Is My Thesis Hot or Not?
April 11, 2010 10:40 AM   Subscribe

 
There appears to be just the one thesis on there at the moment, and it seems to be definitely trending towards the not.

What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? I intend to find out through my research.
posted by empatterson at 10:48 AM on April 11, 2010


Is my website broken or not?

I kept getting the same thesis over and over, and kept hitting "not hot". The site added them all in.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 10:49 AM on April 11, 2010


This site sphinx.
posted by gubo at 10:53 AM on April 11, 2010 [3 favorites]


Nice idea, but it appears to have only one thesis.
posted by memebake at 10:55 AM on April 11, 2010


This would be better if it had more than five theses.

I mean, Martin Luther needed 95 before he went live.
posted by klangklangston at 11:07 AM on April 11, 2010 [7 favorites]


Works for me. Latest thesis on the site:
A Single Tear: How MetaFilter.com Downtime Makes the World a Darker Place

It would be more interesting if it had at least the thesis abstract. As is, it should be called "IsMyThesisTitleHotOrNot?" And, as studies have shown, unless it has several words in it that no layman would recognize, and uses a long awkward sentence structure, it won't be considered hot be the people that matter.
posted by eye of newt at 11:34 AM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


You can have a lot of fun being silly on this thing just by submitting random thoughts, trying to refine your inner George Carlin...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 11:48 AM on April 11, 2010


Best of the web? Or not?
posted by Obscure Reference at 11:50 AM on April 11, 2010


A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a friend about the web of the past and the Hot or Not website came up and I had a flashback to the TV show that was made from it. I wasn't entirely sure if it had really existed or if I had hallucinated. It was incredibly bizarre. The one bit I remember seeing, I must've come across it while flipping through channels, was some guy using a laser pointer to highlight some "flaw" which had something to do with a woman's ankles. I wasn't entirely sure if this had been real or not so I googled, and sure enough, it was just as strange as I remembered (no laser pointer, though). </derail>

Eh... I suppose writing about that show would make for a good thesis... yeah... that was my point.
posted by Kattullus at 11:50 AM on April 11, 2010


I'm getting more then one, but not more then 10 or 20 it seems.
posted by delmoi at 11:56 AM on April 11, 2010


My favorite so far: Comic Sans vs Helvetica: Textual Harassment In The 20th Century.

Interesting to see how much this has grown in the last hour.
posted by joedan at 11:59 AM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Heh. One of the first ones I encountered was:

A Single Tear: How MetaFilter.com Downtime Makes the World a Darker Place
(with a current hotfactor of 7.0)
posted by charles kaapjes at 12:21 PM on April 11, 2010


Interesting to see how much this has grown in the last hour.

If by "grown" you mean "been vandalised", then yes, yes it is.

I suspect exposure to the wider internet is exactly what this site doesn't need.
posted by djgh at 12:23 PM on April 11, 2010


Puppies: The Silent Killers

That's so hot.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 12:34 PM on April 11, 2010


When I first loaded the site, there were about four thesis thesises theses, now there are dozens. Judging from some of the titles (including at least three "beanplate" takeoffs), I suspect most of the current ones are from Mefites.

My favorites so far:

I Know YOU Are, But What Am I: Cisgender Identity in the 21st Century

Put The Lime In The Coconut Then Take It All Out: The Emerging Science Of Homeopathic Drink Mixing

Rabid Wombats: An Epistemological Approach
posted by Rhaomi at 12:37 PM on April 11, 2010 [3 favorites]


Man, I just got a *great* idea for a Coprophiliac website!
posted by symbioid at 12:39 PM on April 11, 2010


This would be a difficult site to defend...
posted by StrangerInAStrainedLand at 1:03 PM on April 11, 2010


"Comic Sans vs. Helvetica: Texual Harrassment in the 20th Century."

I'd so hit that. (in other words: HOT)
posted by iamkimiam at 1:29 PM on April 11, 2010


Puppies: The Silent Killers

Um, I'm guessing whoever is doing that thesis hasn't spent much time around puppies. Their theory is about to get shot down right quick.
posted by Ufez Jones at 1:32 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


The first one I got was "Metafilter: Roman Polanski's Daycare"

I shit you not.
posted by FunGus at 1:45 PM on April 11, 2010


Well that sucked. I was hoping for real theses. I wanted to be all "Whooo! Look at that methods section! tsssssssss."
posted by cashman at 1:51 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Last time I checked, a title is not a thesis. I did see one abstract -- but abstracts are also not theses. Maybe I've figured out what the problem is -- grad students (or metafilter readers :) need remedial education in what a thesis statement is.

That said, I don't think that I believe that a dissertation necessarily ought to have one thesis statement. Some projects fit well into a single research question; I'm reading a book based on a PhD thesis which could be said to have one thesis, albeit a somewhat general one. But not all projects can be designed around a single research question -- it depends on the nature of the data and research. If you know your data before you begin, perhaps you can work a disseration that way, but in many fields what your data is -- even what the sources of your data end up being -- may only emerge in the process of the research. You can shoehorn it into a "single research question" if you must, but that can do a disservice to the research which you have done.
posted by jb at 2:23 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Maybe I've figured out what the problem is...

I don't think you have, since the site is a joke and the "thesis titles" are made-up.

My favorite so far is "A Theoretical Theory That Theorizes All Theorems, Theories and Theorizations"
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 3:51 PM on April 11, 2010


I'm writing my thesis right now.

That is, I'm spending most of my time Not Writing and a lot of my time Worrying about Writing, and Checking Metafilter, and Drinking Very Cheap Wine.

This makes me feel better right now.
posted by Tesseractive at 6:28 PM on April 11, 2010 [3 favorites]


HP LaserJet P10006: if you look at the side-bar (on the left) of the site, you will see that it is not intended to be a joke. It is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but the makers of the site designed it for graduate students to put down their central research questions/statements for others to comment on; this purpose is being undermined by people adding fake joke titles.
posted by jb at 6:40 PM on April 11, 2010


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