That Guy: Watch words on web or face the wrath of Zumba

Opinion

If you have ever spent any time on the internet - and the stats say most of you have - you can't help but be bedazzled by its awesome power.

But be warned - it knows what you are up to and I am not just talking about online porn which, as most people know, can be easily erased in two easy steps (perhaps three if you are on an Apple Mac).

"Bigfoot", "Zumba" and "I can install a DIY roof cavity ventilation system cheaper than any commercial operator" are 16 words that have come back to bite me on the backside, legally and literally, during the past 24 months, and it is all because of the internet.

In this modern age, these words, and many like them, can be selected for an automatic search by fancy-sounding search engines for people who might take an interest in those subjects.

If I write "Bigfoot body found in the Waitakere Ranges", every Bigfoot enthusiast in the world is likely to see it, moments after the column, article or blog is posted on the internet.

Likewise, if I write "Zumba fitness USA is taking legal proceedings against me", they will undoubtedly read it in close to real-time back in the United States. Incidentally, "legal action" is exactly what is happening because of a fictitious article I wrote about Zumba just last week. Bring it on, but I digress.

Last year the Bigfoot community, fronted unofficially by Loren Coleman (disclaimer: he is not the guy in the suit), promised to give me a good old-fashioned, old testament hiding after my, admittedly immature, review of the 2008 Ohio Bigfoot conference.

In my online apology, I mistakenly referred to Loren as a woman instead of a man and this did little but throw unleaded fuel additive on to the fires of controversy.

My subsequent online apology was pointless. The controversy went on for so long and wasted so many precious Bigfoot research resources that most experts believe Bigfoot is now unlikely to be located and verified as a bonafide species for at least another 12 years. Before this controversy it was seven.

And yes, last week, thanks to the internet, Zumba International, which apparently has a 99-year leasehold on the concept of dance and fitness - began threatening a lawsuit against me because I implied that I was making an entire TV series based on their silly dance phenomena.

This is not the case. I was merely planning on filming a few skits that took the format of a medical soap opera set against a Zumba or jazzercise class.

Rather than simply contact me to find out more about the the article, and the yet-to-be-filmed comedy skit, they chose to use lawyers to try to shut down the entire series and laid claim to any footage that I may or may not have already shot.

Communication is the key, and, although the internet may have got me into this mess, it has to be said that as a tool it is also good for communicating.

A simple polite email could have rectified the situation and put all their concerns to rest in minutes.

Naturally, not for legal reasons I might add, we have changed the premise of the soap opera from Zumba Doctors to Bleep Doctors and the only similarity between our concept and that of Zumba International's Zumba phenomena is that we are all very sweaty and many of us are out of shape - but the same can be said about many Egypt-based archaeology documentaries.

Our show was never supposed to be about Zumba.

The dance-fitness sensation was a mere backdrop for amazing storylines, incredibly bad acting and life-changing messages.

The message now is this: If it's published it will be on the internet somewhere, so don't write anything you are not prepared to have published on the internet.

This is common sense, I suspect, but it has been a steep learning curve for me over the past couple of years. My only other computer tips would have to be: don't put photos on Facebook you don't want other people to see and don't try to clean seafood chowder off your computer yourself, as there are professionals who specialise in just that kind of problem.

Note to editor: Can we not put this column online this week? I need to get some sleep.