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The Most Influential Person of 2009 Is …. Moot!

2009_time100 Who is the most influential person of 2009?  Instead of relying on assorted "experts" Time magazine decided to open this year's annual polling on this topic to the "general public." And just as democracy is messy, so are on-line public polls. Totally unexpectedly, the top position has gone to someone named "moot." (There is more to moot than meets the eye. Read the story). The following nine positions are equally stunning. According to the "public" the ten most influential people of 2009 are:

  1. Moot

  2. Anwar Ibrahim

  3. Rick Warren

  4. Baitullah Mehsud

  5. Larry Brilliant

  6. Eric Holder

  7. Carlos Slim

  8. Angela Markel

  9. Kobe Bryant

  10. Evo Morales

How many of these have you heard of? Okay, at least some I am sure. A couple are leaders of their countries (Morales, Markel), one is the newly appointed AG of the US Justice Dept who beat out his widely popular, better known and vastly more influential boss in the White House. Then there is also a Christian pastor (#3), a wanted terrorist (#4) and a basketball player (#9). # 2 is someone I have never heard of. What gives? I guess this will teach Time (and other media outlets involved in list making and wishing to influence public opinions) a lesson in at last figuring out that the "public" is not only quite often ignorant but sometimes, as in this case, also mischievous. NASA learnt the same lesson when it opened up the naming of the International Space Station to public voting and was mortified when it ended up with Stephen Colbert. I suspect that this result too was skewed by the parochial partiality of the voting public.

Barack Obama does figure among the top 100 most influential persons of 2009.  He is at a hopelessly feeble # 37 … well below Britney Spears, Jon Stewart, Ron Paul, Tina Fey and some other knowns and unknowns.  

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12 responses to “The Most Influential Person of 2009 Is …. Moot!”

  1. Dean C. Rowan

    A good post, Ruchira. Influence is a tricky subject, as is influenza these days. For whom would I have voted? Maybe Gutenberg? We still have books, even in 2009. Naw, he’s overrated. From my perspective the most influential person so far this year would have to be either Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose wind serenades as recorded by members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on Nonesuch back around 1982 I recently revisited, having finally mounted my turntable stand on the wall, or Ivor Tiefenbrun, the man who designed the turntable. Listening to LPs lately, after fifteen frustrating months away from them, has replenished my optimism, and the LA band’s delivery of Mozart’s goods secures the supply.

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  2. anonymous

    anonymous hacked the poll, brainiac.
    the first letters of each name spell “MARBLECAKE, ALSO THE GAME”
    anonymous didn’t just hack the first spot, they hacked the whole damn thing

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  3. Dean C. Rowan

    That’s hardly a hack. It’s merely a vote for acrostics as the most influential person of 2009.

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  4. anonymous

    they didn’t vote, they wrote scripts to stuff the ballot box with thousands, if not millions, of votes. there was no legitimate way to make such a precise order that wouldn’t be messed up by other people voting in the regular way.

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  5. banerjee

    See http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ for more.

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  6. Dean C. Rowan

    I still fail to understand why Eric Holder is more influential than Lil Wayne. Ergo, the results should display MARBLLCAKE AESO THE GAME, which makes no sense whatsoever.

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  7. John Johnington

    Ruchira is a horrible reporter, if you can call this blog reporting. The first sentence is horribly inaccurate: They have a parallel online poll EVERY year, and the list that goes in the magazine WILL be judged by experts. Last years poll has a south korean pop star win because korean forums wrote scripts. Do you just make up facts as you go along? Downvoted this garbage on Reddit.

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  8. manoj

    Anwar Ibrahim is the former number 2 to Mahatir Mohammed who was Prime Minister of Malaysia. But Mahatir had him removed and thrown in prison on a trumped up sodomy charge. He was in jail for several years and is now out and again active in Malaysian politics and could well become the PM, but as the leader of the opposition. His major plank is an end to Malaysia’s racial preference laws favouring the Malays.

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  9. Joe

    Re: John Johnington’s remark, “if you can call this blog reporting.” To my knowledge, we don’t call it reporting. We call it blogging, but none of us purport to be reporters. Thanks for your concern, though.

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  10. Ruchira

    Thanks, Joe. Perhaps John didn’t notice that we even have a category called “Random Thoughts & Idle Chatter.”
    I have to admit though that I realized later that Time does do public polling every year (2009 is their third one) and gets weird results like the Korean singer, Rain (he figures on this year’s list too) topping the chart last year. I guess this year’s poll has garnered the unusual publicity because of the mysterious “moot.”
    But still, we are not “reporters.”

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  11. John Johnington

    Hehe I trolled you XD

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  12. Bob

    M
    A
    R
    B
    L
    E
    C
    A
    K
    E

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