The internet is a wild frontier.
It has its founders, its architects, its leaders, and its supporters and critics. The internet is filled with predators and prey alike, hoaxers and debunkers, and it boasts heroes and jesters and unwitting celebrities — not unlike the physical realm.
And because of the very nature of the internet, the line between heroes and jesters is often so blurred that one is given to wonder if they’re not one and the same thing in this beta version of the final frontier.
Rewind back to 9/11 after which a certain photo of a tourist supposedly taken on top of one of the WTC towers moments before the first plane’s impact surfaced in everyone’s in-boxes. I also received the pic, forwarded by an otherwise astute and intelligent friend who fell for the hoax, hook, line and sinker — and for quite some time thereafter, the WTC-guy turned up as an accidental witness to numerous historic disasters. It’s an incident where a jester became an unlikely “hero”, finally falling from grace as his own efforts were photoshopped by other jesters and appeared all over the web.
Everyone stands the chance of becoming the next global village idiot.
Fame and success in the internet world can be measured by the number of imitations and parodies and fan sites and pop culture cross-references a simple picture, phrase, act, video (or a combination thereof) spawns — especially when these escape into the real world or traditional media. Surely, if people “get” the joke and run with it, then it must be really funny or entertaining or relevant or… “priceless”. Right?
