Internet hijinx move at the speed of high school gossip

I often wonder how internet phenoms begin, and how things travel around the internet so quickly. As an interactive researcher, I spend most of my day on the web, and I come across so much of the craziness that makes web 2.0 go 'round. Today's gem... well, like most day's gems, I'm not sure exactly where it came from. But it's causing quite an uproar.


This photo montage of President Obama throwing a snowball (presumably) at a cat has caused furious cries, from cat lovers who believe it's real, and demands that PETA be called immediately. It has also caused a stir among Obama adversaries who feel it adds justification to their cause.

Of course there is a large camp out there (myself included) who believe that this whipped together to cause precisely the stir it is causing now. Let's go to the numbers: Reddit is showing nearly 400 responses to this photo, BuzzFeed is showing over 6,000 views and it has been "Dugg" over 8,000 times on Digg. Do you think we'll get an official presidential statement?

UPDATE: The snowball photos seem to be from December sometime. The cat addition is fairly recent.