In the world of social media, sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs and instant image sharing it is surprisingly easy for everyday people to become famous in only a couple of hours. People can share and upload photographs or stories in just a few minutes, which can then be shared around the world to millions of others.
This phenomenon is not just limited to people either, as demonstrated by the sudden celebrity status this week of two post boxes. The two structures have become popular attractions over the past few days thanks to the fact that they were damaged during a recent storm, Typhoon Soudelor, that bent the metal so that the boxes appear to be falling over.
Facebook pages have already been set up for people to share their photographs of the boxes and postal workers have been deployed to help make sure tourists don’t get too out of hand while posing, although some of the workers are willing to take part in the fun and jump in the photographs themselves. The post office has confirmed that the post boxes will be reinforced so that they can remain in service but will not be fully repaired so that they can be kept in their current state and commemorate the storm.