Isn't the internet brilliant? 

You can talk to friends around the world instantaneously. You can send files to your editor with the click of a button. You can watch videos of shows you can't be arsed to watch in real time—or at least the highlights because there's far too much filler in most programs (doubly or trebly so if we're talking about awards shows).

But it's not all frivolity.

Twittering during news events has become the norm: the first high profile was perhaps the Mumbai hotel hostage situation, but all too many emergencies and natural disasters have proved the usefulness and immediacy of Twitter coverage whether it's wildfires in Australia or election protests in Iran.

Other outlets, too, have been used to keep those in power slightly more honest, e.g. this week's embarrassing moment when intrepid investigative reporter comedian Jon Stewart demonstrated the faked footage in Sean Hannity's use of old footage of supposed protests against health-care. We're on to you, people in the public eye, and we're not idiots. We're here for the little guy!

Example: Sophia Stewart who won her lawsuit against the makers of The Matrix, who ripped off her copyrighted script from the 1980s and maliciously tried to cover their tracks by carefully editing the film and maliciously crushing this spunky gal under their collective heels. At last the truth can be free! The matrix that is the internet, ironically, led to dissemination of this victory.

Except of course it isn't true: if you drop by Snopes, the best place to check on the most common internet urban legends, you'll find this is actually a story that hit a brick wall four years ago, mostly due to the fact that the suit filed by Stewart failed because she never showed up in court.

Why is it circulating again now? Thaindian News which significantly, according to a healthy portion of my students, has the word "news" in its title, featured a story on the final triumph of Stewart today. People picked it up and forwarded it like some kind of lacrosse ball. Why?

Good question.

I suspect with the overwhelming focus on Veteran's Day across the west, a bit of slightly different news, with a built-in underdog angle—African American author against the Hollywood system, lone woman against the powerful Wachowski Brothers, little woman against the giant bloodsucking corp-corp—had a good chance of gaining a little traction. 

It was forwarded to me by a Facebook group in the publishing field, with an incendiary headline about the importance of copyrighting your work (N.B. once your work is in a fixed form, it's copyrighted per US laws—look into it). Of course one of the services they claim to offer is helping you register your work for copyright.

The other important factor is the even greater ease in forwarding stories. Admit it: you've done it. A headline looks good and incendiary and/or amusing. You retweet it or share it on Facebook and voilà, the news spreads. And we're all so busy, and the tweetspace /live feed moves so fast, who has time to actually read the article beyond the first paragraph? 

And of course, as they say, that's how they get you. 

Sometimes their only aim is to get you to go to a particular link (the version I was sent had a spam link in it); yet they can be more malicious, too—hello, virus infection (says the Mac owner breathing a sigh of relief).

The biggest cost, however, is another teapot tempest stirred up by a plausible line and hair-trigger indignation. Unthinkingly many would simply join a FB group entitled "10,000 Strong for Sophia Stewart, Mother of the Matrix!" as they would for "1 Million Strong for Kittens and Puppies in Hats!" There's no cost and it seems like a nice thing to do. But you're letting the side down; we finally trained people not to forward virus warning hoaxes that were just as irritating as the viruses.

Stop joining useless Facebook groups!

 If you want to have a real impact, you have to act in the real world. 

Now excuse me, I have to go assemble my lawsuit against LOLcats because I wrote an essay in 1974 about how my cat makes me chuckle sometimes. I've already got my eye on a mansion with fur-lined sinks and a solid gold rocket car for when I win the suit. Sweet.