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The power of 'Net rumors
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August 12, 1997: 2:14 p.m. ET
Columnist can't explain how her words got linked to Kurt Vonnegut
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Graduates, wear sunscreen.
Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich penned that advice -- and then it wound up in a massive e-mail chain letter attributed to author Kurt Vonnegut in a commencement speech.
And Schmich has spent the last week under the media spotlight trying to explain how it all happened.
"That's the central mystery of this whole situation," Schmich said on CNNfn's "Digital Jam."
Two months ago, she wrote a column to graduating college seniors, a "speech that I would give to graduates if anybody bothered to invite me to address a graduating class."
The column read in part:
"Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.
I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen."
She didn't give the piece much thought until about a week ago, when a reader e-mailed her that her column was being circulated on the 'Net as a Vonnegut speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Over the course of that morning, I started hearing from a lot of Tribune readers, both on the phone and via e-mail, telling me that they were getting this commencement speech in their e-mail but they remembered reading it in my column," Schmich recalled.
Hundreds of thousands of people got the e-mail, including virtually everyone Schmich knows.
"Somebody had to strip my name off it … and then decided to put Kurt Vonnegut's name on it, and then had to invent whatever college it was," she said.
Schmich spoke with Vonnegut about the situation, and he was equally mystified, she said. He never spoke at MIT. She laughed, thinking it almost sounded like something from one of his novels.
Vonnegut is author of "Slaughterhouse Five," "Breakfast of Champions," and "Hocus Pocus," among many other books. He has a loyal following and there are many unofficial Web pages in his honor.
"All this situation does is remind people of the incredible power and potency of the Internet," Schmich said.
At the same time, the story shows how a small piece of information can ricochet around the globe in a matter of hours, she said.
"I think people just don't understand that there are no gates or few gates on the Internet -- that basically anybody can put anything under any name on the Internet," she said.
Schmich wrote a follow-up column that started simply, trying to make some sense out of the mystery:
"Whither cyberspace?
I wish I knew." 
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