The Failed Record Attempt

So recently, (this is Kyle by the way), my good friend Kaden Nesky and I decided while talking on Skype that we wanted to break the world record for longest Skype conversation. Internet searching led us to find that this record had never been officially recorded, so we thought it would be easy to break, right? WRONG! I'll get to why in a second.

So Kaden signed up for an account on the Guinness World Records website and submitted our fantastic idea for a new record for their books that we would perform for them. We waited for around 3-4 days before this little number popped up in Kaden's inbox:

Dear Mr Kaden Nesky,

Thank you for sending us the details of your recent record attempt for 'Longest Skype Call'. We are afraid to say that we are unable to accept this as a Guinness World Record.

We receive over 60,000 enquiries a year from which only a small proportion are approved by our experienced researchers to establish new categories. These are not 'made up' to suit an individual proposal, but rather 'evolve' as a result of international competition in a field, which naturally accommodates superlatives of the sort that we are interested in. We think you will appreciate that we are bound to favour those that reflect the greatest interest.

Guinness World Records has absolute discretion as to which Guinness World Record applications are accepted and our decision is final. Guinness World Records may at its discretion and for whatever reason identify some records as either no longer monitored by Guinness World Records or no longer viable.

As your record application has not been accepted, Guinness World Records is in no way associated with the activity relating to your record proposal and we in no way endorse this activity. If you choose to proceed with this activity then this is will be of your own volition and at your own risk.

Once again thank you for your interest in Guinness World Records.

Yours sincerely,

Julie Kocsis
Records Management Team

Well as you can see, we got rejected. Now there are a few problems with this. First of all, there IS a record for longest telephone call, so I don't see how having a record for Skype, or maybe just a record for "longest call over the Internet" would fail to meet whatever qualifications they have for a record. In fact, we would have even been okay with attempting to break the longest telephone call record (which happens to be 40 hours), through our medium: Skype.

This is the guy that hold the record for the phone call. Totally beatable.

Secondly, don't tell us that some of the records in their book our not just "made up" to fit an individual proposal, when they have records such as "Most Ferrero Rocher chocolates eaten in one minute", and "Fastest Time to Pluck a Turkey". Those are directly from their official website. Don't tell me that their is international competition and major interest in these things. Because nobody cares, Julie.

Except for the turkey.

So that brings me to my final statement. Kaden and I are going to find a way to get into that record book. We just haven't thought of how were going to do it yet. But just you wait. I really shouldn't be putting this on the Internet, because now if we don't come through there will be online record of me talking ourselves up about it. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to do it then...

One last thing. Starting at midnight tonight, I am beginning a three-day media fast for my Communications Class. No internet (except for homework), no TV, no music, no video games, you get the picture. So if anyone blogs it will be Ben. So until Friday, I'm Bob Villa. I mean Kyle Dykema.