Silly Season – Breaking news

The one thing that Social Media has tought us is that you can never predict what is hot or not. Even the most trivial thing can be made into a straight out hype on the Internet within a day.

Take the infamous “Blumenkübel”. Now you might think ‘What?’ and yes I thought that as well. But still this word made it into the WorldWide Trending list on Twitter, has a Facebook page with thousands of followers and was mentioned on major news sites. It has been one of the topics for the last two days on the internet.

So what is it all about then?
Well simply put Nothing really. It’s a non-story, something to talk about in the absence of serious topics (summer recess). ‘Blumenkübel’ means flowerpot in German and refers to an article in an obscure local German magazine two days ago about a flower pot outside an elderly home that got broken by vandals.

Someone started twittering about it and within hours this story just got totally hyped. Worldwide people were twittering about……. a broken flower pot.
Some of them not even knowing what the word meant at all. Al thanks to social media. Would you have predicted that a broken flower pot would have gotten that much attention??

Funny detail, the author of the article just started and this was one of her first articles. Now that’s a way to make an entrance!