Public dazzled into ignorance by viral images and stories
Mesa Legend
Is the dress black and blue or white and gold? These are the types of questions that consume the brain cells of my generation. A generation addicted to solving irrelevant online mysteries and spreading false information. In fact, the day after “the dress” went viral, I overheard a fellow student spread a rumor to a classmate. She claimed he needed to seek medical attention because information provided through a familiar Internet meme stated that people who saw the dress as being black and blue had severe problems with their eyesight.
Luckily, the apparent “mystique” and shoddy medical advice provided by the chameleon colored dress has faded into insignificance, and hopefully no one was seriously worried about their vision because of it. However, other trending images and stories posted online frequently replace one viral obsession after another, or in some cases morph into one. For example, the same day the image of “the dress” went viral, another story began trending soon after: The llamas. For those who are off the grid, here is a brief summary to catch you up: two llamas escaped their handler here locally in Arizona.
Eventually, the news picked up live coverage of the Bonnie and Clyde-esque escape and the rest was history. Viewers on television and the net watched as the llamas made their way through the city until they were wrangled back into captivity by good Samaritans. A strange situation? Sure. Worthy of endless Internet memes and social media shares? Not so much. What is actually interesting is that the two stories that were trending simultaneously, eventually began to intertwine.
Edited images of the llamas began appearing online which compared the llamas to the colors on “the dress.” What originally started as two separate trending stories, quickly transformed into one. The majority of trending Internet stories and memes hold the public’s attention hostage with hollow entertainment value. This is a shame considering real world issues go ignored, buried beneath the trending junk that clogs up my generation’s main source of breaking news and information. However, not all viral stories which start off irrelevant, end in the same manner.
For example, in my hometown of Maricopa, a golden van that was double parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot garnered so much attention online that eventually donations for the city’s foodbank were raised to benefit the community. The Facebook platform for “‘Copa’s Golden Van” had gained so many followers, that messages of compassion were able to spread for good rather than empty entertainment. Overall, meaningless internet garbage is fun in moderation, don’t get me wrong, but it should not control our attention so much so that we neglect what is actually important.
