Iran vs Michael Jackson
I think its pretty safe to say that it is easy for the masses to talk themselves into distraction, and it became evident with the passing of michael jackson. While i’m not too active on twitter, i did notice that the activity around the iran protests were in full force for days on end until the untimely death of m.j. The top trends were #iran or #iranelection, and all of a sudden every single trend was related to king of pop, m.j, or jackson.
Now the dust has settled, and everything on twitter has pretty much leveled out (both remain on the trends). m.j. was an icon, but there are people continuing to lose their lives in iran. Sucks the china Tu Yuangao incident didn’t get any coverage, in which 40,000 to 70,000 people clashed with 30,000 troops. Something like 200 people injured (aside from the death that sparked it all). I remember seeing a video pop up on youtube the day of, that had about 400 views before it was taken down and the entire internet was shut down until things calmed down.
Incredible to see new tools dealing with communication show just how quickly we can be distracted en mass, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. I suppose that is what made the tv networks so powerful over time. They understand the value of ratings.
