Being a student in Florida is dangerous. Well at least it is if you are attending a university sponsored John Kerry speech and are attempting to get him to answer a question while trigger-happy, Taser toting campus police are hovering within striking distance. By now almost everyone has heard something about the incident at the University of Florida where twenty-one year old Andrew Meyer was stunned into submission by a non lethal electroshock weapon. Meyer had apparently been posing persistent questions to Senator John Kerry during a university forum when he was forcibly restrained by the campus police. Several officers pinned him down and one officer used a Taser on him. It was the shock heard around the world and Meyers plea "Don’t Tase me bro became an instant catch phrase. The incident was roundly condemned by both the media and the public, the officers were suspended and an inquiry was launched. Then the questions started to roll out. Wasn’t Meyer a well known prankster, did he bait the cops into using excessive force for the sake of a publicity stunt? Were we all suckered into being participants in an elaborate performance art piece, a thesis on the gullibility of the YouTube obsessed public?

Even though it may sound like a stretch, the truth is it would not be at all difficult for such an event to be staged. You just need to be in the wrong place at the right time and have a camera ready which these days can mean any cell phone. As for whether your masterpiece will be watched, just look at the number of people who frequent video sharing sites like YouTube or DailyMotion. Certainly no one is twisting our arms or holding a gun to our heads forcing us to spend hours clicking on video after video, we are doing it because we love being in the know, having the latest gossip, being able to say "You won’t believe what I saw . It makes us a source of information, which is why people forward and spread internet videos so fast. And we all know the bloodier, the more scandalous; the more outrageous something is the more likely it will find an audience. This is a fact that TV news has long known and used to great effect. There is an old newsroom saying that goes "If it bleeds it leads This is the same concept, make it graphic, make it gory and watch the page view counter climb.

Yes there are some genuinely shocking newsworthy things that happen and someone somewhere fortunately manages to document it on their cell phone like on 9.11 or the Rodney King incident but there are also a large number of people actively exploiting this hunger that the public has for information and feeding them fiction masquerading as fact. And the best way to hide a lie is between two truths; make it just believable enough and you can sell the whole thing. In the case of Andrew Meyer you have a guy who is a notorious practical joker in a situation that got out of hand. The campus police overreacted; the whole thing was caught on tape and achieved immortality on YouTube. It was a horrible incident, it is not ok for the police to use excessive force on anyone but now Andrew Meyer is an internet celebrity. So this was an apparently unintentional incident from which he has now benefited. Whether or not Meyer is exploiting the situation is up for debate but they are already selling "Don’t Tase Me Bro shirts online. So it goes to show there is some money to be made off such a stunt. How long before someone watching the clip thinks, "Well if I can do something crazy like that and get it on tape, maybe I will receive the same attention, sell t-shirts or be on Larry King.

One group that is keeping their eye on the public’s interest in "caught on tape internet video are the marketers. The activity and page view statistics of a site that hosts a controversial, shocking or buzz worthy video climb phenomenally in a very short time and more eyeballs means better CPI (cost per impression) Every advertiser dreams of their campaign going viral, being so sticky that the public themselves become the evangelists spreading word about the video to friends. It becomes news and is no longer advertising. Most of the advertisers exploring the viability of staged events are those brands that cater to a younger more tech savvy demographic. Among this demo, staged events and unconventional guerilla promotional tactics are gaining in popularity because young people are more immune to the traditional ways of marketing. Just posting a regular ad on the net is not going to cut it with your average 16 year old anymore. You need a gimmick, a twist, a hook. Take Diesel for example which launched their intimates underwear line a couple of months ago by having two girls (The Heidi’s) steal the entire collection, kidnap a sales associate and then hold him hostage in a hotel room until their demands were met. They made and streamed a ransom video and the site diesel.com received thousands of hits, people were hooked. It was a genius marketing ploy but as successfully executed as it was, the same stunt could not work as well the next time around because the novelty is gone. So marketers are constantly being challenged to find another hook another gimmick. Question is where do they finally draw the line? Do we at some point require they post a disclaimer stating "This is staged not real or "Do not try this at home folks? But to have such a warning defeats the very purpose of blurring the line between the real and the unreal.

Being an off the wall guy I champion cool, edgy and avant- garde expressions of creativity and personally loved the Diesel campaign. But then I am less likely to believe what is forwarded into my inbox. In our overloaded, over connected culture we are so hungry for information that most of us digest the fiction along with fact. People forget that when you see something on the news it has been vetted by editors, fact checkers, sometimes even lawyers before it is broadcast. There is no such verification process for the videos we see on the net. We assume that someone would have said something if the video was a fake but everyone is in such a rush to pass it on that we do not stop and subject this stuff to scrutiny. Later when the truth does come out we are embarrassed and justifiably angry but quickly forget and more on to the next titillating video drama that pops onto our monitor. The danger lies not only in our inability to differentiate between what is real and what is not but also in the very real possibility of our becoming so tolerant of fake staged events that when something real does happen we miss it. How many times can you cry wolf and still have them believe you?