Monday, May 2, 2011

man on the moon moment?

How many blog posts started with "Osama bin Laden is dead" this morning? And you know all those people who didn't start their blogs with that line sure wanted to. They either thought it would made them look cool to not write about it or something but honestly, it happened and it was sort of a big deal.

Not earth shattering big like the people celebrating in the streets would have liked you to believe.

People celebrating in the streets. Chanting "U.S.A." and singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs outside of the White House.

Who are we? It was strange to watch, knowing it was happening within our borders. We don't celebrate like that. That's what we see on TV when other countries celebrate.

And Twitter. Twitter was all over the place. "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", "Obama is announcing that he is coming around all 50 states to hi-five everyone", "Breaking News: Chuck Norris returns from Pakistan."

I told a friend of mine this morning that when the announcement was made that Obama would be addressing the nation and we found out that Tinker AFB had heightened it's security we flipped on the TV and everything in my living room felt very 1960's-ish. We we're in our pajamas and we we're about to listen to the President address the nation on national television. Was this going to be my "man on the moon" experience? Septemeber 11th was intense, and we watched television for hours at school but this felt a little different.

It might have been that man on the moon moment, if CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and every other network that has live capability hadn't beaten the story to death in the hour we were waiting for the "official" word. I understand needing to alert everyone that needed to know but by the time the calls got to those people, CNN had already told them and so had Twitter and Facebook.

Social media has changed the game.