Hurray, you think, on hearing the news that Rage Against The Machine beat X Factor's Joe McElderry to the British Christmas number one. At last, a shot of anarchy in the smooth, tanned, strangulating arm of the music industry; people power sticks it to The Man. But the more you look at this story, the more wearying it gets – complete with inarticulate fury, pantomime villains, self-proclaimed heroes and a great many people yelling at each other as usual.

The campaign to rage against the Simon Cowell machine was led by part-time DJ Jon Morter, and conducted on Facebook. He intended it as a laugh, a bit of harmless spite against Cowell. Then celebrities weighed in, among them Stephen Fry and Paul McCartney, and last Sunday, after 500,000 downloads, Rage Against the Machine's 'Killing in the Name' was declared the Christmas number one.

On the surface, this looked like a victory for democratic media over bullying corporations. In that respect, it was an appropriate story for the end of this decade, which must go down in history as the decade in which half the developed world fretted about the influence of the internet while the other half gloated about it. It soon became evident that the corporation in the case, Sony, and its accompanying robot, Cowell, lose nothing – apart from a little face. The Rage track is released by Sony, and McElderry's track is released by Cowell's Syco, a Sony subsidiary.

However, that's not the point. The point was to make a point, and however laudable that might have been to begin with, it quickly turned ugly. If you wanted a simple illustration of the way people, especially on the internet, have become idiotically corralled into opposing camps, like football hooligans, this is it. Anyone who's ever read an internet message board will already know that, three paragraphs in, everyone starts fighting among themselves, no matter what the topic. You could post the date and time on an online discussion forum and within a matter of hours someone would brand you a homophobic racist.

So it was with X Factor itself, a series that caused otherwise tolerant, rational people to align themselves on visceral principles of loving and loathing, with nothing in between. ('Hate Simon. Love Cheryl. Hate Jedward. Love Jedward.') So it is, even, with climate change: scientists – people who have spent a lifetime using reason to allay the fear of contradiction – have now abandoned that practice in favour of picking a side and roaring at the opposition. And so it was with this campaign.

On the fan site Joemcelderry.com, his followers were commiserating with each other about the news – but only up to a point, only as long as it didn't contravene the dogma. "I feel gutted to be honest. I'm trying to look at it positively, but the truth is I'm gutted. I know I will get over it, but today I feel absolutely rotten," wrote one fan. The reason this presumably teenage and obviously emotionally delicate girl was desperately trying to "look at it positively" was because she had just been hauled over the virtual coals by an irascible group moderator and threatened with expulsion for being "negative".

Meanwhile, over on Twitter, with 10 minutes to go before the number one was announced, Rage Against the Machine's Tony Morello was exhorting campaigners to download 'Killing in the Name' that moment. "Will the next 10 min determine the fate of a nation's musical soul? WHICH F***ING SIDE ARE YOU ON!! To the barricades!! One last download!" he tweeted, though tweet doesn't seem the right word. You see how it is. Suddenly the guitarist from RATM is stomping around on the cultural high ground, with bells on, for having co-written a song 17 years ago that has four lines of lyrics in it, and variations.

To be fair to the campaigners, their antipathy was not directed at McElderry personally, but at that emetic song that Cowell made him sing. As bland, pre-owned songs go, 'The Climb' is particularly discourteous to the listener, with its lyrics that read like those inspirational posters with kittens on them that stressed-out secretaries like ('Hang in there!!'). However, it isn't at all surprising that Joe McElderry took this personally. We now know that Sony is unassailable, and that Simon Cowell is unassailable, and that there are only two casualties in this battle. One is a wounded-looking 18-year-old boy; the other is the diminishing capacity to be Not That Pushed Either Way.

Drive and text: what you didn't know could kill you, apparently

Fresh evidence of the quality of academic research emerged from the US last week. A new study from the university of Utah reveals that texting while driving makes you six times more likely to crash. Proving this theorem necessitated the participation of two professors, two students, an assistant, 20 pairs of subjects and a "sophisticated driving simulator". The researchers also thought we'd be interested to know that the risk with texting is "significantly higher" than with talking on the phone. However, the conclusions they drew from this had nothing to do with the fact that you can look at the road while talking on the phone. This shows the research is incomplete. We should know by what factor reading War and Peace while driving increases your risk of a crash. What about putting a brick over the accelerator at 120kph and climbing into the back for a nap? More funding is needed urgently.

etynan@tribune.ie

Diarmuid Doyle returns next week