Miyamoto more influential than Nelson Mandela: Confirmed
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
{ May 3rd 2007 at 10:34PM }
And what of the list above Miyamoto? There you'll find Kiefer Sutherland (8th), J.K. Rowling (6th), Dane Cook and, nestled snugly in first position, Rain (who?). Time Magazine's own list wisely does away with rankings and lumps the designer on page 92, but not before suffering a critical lapse in sanity and asking Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel to extend his fingers beyond the WASD keys. Noting that Miyamoto "opened the world" to a host of "people who never even wanted to visit it before" is about all Wendel's article can manage before losing the plot and discussing his 12 championship wins, ultra-performance PCs and how he'll spend the rest of his life "championing video gaming as an equal to pro football or basketball."
Good thing he didn't write the Mandela bit, then.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hvnlysoldr @ May 3rd 2007 10:40PM
He got robbed! I demand a recount!
Gavin @ May 3rd 2007 10:50PM
So the Wii is analogous to Dane Cook's material?
Holy crap, that is so sad.
muppetmeth @ May 3rd 2007 10:52PM
I hate our culture.
Tom @ May 3rd 2007 10:53PM
Wow Gavin that loose association was really reaching. Almost as bad as a Dane Cook joke! Zing!
Mot @ May 3rd 2007 10:55PM
@Tom
Idiot, don't you realize someone ELSE is supposed to say "Zing!" after you make a joke? I won't give you the satisfaction.
NintendoFanbot @ May 3rd 2007 11:01PM
The Colbert Nation is full of commies. :p
Think of how many Muggles, commies, Howard Stern tards, and people who care about the culture outside of gaming had to give Shiggy a 0 so his rank would go down.
fawazr @ May 3rd 2007 11:05PM
"3. I hate our culture.
Posted at 10:52PM on May 3rd 2007 by muppetmeth"
I second this. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I despise our culture.
kraoro @ May 3rd 2007 11:13PM
Dane Cook?! Are you fucking kidding me?
Gavin @ May 3rd 2007 11:23PM
Uhm, Tom...that was a criticism of pop culture more than anything else. Dane Cook is the epitome of middle of the road, unoriginal, bland whitewashed entertainment. But then again, I do feel the same about mini-game collections as well, so take that for what it's worth.
Rubang B @ May 3rd 2007 11:27PM
Well this poll was supposed to only cover the influence they held in the year 2006. What did Nelson Mandela do last year? The man is a hero and a legend, but he's not really known for what he did last year.
gLitterbug @ May 3rd 2007 11:31PM
Just shows that people actually care more about people who entertain them rather than the ones who do the "real and important things".
If one truly thinks this is so bizarre, then imagine a world without anything that exists only to entertain people and make them happy. What would be left couldn't be called worth doing the real and important things for anymore. Not to me at least.
Rubang B @ May 3rd 2007 11:39PM
The key word here is "influential." How is Kiefer Sutherland influencing anybody? He stars in an awesome show and kicks a bunch of ass. Does that influence the viewers? Same with Rain, J.K. Rowling, and all the other people who were strictly entertainers. Dane Cook!?!? For dick's sake the man isn't influential OR even funny at all.
Miyamoto has had a lot of influence on the game industry in general, but he definitely had a lot last year with the Wii, influencing how we play games and how developers make them. Al Gore should've been at the top of the list for what he's done to bring global warming to everybody's attention more than ever before. The man is influencing how people live and how governments react. Miyamoto should've been top 10 definitely, but not in front of Al Gore. The thing turned into an internet popularity contest, so the whole influence argument gets thrown out the window, but I'm glad Miyamoto still got 9th place in a random internet popularity contest.
samfish @ May 3rd 2007 11:55PM
I keep saying it, but WHO THE FUCK IS RAIN?!
Have I become a pop culture troglodyte or was the list spammed by a bunch of South Korean little girls?
Yeah, but Dane Cook was probably the second most insulting person on that list. How that guy has a fan base is beyond me...
gir @ May 4th 2007 12:42AM
XD aahahahaha
These must be the best posts ever. You guys are hilarious.
o.O OH.......MY......GOD.......George W. Bush is influential? What were they smokin?
samfish @ May 4th 2007 12:46AM
Of course Bush is influential. You've got some damn powerful influence when you manage to turn the entire planet against America.
gir @ May 4th 2007 1:10AM
@15
lol
It takes an extremely genius person to do such a thing.
Aberu @ May 4th 2007 2:04AM
This is more of a testament to how out of touch most people are on the internet. You may forget that an internet poll isn't very accurate. I mean when a bridge in a foreign nation is named after Stephen Colbert can you honestly think this 9th place Miyamoto wasn't pushed by ip proxying crusades?
Chris @ May 4th 2007 2:29AM
I think Dane Cook is funny...
Poisoned Al @ May 4th 2007 3:44AM
As George W. Bush is 97th, what's the betting the Dick Chaney is higher? :D
Raynre @ May 4th 2007 4:08AM
I have a sneaking suspicion that this Rain person must have posted it on his personal website or something and is holding the Korean Starcraft servers hostage unless he gets number one OR ELSE.
Seriously, no one in America has ever heard of him.
Greg2k @ May 4th 2007 4:40AM
It would be nice to know where Iwata stands on that list. Since he became President of NCL, I'm pretty sure he's been FAR more influential than Miyamoto.
Jack of No Trades @ May 4th 2007 8:09AM
"I second this. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I despise our culture."
I will agree with this. I fuckin hate our culture. How were these guys influencial?
Shigeru Miyamoto? He didn't design the Wii himself. He didn't engineer the assembly line. He didn't engineer the new CPU/GPU. All he did was showcase the Wii.
George Clooney/Dane Cook? WTF. Are you kidding?
Opera is influencial to women everywhere.
That is why society is so fucked up. People want to be influenced by actors/models over engineers/scientist. We are screwed!
Kizzle @ May 4th 2007 8:41AM
Gamers are annoying and stupid.
JodyAnthony @ May 4th 2007 9:03AM
anyone that sees this as any more than a stupid popularity contest is an idiot. Of course miyamoto is going to be high on the list when gaming websites are posting all sorts of stories about it, telling their nerdy as hell readers to vote for him. Of course colbert is going to be the top, because he can tell his nerdy as hell viewers to vote for him, etc.
JodyAnthony @ May 4th 2007 9:11AM
also we are all missing the biggest issue here:
fatality is a pompous jackass. the thing he wrote is all about himself. what does his bullshit have to do with miyamoto, or the list in general?
sheppy @ May 4th 2007 9:14AM
I could sit here and talk about how Dane Cook is about as influential as a photocopier.... but I'll let the Wikipedia entry do it for me.
"Material
After the release of his CD/DVD Retaliation, similarities were noticed between Cook's work and material recorded on Louis C.K.'s 2001 album Live in Houston.[11] The bits in question are Louis C.K.'s "Itchy Asshole," "Guy On A Bike," and "Naming Kids." In 2005, Dane Cook performed and released three similar routines on Retaliation.[12] These are "Itchy Asshole," "Struck By A Vehicle," and "My Son Optimus Prime," respectively. In Cook's episode of "Comedy Central Presents," Louis C.K. receives a writing credit for the use of his stand-up material.[13] Cook has denied any plagiarism.[citation needed]
In an interview on the Free Beer & Hot Wings Morning Show in February 2007, C.K. stated that while the jokes are similar, the issue was "overblown" and may stem from a backlash against Cook's popularity. However, C.K. accused Cook of being "bullyish" and litigious towards comedians for having similar material to his. He also stated "Too bad the guy [Cook] can't write enough". C.K. ended the interview by saying, "Fuck Dane Cook, he's a cunt."[14]
Comedian Joe Rogan has spoken on many occasions (including the December 1, 2006 broadcast of the Opie and Anthony Show) about Cook performing a bit on an episode of Premium Blend that Rogan claims to have performed earlier in clubs with Cook present.[15]
Rob Sheffield criticized Dane Cook's material in an October 2006 Rolling Stone article.[16]
Comedian Ron White has criticized Dane Cook for his lack of real material and for his inflated ego.[17]
At a 2007 Irving Plaza show, comedian Zach Galifianakis commented, “I saw Employee of the Month the other day...it wasn't as good as I thought it was gonna be.” During his closing number he revealed a sign that read “Kill Dane Cook" before leaving the stage.[18]
Comedian Andy Kindler has been particularly critical of Cook in his stage act, saying "Thank you MySpace for inventing Dane Cook" and that "Dane Cook is a pyramid scheme. 'Tell ten friends who know nothing about comedy about him.'"[19] He criticized his lack of material by asking a crowd "Do you think people drive home from a Dane Cook concert and go 'Ha Ha Oh my god we've been had! There's not a goddamn joke within a hundred miles of his act!'" In comparing the Dane Cook phenomenon to the spread of Nazism in Germany, Kindler asserted that "Dane Cook is worse than Hitler, because at least Hitler had a point of view!"[20]"
Todd @ May 4th 2007 9:39AM
I definitely think Miyamoto is more influential than Jung Ji-Hoon, at least in the global market. I've never heard of anything about the singer, let alone music. Everyone has heard of Mario and Zelda.
Ken @ May 4th 2007 10:45AM
Miyamoto is influential to me, because he made me go into video game design.
So I think he's worth going on the list.
I have to say, I used to think Dane Cook was funny. I had him as a "friend" on myspace, and he was sure whoring himself out on tons of bulletins about how his fans should "vote to put him at the top of the list, if his jokes make you laugh".
Jake @ May 4th 2007 11:23AM
Easy people, easy. Our nation isn't totally doomed because of this. The votes are a popularity contest. They mean nothing of our culture. Most of our rational and sensible citizens aren't going to come across Time.com's vote thingy, let alone bother to vote. It isn't like 1/3 of our population sat down and got really serious about voting.
This test just shows who has the most idiotic fans, in order.
Jake @ May 4th 2007 11:28AM
As for Dane Cook, it is hard to call him a comedian. He is an entertainer that strives to be funny, but not a true comedian. His material isn't funny, relevant, or inciteful. It is empty, mindless chatter.
Try this. Take an original Dane Cook joke (a lot of his best stuff is stolen). Try to just read the words of the joke. You'll find a majority of his material isn't funny at all. He gets people to laugh by the way he delivers it.
Delivery is a big part of comedy. But true comedians have material that is funny on its own as well. The type of material that could be written on a bathroom stall and you'd laugh your ass off. Dane Cook does not have any writing skills whatsoever.
OhJustSomeRandomGuy @ May 4th 2007 1:28PM
Samfish:
Uh, Rain won because he's a famous Korean and this is a worldwide poll on THE INTERNET.
What's the most wired nation in the world? S. Korea.
It's not a bunch of "little Korean schoolgirls" it's just a bunch of Koreans in general. You can bet this poll was on a bunch of their Korean-mySpace-equivalent pages.
Nintendo fans should be irked to discover that they had less pull in this little internet popularity contest than Dane Cook. You'd figure that people who like the guy wouldn't be you know, on the internet, but you learn something new every day.
Ken @ May 4th 2007 2:18PM
@OhJustSomeRandomGuy
Well, as I said, Dane Cook was whoring himself out (about 4 bulletins a day) telling people to vote for him, multiple times.
steve @ May 4th 2007 5:17PM
There was an appeal to spam Rain's vote up on many English speaking asian forums. I suspect it also got back to Korea. I think Rain only had 200k votes a week ago, looks like the petition worked
Mr Khan @ May 4th 2007 5:30PM
They judge this based on influence NOW, rather than in the past, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to put most anyone above Nelson Mendela, who else (besides the now deceased Boris Yeltsin) took a major role in changing the way of life for an entire nation?
The keys of this is: right NOW Miyamato is influential because of his direction of the Wii's and DS's most recognizable (and innovative) titles. Right NOW Colbert holds an entire nation of viewers at his beck-and-call. Right NOW Rain holds a horde of Far Eastern idolizers at his beck-and-call. Right NOW J.K. Rowling is finishing the final book in one of the biggest series in modern literature
But i can't be held innocent in this. I gave Miyamato 100 at least 7 times, and gave Colbert and Rain 0's at least that many times.
Mr Khan @ May 4th 2007 5:34PM
@ Jack
again, given its severe lack of hardware power, the Wii needs software to make its point known. Wii Sports and Wii Play are carrying it right now, and Nintendogs helps to carry the DS
who made them? Miyamato
I'll agree with you on Dane Cook though, a year ago i would've given it to him, but now? no. People have gotten beyond his humor by now
Topdrunkee @ May 13th 2007 3:20PM
Quote"Right NOW Rain holds a horde of Far Eastern idolizers at his beck-and-call."quote
I disagree with that comment.
In all likelihood that's probably just PR, Considering that awhile back there was much disinformation circling around the net reporting how popular K-pop is in Japan.
(It's actually false, most Japanese listen to American music if they're not supporting the local artists. I was living in Japan at the time, & most of those so called Korean acts only aired late night at 1 to 2:00 o' clock in the morning.)
I just came back from Asia a couple months ago.
(Spent 5 yrs. in Japan & another 4 in Guam.)
I can safely say that most people in Asia have never heard of him.
Sure he may have had a couple of hit singles in Japan, but anyone can make a hit single there.
Even Bob Sapp did.
Only Korean national that I know of to actually make it big in Japan's pop industry was BoA.
(Note there are many other Koreans who are rather popular in Japan but they are zainichi, who were born & raised in Japan.)