Who would have thought a herd could moonwalk?

‘All character is action’ goes the old Hollywood cliché — that is, we learn far more about people by how they behave than we do from what they tell us about themselves. Whatever else you think about the internet (for good or ill), it does two really important but significantly different things to allow us to pursue this study of homo sapiens: first, it allows us to connect with each other in ways and with a frequency unimaginable just a few years ago (and so amplifies our natural tendencies); and second, perhaps more significantly, it allows the curious to watch and listen to how vast numbers of folk respond to events in the outside world and marvel at how they interact with each other as a result. It helps us see the character of the human beast in action.

This week has offered us a prime example of this. For those of you who have been asleep, marooned on a desert island, locked in the Big Brother house or for some other reason isolated from all news media and/or human contact, at 19.21 GMT last Thursday one of Michael Jackson’s staff called the emergency services to his LA residence and the star was pronounced dead of a cardiac arrest a short time later. While the death the same day of another 1970s pin-up, Farrah Fawcett, seems to have generated a moderate amount of affectionate and respectful response around the world — polite obituaries in newspapers and on news sites and tender messages of respect — Jackson’s sudden and dramatic demise has unleashed a tide of really interesting human behaviour.

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First, there has been a rush to share the news with other people: long before the mainstream media got hold of the story, ‘Michael Jackson RIP’ was being passed from person to person, via blogs and instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter.