The media, it would appear, are using the internet as a resource for endless numbers of stories about “online crazes” or “internet hits”. Like this latest one:

A new blog matching pictures of drunk people with yoga positions has become a huge internet hit.

The blog has become a huge hit since it started, attracting thousands of visitors.

The blog shows a series of photographs of people taken while asleep and drunk in various different positions – sprawled across a bench, bending backwards over a chair and kneeling face down under a bus-stop billboard.

Alongside each picture is an image of a yoga position which looks very similar. The blog has become a huge hit since it started – attracting thousands of visitors. (The Telegraph)

I’d never heard of this, or the previous “craze” reported in the media: the Lying Down Game.

The Lying Down Game is sweeping the nation via Facebook groups and has already produced thousands of impressive still lives.

Participants are told there are two aims: it should be as public as poss ible and as many people as possible should be involved.

But a cavalier disregard for personal safety seems to give you extra kudos – as the man lying in front of a jet eng ine will testify.

No location is out of bounds, with people stretching out on roof-tops, postboxes, statues, train luggage racks and roads. (Metro)

Plus, of course, the stealing of photos from Facebook accounts and the manufacture of an article around them.

The media, it appears, have latched on to the internet as a easy story-creating source. Never mind whether what they report is actually true, or indeed interesting. Just the fact that it is “from teh internets” appears to be good enough for journalists.

Just because it has been published online doesn’t make it new and fresh – it’s the old cat-stuck-up-a-tree stories slightly repakaged for a new worldview. Plus, it always gives journalists and thei readers a chance to feel superior because they don’t do such “pointless” things…

Journalists, please: go and do some real investigating and write some real news.