It’s not about being right, it’s about being first!

nick

This past weekend I found myself in a twitter battle with the WWA’s Shawn Perry. At the first Toe Jam stop I had tweeted all the action, and the kids, as they say, were stoked.

diana_decastro@alliancewakesk8 wow twitter is amazing and u also. thanks for the updates! ;p

lakehippie@alliancewakesk8 I love the play by plays! I am at work but feel like I am right there with you!! Keep it up for us who can’t be there!!

So I wasn’t at all surprised that just two weeks later the practice had been adopted by others looking to enthrall wakeskating’s huge public. Unfortunately for me and my need to be first though, “others” included Shawn Perry, who happened to be judging the event. He claims his work required him to tweet, but I am pretty sure he just wanted to be like me and beat me to posting the results. Anyway, I become obsessed with beating him to the punch, so I started tweeting the results based onĀ  my predictions, rather than the actual facts. And sure enough, I was wrong on more than one occasion.

I would correct myself via tweet and no harm was done, after all, it’s only wakeskating. But this morning this article was brought to my attention.

Irish student hoaxes world’s media with fake quote

Basically, as an experiment to see how fast information circles the globe, this guy posted a fake quote on a recently deceased composer’s wikipedia entry, which was then published by multiple media outlets in his obituary. I was like, oh my god, what lazy idiots, until I remembered, in the quest for speed, accuracy often gets thrown to the wayside, and I am as guilty as the next. We’ll add this one to the list reasons the Internet is ruining our lives. (Complete list or pros and cons coming soon.)

Sidenote: after the Toe Jam, I checked to see how many people we’re potentially seeing theWWA’s tweets. 29. So follow them, I almost feel bad.

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