Huh

The Internet is an amazing place. As in, amazingly weird. A number of websites are running with rumours that Sarah Palin's youngest child is, in fact, her grandchild born of her daughter Bristol. I'm not providing any links, nor will I mention it after this one and only post. But I wanted to bring it up because I think it highlights the odd dynamic of the Internet: tiny, vocal, crazy-ass minorities can nevertheless be numerous enough on the Internet to appear more impressive than they are.

So we get never-ending rumours about Barack Obama's birth, and now no doubt Sarah Palin's daughter. We get the spectacle of the media inventing 9 out of 10 angry Hillary supporters of the PUMA mold, and of course we get it in larger ways too: the "controversy" over climate change is just this phenomenon writ slightly larger.

Journalists need to develop new filters for the Internet age, and one of them is this: just because a nominally large number of people say something, doesn't mean they're important.