Ya gotta be careful these days.\u00a0 For quite some time, people have taken interesting pictures and movies of people doing unusual things, but in times past such things would be lucky to do more than entertain those taking the pictures.\u00a0 If it was caught on a security camera, local authorities might take an interest if there was a crime involved, but that would be the most attention it got.<\/p>\n
Not so anymore.\u00a0 Such imagery can now go “viral” on the internet, turning people into instant stars for better or for worse.\u00a0 In the past few days alone there’s an astounding video of a car getting airborne and disintegrating when it hits a bridge pillar<\/a> and another of a woman putting a cat in a garbage bin<\/a>.\u00a0 The backstory on the first one is nothing terribly strange–a naughty young man is caught with evidence of drugs and a young girl, but is released.\u00a0 He goes speeding past a police car (which had a dashboard camera) and crashed.\u00a0 The crash is spectacular, and amazingly the young man survived, although he’s in critical condition.\u00a0 More amazing is that you and I even know about it.\u00a0 Not because it made the evening news–although I believe it did in many places–but because it was (at the very least) linked on Facebook and posted on YouTube.<\/p>\n The woman who dumped the cat is in trouble.\u00a0 Not a great deal of legal trouble–it’s not against the law to put a cat in a trash can–but thanks to the internet lots of people know who she is and she is getting badly harassed.\u00a0 I am certain she hates the cat even more than she did when she dumped it.\u00a0 Again, the more amazing bit is that you and I and lots of other people know about it.\u00a0 Her act of cruelty would at most have made the evening news ten years ago, perhaps drawing some local interest, but few would have known who she is.\u00a0 Now she’s under police protection.<\/p>\n These two examples are just the most recent bits of internet stardom.\u00a0 The Star Wars Kid, the Numa Numa Guy, the Dramatic Chipmunk \/ Prairie Dog (technically the latter) are just a few of the internet memes which have entered our world over the last few years.\u00a0 Where were these people ten years ago?\u00a0 Twenty?\u00a0 A century?\u00a0 They were out there, doing their thing, but not gaining any attention.\u00a0 People, both young and old, have mimicked scenes from movies the way the Star Wars Kid did for decades or lip synched like the Numa Numa guy.\u00a0 Plenty of animals act in interesting ways, with or without a camera to catch them.\u00a0 But with the internet and sites like YouTube, ordinary things like these can catch the public’s attention and make stars out of their subjects.<\/p>\n