The meme was the Cooks Source story, which I stumbled across relatively early in the day. I won’t recap the story here, as the original LiveJournal post by Monica Gaudio and Edward Champion’s very well-researched article do a much better job of that. The latter piece is particularly commendable if you’re new to the story, as it not only explains the genesis of the incident but also lays bare a number of other things that were discovered as the story went ballistic.

I’m not sure exactly where I first came across the story—probably a retweet of Adam Banks by a friend of mine—but at the time the meme was really just getting started. At that point there were quite a few people posting on the Cooks Source Facebook Wall to chastise the editor, and the rate of posting was accelerating. I threw in “my own tweet on the topic”: and kept watching the Wall to see if there would be a response, if the Facebook page would be deleted, or something else. At the same time, I was seeing more and more tweets and retweets of the story, and based on just what I could see, it seemed primed to go crazy. I was rewteeted by swissmiss, who has four times as many followers as me (and way more influential followers than me), and it was hitting the feeds of more and more people I follow.

When it showed up on John Scalzi’s tweet stream, I actually got a little dizzy. This was the moment where I felt like the scientist at the beginning of a viral-apocalypse movie, staring at a monitor showing the sites of reported infection in red. Then, in a burst of tense, ominous music, the dots show up in New York City and around JFK. Game over.

I got that feeling because I knew that not only is Mr. Scalzi followed by both Neil Gaiman (1.5 million followers) and Wil Wheaton (1.7 million followers), but he is respected and therefore paid attention to by both. Furthermore, both, as net-savvy content creators like Mr. Scalzi, are exquisitely sensitive to such stories. It was only a matter of time before one of them passed the story on to their followers. And sure enough, within minutes, Neil Gaiman did so.

At that point, it seemed only a matter of time before traditional media channels took interest, and though it took a little while, many did. It literally became an international news story.

Throughout the day, I tracked the situation and tweeted about it as new developments happened. I almost couldn’t help myself; I was completely captivated by watching a meme unfold and spread in realtime. Eventually I hit on a crude measurement of the story’s reach, which I dubbed the Speed of Chastisement (SoC). This was measured by loading the Cooks Source Wall and then scrolling to the bottom of the page, down to the “Older posts” button. The time elapsed since the last of the Wall posts was the SoC. When I started looking at it, it was measurable in minutes, but as the day went on the interval dropped. At one point, it was as low as 34 seconds, and may well have dropped lower when I wasn’t looking.

I wish I could’ve automatically captured that number, say, every minute, because the timeline graph I could make with that data would be fascinating—especially if mapped against various developments, like Neil Gaiman’s retweet of John Scalzi or the time of various article publications.

One of the things I found most fascinating was how the outraged mob used Cooks Source’s own digital presence against it. I don’t actually mean all the Wall posts, which served as an emotional outlet but otherwise only indicated the story’s memetic velocity (the SoC I mentioned earlier). What people did was start new threads in the Discussions tab of Cooks Source’s own Facebook page to document the original sources of Cooks Source articles and to compile the contact information for all of the advertisers in Cooks Source. The speed at which the crowd operated was awesome in the older sense of that word as inspiring of awe, which is itself defined as power to inspire fear or reverence. As I told a friend, I was fascinated in the same way I’d be fascinated watching, from a distance, a predator hunting down its prey. Awe-struck. It was almost frightening to watch how fast people tracked down the various text and image sources, uncovering more and more evidence of bad behavior at full-bore, redlined Internet speed.

On a related point, I was very impressed by the quality of reporting in Edward Champion’s article about the story. Alone of all the articles I’ve seen (beyond the first couple of LJ posts), his laid out specific examples of repurposed content, and furthermore he had talked to people involved and gotten their perspective and to people at some of the sites and companies whose material had been re-used. Read the article, if you didn’t already follow one of the links. It is investigative journalism done far better than any reporter has yet done for any traditional, or even “new media”, news outlet.

I could write about all this for much longer, but I’m going to hold off. My day wasn’t all just observation and tweets, though. A few questions kept hovering in the back of my mind.

• What if the mob had been wrong?

  Imagine with me for a moment that a small crocheting magazine is accused of copyright violation by an author. The editor, knowing this to be false, sends a dismissive or even sarcastic letter (we’ve all done it). The author posts their side of the story and excerpts of the letter to their blog, people notice, and suddenly the Flash Mob of Righteousness is back in business.

  What then? Is it possible, once the rope is out and being tied into a noose, to put it away again?

• Did Cooks Source actually win?

  As I write this, about 24 hours after the story really blew up, the Cooks Source Facebook page has gone from 110 people who “Like This” to almost 3,400. Most of those are because in order to comment on the Wall, you have to Like the page, and a whole lot of people hit “Like”, commented, and then hit “Unlike”. Some of them are still listed because they’re still posting. Still, assume that by the time it’s all over, between people who want to keep harassing Cooks Source and people who just forgot to hit “Unlike”, they’ll have well over a thousand people listed. That’s a full order of magnitude jump in claimed like.

  Is that a measure of success? Will it, in fact, end up a net positive for Cooks Source as it tries to entice advertisers for future issues? Of course, that assumes the magazine survives the attention of lawyers from Disney, Paula Deen Enterprises, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the Food Network, Sunset, National Public Radio, and so on and so on.

• What about Gene Simmons?

  A few weeks back, Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) said that anyone who illegally shares files should be “sued off the face of the earth” and that bands should be litigious about people copying their music. In response, his web site was cracked and a good deal of derision was directed his way.

  Interesting. In one case, a content creator who calls for vigorous defense of copyright is attacked for it. In another, a violator of copyright is attacked. How many of the people who Wall-bombed Cooks Source’s Facebook page were also cheering the anonymous crackers who harassed Gene Simmons? Why the disconnect?

  There are many reasons we could cite, and I think the most likely factor is that in both cases, the targets of attack were publicly arrogant and uncompromising about their positions. That, however, is absolutely no excuse. If you were outraged by Cooks Source, shouldn’t you cheer Gene Simmons’ stance? If you rolled your eyes Gene Simmons, shouldn’t you be on the side of Cooks Source?

  I imagine there are people who did one or the other of those things. But not many. The contrast says something about how we collectively view intellectual property, and it may not be something we want to face.

This isn’t the first time someone will set off an outrage swarm, and it won’t be the last. There is much to think about here, about both ourselves and the medium we inhabit.

“This is a clear violation of constitutional rights and federal and state law. Mr. Bardwell’s actions should be fully reviewed by the Judiciary Commission and disciplinary action should be taken immediately – including the revoking of his license.”

As for Mr. Bardwell himself, he has claimed not to be racist, but instead concerned for the biracial children that result from mixed-race marriage. Of all that he’s said, though, I was particularly interested by the following:

“I didn’t tell this couple they couldn’t get married. I just told them I wouldn’t do it.”

It interested me because it’s exactly the kind of reasoning that underlies “conscience protection” laws that exempt medical professionals who wish to refuse participation in abortion, or dispensation of contraception.

So now I’m very curious to know whether what pro-life groups have to say about what this man has done and how he’s done it. Or, for that matter, what Governor Jindal himself now thinks of the bill he recently signed into law.

Example: “Wait, you wanted me to buy cheerleader pom poms? Oh. I totally cornpensated that one. …Awkward.”

You see, for the entire second half of Election Day, from almost noon until after midnight, Eastern time, I was aboard a Continental flight to Tokyo. We had video-on-demand systems but not live satellite television, so as we arced over Canada, Alaska, and the northern reaches of the Pacific Ocean, we flew in ignorance. As Jeremy Keith put it regarding his own flight to Japan, we were aboard Schrödinger‘s Airplane.

For me, the wave collapsed as we began the initial descent toward Narita. One of the flight attendants, having announced that they were starting the initial-descent procedures and would like us to check around our seats for any personal items we might like to start stowing, added: “And for those of you interested in the results of the election, we have a new President: Barack Obama.”

There was a burst of applause from the economy section of the plane. In business class, there was silence.

Well, not quite. I was myself sitting in business class, thanks to a great big pile of reward miles and some lucky timing in calling the airline. As I heard her say Obama’s name, I let out an involuntary “Wow“. Because until that moment, deep down I had believed, truly believed, that Mr. Obama would not win the Presidency. That was not the outcome I desired, but it was the outcome I expected.

I am in many ways ashamed of my doubts and fears, because I had thought less of my fellow Americans than they deserved.

Since then, from here in Tokyo, I’ve felt weirdly disconnected from what’s happened. In time zone terms, I’m fourteen hours in my home’s future, half a day ahead of everyone back home. But because I received word after it was all over and soon after slept through America’s Wednesday daylight hours, I feel like I’m a day behind. Time and distance combine to create a feeling of disconnectedness from the end result, as though I’m getting word of election results in Germany or India or Australia: interesting, but something seen at a remove.

It’s odd. I’m used to being an observer, but this is something else entirely. I think it’s pure astonishment.

There’s a metaphor there, but I’m having trouble deciding exactly what it is, or perhaps more accurately to whom it applies.

Seriously, I’m not generally one to read messages into things—in fact, I probably lean too far the other direction—but on this? Somebody needs to be fired for gross negligence, because there’s a message being sent here, intentionally or otherwise. In fact, it’s worse if it’s unintentional. The question is who was negligent. The photographer for not seeing what the placement communicated? The editor for approving use of the image on their cover? The McCain campaign for approving the image in the first place?

Maybe all of the above.

I’ll be very interested in people’s responses on this one… and even more in People‘s response, should anyone ask them about it.