| "The power of social media is clearly demonstrated in the reception for a film about an African war criminal named Joseph Crony." ~ Geraldo Rivera (Did he misspeak or was that a Freudian slip?) |
Clif High thinks the Kony 2012 video fulfills for the release language prediction for March onward.
Now, in the background, slowly, with only self sustaining word of mouth, on a human2human level, the KONY 2012 movie and campaign is moving so far past viral as to constitute a new definition of this as a planetary experience.. . .It is my thinking now, that sometime late this afternoon pacific coast north america time zone, the KONY 2012 movie will have been watched by that final human that will be required and the whole context of the planet will begin changing as the shift into release language dominates from this point forward. It will happen before your eyes, and though many will be too blind to see it for months, it will already be engaging some of us by this evening.This combinoric effect is what occurs when enough humans put enough intent into the same context...it changes that context. In this case, the context is the common consensus reality in which the entrenched elite rule with their psycopathic minions.
On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart showed why High may be right. There is nothing funny about the Kony video or the LRA... except watching the mainstream media running to keep up with a massive trend that has completely blindsided them.
The difference between trends and fads is that trends are ground up and fads are top down. Kony 2012 is a trend. And I don't think I've ever seen the talking heads trailing a trend so badly or looking so gobsmacked. They sound even sillier than usual when they try to ape the lingo of the youngsters. They appear to be mystified. Or, as Jon Stewart put it, "Mainly the media just seems annoyed."
This is not about the validity of the video itself and there is much to debate about the content. I'm not going to get into that. Use the google if you want. To borrow the pertinent phrase from the late, great Marshall MacLuhan, "The medium is the message." This is the most powerful demonstration yet of the power of social media. This time it is wrapping an idea around the globe without any help from political machines or chattering pundits.
Remember that social media also had a key role in the Arab Spring. And that could point to another possibility regarding the data gap. What did they do in Egypt when they saw how the internet enabled the protests? They shut it down. I don't like to think that the loss of internet is how the data gap plays out but it bears mentioning that one of the many things demonstrated by the Kony 2012 phenomenon is a threat to the top down social order. The top never cares for that.
Aside from the Kony thing, there has been a lot of release language and drama this month and I think we can all sort of pick our favorites. One that is sure to continue to be ignored by the Time Monks is the eruption over birth control. It's easy to dismiss something that looks from some perspectives like a typical, politically driven, tempest in a teapot. I'm not dismissing it for a very simple reason. It's threatening to upend the prevailing power dynamics. It's turning many conservative women against their own party. Rush Limbaugh, who with his ditto-heads spearheaded the modern conservative movement, lost all his advertisers and finally really jumped the shark. And the Catholic Church has hastened its death. This was another massive, self-inflicted wound for a very tone-deaf Church. But the ripple effects of this won't be recognized right away either because women's voices are routinely ignored until they can't be anymore. But make no mistake. They've awakened a sleeping giant and she's really mad.
| "I don't find a problem with this. I think it's a positive thing. And I think we might look back on this week as the week when everything changed for bad guys around the world who could no longer hide." ~ Bill Maher |
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