BRANDTRUEBOY | (via phazerblast) Last night I found myself...

(via phazerblast)
Last night I found myself thinking: if I was a for real celebrity and had hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to unleash some Orson Welles, War of the Worlds art lies. I’d (ab)use my powerful influence to tweet that the sky was falling or that Pinkberries was giving out free samples to men dressed head-to-toe in pink, or that Demi Moore had cheated on Ashton with one of the Jonas Brothers. Then I’d sit back and enjoy the mayhem that ensued.
But then it occurred to me—I was thinking in old media terms. In this brave new media landscape the next War of the Worlds isn’t going to be the work of one famous man broadcasting to the many—it will be the result of the many communicating as the many. The next great art lie will be disseminated like hot breaking news, when all kinds of people retweet and reblog information that’s not meant solely for their streams but for ALL streams. The difference is that of tweeting or tumbling with the intention of adding to a growing feedback loop as opposed to communicating to a specific set of followers.
A corporation or art collective could accomplish this with only a small amount of patience and coordination: by seeding people in various, unrelated streams (like the Scobleizer , #TCOT and #P2 streams) and waiting several months until they were all accepted as “real” people, an art lie could be let loose that would spread FAR FASTER than one broadcast simultaneously into millions of radios. What created the War of the Worlds panic was not the act of Orson Welles reading H.G. Wells’ story on air—but the subsequent conversations between those who listened to the broadcast at home or at work. The audience discussed the content and convinced themselves it was real—in the new media landscape, this discussion would ALREADY be included in the retweets and reblogs. The amplification of the message and the message itself are one and the same. The more dispersed and decentralized the art lie’s dissemination is, the faster it will travel.
So much for needing to be famous!

Last night I found myself thinking: if I was a for real celebrity and had hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to unleash some Orson Welles, War of the Worlds art lies. I’d (ab)use my powerful influence to tweet that the sky was falling or that Pinkberries was giving out free samples to men dressed head-to-toe in pink, or that Demi Moore had cheated on Ashton with one of the Jonas Brothers. Then I’d sit back and enjoy the mayhem that ensued.

But then it occurred to me—I was thinking in old media terms. In this brave new media landscape the next War of the Worlds isn’t going to be the work of one famous man broadcasting to the many—it will be the result of the many communicating as the many. The next great art lie will be disseminated like hot breaking news, when all kinds of people retweet and reblog information that’s not meant solely for their streams but for ALL streams. The difference is that of tweeting or tumbling with the intention of adding to a growing feedback loop as opposed to communicating to a specific set of followers.

A corporation or art collective could accomplish this with only a small amount of patience and coordination: by seeding people in various, unrelated streams (like the Scobleizer , #TCOT and #P2 streams) and waiting several months until they were all accepted as “real” people, an art lie could be let loose that would spread FAR FASTER than one broadcast simultaneously into millions of radios. What created the War of the Worlds panic was not the act of Orson Welles reading H.G. Wells’ story on air—but the subsequent conversations between those who listened to the broadcast at home or at work. The audience discussed the content and convinced themselves it was real—in the new media landscape, this discussion would ALREADY be included in the retweets and reblogs. The amplification of the message and the message itself are one and the same. The more dispersed and decentralized the art lie’s dissemination is, the faster it will travel.

So much for needing to be famous!