Last-Name effect – An interesting theory.

Last-Name effect – everyone whose last name begins with some of the last letters of the alphabet were last at everything in school, and later, as adults, they are buying everything they can get their hands on because of fear that supplies will disappear. 

According to the new study, people whose last name begins with the last letter of the alphabet (Z) are making the fastest decisions when it comes to shopping. What could explain this weird phenomenon, which the authors of this theory called “last-name effect”? Here is an interesting explanation.

American obsession with alphabetical order, especially in the education system, often places those whose last name begins with a letter “Z” at the end of the line, causing different kind of suffering in life of those persons. For example – they are always last in line at the canteen and the other kids are taking all the chocolate milk before them…also, in most cases, they are placed in the last rows in the classroom, so they have to put a great effort to get the attention of teachers. Later in life of those persons, as soon as they see a product that is discounted (or if someone offers them something to buy) they are immediately buying them because they have a fear that the supplies will disappear. In those moments, they finally have “chocolate milk” within their reach.

“For years, simply because of your name, you've received inequitable treatment. So when you get to exercise control, you seize on opportunity. It's a coping strategy, and over time it becomes a natural way to respond” – explains Kurt Carlson, an assistant professor at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business and a co-author of the paper on this subject.

He and Jacqueline Conard, an assistant professor at the Massey Graduate School of Business at Belmont University, have uncovered the “last-name effect” through an experiment.

They selected a group of students and send them an e-mail, offering them free tickets to a basketball game.  Within that e-mail, they highlighted that the offer is limited. The average response time of people whose last names begins with some of the last nine letters of the alphabet (from R to Z) was 19.38 minutes. Those whose last name begins with some of the first nine letters of the alphabet had an average response time of 20.08 minutes, which is a statistically significant difference.

These results drove “Time” journalist Sean Gregory to verify this theory. He took the list of workers and found Paul Zelinski, a production director for “Time” and “Sports Illustrated” for kids. Zelinski told him that he spent many days in the back of the class as a student in Brooklyn Catholic schools.

“In grammar school, I didn't mind, because there was this girl next to me who was cute. But in high school, it stunk. I couldn't see over the taller guys in front of me” – said Zelinski.

He claims that “last-name effect” makes sense. For example, he is always looking to make a quick agreement on a deal, and he recently bought a car over the internet for a good price. However, he is still afraid that he will be on the fringe. When he goes to watch a game, he often arrives two hours earlier, just to grab the best seat and have a good view of a game.

“I don't know if that has to do with being Zelinski or being Polish. I might have to go into therapy to find out.” – Zelinski said.

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The Most Influential Person on the Internet!

When a kid from New York started, what it looked like, a regular site (4chan.org) he didn’t even dreamed that it will become a movement capable to make a hell of a life to anyone.

If someone thought that internet is a paradise with unlimited possibilities for gaining information and creating perfect virtual life, then it was just a matter of time when a confronted hell will arise. That time has come. Hell is born.

In 2003, far away from public eyes, a 15-year old boy from New York created what it looked like, a regular site for posting and commenting photos and comic books, 4chan.org. In just 7 years this site has overgrown in to a movement capable to make life miserable to any individual on this planet who knows how to press Enter.

When Christopher Poole started 4chan he couldn’t of imagine that he will create a community of seven million people who visit this virtual place every month and leave about 700 000 comments daily, nor he was aware of what kind of power he could have by controlling a mass like this. Well, Christopher was still a kid then. But a kid who had control over the most powerful voting machine on the internet. Since the community of 4chan has a lot of really good hackers who are geared with amazing software, they hack in to other Facebook accounts (where they change content however they want) or large system sites, and they always make some pranks. These pranks are usually utterly distasteful, some jokes are really funny but most of the time they create chaos of global magnitudes.

Sarah Palin, the first female vice-presidential nominee, knows this really well. 4chan’s have hacked her private e-mail and the media were buzzing about that for months. Even the internet taikun’s from Google, Twitter and YouTube know them well. 4chan’s have enriched their content with pornographic materials and left trails that led to some of their adversaries, which were considered guilty in the beginning.

Similar to this, the members of 4chan have pulled out Rick Astley from naphthalene, a British singer whose last big hit was in the 80s. They made a prank in which more than 66 million internet users were tricked into watching his video "Never Gonna Give You Up" by posting it under the name of other popular video titles. That made Rick the most listened guy on the internet and eventually brought him an MTV award. This practice is now known as Rickrolling.

Following the same principle, last year they engaged them self in the famous Time magazine voting for the most influential person of the year 2008. This time they secured the first place for Christopher Poole, but under the name Moot. That was because in the time of voting, no one on earth didn’t know who was behind 4chan, except that his nickname was Moot. Moot became the most influential person in this internet poll, but the site editorial put him later at the top of the list of the most influential persons that now one knows about.

The last victim of 4chan was the latest MTV star Justin Bieber. First they arranged that every visit to some of his songs redirects you to some porn. Bieber had, among other things, offered to his fans to choose over the internet in which country should he additionally arranged a concert during his World Tour. 4chan arranged it to be North Korea, instead of Israel. Now this teenage star has to at least try to organize a visit to this dictatorship country.

Christopher Poole came out of anonymity last year, when one reporter discovered his identity. It turned out that no one close to him didn’t know that young and shy Chris is running one of the most powerful sites. That includes his mother. She discovered it when that reporter called their house for the first time. Poole is 22 today and he didn’t earn a single dollar from his site. Some have already started to call him the biggest internet fool because he created a site in the rank of Google and Facebook, but lives in debts, because he was paying his site hosting with his mothers credit card and made a debt bigger than 20 000 dollars.

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