People can try for years to become famous – get their name in lights, spend a night partying like Lindsey Lohan, walk the red carpet. Some would be content with only a taste, some small form of glory or name recognition by the man who pumps your gas. Or at least get 15 minutes of Internet fame when your face is featured next to a 55-gallon tub of lubricant. . . Wait, what?
Nick Bergus, adjunct instructor for the school of Journalism and Mass Communications at Iowa, originally found the link on Stellar. It linked to an Amazon page displaying a 55-gallon drum of lubricant for sale for $1,495.
Finding the sale amusing and wishing to share it with his friends, Bergus reposted the link on his Facebook wall on Valentine’s Day with an accompanying status that read, “”A 55-gallon drum of lube on Amazon. For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life.”
About a week later, one of Bergus’ friends posted a screen shot on Facebook of Bergus’ face next to the Amazon ad as a “sponsored story.” Facebook had turned Bergus’ status about the lube into an ad, paid for by Amazon.
“It put me in the awkward position of hawking an absurd amount of lube to my friends, coworkers and family,” Bergus said. “It was the first time I’d really thought about how Facebook was directly selling (and profiting from) the content I posted there.”
From there, Bergus wrote a post about the absurdity on his blog called “How I became Amazon’s pitchman for a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant on Facebook.” Shortly after that, one of Bergus’ favorite blogs by Jason Kottke linked to his post.
After that, Bergus found his story popping up all over the place. Gizmodo, The New York Times’ Bits, Gawker, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, Forbes, Cnet and Adweek all reposted or did some form of rewrite of Bergus’ original blog post. Bergus has also come across versions in Russian, Dutch, Portuguese and Romanian. Iowa Public Radio also featured Bergus about the story on their “River to River” show last Thursday.
The twist in Bergus’ 15 minutes of Internet fame? Almost every site that republished his story did it without asking, used the screenshot of the original Facebook ad without asking, did not ask him any questions about the story and embellished upon his original post.
“I don’t mind people retelling the story or pulling quotes from my copy. I’m not even that annoyed by people reusing the image without asking (only the MSNBC reporter specifically asked if she could),” Bergus said. “I was bothered by the embellishment and sensationalizing of my post. The story had one source: me. Outside of the radio interview, I was asked one question by one reporter. That was a little discouraging.”
Despite the dramatic angle that some of the sites took reposting his content, Bergus thinks that relinking to stories on the Interent is a great format that is good for modern journalism. However, it doesn’t let reporters off the hook from doing their jobs to actually ask questions to further a story.
So you still want your 15 minutes of fame? Better find an odd link to post, wait for Facebook to turn it into a sponsored story and blog about it. Hey, it works for some people.