The End of the World as We Know It

Tim Berners-Lee (0:05)

We're supposed to learn from our own mistakes, but other people's errors can be instructive too. From efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry, to the untimely death of the Segway boss, history is a treasure trove of mishaps and meltdowns that can teach us all. I'm Tim Harford, host of Cautionary Tales, the podcast that mines the greatest fiascos of the past for their most valuable lessons. Listen to Cautionary Tales wherever you get your podcasts.

Garrett Graff (0:39)

When was the last time you felt good about the Internet? The online landscape today is a harrowing one. People screaming at each other on social media, violent videos going viral, cyberbullying, racism, misogyny. It's hard to say for sure where the web started to turn sour. But a case can be made that the last good day of the Internet was February 26, 2015

SPEAKER_3 (1:06)

How could we not start with this video?

SPEAKER_4 (1:08)

Two llamas on the run in Sun City for hours today.

Garrett Graff (1:13)

That morning, people around the country were huddling around their monitors. A news event was unfolding that was holding the Internet in a trance. The must-see video of the day, llamas on the loose in the valley. A pair of llamas had escaped from a visit to a nursing home in Sun City, Arizona.

SPEAKER_4 (1:31)

A man let go of his rope and before we knew it, it was llama's day out here in Sun City.

SPEAKER_5 (1:36)

So we're double choppering the two llamas for the day.

Garrett Graff (1:40)

Helicopter crews documented the chase as the llamas dodged handlers.

SPEAKER_6 (1:44)

Oh, llama llama's headbutton.

SPEAKER_5 (1:47)

That is not good.

Garrett Graff (1:48)

And wove in and out of oncoming traffic.

SPEAKER_6 (1:51)

This is crazy.

SPEAKER_9 (1:52)

It would be really neat to be in those cars on the streets with the llamas.

Garrett Graff (1:56)

Online, the incident was going viral under the hashtag, llama drama.

Kate Holderness (2:02)

The entire internet, my office included, was just obsessed with these escaping llamas in Arizona.

Garrett Graff (2:10)

Kate Holderness and her colleagues at BuzzFeed were watching the llama drama from their office in New York.

Kate Holderness (2:16)

And there was like helicopter footage and news coverage. And it was just hours of everyone being like, Oh, are they going to catch the llamas?

SPEAKER_11 (2:24)

They do have a couple of guys with lasso around there, but they've tried to throw these things.

SPEAKER_12 (2:27)

Oh, yeah, they got it with one.

SPEAKER_4 (2:30)

The llamas finally caught and headed back to their trailers.

Kate Holderness (2:35)

They finally did catch the llamas.

Garrett Graff (2:43)

Believe it or not, watching llama videos was a big part of Holderness' job at BuzzFeed, trying to predict what would go viral and how to capitalize on it. At the time, BuzzFeed was the king of viral content, with 200 million visitors a month.

Kate Holderness (2:58)

We had the attitude of, if a piece of content makes you feel something, you should post it.

Garrett Graff (3:05)

And toward the end of that day, as the llama drama was dying down, Holderness got a message on BuzzFeed's Tumblr account.

Kate Holderness (3:14)

Hey, BuzzFeed, can you look at this thing that I posted? My friends and I are losing it. We're freaking out. And I was just like, I don't see what the big deal is. It's a blue and black dress. I leaned over to two of my colleagues who were sitting beside me, and I was just like, hey guys, what color is this? And at the exact same time, one of them said white and gold and one of them said blue and black.

Garrett Graff (3:37)

Her colleagues were looking at the same picture of a dress and seeing completely different colors.

Kate Holderness (3:44)

They immediately started debating with each other.

Garrett Graff (3:47)

Their argument drew people in from the rest of the office.

Kate Holderness (3:51)

Within 10 minutes, there were 20 people standing behind my desk just screaming at each other. Just couldn't believe people were seeing at different colors. I was like, if we're fighting about it, maybe the rest of the Internet will fight about it. So I threw it up into a BuzzFeed post, hit Publish, and then left work. Didn't really think much about it until I got off of the subway.

My phone kept crashing. I couldn't load Twitter, and I had dozens of text messages from friends and colleagues and family members saying, you're ruining our lives. Like, what did you do? I looked on Twitter. At that point, I had like several thousand notifications and everyone was freaking out. It was just like the entire internet was freaking out. It started making the rounds through New York media.