And Then There's This How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture

174 Pages·2012·1.16 MB·English

by  Wasik Bill

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction

Chapter 1. - MY CROWD
Chapter 2. - ANNUALS
Chapter 3. - I HAVE A MEME
Chapter 4. - AGENT ZERO
Chapter 5. - NANOPOLITICS

CONCLUSION
Acknowledgements
INDEX
VIKING
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First published in 2009 by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Bill Wasik, 2009
All rights reserved

Portions of this book first appeared in different form as “My Crowd” in Harper’s Magazine and
“Hype Machine” in The Oxford American. “Hype Machine” was later published as “Annuals:
A North Carolina Band Navigates the Ephemeral Blogosphere” in Best Music Writing 2008,
edited by Nelson George and Daphne Carr (Da Capo Press).
Graphs by the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wasik, Bill.
And then there’s this : how stories live and die in viral culture / Bill Wasik.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-10105770-4
1. Internet—Social aspects. 2. Information society—Psychological aspects.
3. Internet users—Psychology. 4. Blogs—Social aspects. I. Title.
HM851.W38 2009
303.48’33—dc22 2009004100

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INTRODUCTION:
KEY CONCEPTS
THE NANOSTORY
I begin with a plea to the future historians, those eminent and tenured minds of a
generation as yet unconceived, who will sift through our benighted present,
compiling its wreckage into wiki-books while lounging about in silvery
bodysuits: to these learned men and women I ask only that in telling the story of
this waning decade, the first of the twenty-first century, they will spare a thought
for the fate of a girl named Blair Hornstine. Period photographs will record that
Hornstine, as a high-school senior in the spring of 2003, was a small-framed girl
with a full face, a sweep of dark, curly hair, and a broad, laconic smile. She was
an outstanding student—the top of her high-school class in Moorestown, New
Jersey, in fact, boasting a grade-point average of 4.689—and was slated to attend
Harvard. But as her graduation neared, the district superintendent ruled that the
second-place finisher, a boy whose almost-equal average (4.634) was lower due
only to a technicality, should be allowed to share the valedictory honors.
At this point, the young Hornstine made a decision that even our future
historians, no doubt more impervious than we to notions of the timeless or
tragic, must rate almost as Sophoclean in the fatality of its folly. After learning
of the superintendent’s intention, Hornstine filed suit in U.S. federal court,
demanding that she not only be named the sole valedictorian but also awarded
punitive damages of $2.7 million. Incredibly, a U.S. district judge ruled in
Hornstine’s favor, giving her the top spot by fiat (though damages were later
whittled down to only sixty grand). Meanwhile, however, a local paper for
which she had written discovered that she was a serial plagiarist, having stolen
sentences wholesale from such inadvisable marks as a think-tank report on arms
control and a public address by President Bill Clinton. Harvard quickly
rescinded its acceptance of Hornstine, who thereafter slunk away to a fate
unknown.