The Perils of Viral Means of Communication

Part of me really just wants to sit back and enjoy the confusion, but part of me feels guilty for what I suspect will eventually embarrass otherwise well-meaning people. I noted a while back that an April Fools Joke I posted here (on April 1, 2010) has spiraled out through the Internets and was being reported as true in some places. Now the same (incorrect) item has found its way into a serious New York source for culture news [h/t Helen S]. From the New York Observer:

The artist and James Franco met last year at the Raleigh Hotel during Art Basel Miami. Mr. Franco was in the midst of filming his own artistic investigation of soaps, his own role as an artist/serial killer on the soap, while Mr. Linzy was performing at a party thrown by Picasso granddaughter (by Marie-Therese) Diana Picasso. But Mr. Franco said he actually first saw the artist when Mr. Linzy gave a lecture at Columbia, and was impressed enough to pull him into the job of playing a performance artist for the General Hospital project. Since Mr. Franco has been selected as the U.S. artist for the 2011 Venice Biennale, their collaboration may be showcased on a global stage. So, now, Mr. Linzy is poised, interestingly, right between widespread acclaim, even over-saturation, in the contemporary art world, and virtual anonymity outside of it. [emphasis mine]

I mean, really now...the New York Observer wasn't just a little skeptical that one of the highest honors the US can bestow upon its artists was being given to a relative newcomer in the fine art areana?

There's this notion I have about "truth" (in the art world or elsewhere) as it pertains to the value of some effort which is that I tend to assimilate as "true" anything I've read in three places. I think this extends to my art world assessments that an artist is well known (if I've read three reviews of their work) or that a gallery is up and coming (if I've seen three instances of increased stature) or that a curator is onto something, etc. etc. Before my main source of new information was the Internet, when I read magazines or newspapers for verifications, that generally turned out to be accurate. Today, however, with RSS feeds and other instant-distribution-via-multiple-channels-type-technologies, I can read something untrue but presented as true many more than three times before the sweat from the fingers of the original author has dried on their keyboard.

So what to do? Increase my threshold to 13 or 23?

I'm not sure. In the end, I've decided, it's wise to take any information you find online, in any source, with a digital grain of salt.

Back when I was writing on political blogs...after being slammed a few times for not having checked my sources...I got in the habit of not only verifying what I thought was "true" in three reliable sources, but also systematically seeking out sources that contradicted the "fact" and assessing their veracity. At the very least, I was going to write my opinion with a good sense of what the dissenters thought about the issue. This generally made my arguments stronger, despite how time consuming it was. And I wasn't being paid (I'm just anal that way). The New York Observer really has no excuse.