Local businesses have always loved gimmicks. Upside down billboards, plush characters with men inside, rude waiters and hot air balloons abound.

It’s inevitable, it seems, that with online traffic easily measured and increasingly valuable, that same tactic would move online. And it has, in droves.

A poker site is embracing the tactic with this obviously transparent ploy for traffic. I’m not linking to it here, because I don’t want to reward the cheesiness (move along, people, there’s nothing to see here, it’s just one page), but I want to show it to you as a sign of things to come.

Very quickly, these sites are going to be like car wrecks or rock groups–only the grossest or the loudest (or possibly the most clever) are going to earn the attention of the public. After all, once someone sells the pixels on his site for a million dollars, you don’t want to see it again. And once someone cuts off his finger (I think he should have used Photoshop) then what… a head?