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Blurring the line between fiction and reality
By Michael Counter
Correspondent
Published November 20, 2009
Editor’s note — Michael Counter is an intern at Dallas South News, an on-line publication by Shawn Williams, a Paris native. Shawn asked the senior English major at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls to reflect on how his generation interacts with social media, and in turn shared this column with The Paris News. The result is somewhat enlightening.
Kanye West is dead. That’s what @dopegirlfresh said, then @sugarbear said it. @loren752 was upset about it while @kokovida applauded it. After it was retweeted by @freddysoso, @envyoftheworld’s (that’s me) curiosity was peaked. So I checked out what @thedarealamberrose (Kanye’s girlfriend) had to say:
“This ‘RIPKanyeWest’ topic is not funny and its NOT TRUE! He has people like myself and his family that love him very much,” Amber tweeted. “It’s in extreme poor taste to have that as a trendy topic. It’s totally disrespectful to make up a story like this where all human and we all make mistakes and to say someone died cuz of a mistake is ridiculous. U wouldn’t want someone to say that about u.”
Kanye West is obviously not dead, but last month the power of social media outlets like Twitter made fiction seem like reality with each mouse click and text message. Major outlets like Fox News even joined in the speculation. At the very least the flames of the tabloid rumor mill were stoked.
Social media is the millennial generation’s gateway to news and entertainment, oftentimes blurring the lines between the two. West’s supposed death came just weeks after his infamous MTV Music Awards rant during country music starlet Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech. This incident also made Twitter’s trending topics, and overshadowed tributes to the late Michael Jackson performed by his sister Janet and friends Madonna and Brooke Shields.
For many of us, social media is part of a larger regimented schedule of information intake. We continue to learn and adapt to new technology while previous generations tend to stick with convention. My parents wake up and check out The Today Show, CNN, and maybe even The Weather Channel. They get dressed and prepped for the day with coffee and a newspaper.
Meanwhile I roll out of bed and head for the bathroom with my smartphone in one hand and my toothbrush in the other. There are many mornings when I silently pray for an extra arm to hold my phone so that my morning grooming won’t be hindered. Blog feeds, Tweets and text updates are sent straight to my phone, linking me to even more magazines, blogs, TV show Web sites, (I can’t miss Real Housewives of Atlanta) and other forms of news. I am a veritable media consortium.
Social media isn’t only used to spread gossip and rumors, but it also allows us to set the record straight. It gives us the freedom to connect with whom we choose and however we choose to connect with them. We are very literally in charge of the truths we receive.
Also in October world-renown poet and performer Maya Angelou was listed as dead on Twitter’s trending topics, even as she tweeted from her personal Twitter account! President Barack Obama has used Twitter to disseminate information about his plan for health care reform. The president’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign, a task force dedicated to obtaining and protecting civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered men and women, was tweeted by those in attendance. Class discussions and study sessions utilize all available social media platforms, and many businesses are now using Facebook to market their brands and gain consumer input through fan pages and discussion boards.
In our McDonaldized society where we want it all as fast as we can have it and the way we want it, social media allows us to do just that. We can have news, entertainment and instant reactions.
And speaking of hoaxes, the Balloon Boy fiasco showed that major news organizations are not exempt from falling victim to the proverbial fast one. While TV News followed Richard Heene’s homemade balloon across the mountains, TMZ.com was already reporting that the family had appeared on ABC’s Wife Swap, prompting immediate speculation that viewers may have been watching a publicity stunt.
The weight of social media can no longer wait for us to catch on. Dallas South News, at its core, is based on the importance of social media and the consumer or citizen’s agency to tell his or her truth as it exists and as it occurs.
Long live Yeezy. Longer live social media.
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