The World’s Most Exclusive Website

http://theworldsmostexclusivewebsite.com/

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As Weinergate blows up the Twittersphere, and Rebecca Black’s parents reportedly fund the 13-year-old to create an abomination of a YouTube music video, isn’t it time we reintroduce a little more exclusivity to the web? Aren’t we all nostalgic for the days when Facebook was accessible only by Hahvahd? Politicians seem to be. Congress has shied away from Twitter, with tweets from our nation’s representatives dropping almost 30 percent since the news of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D—N.Y.) scandal broke, according to government-tweet-tracker TweetCongress.

That’s where The World’s Most Exclusive Website comes in. A digital art project, the site limits entry to the internet elite: verified Twitter accounts. Sadly, this does not include me. When I and all other Twitter hoi polloi approach the site, we are welcomed with a forbidding door and brick wall. After attempting to log on, we are let down with a tongue-and-cheek banner: “Verified Twitter accounts are reserved for the famous or otherwise socially significant. You are being redirected to a slightly less discriminating destination.”

That destination is Olive Garden’s homepage. After such a rejection, Four Cheese Pastachettis has never sounded more comforting.

After my failed attempt to sneak into the site, I found an interesting twist to the project: even those with verified accounts are redirected to doors. Granted, there are a variety of doors, from carved museum doors to dreary bathroom doors, each chosen based on the number of Twitter followers the account has. Still, they’re just doors. This is getting downright philosophical. Aren’t we all trying to gain entry to something more exclusive, regardless of our status?

The project was designed by three internet artists and pranksters extraordinaire: Jeff Greenspan, Mike Lacher, and Chris Baker. Greenspan was behind the “Tourist Lane” stunt that separated tourists from New Yorkers on a city sidewalk. Lacher designed The Geocities-izer, a ’90s wallpaper throwback to one of the original social networking sites, GeoCities.

Thank you, gentlemen, for creating a website that doesn’t allow us to publicly humiliate ourselves. Then again, it’s still just as easy to commit embarrassments the old-fashioned way via Christmas cards.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate