Social Media Optimization

By this point and time it’s old news. As it’s the end of week one at SMOmashup I couldn’t help pass up what has become perhaps the largest news story in the past month. Definately the largest in regards to Social Media.

Think for a moment. Think back to the middle of December. You’re visiting your parents house wondering what on earth you’d get these strangers for Christmas when - wait - what’s that you see? Yes. There across the living room, under the library edition of the latest Dean Koontz novel.. Is that a monitor you see? Is that “You” written in Arial 2.0 on the monitor? Is that a chubby in your pants?

Well if you got a semi in front of your aging rents over the honor, imagine how surprised I was when I found out I’d been named Time’s Person of the Year. Hold up, you don’t have to imagine it, ’cause you were too, remember? You’re riding the Internets. You blog. You MySpace. You… Tube. And as a result, the fine people of Time Magazine, who weren’t fucking slacking off or trying to reach any sort of deadline in the least, have decided that each and every one of us is equivalent to Stalin, Newt Gingrich, or 50% of George W. Bush.

Any which way you slice that turns out as pretty fucking insulting to everyone involved.Well, for this year, the collective pronoun for the second person gets the randomly odd nod for embracing the true nature of the Internet: filming yourself getting hit in the nuts and then employing a subsidiary of Google to let your bestest friends see it 24/7. I don’t know about you but I’ll proudly display my certificate on my wall. We’re all getting certificates, right? I realize it’s January but I figured the holidays had slowed the Postal Service down a bunch. If that doesn’t pan out I’m sure Time will at least give us a link to a PDF we can print out? Right?

Stop the press! It doesn’t matter. Because I regret to inform Time Magazine that I must decline their honor. I know. I know. The accolades. The media fanfare. But I digress, as it just wouldn’t be right accepting an award based entirely around a concept that I find morally abhorrent. Now I know how Yasser Arafat must have felt when he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, he kept the money, the selfish bastard.

But I’m afraid that I can’t accept any award given out for… well… here… let Time stand at the podium:

“It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

Oh, fuck the fuck off. This same shit has been here for years. Before Wikipedia, if you wanted to know the names of all of the games in the Ultima series, all you had to do was search Altavista, find the Ultima WebRing, and click through them until you found some nerd that had listed them all off, from “The First Age of Darkness” to “The Silver Seed, pt 2″. But you know what? Someone always had. All Wikipedia does is keep the these bringers of dorkiness from having to find a host or possess some rudimentary knowledge of HTML.*

And what about “the many wresting power from the few?” Is that really what’s happening? Is that really the catchphrase you want attached to America circa 2006? At a time when all the money is moving from the hands of the many to the greedy paws of the few. When the executive branch of our elected government is consolidating power from the many to the one. However, thanks to the great leveller, MySpace, the poetry of 14 year-old girls is being set to music and distributed on a global scale instead of staying in glittery pink notebooks in bedroom drawers. I’m so glad Time recognizes this for the monumental achievement for mankind that it is.

Perhaps, Rubel would like to explain how we’re all best buds now. But in truth, the worst part of all this is that they know the “many” are a bunch of fucking morons, and they just don’t care.

“Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred. But that’s what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail.”

I love the fact that they admit they’re romanticizing this, but only as much as is strictly necessary. Ri-i-i-ght. Strictly necessary to make a deadline and not piss off your average reader with a politically divisive choice. The greatest thing about this year’s pick is it will piss everyone off in a nice, friendly, generic way. Except me, of course, who’s been a firm believer since before day 1 of Web2.0, that just because you have a camera or 200 ‘friends’ doesn’t mean your voice is worth listening to. Time magazine, however, wants to tell me that not only am I part of this problem, but that I should be happy about it. Oh joy of all joys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*RIP Geoshitties.

posted by greg :: Jan.05.2007 :: Social Media Optimization News  
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