Become Certified Awesome TODAY!

Christian Rambling

Hello friends!

Today I’m happy to announce a new, innovative project! The seeds of this idea were planted several months ago when I published Third-party Evaluation: Trophies for Everyone! In that post, I mentioned how legitimate companies seem surprisingly comfortable advertising awards from entities that totally lack credibility.

Since then, I’ve noticed more forms of bogus website endorsements. For example, Comodo Group’s trusted site seals:

A Comodo SSL trust seal indicates that the website owner has made customer security a top priority by securely encrypting all their transactions. This helps build confidence in the site and increases customer conversion rates…For a site seal to be effective, customers have to have confidence in the ‘endorsement brands’ that are on your site. If visitors are to trust you, they must trust the companies behind the logos on your site…Comodo is now the world’s largest SSL certificate authority and over 80 million PC’s and mobile devices are protected using Comodo desktop security solutions. That adds up to a lot of online visitors trusting you because they trust us.1

You can get these seals for free here. You don’t even have to verify that you’re using any kind of security! I indicated that I have a UCC SSL certificate. I don’t have one of those, but look at the cool seal I got!


UC SSL Certificate
UC SSL Certificate

SiteLock also offers cool security seals. They look like this:

That’s just an image for illustrative purposes. It’s not a real, verified seal. Getting an actual seal costs money and involves verification. The verification component is interesting. If SiteLock realizes a site is not safe for visitors, will the seal make that clear?

Nope!

If a scan fails site visitors will not be alerted to any problem. The SiteLock Trust Seal will simply continue to display the date of the last good scan of the website. If the site owner fails to rectify the problem SiteLock will remove the seal from the site and replace it with a single pixel transparent image within a few days. At no point will SiteLock display any indication to visitors that a website has failed a scan.2

All this got me thinking. What if I offered free, honest endorsement seals?

This idea had an obvious flaw: a total lack of credibility or credentials on my part. I decided it was time I got myself some credentials. I went to the Universal Life Church (ULC) website and began the arduous process of becoming an ordained minister. After painstakingly entering my personal details and clicking the “Get Ordained Instantly” button, I had my first credential:

My Universal Life Church Ordination

A few days later, I had physical proof:

A lot of people have been ordained by the ULC. To make sure people could know I’m really trustworthy, I went ahead and got a few less common credentials:

After acquiring my credentials, I spent an intense eight minutes creating a professional endorsement seal:

You can get one of these seals for your own website if you certify its awesomeness. If you’re not sure if your website is awesome, the book On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck might be able to help. Click below if you’re ready:

✔ Yes, my website is awesome!
Congratulations! Your website is now certified awesome, and you have permission to use the Confusopoly Endorsement Seal™ displayed below. The seal can be shared with the following code:

<a href="https://coveragecritic.com/2019/04/01/become-certified-awesome-today/"><img src="https://coveragecritic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ConfusopolyEndorsment.png" width="800" height="600" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2338" /></a>

May the force be with you,
Dr. Christian Smith, PhD

Footnotes

  1. The excerpt comes from Comodo’s Trusted Site Seal page as of 3/31/2019 (archived here).
  2. From A Small Orange’s “Use The SiteLock Trust Seal” article on 2/20/2019 (archived here). Emphasis mine.