I wanted to take a few seconds to introduce you to a phrase that is being bandied around the blogosphere recently, “jumping the shark.” Often used to describe a blogger who has finally succumbed to hubris and has put together something so incredibly wrong that even he has a problem believing that he wrote it — jumping the shark is actually a phrase stolen from television.

Sunday, Monday Happy Days

It was coined in the 1990s and has its origins on the television show, “Happy Days.” In an episode late in the series’ run, Fonzi finds himself at the beach and for reasons that are still beyond me ends up jumping over a shark wearing his signature biker’s jacket. If you haven’t already figured it out, “jumping the shark,” is most often used to define the tipping point when something goes from useful or entertaining to ridiculous. By resorting to what has to be one of the sillier stunts in late 70s television, that episode marked the downturn in the series.

The fact that it is now being used to describe blogebrities is quite telling. It seems we have arrived at a point, as members of the tech community, that where once we wanted nothing more than a vehicle to express our opinion — we’re beginning to rely on “shock and awe” to get the increasingly fickle attention of our readership.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Is this a bad thing? Well, what history can tell us is that every television show that has ever “jumped the shark” has failed spectacularly. Usually, this is because the show loses the one thing that no spectacle can make up for, credibility. Next time you are sitting around pontificating on how best to make your way onto Techmeme, you may want to consider the case of one Arthur Fonzarelli.

[Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed before leaving]