The Internets are full of kooky and frightening acts of fakery. It is only a matter of time until web trickery evolves into an actual genre of writing. Someday, your kids' literature textbooks (or ebooks or brain chips) will include a section about phony Craigslist ads and imaginary MySpace characters.
Andrew Adam Newman just wrote a great essay about Craigslist as fiction workshop, pointing out some of the best fabulists populating the want-ad website. Case in point:
"Brett Michael Dykes, whose fake ads and their responses have been popular features of his blog, Cajun Boy in the City, usually posts in the "Missed Connections" category." (Thanks, Bookninja)
At the same time, your kids' journalism ethics textbooks will be dissecting this story for years to come--looking at a crazy couple of MySpace pranksters who allegedly taunted a suicidal girl online.
Romenesko had the scoop: " The Lee-owned St. Charles Journal recently wrote about a teenage girl who killed herself after two adults' postings on MySpace. The paper declined to name the pair, but blogs outed them."
Then, Steve Almond wrote a hilarious fake obituary for fake memoirist James Frey in The Virginia Quarterly Review. It will never show up in any journalism or literature textbook, but it should.
Finally, tune in next week for more National Book Award web video interviews with National Book Award finalists.
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