webofevil | Media in "echo chamber" shock

You may remember, if only for its startlingly rubbish illustration [right], this story from October last year about an “evolutionary theorist” predicting that the human race would, after tens of thousands of years, eventually split into two sub-species.

Last Thursday night I was catching up on my NEWS when I noticed that the article had suddenly and unaccountably appeared in the “most emailed” section of the BBC News website. In the small hours of the morning the “most emailed” stats can be affected by a tiny amount of activity; sometimes just one person can effect a change in the rankings. It struck me as odd that such a non-story should resurface but I didn’t think anything of it.

The next day the Daily Mail ran this story, which by now will be pretty familiar. Five will get you ten I stumbled across the traces of panicked research sparked by a late-night email along the lines of, “Bloody hell, Steve, we need filler. Just reword this, will you.”