Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post of Internet memes, wins the “more meta than thou” award for making “An Infographic Backlash Infographic” inspired by the tragic tale of a guy whose job it was to game Digg back when Digg had enough traffic to make it worth gaming.
Okay Buzzfeed, just because you understand recursion, doesn’t mean you have to rub it in our face all the time. Aside from the Greyhat SEO tricks, your anti-infographic infographic and the post that inspired it are actually just describing successful web-writing and content creation. It’s like…there’s a reason people are clicking on it.
From the Digg gamer’s playbook, which is really interesting if you care at all about how people used to build website traffic.
“Spam other sites with it too for bonus points. Email large blogs, etc. to try to get them to run with it too.”
From the Buzzfeed “community manager,” in our Tips inbox today:
Thought this might be up your alley –
Techcrunch eventDisrupt 2026: The tech ecosystem, all in one room
Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $400.
Save up to $300 or 30% to TechCrunch Founder Summit
1,000+ founders and investors come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately
Offer ends March 13.San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026a couple of days ago someone posted on Reddit about how he been paid to game Digg and other influential sites by creating infographics (those goofy, badly designed images with stats and pie charts called “everything you ever wanted to know about boobs” that keep turning up on content-sharing sites) and then loading them with keyword-spam embed tags once they start spreading.
today, we posted an infographic about how the system works: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics
and within a few minutes, dozens of new fake accounts were created on our site to defend the practice.
the whole thing is pretty fascinating!
Well I do find it fascinating … But wait, didn’t you guys just tell me I shouldn’t link to infographics? Fortunately the spam infographic has some helpful suggestions for what to do when you’re in this kind of a situation. “If you do include a link to a spam infographic include a no follow tag in the html.”
Which is exactly what we did. Thanks guys! Hi Jonah ;)
