I almost don’t want to write this, as I hate to further spread such a stupid PR stunt, but here goes. You may have noticed some rather ridiculous ads over the past weeks, advertising a new service which would let you tan over a computer. The posters and even commercials on the new-fangled projectors on the London tube directed people to a Computer Tan website.

Now, I’m pretty sure most people were fully aware that computers don’t tan their users; anyone who works in an office in the UK can attest to the vampiric pale skin of their desk-bound colleagues.

And I’m pretty sure most people are aware that the sun does tan you; consider the word “suntan”. It’s pretty blindingly obvious.

But the charity behind the hoax, if you can even call it that, is now claiming a million people have visited the site over the past two-ish months, showing they were fooled by this ingenious trick and clearly have no idea how the sun or computers work.

Their PR folks said: “The fact that so many people fell for the ComputerTan hoax demonstrates the frightening truth that getting a tan – regardless of the risk – is still appealing for many people.”

Uh no.

First, visiting the site doesn’t mean people bought the hoax. It means they went “huh?” and checked it out to see what the hell was going on. This isn’t a bad thing. This is curiosity and fact checking. Indeed, most people likely realised it was a viral ad campaign, as these are hardly rare these days now that PR has discovered the interwebs, and wanted to see what it was for. If I click something, it doesn’t mean I believe it or want it or like it. A lot of Republicans probably read Obama’s sites, right?

Second, the charity behind this (Skcin) has been pushing “How Computer Tan hoaxed the nation” since the beginning of February. I got sent a press release for the site — they tried to hoax us tech journos, too, you see — as well as a follow up one from Skcin on 3 February. I’m not sure why it’s getting attention now — someone finally gave in, or the number of ‘hoaxed’ got too big to ignore.

I’m all for finding creative ways to engage people about their health to prevent diseases like cancer. So Skcin gets automatic good karma points for that one. They mean well, and it’s a good, worthy cause. But do you really have to treat us like we’re all idiots?

But if anyone actually thought a screen could give them a tan, it shows more about their lack of knowledge of how monitors work than it does knowledge of skin care.

Rather than try to drive people to a website by making insane claims which complicate the issue for those dense enough to not understand it, maybe all those fancy ads would be better served sharing the frightening stats about skin cancer straight up, instead of being all Web 2.0 too-clever-by-half about it.

Children will be learning to tweet in schools, apparently. Well, sort of. A draft proposal for a plan was leaked to the Guardian, which — among other things — suggested the microblogging site could be taught to primary school children as part of plans to educate kids on modern communications tech.

On one hand, this obviously sounds stupid (especially to Twitter-phobes like myself). Kids know more about tech than us old folks (and I say this as someone not yet 30) and they’ll learn it on their own and isn’t Twitter only used by old people anyway? Yes, yes, and yes.

But think of it a different way. The basic skills to using Twitter — or the other mooted tools, such as Wikipedia and blogs — are good skills to know. To use Twitter, schoolkids should have to have an understanding of how the web works (and how to stay safe on it), as well as basic spelling* and literacy. Is anyone complaining about teaching kids any of those skills?

In fact, don’t people — and tabloids — constantly freak out that kids these days don’t know how to read or spell or communicate? Aren’t there constant stories about how pedophiles are trying to groom kids over the net, about preventing online bullying and all that?

So what’s the problem? It’s not like the web and computers are incompatible with books and pencils — you can use online and offline tech to learn. Look around your desk — is there a computer sitting on it? Is it connected to the internet? Do you have a pen somewhere to hand, and something to write on?

Why are people so afraid to give kids the tools that they themselves use? It’s not like teaching about the web and the Magna Carta is mutually exclusive somehow — we can teach them both. And we should.

(*I realise most user-generated online content is horribly spelled. But maybe if we train the precious darlings from a young age to spell properly online, we can save the internet from becoming an unreadable wasteland, too. Two birds, one stone, and all that.)

The Scottish Sunday Express has recently been slated — and rightly so — for running a horrifying story about the survivors of the Dunblane Massacre. The story, and the reaction to it, is a great example of the good ways and the very bad ways people are using the web to spread information.

So here’s what happened. A journalist named Paula Murray realised the survivors of the shooting would be 18 now, meaning their photos could be published. She trawled social networking sites for dirt on the survivors — these being people who were shot as children, and saw their friends killed — and befriended them to get some dirt.

She then wrote a front page story, slamming them for daring to use social networking sites and publicly posting photos of themselves drunk and making comments about binge drinking.

“But now the Sunday Express can reveal how, on their webbased social networking sites, some of them have boasted about alcoholic binges and fights. For instance, [name redacted] – who was hit by a single bullet and watched in horror as his classmates died – makes rude gestures in pictures he posted on his Bebo site, and boasts of drunken nights out.”

(To be clear, while the name has since been taken out, Murray left it in.) While such an opinion — that somebody should never go out and drink or do anything fun because something bad once happened to them — is clearly just stupid, that the journalist thought it was okay to use social networking sites in such an invasive way is a bad sign.

Thankfully, the reading public reacted as they should, and complaints lead to the story being pulled. Now, I don’t have a subscription to the Scottish Sunday Express, yet I can still see the insanity that they chose to run — it’s been preserved online in text and photo form.

Because of this, it’s been able to go viral, and is getting bumped around the internet, meaning more people can see what jerks the Express are — and make complaints to the press commission and sign e-petitions.

It’s also hit the blogs — and not just this one. And one blog has done to Paula Murray exactly what she did to the victims of Dunblane — looked her up on Facebook, swiped some photos of her drinking, and found comments she’s made bragging about boozing, saying she’d “fallen off the wagon” and was feeling “legless”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with posting drunken pics — full disclosure here, so you don’t have to hack my various accounts, but I’ve posted boozed-up pics myself. But that she didn’t think it could happen to her after doing it to someone else is rather hilarious.

So what’s the lesson? If you post something online, people might see it. But that’s hardly news, is it? Shame the Express didn’t realise that…

Last night, I had the good fun of watching comedian/journalist/ranter Charlie Brooker trial a new radio format (as an aside, we found out about it over Twitter, and I’m really getting sick of how useful something I can’t be bothered with is turning out to be.)

One of the guests was David Mitchell (not our reviewer, the Peep Show dude). Half-way through the recording, for some reason or another, he referred to Bill Gates, as “y’know, that guy who runs Apple, or whatever his name is.” (Don’t quote me on that, I understandably didn’t have my notebook handy.)

Guess that string of I’m a Mac/I’m a PC commercials laying out the differences between the rivals didn’t sink in to Mitchell’s head, which is rather odd, given he starred in them…

Or maybe it was a joke? Either way, to celebrate him not caring about what was surely a very lucrative campaign for him, click here for a collection of the ads.

Twitter has made me an object of some mocking in the office, mostly because I think it’s incredibly silly, while my coworkers are all twittering away. Sure, thousands of people love the IT PRO twitter feed (and who wouldn’t), Stephen Fry is hilarious and insightful in just 140 characters, and it’s even recently been of help in a rescue attempt.

But for the most part, I just don’t get why anyone needs to put themselves on such display — those three examples aside, as they’re all for various reasons ploys for more publicity. (We and Fry just want readers, while the others were trying to save the life of a friend.)

I’m not convinced, but don’t listen to me. American comedian John Stewart sums it up much better — it might sound adorable, but what’s the point of twittering?

So have we (again) confused “new” with “good”? Or is it the same with any web trend? Your thoughts below, in the old school comments section… or tweet us on twitter.com/itpro.