In an earlier blog posting that I wrote 23 days ago, I identified WE LINK, THEREFORE WE ARE as an Internet-induced phenomenon that has engulfed the world as a result of the Information Revolution, (which management guru Peter Drucker happened to talk much about.) The first example that I cited was "奧氏英語 in Japan". Since then, I've already noticed 2 more candidates that fit well into this category, namely:
And I expected more would be forthcoming. Still, the latest star to hit the news is a surprising one. It is the rise of the Three Wolf Moon Tshirt from a meaga sale of 2 to 3 a day to a mega one at 100 an hour, powered inadvertently by a joke review made by a reviewer on amazon.com, as is reported on this video.
According to another report in New York Times:
The magic, it turned out, was not so much the undeniably totemic power of the shirt, now endorsed by about 700 other similarly rapturous, if not entirely serious, reviewers, but the lesson in the inscrutable power of online culture that it provided. Like the butterfly wings creating the tornado, Mr. Govern inadvertently helped set off an almost impossible marketing bonanza and pop-culture craze: The shirt has been Amazon’s top-selling item of apparel every day since May 19, and it has morphed into one of those instant icons of Internet culture.
“This is something a lot of companies spend $100 million trying to do and for us it just happened, and we embraced it early on,” said Michael McGloin, an art school dropout and creative director of the Mountain, the New Hampshire-based company that made the shirt.... “You could not dream of getting this worldwide notoriety for a T-shirt, but it became a viral visual,” Mr. McGloin said....
More and more socio-cultural and political changes are made through the power of the Internet. However, people who are not good at playing this game would use other tactics to fight back. Being challenged is whether some activities are ethical or legal. To trust or not to trust e-messages, citizens of the cyber-world will learn from experiences (and mistakes).
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