Product Dysplacement

Last night in a flurry of interactive rebellion apparently prompted by the failure of VH-1 to include Marilyn Manson's "Coma White" video on "The List", thousands of gloom rockers organized via Usenet, joining forces with disgruntled "Star Trek" fans in order to barrage Viacom interactive properties with trekkie references, gothic symbolism, and deliberate non-sequiter product placements.

Webmasters at Simon & Schuster were stymied when their daily poll for womens' favorite reads yielded 666 votes for the Manson biography "Long Hard Road Out Of Hell", and an equal number for the hardbound edition of Leonard Nimoy's "I Am Not Spock".

UPN.com was forced to take their webservers offline due to the relentless volume of requests for a non-existent file named "Antichrist.gif".

"Total Request Live", beseiged by an avalanche of emails and 800 calls, was pressured into airing a video of William Shatner...

Chatrooms at MTV.com were quickly filled to capacity by Manson fans sporting the monikers of qabalistic demons and memorable Star Trek villians, whose sarcastic comments on the death of rock and the decay of western civilization managed to decrease the site's banner click-thru rate by a whopping 82% over a four-hour period.

The interactive gameshow "WebRiot" suffered an embarrasing series of pale-faced volunteer contestants in black clothing who repeatedly flashed the vulcan handsign while shouting "The Good Of The Many Outweighs The Good Of The Few!" but refused to answer any questions unrelated to the classic science fiction series.

On the "LoveLine" set, Doctor Drew and Adam Corolla were sent home early when live studio audience members rioted in response to inciting verbal assaults launched by on-air callers with names like "The Tholian Web" and "Kill Your Television".

The staff of MTV's "Total Request Live", beseiged by an avalanche of emails and 800 calls, was pressured into airing a video of William Shatner performing "My Way" while an army of emaciated goths chanted "We're All Stars Now" in the crowded street below.

17 thousand emails from temporary AOL accounts beginning with the word "Omega" flooded their servers...

Carmen Electra's interactive appearance on Yahoo.com was postponed indefinitely when more than 17 thousand emails from temporary AOL accounts beginning with the word "Omega" flooded their Q&A submission servers, requesting that the starlet perform a reprehensibly wide variety of sexual acts. (To Electra's credit, she valiantly attempted to comply with requests until losing consciousness completely. She is reported in stable condition.)

Staffwriters for "The Real World Online," already under a timecrunch to generate new material, apparently found their creativity challenged by a preponderance of telephone opinions and bulletin board posts indicating a marked demographic preference for plotlines involving occult spiritualism and hermaphrodites from outer space. Two actors were made to shave their heads and don uncomfortable prosthetics, while another was forced to appear on webcam wearing fishnet stockings and a reversed pentacle around his neck. "It made me feel dirty," said the would-be genY celeb whose name has been changed (by audience vote) to "WormBoy".

Meanwhile in related news, fulfillment houses all over the country have been thrown into chaos by an inexplicable wave of orders for extra-large black "Rugrats" T-shirts, originating from masked IP addresses and attributed to consumers whose names seem to have been pulled from Blockbuster's "deceased customers" database.