technoculture314-09

Had a look down and Sam C has already blogged about something similar, but I'm going to go ahead anyway because our actual content/opinions seem different...

I'd like to direct you to this link first: Twitter drama after Obama calls Kanye a 'jackass'

The actual event in topic may have gone unnoticed by some, since maybe Taylor Swift is a ‘Taylor who?' to you, and Kanye West is, no sorry, always was a bit of a jackass. But that's purely opinion, not fact. It's also Obama's opinion too though, so The President of the USA has my back; and thanks to a couple of Twitter feeds, he and I are like this (this being the proverbial crossed fingers, you just can't see me doing it because I'm blogging it) now in our shared opinion of West. But I digress.

What was your response to this? There's:
a. The President. Used. The J-bomb. The President. He's not supposed to even know that word in public; he could tell Michelle after they switch off the lights that 'man, that Sarkozy’s a real jackass’ but just not within public hearing.
b. Obama says Kanye’s a jackass. Dude, that’s cool.
c. What is the world coming to when The President uses such foul language? Well I never. If Bush was still in power…

But I’m not:
a. My thirty-something-father-of-two-toddlers neighbor (not his exact words, per se.)
b. A high school kid.
c. Everyone’s grandmother… or Republican.

Admittedly when I first heard the news, it was just funny. It was the perfect word. But then I came across the article in the link above, and my opinion changed to ‘this first broke out on Twitter?!’ I mean... Twitter? The same place where Paris Hilton tweets “I love staying in and watching movies so much more then going out. So releaxing and fun!” (And yes, Microsoft Word informed me of the mistakes after I hit ctrl+v for that tweet. And I did not change them.)

Am I overreacting? Probably, to some, but I’d like to think I’m pretty technology savvy, and that I’m generally accepting of all the new and exciting things happening on the web. But I find it hard to mask my disdain at something like this. Call me old fashioned, tell me to chill out, but for the news reporters around the world to be making a buck on reporting something from a 140-word blog, then accept that as the place where the news first officially broke out… I may not be wrong in thinking that the core of journalism is losing its merits thanks to the internet age.

I guess my concern is mainly for the younger generation though. Sure I’m young, too, but back when I was fifteen, journalism was for serious people, for grown-ups who reported news, the serious and the not-so alike, by doing some actual work. Receiving someone’s Twitter entry on your Blackberry would never have been considered a reliable source less than a decade ago. Yes, the people who put this on Twitter heard through the live feed from Obama’s own mouth, but the rest of the world found out because they tweeted about it. This is how our teens receive world news now. Is this not unsettling to you?

Sure, I could chill out, but it’s pretty hard when I’m not earning the bigger bucks on a journalistic piece I wrote based on a 140 word Twitter feed.