Wednesday night I found myself glued to tweety. No wait, that's a cartoon bird. People who are twits. No...that's not it either....
Oh you know what I mean.
Anyway, there was a lot happening.
For one thing ... the Ontario Ombudsman, who uses social media very effectively (whether you like him or not), found himself nearing the end of a term without word of a promised extension. He put this out on tweeter, with the encouragement to "make some noise, please"!
Well my friends, there's nothing that twitting people enjoy more than making some noise, all together, all at once. The twooters exploded. Within two hours, the mainstream media was reporting it. By the next day, it was announced that Mr. Marin's position had certainly been extended as promised, with the commentary that it would have happened anyway, and his social media "meltdown" was entirely unnecessary.
Maybe that's true, maybe it's not.
I'm just saying ... dude understands social media.
And props to him for that.
And then for another thing ... our fair city was informed on Tuesday that we are getting a whopping 1 Billion Dollars for Light Rail Transit. Since a lot of local people in favour of this are also twittinators, there was a great deal of virtual rejoicing at this. To follow-up, our City Council had their regular meeting Wednesday evening, which, judging by various online sources, was just one long exercise in happiness and unity and general agreeableness.
Um, to give perspective ... I've lived in this city for 15+ years, and I've never personally seen everyone so happy and agreeable all at the same time. It was a billion-dollar miracle, a beautiful little moment.
Emphasis on "little".
Because finally ... um ... how do I say this delicately ... you know how outrage and offence become magnified exponentially at lightning speed on the interwebs, and there is no stopping it once the mob mentality takes over?
Yeah, that happened. To some local people, whom I don't personally know, but who seem to me to be decent people, who advocate for and add to our city. So the drama of that exchange was right up there with reality TV. ... Except it was real.
Sigh.
I really hate that.
I really hate that.
Someone suggested that Outrage-Free Friday
could maybe be moved up a day,
I presume in relation to that whole thing.
So that was encouraging.
You know - that anyone had heard of my
Outrage-Free Friday project.
Oh, that twitter.
Oh hey! It's Outrage-Free Friday!
Well... it's the last Friday of the month, so technically - it's a freebie - you're free to be outraged. But in honour of yesterday's outrage, I'm going outrage-free anyway.
I'm all wild like that.
