Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Blogs Breed Crackpot Tsunami Theories
The Tsunami meme in the blogosphere almost resembles a game of Chinese whispers where information that gets passed around becomes progressively more distorted the further they get from the horse’s mouth.
The theories get weirder about the tsunami seem to get weirder and weirder. Its almost like watching a gossip mill in action.
I can’t help thinking how easy blogs have made it so simple for all the conspiracy theorists and crazies of the world to air their crackpot theories. Of course that’s not the sole domain of blogs, since there’s a lot of that to be found on personal websites.
Blogs can be put to far better use, but can pure rational thought ever fight the magnetic attraction of say, a theory that the disaster was cause by UFOs? 
Like it or not the internet is a democracy and blogs seem to be changing not only the face of marketing and politics online, but could also become a process for truly global and democratic discourse.
And as for the conspiracy theorists, as in a true democracy, the well informed ones will probably find a following, while the ignoramuses will, sooner or later, be the cause of their own undoing.
