YouTube brawlers get more than 15 minutes

Smile, you're on YouTube - whether you want to be or not.

Just ask those two kids who got into a fight Monday afternoon outside Half Hollow Hills High School East.

Ask the student who recorded the brawl with a cell-phone camera and the one who posted the action on YouTube.

Ask the five who either stood nearby or egged the fighters on, offering helpful suggestions like: "Hit him in the face."

Most of them sure didn't ask to be a worldwide digital-video attraction. Yet here each of them was, with hundreds of thousands of digital page views and real-life suspensions closer to home.

Are school-yard fistfights all that unusual? No.

Was this one especially brutal or cruel? No again.

Half Hollow Hills spokeswoman Chris Geed had a point when she said: "I don't want to say this happens every day at every school in America. But it happens frequently."

So why all the uproar? One reason alone.

This school-yard fight was captured on video and made instantly available around the world. Thousands watched, and that changed everything. No one could ignore the little fight now.

The media were asking questions. School officials were called to task. The machinery of high-school discipline rumbled into overdrive.

And the kids on the scene were the ones who paid the price.

This is no isolated development. This won't be the last famous school-yard fight.

Almost everyone carries a cell phone now. Security cameras are everywhere.

Some seemingly minor incident can go viral in a matter of minutes, turning anonymous people into snap-of-the-finger Internet stars.

We're the accidental stars of tomorrow.

Even if we want to hide, fame will find us eventually.

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