Time Magazine's Most Influential People List

QUOTE :
"These people are influential only if we let them influence us. If we shut off the TV and put down US Magazine and start paying attention to our own self interest Zac Efron, some webkid and the Sean Penn's of the world won't seem so important. If our President is so influential we should spend more time looking at the ways he is mortgaging our future with needless debt." : Not_That_ Girl


Time Magazine's Most Influential People List

By Corky Siemaszko - daily news staff writer

Thursday, April 30th 2009, 2:36 PM

Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People

A 21-year-old New York college student beat out everyone from President Obama to Oprah Winfrey in a Time.com poll to win the title World's Most Influential Person.

In doing so, Christopher Poole, aka moot, managed to bull his way into Time magazine's 2009 list of "Most Influential People in the World," a group that includes Nobel prize winners and heads of state.

Who is Poole? He's the publicity-shy founder of 4chan.org, which Time said averages 13 million page views a day, 5.6 million visitors a month, and could be the "second largest bulletin board in the world."

Poole was 15 and living with his parents in Westchester County when he set up the site in 2003 to attract other fans of Japanese comics.

Did Poole's platoons rig the vote? Poole denied it, but Time.com said their techies did detect - and derail - several attempts to hack the vote.

Even if the final result is as suspect as a Chicago election, Time.com managing editor Josh Tyrangiel said Poole is no less deserving than previous winners like Nintendo video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto (2007) and Korean pop star Rain (2006).

"I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll," he said on Time.com's Web site. "Doubting the results is kind of the point."

Time Magazine's list of 100 people with the most juice was compiled by an even less scientific method - managing editor Rick Stengel picked the people.