What pretty girls with whiteboards teach you about Blogger gullibility

Yesterday a "viral video" went round about a girl who (apparently) resigned by sending photos of herself to her boss (original here), and this was put up on a fairly small website and then picked up by some of the major blogs and touted round the 'Net as the real thing.

Except it was a hoax, and the original website did it just to prove they could.

And (if I may say, in patronising after-the-factness) it was pretty damn obvious just looking at it that it wasn't real. We all thought it was a standard viral vid doing the rounds, had a laugh, emailed a few friends that it would amuse, and left it at that (in fact yesterday the better resignation story was the air steward who opened a 'plane door, inflated the exit raft and slid away).

But Lo and Behold, it seems like many of the leading lights of the the Tech Blogosphere got taken in and pimped it as a real resignation, despite the far more common probability that it was Yet Another Daily Viral Vid:

“You get a pure thrill of watching your site go from 15,000 uniques to 440,000 uniques in a single hour, watching yourself sucker every site from a-z who didn’t do their backstory.”

It's that whole backstory bit - whether it is missing out a pretty obvious hoax, or being asleep at the wheel when it comes to Google and Net Neutrality, or not doing the hard analysis behind some of the PR guff that comes out, the "A List" Tech Blogosphere is - in my view - doing an increasingly lousy job on quality reporting (and not just the Blogosphere, some print media journos are becoming rather breathless regurgitators of the Kool Aid too).

As the original team noted, these people wanted to believe, probably needed to believe:

The purpose of the hoax was to entertain and inspire, not to inform, so what difference does it make if the story has a single ounce of truth? After our second hoax I remember a reporter telling me, ‘Well it looks like you’ve fooled us twice. Won’t get away with this nonsense again.”

But they will.....if you are chasing clicks, you can't be a laggard to the virals

As they chase the need to monetise, the Big Blogs seem to increasingly be blurring the distinction between journalism and PR channel - this was already highlighted as a problem in Print media in Flat Earth News, but my impression is its getting worse in the Big Blogosphere too (I just think the A List bloggers of 2006 or so would have seen this one coming)

But, to help the Big Blogs, a quick checklist for the next New News:

1. Does it come from a source that would benefit hugely from the clickstream oxygen
2. Does it look like a "too good to be true" story, or even more - a viral vid?
3. Is it fronted by a pretty girl or boy?

3 out of 3 means check the backstory..................