(CNN) -- You probably heard the story. It is, after all, so last week. A wealthy banker goes out to lunch with a colleague. The banker disdainfully leaves a 1% tip on a $133 bill with the message, "Get a real job." The colleague, who runs a blog called "Future Ex-Banker," takes a picture of the receipt, which then goes viral -- first on Eater.com, then on Twitter and Facebook, soon everywhere (including CNN). It was a hoax, however, though it took a few days before the restaurant found proof the original receipt had been Photoshopped. By that time, despite some disclaimers along the way, the bill had become water-cooler gospel and left outrage in its wake.
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Thanks to social media, missteps and misinformation get repeated more quickly than ever
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Singer Chris Brown posted profane tweets after the Grammys, then deleted them
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A story about a banker leaving a 1% restaurant tip went viral before it was revealed a hoax
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Mistakes online can be fixed quickly, but not before damage is done
But social networks and real-time Internet portability have combined to spawn errors and reactions at an increasingly breakneck pace, particularly on @placeholder, which -- with its brevity and scope -- makes it easy to disseminate clickbacks and comebacks in 140 characters or fewer.