Amman, Jordan - March 3, 2008
On Saturday morning, members of the reddit internet website woke up to the fresh and - at the time somewhat dubious - news that the Saudi Arabian ambassador had been SMS'ing all fourteen of his friends warning them to get out of the country as soon as possible, inshallah. Thousands of furious clicks later, what started as unsubstantiated rumor has developed into armed conflict the likes of which will keep the internet abuzz for at least another fifteen to twenty-five minutes.
Reddit is a social news service - the website industry jargon pegs it as web 2.0 - where website visitors can type in news stories from links found in more reputable other sites. Other website visitors can click to vote up the news items, and the more clicks a story gets the higher up in the ratings it climbs. On Saturday morning, one reddit member with the unlikely internet handle of "scott" submitted to the site a story purporting to claim that several Arabian gulf countries had initiated evacuation plans from Lebanon.
Israeli soldiers celebrating an overnight 200 point karma gainBy the time the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Lebanon woke up and had a chance to check reddit, the story had already reached number five on the reddit.com front page. Our sources in Beirut indicate that he then proceeded to sms all fourteen compatriot Saudi Arabians in Lebanon to inquire what the hell was going on concerning this evacuation rumor. We have received what is alleged to be the text message itself, and our affiliate correspondent in Cairo confirms that a linguistic ambiguity in the Arabic phrasing lends it an unfortunate double meaning: "We are evacuating the country right now. Inshallah this is not a rumor."
A HTML programmer called spez responsible for the reddit.com website has released select information from the Saudi Ambassador's reddit account, and it seemed that in the panic he also upvoted the story. "reddit.com's new ranking algorithm factors in voter credibility," spez related to our correspondent in Two Goats, Arizona, "and from a purely functional perspective it's a huge success that an upvote from the person who is himself concerned in the story bumps the story straight to the top." Mr. spez would not comment on his website's alleged liability for the hostilities, and he would not specify either whether spez is a first or family name.
While the international community is focused on the pursuit of ceasefire terms agreeable to all parties involved in the conflict, recriminations are already being voiced at the role of reddit.com in the outbreak of hostilities. The spokesperson for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry has called for a special investigative panel to assess allegations that the sheer volume of the reddit userbase and the phenomenal levels of credulity which led the rumor to the top spot in any fashion actually affected the reality on the ground. "We don't know for sure yet," said Mr. Frederiksson, "but we do know there is no precedent for mass rumor mongering massaging reality in a direction different from fact. 
An American Army person stationed on the USS Cole saying macho things about terrism. In Lebanon, that is.Correspondingly, we have no historical precedent for a social aggregate which can propagate silly stories this quickly and efficiently. We have not ruled out the fact that reddit's wishful thinking has in fact altered reality."
In related news, the internet blackout imposed on the Middle Eastern region pending the reddit investigation has created a lolcat shortage. The United Nations Lolcat Task Force is set to issue a statement later this evening.
