A year ago I wrote about how Twitter gives us the potential to rally, recruit and lobby en masse. Within that year, we did it, powerfully, for everything from elections to catastrophe relief. Interesting to look back and see how we really took this social influence to the next level.
—— [originally posted Spring 2009] —–
The earliest forms of self-expression on the Internet were pretty basic – leave an opinion, offer a smile, pass on an email. But now that I think about it, TV and radio never evolved even that far. Watch a show or boycott it. Listen passively to the radio or perhaps call in (Hey, I finally got through!!) with an opinion.
Most of us were trained to be passive media absorbers – passive-aggressive at most.
Digital media didn’t have to change that, but it has. And we have all been instrumental navigators on this mission, directing and determining the direction of this r/evolution. We have proven again and again that we want to participate. Give us a voice, and we will use it — we’ll enter the contest, express our opinion, rave, ruin, tell ten people, and vote our little hearts out.
We now have a medium for being vocal without much constraint or risk. And we like it.
But I have this hunch that we are like an animal that gets chained when he’s young and learns that he can’t go beyond a certain distance. Then when he gets old, he still thinks that he lacks the power to move, even though the chain is long, long gone. (I hate this story. I’ll get to the point.) He can do whatever he wants, but doesn’t.
Sooner or later we’re going to see that the ability to ‘thumbs up’ a book or have a public opinion on a movie is only a small fraction of our ‘social media’ power. It’s just us playing safely in the yard, not even pulling on that chain - being fairly passive, obedient, timid, non-confrontational.
I don’t think we’ve fully grasped it. I certainly haven’t.
Add up all of us voters/tweeters/reviewers/humans-on-the-internet and we are a massive amount of people. Massive.
Right now, I could be helping to free someone, solve something, create something miraculous. Whatever you’re passionate about – you could be making it bigger, making it happen. I want to commit now to using this power and pushing it to its limits.
We are tidal. We are TIDAL! I’m curious to see what happens when we all wake up and realize it.
