Recently I had an amusing encounter with a certain Digg newsfeed on my Pageflakes titled “Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.” Just from the title I instantly sensed something fishy, so I tried to satisfy my curiosity by clicking the provided link. http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

After a careful examination of the website, I must admit I am little more convinced the existence of a tree octopus. However just the thought of an invertebrate living without the support of water is still bothering me. So I looked further into the website. Through a jungle typos a trails of clues began to emerge. In general, the website provided very vague description of the existence of such creature and justified it by saying it is elusive and intelligent. I give thought it could whoever write on the website is a student who is simply enthusiastic about the protection of the “tree octopus.” what gives it away is the FAQ page where it states that none of the money made from the selling of merchandise is going to support the protection of these nearly endangered species.

I could not help but to further my investigation by searching for other related websites. It all became clear after that. “The Pacific Tree Octopus is a fictitious endangered species first published on the Web in 1998 by Lyle Zapato.” It is among many websites commonly used in internet literacy classes.

To say the least, this is perhaps an excellent illustration of how vulnerable internet users are in today’s society. Anyone can make a website about anything. Certainly, this is also the power of internet, to reach everyone across the globe without barriers. We as consumers should beware of the information we see because the era of real news provided by news crews might be coming to an end. What’s replacing it is probably one man, like you and me, behind the monitor with a wild imagination.