Within the last few weeks, bloggers, twitterers and social network users have defeated SOPA / PIPA and brought down the Komen people. Do you now realize what a huge force we have become and why all traditional media journalists hate us so much?
The future of political activism is online, people. Those who can get the greatest number of people to reblog, retweet, repost and facebook will end up defeating those who can invest the greatest amount of money and bring the greatest number of people to a protest.
Two days ago, a scandal broke in Russia where hackers accessed information proving that some of the most popular bloggers and Twitterers in the country had been receiving money from the government to mention Putin in a positive context or include heart-warming pictures of him (holding babies and practicing martial arts, the usual stuff) in their posts. Truly huge amounts of money have been paid out to counterbalance the negative publicity that honest bloggers have been creating for Putin.
The Russians are, as usual, ahead of everybody. Those in power in that country have realized that you now need to have the blogosphere on your side if you want to achieve anything. I predict that this trend will grow in the future and the blogs, the tweets and the social media will play a hugely important role in politics and activism in the near future.
So … does this mean I can continue being a neurotic unsocial shut-in with a computer and still feel like I’m contributing to society somehow?
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Absolutely!! This is one point that I agree with Clarissa on – the power of the on-line community to bring out the silent majority, to shack off the shackles of partisan rhetoric, and attack the issue has been multiplied exponentially on the web.
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“bring out the silent majority”
You mean furries and bronies and ’60s Spider-Man Meme.
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Absolutely. 🙂 The era when the unsociable will have a head-start has started. I think this is good news. For people like us.
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I remember someone referring to it as the “internet iceberg”, which is to say, a real life (or meatspace if you prefer) protest may be the most visible part to the mainstream media, but there’s a great power on the internet driving the protests which is not visible unless you’re looking, and it is a force to be reckoned with.
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