For a few hours yesterday evening fear gripped the nation. Panicked anchors on CNN clutched their earpieces and relayed the latest news to viewers regarding the whereabouts of a 6 year old boy who tied himself to his parents homemade air balloon and took off into the sky. When the balloon finally landed and the boy was no where to be found, sheer panic ensued. By this point, I'll assume everyone knows the saga - if not, try googling "balloon boy."

I happened to be babysitting a six year old girl last night when this story broke. Her stepfather had CNN on and relayed vague information as he and his wife got ready to leave. The story seemed too outrageous to be true, but regardless of its validity I genuinely feared for the little boy. I was glued to the television until her parents left.

I had all but forgotten about the boy until I got to work this afternoon, when my boss mentioned a video that had gone viral of the boy vomiting in an interview this morning. When I returned to my desk later I did some research and watched the video he'd mentioned and began to consider the implications if the entire story were made up by fame hungry parents. If this story is indeed just a publicity stunt, it was executed impeccably. Media outlets took the story and ran with it. By this morning the story saturated blogs, newspapers, television and Youtube. The family was interviewed this morning on CNN and the Youtube clip of the interview is already has half a million views. In the interview the little boy, named "Falcon" says quietly that his Dad told him it was a media stunt. His dad brushes aside the comment and changes the topic immediately. One more piece of information decreases the credibility of the story even more: the family was featured on ABC's WifeSwap. Ulterior motive? FAME. I immediately felt outrage when I came to this realization, then I had another: THIS IS BRILLIANT. How dare this family take millions of people on a tear-jerking saga knowing the entire time their "missing" son was in their garage? Because they know how to harness the power of media and go from nobody's to household names in a matter of hours.