To show you how easy it is to be Quora--or Ask Jeeves, or Facebook Questions, or Google Questions, or Allexperts.com--I’m starting my own question and answer site right here in this very column. If I’m half as lucky as Quora, I should get $150 million.

Why is anyone even paying attention to Quora, at all?

Excellent question. As part of the slavering press frenzy that accompanied Quora’s debut, co-founder Adam D’Angelo told some reporter that he quit Facebook to start Quora because “Q & A is one of those areas on the internet where there are a lot of sites, but no one had come along and built something that was really good yet.” And they still haven’t.

He also said, “We think there’s a lot of knowledge that is still in people’s heads that hasn’t really been written down on the internet in a useful format yet.” Totally.

People think it’s a good idea to care about Quora because question and answer sites are as fashionable right now as rompers were last summer. See, just like the romper,  Q & A sites inexplicably makes a comeback every few years. With Google flooded with spam and SEO nonsense, technophiles are thinking it’d actually be better if we farmed out our question-answering needs to “social networks” of humans. Much in the same way grown women periodically think it’s a good idea to dress themselves in one-piece outfits for two-year-olds, Q & A sites like Quora and Stack Exchange rear their ugly heads now and then.

Plus, just like Hashable, Quora capitalizes on the narcissism and incestuousness of tech start-up culture, generating outsize enthusiasm from a group of people who love nothing more than to hear their opinions and mutual adulations echo around whatever virtual forum happens to be popular at the moment.

That’s it?

Self-promoter Robert Scoble at one point was the site’s No. 1 user, but Quora got upset that he was using it as a personal branding vehicle (an odd objection, considering personal branding is one of the only reasons anyone has any incentive to answer dumb questions on Quora to begin with). Scoble got in a fight with Quora and eventually wrote a passive-aggressive fake mea culpa, and some people who read tech blogs paid attention to that.

Who runs Quora?

Charlie Cheever (my boss’s friend) and Adam D’Angelo, two ex-Facebook guys who decided to jump ship in hopes of making a buck off investors who are going crazy over tech companies. Sound familiar? It should.

How is Quora different from Yahoo! Answers?

Quora is not different from Yahoo! Answers.

How is Quora different from Stack Exchange?

Unlike Stack Exchange, Quora does not make a habit of weeding out poorly formed and illogical questions. (Stack Exchange’s Pokemon questions, for example, are very well thought out and pragmatic, whereas on Quora you get threads like “Who is the sexiest Pokemon?”)

Is Jeeves on Quora?

No, Quora has even less going for it than the ill-fated question and answer engine, because Quora does not even have a cartoon butler for a mascot.

How much is Quora worth?

Somewere between $86 million and $300 million, if you believe the deep-pocketed, glorified lottery players at Benchmark Capital. My valuation is closer to the $0 range, but my opinion doesn’t matter as much as that of venture investors making scattershot investments in hope of cashing in a winning start-up lottery ticket.

Why is this happening?

Mainly because what drives any American bull market is a group of wealthy and self-congratulatory -- but also ignorant -- people wasting their money on fashionable but ultimately worthless investments.

Should we grow up now?

Yes, grow up, you babies.

"Congratulations! You have just become a top advocate for Charter Schools on Jumo. Boost your advocate status by posting, commenting on, and caring about stories on Jumo: http://www.jumo.com/charterschools."

Mr. Taylor had been a member of Jumo for two days, having joined on March 29 to find specific ways to make fun of it.

When Jumo was getting ready for launch, a guy could practically feel the drool puddles from a small army of social-media buzz junkies gathering around his Chuck Taylors. Chris Hughes, the adorable blonde "Facebook co-founder" (Yeah, remember the guy whose job it was to reach out to Yale and Columbia in The Social Network? Great founding.) who used Twitter to help Barack Obama become president was behind the project.

As it turns out, the website that helps people engage in perpetual real-time narcissism makes a pretty bogus inspiration for a site designed to get people thinking about anything but themselves. But Jumo manages to be a dud even if you ignore the totally flawed premise. It’s suspicious, confusing, ugly and boring.

To get started on Jumo, you better get in the spirit of giving right away, because the website demands that users hand over a bunch of Facebook data right off the bat. Jumo wants to know your basic Facebook information and access your data whenever it wants. And it wants to post to your wall.

After that, Jumo makes fake activism easier than ever before. Pick a couple nebulous causes you’re vaguely interested in (are you into “Environment and Animals” or “Human Rights”? -- you can pick both!). Soon you’ll be confronted with a Facebook Wall-style page that displays articles and other material that sort of fall within the set of interests you chose. Right now I’m looking at two posts about refugees, something about sea turtles and a promo for a documentary about landfills. Next to each item is a little green button that’s resembles Facebook’s “Like” button except it says “Care.” Caring was never so easy. Thanks to Jumo, I can care about 50 tragedies by the time I’m done eating my Kashi Heart to Heart Warm Cinnamon Oat. It’s soothing to watch that little green button turn from green to white. “Care” becomes “Cared.” There are a million Ivory Coast refugees.  More in Somalia. Public schools in Detroit are failing. Click, click, click. Care, care, care.

Just like voting for a president, “Caring” is easy. Too bad Amnesty International doesn’t free political prisoners on the strength of clicks. Anyone who cares about doing more than making empty gestures for Amnesty is going to have to actually write a letter. (You can send money through Jumo, but it doesn’t use PayPal, so get ready to give your credit card number to yet another website.)

Part of the confusion owes to an uncomfortable fact: Jumo is as ugly as a shaved rabbit. Honestly, I’ve seen Geocities pages that looked better. Part of being a serious charity website is looking like you’re serious. And the Reebok Pumps color scheme isn’t helping here. I haven’t seen this much royal blue and lime green since I thumbed through a Pac Sun catalog. When people give money to Jumo they probably expect to get a pair of board shorts in the mail.

Look, Jumo isn’t bad for charities. It’s way too useless to do any harm. Jumo’s users are the kinds of people who if you asked them if they cared about a certain humanitarian disaster they would say “Oh yeah that’s awful,” and if you asked them what they did about it they might say “I voted for Obama.” Or, if they were really engaged, maybe they paid some money to get a little Japanese flag onto their Tumblr avatars after the earthquake. Fixing problems isn’t fun. Activism is boring and hard and frustrating. And that’s not going to change just because someone made an ugly, buggy version of Facebook and said it’s for a good cause.

Grow up, you babies.

Ever since Guy Kawasaki dropped The Macintosh Way, it seems like every waffle-brain who’s learned a little Ruby is trying to get on the AmEx-blog gravy train with a bunch of schlocky be-like-me drek. It seems like whenever investors and mobile-app cheerleaders set down their pom-poms long enough to type anything at all, they start spouting the kind of self-help jargon even that would make even Drs. Phil and Laura squirm in their armchairs.

I swear, the crud that these people use to console each other while they wait a few weeks for the next dumb-money angel fund to cut them a check! Did you know that saying yes opens up a lot of opportunities? Like meeting your wife at a benefit concert? If you answered “Yes,” congratulations: I grant you the “opportunity” to not click that link.

How about this? Be good—and your customers will be good right back to you! Put another way: Even though you may already have made millions off this venture-capital merry-go-round, you don’t have to act like an entitled child. And let’s not forget that taking initiative is the only way to get things done. And social media is about the customer. Or wait, was it about engagement? No, it’s about people, but not tools.  I could’ve sworn it was about tools. Discouraging.

But not too discouraging, when you remember that can’t is a four-letter word. Well, at least it is when you’re best friends with Ben Lerer and you can do whatever the [four-letter word] you want.

Once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound.  No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself. Kind of like kickball games at recess.

In theory, these risk-takers who’ve braved debt (or at least dependence on their parents) to emerge with an iPad-compatible golden goose should have something materially valuable to share with their aspirational audience. But instead we get vapid pep talks that even your high school guidance counselor couldn’t utter with a straight face. I’d say we should ask for more from these shysters but that’d probably be expecting too much.

Grow up, you babies.

Nathan Hubbard, Ticketmaster's fresh-faced CEO, trots to Austin for South by Southwest. But can he bring transparency to his hated concert colossus? [Wired]

Having trouble deciding which New York accelerator program might be right for you? Here are some bullet points that might help. [ChubbyBrain]

Rumor! Angry Birds are readying an attack the New York Stock Exchange. [TheNextWeb]

Authorities are wrapping up their investigation into the Gizmodo iPhone scoop, in what surely will prove to be one of the best deployments of government resources in recent memory. [cnet]

For example: If I were to lurk outside the Union Square Ventures office waiting to spot Fred Wilson and then I dove into a cab and yelled at the driver to “FOLLOW FRED WILSON’S CAR!”--and then raced after him down the NJTP and chatted Fred up in the bathroom at the Vince Lombardi Service Area, and we clicked, then what I would do with Hashable (besides tell Fred it’s a dumb idea and he shouldn’t have invested in it) is I would type “Just #stoodnextto @FredWilson at a #urinal at a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike :).”

And I would do this because Hashable keeps track of all the times I talk to some guy in the bathroom or someplace else. Plus, I get a “hash cred,” which is like those corny “badges” Foursquare generously doles out (because they are imaginary) and my Hashable ranking goes up. Look out, Gary Vaynerchuck (#85)! I’m coming for you. Just kidding, I’m not. Hashable is stupid.

It is designed for one purpose: to exploit the social anxieties of insecure weaklings.

It does this by turning human interaction into a quantifiable game with winners and losers. The problem is, to be a “winner” at this dumb game, you have to be the type of chucklehead who’d ever want to play it in the first place.

Turns out  there are plenty of insecure people with smartphones. Something like 400 of them attended Hashable’s VIP party down in Austin at “South By.” At this “invite-only” event, they set up a VIP section within the VIP party! Apparently, in Hashable founder Michael Yavonditte’s fevered mind the whole world is a series of concentric VIP sections one must navigate, only to encounter Mikey Yavo himself standing guard over the last velvet rope informing anyone who makes it that far, “Sorry bro, you’re not Hashable enough.”

Because face it, you’re never going to have as much hash cred as him. Wait, stop crying. I know it hurts, but you’ll feel better once you accept that your social skills are subpar. Then you can finally stop trivializing real-world encounters by exploiting them for dubious prestige awarded by a company whose mascot is a smiling octothorpe that dresses up like a cowboy.

Believe it or not, Hashable started out as an even lamer idea--some kind of finance-oriented app called Trackt. Then the company pivoted (“pivot” is start-up talk for “try to make something that’s at least a little less stupid than what you originally made”). Here’s an idea, Hashable. How about next time you just pivot yourself right off a cliff and spare us your childish, syrupy social-networking nonsense.

Grow up, you babies.

Now Check Out: The Kings And Queens Of Dot-Com NY - Where Are They Now >>

Previously: Abolish South by Southwest!

The future is here, drunk and deluded. Source: Flickr -- shatz

If there's one thing I hate more than spilling a Shiner Bock on my iPhone 4 just after I just downloaded the newest OkCupid update, it's South by Southwest, especially the Interactive part, a supposedly technology-oriented appendage of the days-long party.

Let's destroy this sham of a technological confabulation once and for all. But before we do that, let's call it what it really is: the Woodstock of our generation. Which is to say, an excuse for unattractive men to disguise themselves as forward-thinking revolutionaries in hopes of getting laid.

But here's the sad truth, South by Southwest fanboy: you're not a revolutionary, and worse, you're not getting laid.

Come to think of it, "SXSW" is less like Woodstock than a revival meeting, but without the virtue. You've got your blind faith, speaking in tongues, fantasies of redemption and plenty of "evangelists."

Can you get an "Amen"? Not from me, suckers.

"WE ARE AT A PIVOTAL MOMENT!" some panelist will preach to a laptop-toting choir. "SOMEONE MUST INTERPRET ALL THIS DATA!" Out on 6th Street, meanwhile, a bunch of drunken mooks pile on top of each other in sweltering heat while the stench of human odor and overused mobile applications permeates the air. Disgusting.

Any value "SXSW" might have had wore off shortly after everyone stopped spelling the whole name out. (Now they call it "South By" and soon it will just be a vague hiss: like "Sssuhhhhh...") But over the years the conference has become a gross parody of its original intentions. Let me break down the daily schedule of the average ding-dong who still goes to this festival:

He comes to on a dorm room floor, breath stinking of Corporate Super-Sponsor Miller Lite. He collects his buttons, stickers and vanity USB sticks. He stumbles into the Austin heat, where someone is handing out samples of Pepsi Max or Brisk Iced Tea or, worst-case, Monster Energy Drink. He bikes over to the Dell Computer Lounge for another panel and the "opportunity" to network with someone who coded some software that makes it easier to identify smells. Which will come in real handy back at the crash pad.

And I cannot stress this enough: No-one has gotten laid.

Why don't you people do something useful? Maybe make an app that allows users to avoid getting beaten by government thugs. Then have your little festival. There's a global famine going on. Make a food replicator like they had on Star Trek, then file for your parade permits.

All this banging on about techno-utopias when so much of the world is so cocked-up makes my ears bleed. Sorry, dorks, but fancy cloud computing isn't going to help us educate our youngsters or take out the trash.

Here's a newsflash, Soup Soup: If you're a real innovator, you're not out in Texas shaking hands with indie bands; you're 15 years old, grinding out the hours in some Connecticut basement, soldering together old Kaypros and giving Steve Jobs the night sweats.

Get rid of South by Southwest. Strangle it with its own lanyard. And save the backslaps for when we really have something to be proud of, like a program that can finally stop my iPhone apps from wiggling.

Grow up, you babies.