Sometimes I wonder how many people would take me up on an offer to buy a big bridge with a really nice view of Brooklyn.
I’m sure the number would be high, considering the number of people that fell victim (OK, myself included) to the buzz created around a breakup video posted on the popular Internet site You Tube.
Some of you might remember this one. On Valentine’s Day, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill senior Ryan Burke supposedly dumped his girlfriend with the help of singers in front of a large crowd on the school’s campus.
Burke attracted the crowd by promoting the breakup on facebook.com, an Internet social networking site. In front of a throng of students, an a capella group sang the Dixie Chicks’ song “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice” before Burke announced he was ditching his supposed girlfriend, North Carolina State University sophomore Mindy Moorman, because of her alleged infidelity.
What followed was basically a verbal bitch-slap from Moorman to Burke after she launched into a tirade filled with expletives. In other words, Burke looked like an idiot after the whole thing was said and done.
With a couple of pushes on a computer keyboard, the breakup created quite the stir. The video garnered more than 740,000 hits and a bunch of local and national media coverage.
Guess what? The whole thing was a hoax. And we all fell for it.
Burke admitted Monday to the Charlotte Observer he and Moorman aren’t even dating, and they staged the whole thing to show the power of Internet communities and the money companies make from them.
I’d like to think of it as an exercise in showing the stupidity of humanity. And how gullible we are.
Our culture today thrives on the trials and tribulations of others. Why else do you think stuff like this, or stories like Anna Nicole Smith’s death and Britney Spears’ shaved head, makes headlines and generates so much buzz?
It would be easy to blame the media for calling attention to these types of events, and I admit sometimes we go way overboard in covering the stories. But society in general, while most won’t admit it, gobbles it up on a daily basis.
Look at Internet search engines like Google and see what’s among the hottest searches. According to that Web site, the top 10 searches last searches were, in order: Spears, lunar new year, Antonella Barba (alleged racy pictures of this “American Idol” contestant surfaced last week), Bridget Moynahan (the ex-girlfriend of NFL quarterback Tom Brady who is pregnant with his child), “American Idol,” Ash Wednesday, Brady (see Moynahan), “Dancing With the Stars” (another stupid reality TV show that announced it will feature Heather Mills, the one-legged soon-to-be-ex-wife-of-ex-Beatle Paul McCartney), Lent and Black Snake Moan (a new movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci about a God-fearing bluesman who falls in love with a childhood sexual abuse victim).
Meanwhile, America is in the midst of an unpopular war in Iraq, illegal immigrants pour across our borders on a daily basis, jobs continue to be outsourced to foreign countries and millions continue to be without adequate health care insurance.
And yet we’re more concerned with a a couple of college kids staging a public breakup, a manufactured celebrity’s hairstyle and her stint in rehab or whether it really was some reality-TV show contestant that was pictured going down on some dude.
Seems to me that we need to get our priorities straight.