Viral Cynicism (or, In Search of the Original Terrorist Fist-Jab)

Where everything is for sale, every communication needs to be evaluated as though it is advertising.

That thought came to me after thinking a bit about viral engineering. Not the biological kind, I mean the viral videos that prowl the internet. Some are natural, spontaneous, stupid videos that someone put together or caught on camera that are hilarious and get passed on a lot. Contrast that with those that are engineered. They are made to look spontaneous, but they're carefully choreographed and injected into the internet video stream to hopefully generate discussion and function as free advertising, a virus that gets your point across.

It's the internet's answer to the publicity stunt. It might even be simpler than that: it's the same old publicity stunts, simply harnessing the individual's power of the internet instead of the relatively fewer newspaper gossip columns.

I'm not really sure it's a bad thing to catch a video virus even if it is engineered. After all, you get entertainment out of it. What's really dangerous is when its propaganda.

For example, yet another throw-away-blonde from the Fox News network (E.D. Hill) referred to Obama's fist bump as a "terrorist fist-jab." This was hilarious on many levels. The first is that it served as yet another tally in the mounting evidence that TV news pundits are terrifically out-of-touch. Anyone who has even a toe outside the ivory tower knows that the fist bump is the modern high-five, a congratulatory gesture friendly to germophobes.

What added to the hilarity was the naked and feeble attempt at labeling Obama a terrorist. I challenge anyone to find a reference to a "terrorist fist-jab," or any video or image of terrorists (and ONLY terrorists) performing the gesture prior to Bimbo the Wonder Pundit calling it such. I almost feel sorry for her, she was clearly just doing what her bosses at Fox had instructed: trying at all costs to paint Obama as a terrorist. Her reward? They eliminated her show. Swim with sharks, E.D. and eventually they'll eat you. See you in Maxim.

Fox fools have tried and failed at viral engineering as well. Bill O'Reilly wrote a shitty book (Culture Warrior) in an effort to get his label "SP's" (Secular Progressives) to catch on as convenient slang for American enemies of America, like the word "communist" once functioned. Ann Coulter has found some kind of publishing success pandering to her hateful idiot fan base by calling fellow Americans "liberals" and treating it as an insult. So Bill tried to dish out the same bigotry.

It's clear the hate-marketers feel their dumbass fans are unable to think about any subject that does not invoke a good guy vs. bad guy narrative. I can just picture a Fox News viewer upon accidentally encountering reality, where it is not clear who is wrong or right: "God dammit," he laments, "Who am I supposed to hate?"

Anyway, getting back to engineered viruses: Another suspect is the LEGO creation of a giant boulder and a re-enacting of the scene from the original Indiana Jones. This video seemed to surface (May 16, 2008) a little closely with release of the latest Indiana Jones movie (May 22, 2008) AND with the release of the LEGO Indiana Jones video game (June 3, 2008). Coincidence or viral engineering?

Another fake viral suspect? Tim McGraw ousting an unruly fan. What really made me think this one was suspicious was at one point during the video, McGraw cocked back his fist so far it could have been seen from space. It was very dramatic and reminded me of pro-wrestling's slow moving theater. It also happened to coincide with his song's lyrics, "I ain't lookin' for trouble..." How convenient. Millions of people watched the video and thought to themselves, "Wow, what a good guy." News networks picked up the video (that's where I saw it) and provided him free advertising for his albums.

Here's where we come to the true infection of the fake viral: cynicism. Maybe Tim McGraw really is a good guy, maybe he was ousting a truly unruly fan. But viral cynicism has infected me, so I question it. He's not really helping get rid of an asshole, he's just trying to get his name in the news.

Thinking cynically of the LEGO video, was it a bunch of dudes getting a crazy fun idea with LEGOs and Indiana Jones? Nah, it's just to get a buzz going about some new products.

It's cynical, but that's the damage done when a society tries to inject advertising into everything. Kurt Vonnegut said, "What passes for culture in my mind is really a bunch of commercials."

So here we are: what's real? What's spontaneous and what's fabricated? We'll never really know (except in the case of the clumsy efforts at Fox.) It's harmless when I consider a LEGO project or a singer's chivalry. But when someone uses it as propaganda, then we've moved from publicity stunts to slander.

I'm skeptical by nature, so maybe it's just me. Why be so damn thoughtful about it? If it's a free video and makes you laugh, makes you smile, enjoy it as such and leave it at that. As long as they stay in the realm of entertainment, fine, but once they move into the world of politics, of factual news, then the virals deserve the cynicism necessary to learn anything in that field.

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Larry Nocella is the award-winning author of the novel Where Did This Come From? available at Amazon and Xlibris and other fine online book stores. Where Did This Come From? is also available as an eBook. For more info, visit Larry Nocella's website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.