Gawker: If you don't buy this magazine we'll kill this dog

In January 1973, National Lampoon published what would become one of the most famous magazine covers of all time: A photograph of a cute pup with a gun held to its head, next to the headline "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog." Turns out that whoever wrote that line was a visionary. Almost exactly 35 years later, someone's finally adopted a somewhat finessed version of that MO, only it pertains not to the glossy world but to the blogosphere -- and it works from the inside out.

It relates to a new compensation scheme, and it goes roughly like this: "If You Don't Click on This Post, We'll Kill This Blogger." Well, OK, not exactly -- but the blogger might lose the will to live, because her pay rises and falls in direct proportion to the number of people who click on her blog posts.