i had a friend who worked at a place whose owners had a forum board(or perhaps many) and the employees working there were supposed to 1. search shit up the int

i had a friend who worked at a place whose owners had a forum board(or perhaps many) and the employees working there were supposed to 1. search shit up the internet. this could be any random stuff. electronics to politics to plain BS. 2. start a thread by logging into one of the board accounts by literally copy pasting the stuff they chose to select based on some criteria. 3. reply the question from different accounts(all taken from a pool), usually more copy pasted shit. 4. copy-paste all that into some document and submit it as a worklog to the management. i think the source of income was advertisement(what else could support such a thing?). what i found fascinating was that this cottage industry somehow managed to pay middle-class salaries to about 20 odd employees in a place like suburban mumbai by siphoning money from a burgeoning advertising industry and doing nothing of any value whatsoever. i guess this is what Friedman really meant by a free market. stupidity begets stupidity! the point being, it's become really difficult to figure what's of value in this weird weird world!