Strange comparison, I know, but the two have converged via Twitter since the announcement of Michael Jackson’s death.
For the last two weeks the two top trending topics on the site has been Iran and #iranelection, given that Twitter has been the primary source of information coming out of the country due to government censorship. As anyone who has been following my posts over the last week knows, I have been avidly following these updates and sharing them with the Scoop44 community.
So I was still observing the incoming posts on my Tweetdeck when it was announced that Michael Jackson had been taken into the hospital after suffering from cardiac arrest. Slowly related topics began to creep up the the trending topics ladder, and literally within 20 minutes all topics related to Iran had disappeared on the board. At the moment, that is 4:28 PST, all but one of the ten trends is related to the well known “King of Pop.”
Now I do not mean to downplay the sadness of this day or of his death, I am a fan and his contributions to the development of music, as well as the music world, is comparable to John Lennon. But people are suffering and dying in Iran, and the turmoil over there is unprecedented over the last 30 years. Don’t you think that it deserves at least a little bit of coverage on CNN, instead of the nonstop coverage it has done of MJ’s death since it was first reported?
Its another sign of how viewer ratings have enslaved the news networks inside of the U.S.
Popularity: 1% [?]
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I choose to mourn the loss of the one who DIDN'T molest little children… RIP Farrah Fawcett, you were brilliant and inspiring then and now.
And now the television media go to work showing images of Mr. Jackson surrounded by lots of happy kids, trying to improve his image post-mortem. It's too late. Good music, but I do not like the person.
June 25, 2009 at 5:47 pmI don't know, this strikes me as much ado about nothing. Who decided Twitter, of all things, was a force for democracy instead of an insipid social networking tool that, by encouraging brevity, breeds flightiness and a lack of real depth and insight? Why do people think that “trending topics” indicate the importance of anything, in particular because many of them are actually indicative of the more shameful parts of our culture (see: misogyny via #uraho, #liesgirlstell, etc). I remember when #rejectprop8 was a trending topic (as though the judges would be looking at Twitter for help interpreting the law), and seeing hundreds of tweets every minute, decrying the fact that it was not the number one trending topic (it was the second), and how that demonstrated what was wrong with America, and the very attitude that caused Proposition 8 to be passed in the first place. Really?
Twitter is a social networking site that encourages people to share the thoughts, however inane, that they are having at that moment. Must Iran be at the forefront of our minds at all times, at the exclusion of all else? Why shouldn't the number one trending topic on Twitter be Darfur? Why not the detention of journalists in North Korea? Why not the fact that 25% of men in South Africa have admitted to committing rape? Why aren't we STILL talking about Prop 8? The view espoused here seems to imply that there must necessarily be a hierarchy of empathy and compassion, and that the order that we consider them is morally unambiguous. It further implies that the impact an artist has on millions of people does not deserve priority, not even for an hour. All grief is valid. It is a strange thing to be complaining about human attention spans while lauding Twitter as a tool for social change, while being unwilling to explore your subject for longer than three paragraphs.
I am not of the opinion that Twitter is totally useless. But it is what it is. It can be a useful tool, but only for organizational purposes. What actually changes the world is not a big cyber love-in or the impotent outrage of rich white kids in America who sit on their Macbooks and wring their hands over the unjust state of the world. It's the people who are fighting and dying in the streets right now, not just in Iran but the world over. Twitter is just background noise.
June 25, 2009 at 10:26 pmOnly comparable to John Lennon? Are you f-ing shitting me?! I have two more words for you: James Brown.
June 26, 2009 at 1:12 amI admit he had his impact on the pop world, but seriously MJ has nothing doesn't come close to those two and a few others. And yes it's pretty damn sad that the freak is apparently more important than what's going on in Iran, lets just hopr that will soon pass, like in the next few hrs.
You are right, I did not mean to have the word “only” in there, that was an editing mistake on my part. I changed it after reading your comment.
June 26, 2009 at 1:28 amHave something to add?