In Viral Copy: Trading Words for Traffic, Brian Clark discusses eleven ways that bloggers can viralize their posts. Brian ends his report with a warning to “Avoid the Dark Side” when seeking attention for your blog. Brian then recounts the story of how the 1970’s fictional radio station manager Arthur Carlson, of the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, arranged to have live turkeys dropped out of a helicopter as a Thanksgiving publicity stunt. Because turkeys cannot fly, dropping the birds to their deaths did not bring the radio station the kind of publicity that they desired. Brian’s message: Not all publicity is good publicity; Avoid attention-getting schemes akin to dropping turkeys out of a helicopter.
It was Brian’s advice that came to mind as I spent a few weeks in the blogosphere looking for information about the leading presidential candidates. My intention was to learn the candidates’ positions on issues that affect the self-employed. What I found instead left me feeling as though I was wading through miles of virtual turkey carnage.
My search made it painfully apparent that splatting certain turkeys is not only socially acceptable, it is as American as waving the flag at a Fourth of July parade. Turkeys practicing “weird” religions, turkeys married to guys named Bill, dieting Evangelical turkeys, or turkeys that happen to share the same middle name as a terrorist seem to be fair game. These unfortunate gobblers bring a gladiator colosseum-sized crowd anxious to watch the flightless birds plunge to their deaths from America the Beautiful’s spacious skies onto her amber waves of grain.
I suppose you could look at it as pure genius – Post an article to your blog poking a little fun at individuals, groups, or ideologies that readers love to hate. Then watch the site counter and the number of bigoted comments rise. It is the seemingly perfect formula for successful and profitable blogging, but it comes at a greater price.
Words do not stay words forever. They lead to action. In a sense, hateful words will eventually become the proverbial sticks and stones that do the bone breaking. A climate of mean-spirited political bantering also encourages our children to tease and bully. Don’t think for one minute that we grown-ups can go around name-calling and not expect our nation’s children to do the same. The message we are sending our children is that it is O.K. to tease, pick on, make fun of, discriminate against, or hate someone because of their name, their religion, their gender, their race, their general beliefs, etc.
