Hackers Cook Time's Most- Influential Poll; Mag Shrugs

The results of Time’s online “world’s most influential person” poll have fallen victim to shenanigans, TechCrunch reports. Moot, leader of the devious web forum 4Chan, sits atop Time’s leaderboard, above Barack Obama and other usual suspects. And the first letters of the top 20 spell out “Marblecake Also the Game”—"marblecake" being both “lewd sexual reference” and online shorthand.

“Marblecake” can refer to the practice of embedding hidden messages on the web. Time was not entirely oblivious to the hack; its “technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts,” it notes, though, alas, not the felling blow. The magazine is philosophical about the incursion. “I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll,” the managing editor said. “Doubting the results is kind of the point.” (More Time magazine stories.)