At this point (As in time of post), if you have never heard of the Tammy sex scandal, it is time you realize that living in your shoe has its downsides. Behold the phenomenon in which an envy-inspired exposure sparked off an explosion in the news world and blogosphere. When was the last time you find an armada of news stories, articles, and blog posts that are attached to a single word/name?

I call this the Tammy effect.

The previous occurrence of the Tammy effect is the Star Wars Kid phenomenon. His leaked video of himself spread like wildfire across the internet and became one the web’s most searched people. Only this time, it is unlikely that people would add music and special effects to the ten minute sex video. SpyMy.com has taken the liberty to link to the video for download, an act that has been disagreed upon here, here and here.

All it takes for something or someone to make the news is to have it related any of the following: sex, private videos, mass exposure, and scandals, among many other things. This case includes all of these elements!

As I type, the Tammy incident has taken up the top four search terms in Technorati, leaving other things like American Idol and Bush struggling in the top 15 rank. Even in Yahoo and in Google, the word was being searched more and more and climbed in popularity in the search engine world. In fact, my traffic jumped threefold yesterday because I wrote a short post with the word ‘Tammy’ in it. But it did not jump as radically as that of Sir Hoe, it’s crazy. Bexafraid.com, another blog, has received the biggest traffic boost due to its mention in the Star newspapers. You just can’t help but to follow that link.

From that fateful incident, post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post has been written by bloggers in the region to have a say on it.

I pity her for having this much exposure even after the video got mass-circulated through e-mail. Of all the videos and unspeakable things found in Singaporean students’ phones, it was Tammy’s that made the news, a most unfortunate event. Yes, there are others. Maybe this is what you get for doing wrongful (arbitrary) things: having pre-marital sex, videotaping it, and be careless enough to let the video get stolen. People should be more careful nowadays.

This is just another example of how far the media has progressed in terms of technological advancements as a boone of human interaction and knowledge. This is referred to the Web 2.0, where ordinary people can have a say about things of all shapes and sizes. This is my take on the entire debacle, expressed through a blog, an act not possible just a few years ago. The internet is growing ever so gracefully.

Spy this article.

Updated 24/2/06: Xialanxue’s link is broken due to this.