Bank of America sucks at being a cargo cult

The next release from Wikileaks is going to be about a US bank. Bank of America seems thinks it's going to be them (bit of a giveaway they've done something so bad it's worth leaking). The regulators think it's going to do the regulators more harm (bit of a giveaway...). 

Bank of America's panic-buying of domain names is a fascinating response to the fear their secrets are about to be spilled. Says ReadWriteWeb, they're "buying up domains for (the) senior executives and board members, including their names along with "sucks" or "blows.""

This is pure cargo-cult thinking.

This is so similar to the post-WW2 Pacific Islanders building airstrips out of bamboo in the hope it would make the cargo planes return that if I was a Bank of America investor right now I would be taking my money and putting it somewhere run by rationalists instead. Ones who, you know, don't telegraph their utter incomprehension of what this Internet thing is all about.  

The most alarming thing is not just that this panic-buying won't work - type "Bank of America sucks" into Google and it's obvious that it's far, far too late for that. It's the mentality it reveals. Someone in Bank of America has spotted that when the mighty Internet gods get angry with a company, activists buy up "brandnamesucks.com" domains from which to coordinate the protest. So someone in BoA thinks they can safeguard themselves from the coming online protest by merely buying up the "sucks" domains. It reveals a staggering inability to distinguish cause from effect. It's practically a propitiatory sacrifice.

But mainly it's a cargo cult. Build something that looks like the technical wonder that brought the cargo last time and it will come again. Buy up all the relevant domains and you own the protest. Really, BoA investors, you're money's not safe there.

(Photo by Tim Ross on Wikimedia Commons)