I absentmindedly posted a picture of an oil painting that looked the Prime Minister – the next thing I know it’s spread around the world, writes student Sophie Gadd
Yesterday I was awoken by a frantic phone call from my mother telling me I was on page three of The Daily Mail.
That may rank as one of the most terrifying ways to wake up, after fire alarms and falling out of bed.
My appearance on page three was not the result of me taking my clothes off, but the culmination of 24 hours of viral social media, and it happened like this.
While visiting an admittedly quite boring Berlin museum with a friend, I spotted a painting of a woman who looked remarkably like David Cameron, right down to the receding hairline, jowls and cherubic cheeks.
I absentmindedly posted it on Twitter expecting a few replies
But nothing could prepare me for how quickly the picture spread.
On Twitter it began with hundreds of people retweeting it, and messaging me to say that it was Catherine the Great.
It’s this point during a viral Twitter storm that notifications have to be disabled, for fear that your phone may explode.
This phase was followed by lots of horse jokes – there are many myths about Catherine and strange “incidents” with horses.
The wave of sceptical truthers came barraging in next, claiming everything from Photoshop, to face-swap, to the fact that it was in fact a painting of David Cameron.
I was slightly taken aback by the accusation I might spend my holidays editing photographs of the Prime Minister. Well, everyone needs a hobby.
I hadn’t submitted it to the press, yet in less than a day the picture found its way onto websites, the papers, radio, and TV.
It is an incredibly surreal experience for an average politics student to find their name appearing in the news, having not really done much at all.
This must be one of the laziest ways anyone has got press coverage in 2013. Typical student.
In the last few weeks there have been a few pictures circulating on the internet of teachers holding up signs saying they wanted to teach their pupils how quickly an image can spread online .
I didn’t take this seriously myself until it took less than 24 hours for my picture to get from Twitter to a national newspaper.
It’s slightly nerve wracking reading an op-ed piece on a newspaper website discussing what could’ve been a passing comment in the pub.
It is also strange to think that Cameron himself has probably been made aware of the picture, since it could make up quite a jibe in PMQs. This has certainly made me more cautious about tweeting nonsense.
Just as I thought the storm had died down, The Spectator discovered David Cameron is in fact actually distantly related to Catherine the Great.
So what I thought was a funny observation actually turned out to reveal a new blue-blooded relative for our man of the people . Maybe I should go to museums more often!
