Comments on: Obamma and the Wild Web

By: Richard’s Blog » Blog Archive » Micro Celebrity and Internet Pioneers

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:06:55 +0000

[...] relates very much to a comment one of my student’s made on another post. The interesting thing here is that we forget, or, at least I forget, that to be [...]

By: Christian

Christian — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:27:50 +0000

I’ve been rethinking my position a little – I think I may be arguing % of immersion. I’m swimming waaaay deep in the Internets while most people are mostly floating on the surface. So they may not see the whole picture, but just being connected by the water they’re being carried along by the tide. I’ve definitely gotten some cool links emailed to me by people that I was shocked had gotten them – people I only usually get chain letters from.

So I may have overstated my case earlier just a bit. But I have a penchant for exaggerration so you’ll have to excuse me.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:15:46 +0000

Well the Obama Girl video was entertaining. I couldn’t tell if she really was promoting him, just making fun of him, or if she really wanted to pole dance for him.

I definitly agree with Christain I am not sure that mainstream people would get the language of the net. If I didn’t have so many kids with facebooks that I keep track of I’m not sure I’d get it. I remember in high school their was classes for shorthand; it was very difficult to learn, a new language so to speak. Perhaps we’ll have to start having ‘internet speak’ classes.

By: Christian

Christian — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:00:29 +0000

I’ll throw this out there again – as an Internet dweller and general geek I tend to think of what goes on online as the world I live in, but I still don’t think enough of the mainstream exists there sufficiently for what happens to be all that relevant. I don’t think it translates to reality most of the time.

If I walk up to 100 people in the street and tell them that “the cake is a lie” or start throwing lolcat-language at them, I’ll be surprised if 2 of them know what the heck I’m talking about. The other 98 are definitely calling the police. In general, I think the people who are existing in the space are sarcastic by nature – I know I am – but I don’t think the Internet backlash translates to reality unless the MSM starts talking about it and drags it out of the web and into the ‘normal’ peoples’ living rooms.

I think that the people living in the ‘real world’ are still riding the crest of Obamamania and won’t get to backlash for a while now. I mean, just last week I heard Chris Matthews (Hardball, MSNBC) talking about getting a ‘thrill up his leg’ when he heard Obama talk. So, us cool kids are on to the next cool thing – but by the time everyone else catches up the only political choice will be Obama and McCain and there’s really nothing cool about McCain, right..? Not that he can’t win but he can’t be that ‘next cool thing’ that people latch onto, imho.