Youtube Nation: Millions

For a little while now, comedian Craig Rowin has been dining out on his suspiciously absurd request for someone on the Internet to simply give him $1 million. Unlike other Internet hoax artists, he didn't threaten to pretend to kill a fluffy woodland creature and he didn't ask us to believe that he was someone just because he said he was. No, Rowin just made a video flat-out requesting a million bucks for nothing. Naturally, people watched with that classic Internet mix of skepticism and hope beyond hope. Of course the whole thing was an elaborate joke, but that seems almost beside the point. Unlike some self-indulgent filmmakers, Rowin didn't invest that much time and money into stringing people along with this ridiculous premise, nor was he trying to make any high-minded commentary on the nature of modern society. Like any good comedian, Craig Rowan was just interested in setting up a proper joke. The best of his audience did what was necessary to be amused by it, which was to play along even though common sense dictated they ignore him. That's why we listen to a comic's long, rambling stories in the first place. It's not that we believe these things actually happened, just that we need to envision a world in which they did in order to enjoy the punchline.

So, what was the punchline of Craig Rowin's million-dollar hoax? As far as I can tell, it's the same as every too-good-to-be-true bit of flotsam on the Internet: "Of course not, you dummy."

I think this is a beautiful thing. That phrase is the answer to a vast majority of Internet mysteries. It applies everywhere. Take Net Insanity's very first entry in the Youtube Nation column, "Greatest Freakout Ever". After watching that stupendously over-the-top tantrum, the first question you should ask is, "Did that kid really just flail around, beat his own head with a shoe, inexplicably march in and out of a closet and attempt to jam a remote control up his ass because he was angry about a video game and didn't know anyone was watching?"

The answer is, as it shall always be on the Internet, "Of course not, you dummy."

The same applies for the sorrowful subject of Internet dating. The farther a particular platform is from real life, the less likely it is to get results. While it's reasonable enough to assume some truth in a friend's insistence that they went out for coffee with a moderately attractive person they met on a dating site that includes pictures, that's about as far as it will ever go. When those sites or the plants they hire to promote them claim that users will be able to meet gorgeous, interesting, personable people on what basically boils down to a digital desperation catalog and the impressionable dolt in all of us asks, "Really?" we know the answer is actually, "Of course not, you dummy."

So, when a guy like Craig Rowin, a comedian, a man whose job is amuse people by pointing out absurdities, goes on the Internet and asks for one million dollars in exchange for nothing, then tells the world that someone acquiesced, the Web's infinite supply of fantasists will come out to ask, "Did someone really give you a million bucks for nothing?"

Of course not, you dummies. But while you're here, let me tell about the time I used a special amulet to go back in history to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence...