Viral fluff

So, are are your social media feeds finally free of #weaselpecker?

You know, the photo of the weasel riding the woodpecker. It "went viral" so virally that it made the news. Which was odd, because it started out as an item on the nature section of news sites as one of those fantastic photos.

But then it went viral on social media firstly because of the fantasticness of the picture, but then because of the photoshoppability of the picture. Every single spoof, "new media", and eventually "real" media site went wild creating their Buzzfeed-style "look what the internet did with the #weaselpecker" posts.

But this came just a day after #TheDress. You know THE DRESS. The dress that went viral. Someone posted it to Tumblr and it got caught on Twitter. I was fully aware, it hit newsfeed just as I got in from the pub - by the morning it was all my newsfeed was going on about it. And by the evening, everyone in my timeline was bored by it.

The fact that it made evening news was revilled by some. My evening feeds were filled with "seriously, a dress is the news?!" type posts.

And, in the scale of wars and crimes and arrests and failures and reports and statistics and everything, it did, to some, sit uncomfortably as a news item.

Because it wasn't negative.

News these days has to be negative. Doesn't it?

Every now and again you get some heart-warming tale of charitable work with a positive end; ITV used to end their News At Ten with a 'light-hearted' story every night, but that's what it was - fluff. It wasn't news, it was just something to make sure you don't go to bed with a nightmare.

But #TheDress was news. If news is "current affairs" - well, it was current (it only went wild those few days) and it was what pretty much everyone was talking about. I don't know of a single office that hadn't discussed #TheDress by the end of the day.

Real media loved it - they could do real reporting on a popular theme. There was recent, actually really properly educational, scientifically important research as to why #TheDress might be see as #WhiteAndGold or #BlueAndBlack. It allowed them to fully contextualise a viral meme within education. So I think criticisms about it being "reported by the media" are perhaps a little unfair. Firstly it was a massive social media - and therefore general media - and secondly, it had that educational property.

But the criticism really is that 'viral' should not be 'news'. 'Viral' should be fluff. It shouldn't be 'news'. It should be one of those things that fills the "third media" sites.

The First Media being News - politics, business, crime, disaster the Hard Stuff.

Then there is the Second Media - Entertainment. Actual information as to who is doing what in the Entertainment Industry or who is being cast as whom, what is being written, by whom, and all that stuff.

And then there is the Third Media - stuff that may or may not involve the day's story; but can be nicely listed, or listicled, or aggregate relatively recent stories from various sites in a nice, light-hearted, almost clickbated manner.

Finally there is MailOnline. Which really falls between all of the stones of "media" and ends up scattered amongst the tattle and clickbait of the rest of the web. Who were equally as eager to report on the criticism of TheDress as they were to report on TheDress the day before.

TheDress happened within hours of the lovely Llamas that got loose and set media and social media alight. These almost kind of legitimately made the news because they were shutting down certain areas of the town. One town, in a very large state, one of just 50 states of the Country. But it was lovely because it was llamas shutting it down, not gunmen. No-one was at risk. Everyone actually wanted the llamas to survive. But this was one small town in a small county in a small state in America - it went global because it is what is needed now.


But it also happened within weeks - perhaps days - of other "stories" which are in no way newsworthy, other than purely because of how viral they went. The chap who - apparently - woke up back in his taxi driver's house watching Take Me Out; the chap who - apparently - replied to his own text message whilst drunk.

Now, there are two points to take from this.

Firstly, you'll notice that I repeatedly say "apparently". People are desperate for their fifty five clicks of fame. I recently watched the documentary Catfish. If you haven't, do. It shows just how easy it is to lie online, but also how the lies spin out of control. But photoshopped pictures of politicians, fake Twitter profiles, statuses purporting to come from people which don't, even fakely adding a 'verified' symbol to an account are rife, purely for that little bit of fame. If you get retweeted once; you get a buzz. If you get retweeted a dozen times, it is far more than a dozen buzzes. I've already commented on when something is or isn't viral.

But, the second thing to note is how many First Media sites I have linked to. And I've deliberately tried to avoid the Second Media or Third Media sites. In particular, the chap who replied to his own text message when drunk was covered by Australian news - the other side of the world.

And this is it, in the face of Third Media sites First Media sites are bringing themselves down to that level. It's the Buzzfeed effect of media. But, what is key, is how the First Media sites report on them. As you've seen above, some of them have made them actual real stories. What I love about the BBC (everything) is they have identified this risk. They have set up a separate page - sorry, 'vertical' to cover these stories, but not just as an aggregator or rereporter, but to analyse the story behind either the story, or the reason that it went viral. A bit of depth to the fluff.

Social media is doing everything these days - it is reporting the news, it is allowing people to comment on the news, it is making the news, and now it is defining what the news is. It isn't just reporting it, it isn't just your reaction to it - it's reporting your reaction to it. What social media is doing is telling the editors - the people who used to control what you got to see - actually what it is that we're wanting to look at, interested in, commenting on, actively involved with. Whether this was on their news agenda or not. And yes, we are commenting on the important, serious stuff; but overwhelmingly we are telling the editors that their running order is too heavy, too serious.

We actually like fluff and fun.