It seems that a Daily Mail columnist is having to learn about the unreliability of user-generated content the hard way.
Former Telegraph hack Petronella Wyatt succumbed to the egotistical practice of writing her own entry on Wikipedia, the do-it-yourself internet encyclopaedia.
“Taking every precautionâ€, she says in the Mail, “I kept the facts on my entry to a
minimum, confining myself to my academic career and the post I held on various newspapers and magazines.â€
So far, so good.
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But imagine her horror upon returning to the page two weeks later to find that cyber-bullies had vandalised her good name by saying that she often rode to hounds “bare-breastedâ€.
The entry said she often did this while living in Virginia, USA, causing huntsmen to “blow their horns in panic†and children to “utter petrified criesâ€.
The evil hackers wrote that when she finally left Virginia, the roads were lined with “thousands of happy people cheering†her departure.
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And as if that wasn’t enough, Wyatt is also descended from a long line of “schizophrenic bats†‒ according to her page, at least.
Petronella’s actual father, Labour MP and diarist Woodrow Wyatt, just for good measure, is described as a “famous lunatic†who bribed Oxford University to admit his “mentally-backward†daughter.
Sinisterly, Wyatt claims to know who the culprit is but refuses to name her because, not being a world-famous Daily Mail columnist, she doesn’t have an entry and “doesn’t merit oneâ€.
Would it just be mean to suggest that what is really to blame here is vanity?
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