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Quinnipiac Assignment #2 – Disruption (NSFW)

Disruption (NSFW)

Consider disruption (NSFW): Good Lord, people, hide the fine china! Lock up your children! Clutch your pearls! It’s all gone NSFW!

Still, I shouldn’t kid.

This assignment is about using social media being as a tool for disruption. I chose to examine the Boston Marathon bombings, and of course, that’s nothing to be flippant about. Further, I selected a completely NSFW (Not Safe For Work) moment during the ordeal.

David Ortiz for the Disruptive Win!

I chose to center my video around Boston Red Sox player David Ortiz taking the microphone during the first game after the bombs went off, and him bellowing into the mic, “This is our f—in’ city!”

There are some people who complained, after the fact, about the obscenity. But the vast, vast majority of viewers took it all in stride.

How Did Social Media Handle All This?

What did Social Media do? How did it disrupt coverage? Well, let’s just put it this way. If the bombing had occurred fifteen years ago, or even five, coverage (and our memories of it) would have been far, far different.

It would have been far less immediate. We would not have seen the carnage in anywhere near as much graphic detail. Jeff Bauman would have maintained some privacy with reference to his grave injuries.

And David Ortiz, if he had dropped the f-bomb live on TV at all, would have been fined, big time, as would have the Red Sox organization.

Instead, we know. We have seen. We have heard. And it’s a lot harder to forget.  The news is no longer being sanitized successfully in America.

Welcome to the media treating us like grownups.

Disruption Eight Years Later…

Looking back at this post in last 2022, my first observation is that it’s almost quaint. No one seemed to really care about Ortiz dropping an f-bomb on television. But why?

It’s quite simply because he just said what we were all thinking. And many of us had probably said it in the comfort and privacy of our own homes.

But David had the microphone, and the platform.

Oh, and PS — my own video ^ is restricted on YouTube these days! Wacky. So, social media does not treat us like adults these days!


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Published inQuinnipiac