Hostage

The article that was assigned this week, “The Youtube Election,” shined a light on a particular example of how then-US George Allen was defeated for re-election after someone caught him on video calling someone a “macaca.” Well whatever a macaca is, the video went viral on Youtube, and was a great contribution to the Senator’s defeat in the 2006 race. In one moment, the Senator made one misstep, it happened to be caught on tape, and his career was over.

The article also mentioned how Youtube hurt Senator Joe Lieberman in 2006. Lieberman was a Senator who drew a primary challenge because he was deemed “too close” to the Bush administration. His primary opponent kept using a picture of Lieberman will President Bush in TV commercials and internet ads and was trying to insinuate that because the two were photographed together, they must be in cahoots, so Lieberman lost the democratic primary. The “netroots” grabbed on to this images a sledgehammer to hit Lieberman over the head with. Lieberman would win the general election though as an independent.

These two examples, each complimenting the class reading, show a drastic change in the political, and more broadly, the career ramifications of a single moment (which could be easily taken out of context) going virtual online. With Allen some guy showed up at his rally with this camera and was heckling him from the audience. Allen was caught on tape calling the guy holding the camera a macaca. What even does that mean? But because some made it seem like it was a racial statement, he got burned for it and once it got out online he was finished.

With Lieberman, a photo of President Bush was used to show how close the two were. But in actually, probably every US Senator has a picture with every President, regardless of party. But the photo was taken out of context and cost him the race.
What these two examples are creating is mindsets were people are starting to greatly insulate themselves from anything that they deem might come back to hurt them. They are cautious about writing two controversial of papers in college because they fear they can be uncovered. People are of course cautious of Facebook pictures and how those might give off a certain impression. But all this guarding and protection is starting to take it’s toll on liberty.

People are becoming too concerned with an “online imagine” and we are now all held hostage over the fear of online embarrassment costing us something we want. We may be looking for a job, and we see where Allen and Lieberman lost theirs in similar situations. Invisible audiences include people that make powerful decisions about our futures. We should be mindful of them, but sometimes I feel I am their hostage.

Twitter Drama

Every couple of days there is a classic version of Twitter drama. Someone makes a point or a statement and someone replies and everyone following gets to follow the entire dialogue. People jump in with their own two cents and either takes sides, or just throw more flames on the fire. Tweet pics and “tagging” someone in a tweet, using @____, brings tweets to certain people’s attention. My mentioning them in the tweet then makes them see it, and the conversation, even if they previously weren’t following it. These varying tricks allow certain things to become “big twitter news” as people have the ability to monitor picture and tweet views. The more people that look at a picture or see a controversy, makes it a bigger deal. “It was all over Twitter today” comes out of my mouth probably twice a week. Adding in a certain #’s also lets you take a jab at the person, like “hey great job. Not. #fail.”

An example of this exploded yesterday afternoon. The day before yesterday, a friend of mine went to the library to ask a question about where to find a certain book. The librarian she asked gave her an answer, but seemed very annoyed at having to answer what the librarian thought was a very simple question. After some good tweet investigation by a friend of ours, he actually found the librarian’s personal twitter, and found that she mocked (mocked!) my friend for asking such a question.

When my friend found this she immediately contacted the library twitter, via @cualibraries, with the following public tweet:

Hi @CUALibraries, I'm a big fan, but can you ask your employees not to mock a legitimate question I had ab the stacks? http://bit.ly/1cArCd

The link use to take you to the librarians’ tweet, but the librarian has since taken it down. When we all saw this people started to retweet it until the library came up with a response as to why a student can be publicly mocked for asking question on how to find a book. I was so insulted for my friend that I tweeted directly to the librarian herself, but again in the public setting that is twitter.

I said:

Hey @bookbloom, you better watch what you tweet! http://bit.ly/1cArCd Do you have a mocking quota? Gross and unprofessional #cua @cuatower

I mentioned the librarian to single her out, and I mentioned the CUA Tower to bring it some attention. I used the #CUA in order to include it with anything CUA related being discussed on Twitter so people could become made aware of what was occurring.

My friend Alex eventually got this publicly tweeted apology:

@AlexandraCSmith We're sorry! We love our students and are happy you're a fan! We want you to feel comfortable asking Q's - lesson learned 4:12 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck in reply to AlexandraCSmith

Lesson learned for the library, and lesson learned for the tweeters. Be careful what you tweet, anything can be found.

Times Change: Tweet Instead of Blog

Sometimes I hate doing this blog. For some reason I find it so difficult to come up with a “substantial” post that has something to contribute to our discussions on new media. I do the readings, and enjoy the course discussions, but when it just comes to sitting here trying to type something out, I find it very unappealing. I realize that it is because of new media, that I am bored of new media.

Coming up with so much commentary sometimes feels very forced. It feels like I am being made to meet certain requirements only to satisfy a rubric, and not actually explore the genre. For example, I consider myself a fairly active Tweeter. I use twitter all the time, usually having somewhere between five to ten tweets a day. In addition to always using Twitter, I check my Facebook constantly, and use features like messaging to actively communicate with people and make plans. I have an application for both on my Blackberry, which makes using new media a frequent part of my day. But for some reason I can’t sit here and come up with a few paragraphs of commentary. I attribute this to the “micro-blogging” movement started by Twitter.
Blogging is old school. Micro-blogging, largely via twitter, is the newest way to post commentary.

Micro-blogging is even more user friendly then blogging itself. It is shorter, and is much easier to do while on the go. With schedules like most people have, sitting done and writing something (at a laptop, which even laptops are starting to sound old school) doesn’t sound like the most effective way to communicate. Using micro-blogging allows information to be shared faster and smarter.

My Twitter the updates are short and sweet. Here, in 140 characters or less, is what I have to say. Here is a picture I want you to see, here is an article I found, or here is a point I want to make. Trying to sit here and fill a section of my blog is tedious and makes me stretch ideas to try and fill space. Maybe future classes should be required to make a Twitter. X number of updates a week, X number of hash tags, X number of @ replies, X number of tweetpics, ect.