Along with chiseled biceps, tough-guy roles and unusual hair (or lack thereof), Vin Diesel, Chuck Norris and Mr. T can add one more item to the list of things they have in common. Each is the subject of a random fact generator on the popular humor website 4q.cc created by Ian Spector '09. Frequented by college students, military personnel and even Fortune 500 employees, the Web site features thousands of random "not necessarily true" facts about the three, all submitted by fans eager to contribute to this new pop-culture phenomenon.
The Vin Diesel fact generator, the oldest of the three, got its start last March after Spector noticed a thread on the Web site SomethingAwful.com listing random facts about the popular action star. Spector thought it would be funny to create his own site that would compile these facts and allow people to submit their own, he said. Hosting the site on a domain he already owned, Spector posted a link onto SomthingAwful.com and went live on April 1, 2005.
The site received 20,000 hits in the first 24 hours, and within a month it had reached 10 million visitors. However, "the novelty was beginning to die away," so Spector posted a poll listing 12 other celebrities as potential options for a new random fact generator. After receiving 10 or so e-mails suggesting Chuck Norris, he decided to include him in the poll, which Norris won by a landslide.
The Norris Web site became very popular in November after a friend posted a link to it on CollegeHumor.com. To date, it has received 48 million hits. Its popularity has astounded even Norris' publicist, Jeff Duclos. "Its obviously the subject of much speculation on why this is happening," he said, adding, "I suspect it is the distinctiveness of Mr. Norris' personality and celebrity."
Norris issued a statement on his Web site about the fact generator, stating, "Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it."
Spector said most of the site's visitors are college students, which explains the drop in the site's hits during summer and winter breaks. He also said that 90 percent of visitors to the site are from the United States, although the fact generator has gained worldwide popularity.
"Somebody sent an e-mail saying my site is all the rage in Poland," Spector said.
The site has become so popular that Spector was asked to appear on the CNBC show "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch," but his segment was cut at the last minute while he was waiting to go on the air. Later, Spector was invited to meet with Norris and his wife at Mohegan Sun, a casino and entertainment center in Uncasville, Conn., where Norris was hosting The World Combat League, a martial arts competition. "We talked for an hour or so, but it wasn't a business conversation," Spector said.
In addition to the Web site, Spector has created a calendar of user-submitted Microsoft Paint illustrations along with some of the facts, which he says has sold about 40 copies. He makes money off the site's ad revenue, although he is not supposed to say how much. "It's nothing overwhelming at this point," he said. He spends on average a half hour each day maintaining the site, and often has friends help him to decide which facts make the cut. Out of over 38,000 facts on Norris and about 7,000 more on Vin Diesel awaiting approval, only around 5 percent will make the cut, he said.
So what does it take to earn a place among the 4,600 already approved Vin Diesel facts and the 3,200 facts on Chuck Norris? "It has to be well-written and contain unique references to pop culture or politics," Spector said. He sees 20 submissions at a time and can scroll through them quickly. "When it's good I can tell it's good," he said.
A computational biology concentrator who plans to go on to medical school, Spector also owns his own web hosting company called qubefactor.com. A literary agent has already contacted Spector with plans about compiling a book of the random facts, and Spector is planning to give away a total body gym - a product endorsed by Norris - to the winner of an image contest the site is sponsoring.
Both Spector and Duclos seem amazed by how popular the Web site has become.
"This has sort of taken on a life of its own that has all these different extensions to it," Duclos said. "(Norris is) the closest thing we've got in this generation to a John Wayne persona," he said. "When Chuck was a child, (John Wayne) was his favorite movie star."
For his part, Spector's favorite fact reads, "Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs."
