So I was angry. Watching TV news over dinner -- turning my attention from scandals in the UK to those here and frankly welcoming the distraction from the tragedies in Norway -- I listened to the latest from Washington about negotiations over the debt ceiling. It pissed me off. I'd had enough. After dinner, I tweeted: "Hey, Washington assholes, it's our country, our economy, our money. Stop fucking with it." It was the pinot talking (sounding more like a zinfandel).
That's all I was going to say. I had no grand design on a revolution. I just wanted to get that off my chest. That's what Twitter is for: offloading chests. Some people responded and retweeted, which pushed me to keep going, suggesting a chant: "FUCK YOU WASHINGTON." Then the mellifluously monikered tweeter @boogerpussy suggested: ".@jeffjarvis Hashtag it: #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON." Damn, I was ashamed I hadn't done that. So I did.
And then it exploded as I never could have predicted. I egged it on for awhile, suggesting that our goal should be to make #fuckyouwashington a trending topic, though as some tweeters quickly pointed out, Twitter censors moderates topics. Soon enough, though, Trendistic showed us gaining in Twitter share and Trendsmap showed us trending in cities and then in the nation.
Jeff Howe tweeted: "Holy shit, @JeffJarvis has gone all Howard Beale on us. I love it. And I feel it. Give us our future back, fuckers. #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON." He likes crowded things. He's @crowdsourcing. He became my wingman, analyzing the phenom as it grew: "Why this is smart. Web=nuance. Terrible in politics. Twitter=loud and simple. Like a bumper sticker. #FuckYouWashington." He vowed: "If this trends all weekend, you think it won't make news? It will. And a statement. #FuckYouWashington."
And then I got bumped off Twitter for tweeting too much. Who do the think they are, my phone company? Now I could only watch from afar. But that was appropriate, for I no longer owned this trend. As Howe tweeted in the night: "Still gaining velocity. Almost no tweets containing @crowdsourcing or @jeffjarvis anymore. It's past the tipping point. #FuckYouWashington."
Right. Some folks are coming into Twitter today trying to tell me how to manage this, how I should change the hashtag so there's no cussin' or to target their favorite bad man, or how I should organize marches instead. Whatever. #fuckyouwashington not mine anymore. That is the magic moment for a platform, when its users take it over and make it theirs, doing with it what the creator never imagined.
Now as I read the tweets -- numbering in the tens of thousands by the next morning -- I am astonished how people are using this Bealesque moment to open their windows and tell the world their reason for shouting #fuckyouwashington. It's amazing reading. As @ericverlo declared, "The #fuckyouwashington party platform is literally writing itself." True, they didn't all agree with each other, but in their shouts, behind their anger, they betrayed their hopes and wishes for America.
@partygnome said: "#fuckyouwashington for valuing corporations more than people."
@spenski, on a major role, cried: "#fuckyouwashington for never challenging us to become more noble, but prodding us to become selfish and hateful.... #fuckyouwashington for not allowing me to marry the one I love.... #fuckyouwashington for driving me to tweet blue."
@jellencollins: "#fuckyouwashington for making 'debt' a four letter word and 'fuck' an appropriate response."
@tamadou: "#fuckyouwashington for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they're selfish."
@psychnurseinwi: "#fuckyouwashington for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old."
I was amazed and inspired. I was also trepidatious. I didn't know what I'd started and didn't want it to turn ugly. After all, we had just witnessed the ungodly horror of anger -- and psychosis -- unleashed in Norway. I've come to believe that our enemy today isn't terrorism but fascism of any flavor, hiding behind anger as supposed cause.
But at moments such as this, I always need to remind myself of my essential faith in my fellow man -- that is why I believe in democracy, free markets, education, journalism. It's the extremists who fuck up the world and it is our mistake to manage our society and our lives to their worst, to the extreme. That, tragically, is how our political system and government are being managed today: to please the extremes. Or rather, that is why they are not managed today. And that is why I'm shouting, to remind Washington that its *job* is to *manage* the *business* of government.
The tweets that keep streaming in -- hundreds an hour still -- restore my faith not in government but in society, in us. Oh, yes, there are idiots, extremists, and angry conspiracy theorists and just plain jerks among them. But here, that noise was being drowned out by the voices of disappointed Americans -- disappointed because they do indeed give a shit.
Their messages, their reasons for shouting #fuckyouwashington and holding our alleged leaders to higher expectations, sparks a glimmer of hope that perhaps we can recapture our public sphere. No, no, Twitter won't do that here any more than it did it in Egypt and Libya. Shouting #fuckyouwashington is hardly a revolution. Believe me, I'm not overblowing the significance of this weekend's entertainment. All I'm saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people -- not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll -- I see cause for hope.
I didn't intend this to be anything more than spouting off in 140 profane characters. It turns out that the people of Twitter taught me a lesson that I thought I was teaching myself in Public Parts, about the potential of a public armed with a Gutenberg press in every pocket, with its tools of publicness.
For an excellent summary of the saga as it unfolded on Twitter, see Maryann Batlle's excellent compilation in Storify, as well as Gavin Sheridan's Storyful. CBS News Online's What's Trending was the first in media to listen to what was happening here. David Weigel used this as a jumping off point for his own critique of Washington and the debt "crisis" at Slate. Says Michael Duff on his blog:
Everybody knows you guys are running the clock out, waiting for the next election. But you can't have it both ways. You can't go on TV to scare the shit out of us every day and then expect us to wait patiently for 2012.You can't use words like "urgent" and "crisis" and then waste our time with Kabuki theater.
Either the situation is urgent and needs to be solved now, or it's all just an act that can wait for 2012. This isn't 1954, gentlemen. The voters are on to you now. We know you're playing a game and we know you're using us as chess pieces.
That's why #fuckyouwashington is trending on Twitter. We're tired of being pawns.
Every politician in Washington needs to pay attention to this outrage, and remember who they're working for.
And then there's this reaction from no less than Anonymous: "@jeffJarvis you've started a shit storm. Nice going."
Follow Jeff Jarvis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffjarvis
WE are pissed out here!
WE want our elected officials to do their jobs of governing, not wasting time trying to screw "the other side", which is anyone with a different letter after the name.
WE elected people to be OUR voices, to actually represent the people back home, to be our proxies.
If anyone had been paying attention, none of this would be a surprise.
Also, 90+ percent of the House, with the eager cooperation of state legislatures, have seen to it that they are gerrymandered into jobs they can't possibly lose unless they Weiner themselves - and even then it's just one party hack replacing another.
He's a dude who started blogging a decade ago and thought he had thus divined the meaning of the universe. Witnessing him go increasingly gaga about each of his tech-related "epiphanies" was like seeing a cyber version of the Dunning–Kruger Effect in action, in real time.
Over time he began to fancy himself as some sort of online guru. Meanwhile all the truly smart tech gurus sat around snickering at him behind his back (and grimacing as he actually began convincing people to buy his snake oil). He's like the Mitch Albom of technology writing.
OK, so a lot of people used a hashtag. Uh... congrats? Yeah, okey dokey, so I'm sure it tells us all sorts of Important And Incisive Stuff About The Revolutionary Digital Era In Which We Live. What a goofball.
Charlie
We are on the brink of a catastrophe -- self-inflicting a major wound on an already ill economy.
Get clear what will happen if the right prevails:
1. We will lose millions of jobs
2. People will become homeless
3. There will be violence as people get desperate
4. Interest rates will rise
5. Credit will get even scarcer
6. The vision that America and the dollar have been the basis of world economic stability will be shattered.
This is serious.
Get clear what is happening here. An extreme right faction has taken over the GOP and is trying to pull another power play to screw Obama. Perhaps Obama is not blameless. Perhaps the Democrats in congress are not perfect. But they are trying to prevent default and the other side is playing chicken.But guess what -- they may just push us off this cliff this time.
Wake up and make your voices heard.
Charlie
How about we just demand that the right wingers don't drive the economy over a cliff?
How about we demand responsibility in government?
And perhaps demand that people compromise because their view is not the only one?
Just my $.02.
Charlie