Betabeat » daily dot

Delightfully Ludicrous Twitter Account Imagines How Non-Existent Season of Star Trek Played Out

Jessica Roy — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 12:42:23 -0400

(Photo: 9Laughs)

Today, The Daily Dot published the story behind one of our favorite Twitter users, @tng_s8, a parody account that purports to publish plotlines from the unaired season 8 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. @tng_s8 is run by a 30-year-old Los Angeles-based aspiring comedy writer who asked that the Daily Dot not use his name, lest the pureness of this Twitter stream be tainted by his Hollywood dreams.

The account undoubtedly appeals to the more rabid TNG fans among us, but even if your knowledge of the show extends simply to "That one guy has a beard," you'll probably find some of the tweets pretty hilarious. Below, we've collected our favorites.

Newest Viral Marketing Scheme? Transmitting Tweets to Space

Jessica Roy — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:50:04 -0400

The Chasing UFOs team. (Photo: National Geographic)

It's one thing to fake intergalactic advertising like the hoaxsters at Rolling Rock did back in 2008 with moonvertising, but actually carrying through with the plan is a whole other thing entirely. When the National Geographic channel heard about Tweets in Space, a program spearheaded by two artists who plan to beam tweets to planet GJ667Cc, they decided to jump on the bandwagon. But, of course, it's not all in the name of science.

The Daily Dot reports that National Geographic has teamed up with Tweets in Space to transmit tweets with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs to promote its new show called--yes--Chasing UFOs.

Writes The Daily Dot:

Any tweets tagged #ChasingUFOs that are sent in the seven hours after 8pm ET on June 29 will be rolled into National Geographic’s transmission. The nonprofit is sending the tweets in response to the Wow! Signal, a 72-second transmission from space picked up by Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in 1977. National Geographic is also sending several video messages from filmmakers, musicians and scientists among others.

Somehow this isn't at all how we imagined first contact would go.

Card Game About Tentacle Rape Porn Pulled from Kickstarter

Jessica Roy — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:55:57 -0400

Tentacle Bento (kickstarter.com)

Even on the sex-swathed Internet, there are still some things considered too taboo for mainstream consumption. While a search for "tentacle porn" on XXX sites would undoubtedly yield at least hundreds of results, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is publicly grappling with its anime animus.

The Daily Dot reports that a tentacle rape porn-themed card game that had raised more than double its funding goal was canceled by Kickstarter, due to its graphic material. As Twitter user @VonRosceau tweeted, "Kickstarter didn't want a game about raping teenage girls with tentacles funded under their name today. Manchildren angry, nobody surprised."

According to the Daily Dot:

The game lets players assume the role of tentacle monsters disguised as buxom students at an all-girl’s school in Japan. It urges players to befriend “sexy” and “sporty” high school girls and “get your slimy tentacles on as many of the students as you can before time runs out.”

Despite the fact that the game's developer, Soda Pop Miniatures, issued a disclaimer saying that the game was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek spoof on actual tentacle porn, and that it did not condone violence against women, the Daily Dot reports that many gaming sites took issue with its subject matter. The fact that the game play revolves around kidnapping schoolgirls makes the light-hearted spoof argument difficult to buy.

Tentacle Bento fans, including one prominent Penny Arcade cartoonist, declared Kickstarter's move censorship, but it's worth noting that the project clearly violates at least one of Kickstarter's prohibited subjects, including "Pornographic Material" and possibly "Offensive Material."

Kickstarter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Do Reddit, 4Chan, and Digg Need Their Own Hometown Newspaper? The Daily Dot Hopes So.

Nitasha Tiku — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:06:42 -0400

The idea behind The Daily Dot, a new website that just emerged from invite-only private beta today, sounds like a great premise for an infographic. "Day-to-day coverage will focus on ‘neighborhoods.’ Sites like Reddit, like Digg and like Etsy are really like cities. And the web is like a large country of itself,” founding editor Owen Thomas told his former colleagues at VentureBeat. It's easy enough to picture an illustrator going to town with a map of the internet and Etsy's cutesy, cuddly cul-de-sac next to 4Chan's lawless urban sprawl.

But is it enough to carry an entire newspaper?

The online-only news outlet was founded by Nova Spivack, a serial entrepreneur and investor in Klout, as well as CEO Nicholas White, who quit his family's 179-year-old newspaper company to join the start-up. So far, they have raised $600,000 for media execs and investors with commitments for more if necessary.

The wink-and-nod to web natives is apparent from the datelines--which feature the icons for the community, such as Reddit or Twitter, that the article is about--to the gamified leaderboard, which show profiles of the top people from communities like Tumblr along with a "Dot score."

VentureBeat points out that Daily Dot plans to apply traditional journalism techniques to covering these internet "cities" like a real community. But here's where we think the hometown paper concept might not catch on. The appeal of communities like Reddit or 4Chan to day-in, day-out residents, as it were, is partly its insularity and the fact that a noob might easily get lost in them there woods. If we were pitching The Daily Dot, we'd say it sounds more like a way to report the news in those communities to the norms.