The Swine Flue Experiment

Two weeks ago I decided to conduct a social experiment on Plurk. The swine flu panic was just beginning and Twitter found it's way into the limelight as the breeding ground of rumor and misinformation. Not wanting to let Twitter overshadow Plurk yet again, I decided to start a misinformation campaign and began furiously plurking questionable news stories and mislabeling them. In case you didn't bother checking Plurk that day or muted me:

Mantra shares:
Aloe Vera = 100% Swine Flue protection
cats and dogs **completely immune** from swine flue! Eat your furry friend to gain their powers!
Swine Flue like the plague! Avoid breathing and sneezing!
Seeing yourself living in a perfect body prevents Swine Flue!
Symptoms of Swine Flue include loss of consciousness followed by death! "This virus sucks really bad."
green tea, garlic, vitamin C in excess of 5,000mg, hot grapefruit juice, and zinc lozenges all FULL PROOF ways of curing Swine Flue!
Swine Flue is 4-year-old's fault! Demand Justice!
Swine Flue also fault of entire Republican Party!
Too much pork in spending bill causes Swine Flue!
Swine Flue only fatal for Mexicans!
New protective masks offer 100% protection from Swine Flue!
Join the People in their valiant effort to alert the Internet to Swine Flue!
These people want you to die from Swine Flue!
Swine Flue causes vacation shortages!
"Swine Flue" offensive to Jews and Muslims. Should be renamed "Mexican Flue."
Swine Flue food for Nativists!
Swine Flue created in laboratory!
US Swine Flue more mutated than other mutant Swine Flues!
Nanomasks sold out due to Swine Flue!
First book on 2009 Swine Flue released!
Masks completely ineffective against Swine Flue!

I was being tongue-in-cheek about it, of course, but the idea was that someone would see these plurks and freak out, voicing their own concerns over the spread of swine flu, mirroring the disreputable news links to their plurk buddies or otherwise diseminating the "swine flu panic" word virus. However, while Twitter was and remains a panic party, not a single person on Plurk bit. Some wondered why I had apparently become obsessed with swine flu or similar comments, but no one spread the misinformation, and Plurkers in general remain relatively quiet (although others seem to be running similar experiments).

So why was the experiment a failure on Plurk but not on Twitter? Perhaps it was the test group; the only people who saw my plurks were students in the Nanotexts class, and we had just finished The Ticket That Exploded. Perhaps Burroughs has inoculated us against word viruses to such an extent that we simply ignore them. But I wonder if this is really such a good thing in light of the Disney cartoon on vaccination we watched. Perhaps what we've created here on Plurk and Twitter isn't an online panic word virus but a vaccine against the real panic in the news. Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to criticize the people on Twitter who are parodying the panic by disseminating this misinformation for fun. By looking at these outlandish articles and tweets about swine flu we are building up our mind's immune system and giving ourselves a healthy dose of skepticism. When a swine flu alert is made on the news now, perhaps instead of freaking out our minds can resist the fear enough to demand and seek out better sources of information, or at the very least to look at what the results of the primary document being cited is and distinguish it from the claim being made about it.