Stoking the Fires of Popu-lustfulness (Or How Facebook Killed Politics)
Get your day-glo vests and buckshot ready, it’s Fat Cat Season.
Average Americans, armed with incendiary e-mails and blog commentaries are actually beginning to affect Business As Usual. An op-ed from yesterday’s NYT documents the new populist fervor.
Unfortunately, we aren’t yet seeing any pitchfork carriers in the streets. And, in all likelihood, we never will. Pitchforks aren’t as popular a household item as they used to be. But the real impediment to the rampaging waves of populist protesters isn’t a lack of pointy sticks. It’s Facebook.
No, I’m not kidding. This ability of the information generation to distract itself is nearly infinite. Our digital toys are cheap and far too well designed. How can we get a really fiery rage going if we are siphoning our emotions into our Facebook update client? Reporting on your emotional state every 15 minutes is a great way to never actually achieve a productive rage. These tools of the self-actualization movement couldn’t be more counter-productive right now.
We need to stifle. We need to seethe. We need to stop futzing around with the goddamn FIFAs, Solitaire’s, Minesweepers, AOLIMs, Snoods, and Half Lifes. We need to stop texting, and start writing. Nobody will ever fear a political backlash coming from a throng of distracted, impotent digital addicts.
Our country could move forward 20 years in a single bound if only someone would turn the power grid off for a week. Let’s get the environmentalist radicals on that one. Then maybe we can really put the Fear into the Fat Cats. A screaming, writhing mob is just a bit more likely to induce change than a whiny youtube monologue.
Though I assume you would ask people to save some laptop battery so they could come to The Mep Report.
Right?
🙂
In my utopian electrical apocalypse, I guess we’d have to Mep on the front lines, instead of from behind a keyboard.