Show me a modern political candidate who doesn’t understand television, and I’ll show you a loser.
When TV became the dominant medium for Americans to consume news and entertainment, political candidates could no longer be successful without looking polished in televised debates, appearing on talk shows and spending big on commercials.
Like the television boom of the 1960s, we are standing on the precipice of a big shift in how public figures are perceived and how campaigns are conducted. Our frontier is social media, and its impact on mainstream political culture is coming on fast.
While my colleagues have been making their predictions about what’s on the tech and social media horizon in 2011, there will be no major U.S. elections next year. Here, we’ll be postulating about social media’s impact on the more long-term future of American civics.
1. There Will Be a Tipping Point
While campaigning and marketing share many similarities, the differences mean everything when you’re talking about democracy’s big picture. Brands can sell by hitting a tech savvy demographic of influencers. Elections involve everyone, whether they’re online or not.
If a large bloc of your constituency is made up of 65+ year-old retirees, chances are a Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook strategy won’t be time well spent. Despite the enthusiasm of the tech crowd and blogosphere, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter is exceedingly far from the mainstream, with only 6% of Americans using the service. And while the world consumes YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube videos at a mind-bending rate, viral success is still transient and elusive.
While these tools have certainly proven to be effective in rallying support and contributions, we don’t yet live in a world where social media can make or break a political candidate by itself.
That will change, perhaps even by the next major election cycle.
The future of the social media politician is not about wild speculation and technological uncertainties. It has everything to do with when and how deeply social media can be absorbed into mainstream culture. We are on track for a tipping point — a JFK/Nixon TV debate moment — when everyone on the political scene will acknowledge that we can never go back to campaigns without social.
2. New Media Strategists Will Just Be Strategists
I’ve had the opportunity to talk with the new media strategists for a number of senators, congresspeople and political causes. Despite their differences, they all agree that their own jobs will soon be folded into the larger campaign strategy. As many have already foreseen, social media will not require experts for much longer. As we head toward true mainstream adoption, social will be a default and well-understood tool in the belt of any public-facing professional.
We’ve already seen this happening in the private sector with marketing and PR professionals. As many corporate entities lumber to catch up with those on the cutting edge, so too will government officials and the campaigners who seek their offices.
3. We’ll See the Devaluation of Old Media in Politics/>
Print and radio ads are not as valuable as TV. TV will no longer be as valuable as interactive media. For politics, this is especially so, as the arena (at its best, anyway) warrants engagement and discussion.
As media appetites shift, this is an inevitability. In the U.S., we’re already seeing web use catch up with television in terms of weekly hours spent. Political money will simply go where the eyeballs are, and we’re likely to see a big payoff on social creativity when it comes to future campaigns.
4. Whistle Blowing Gets More Efficient, But That’s It
The WikiLeaksclass="blippr-nobr">Wikileaks saga has ignited plenty of discussion about journalism and whistle blowing in the Internet age. But at the end of the day, the mechanics of an information leak are about the same as they’ve always been: Someone from within an organization leaks damaging information, and the media (in whatever form) disseminates it to the public. Generally speaking, WikiLeaks has only acted as a “middle man” for raw information. It’s journalists who are making sense of it and transmitting it to the public with context.
The web only speeds up this process through digitization and universal access. Governments and politicians will feel the impact of leaks sooner, but it’s unlikely the methods of protecting sensitive information will be much changed.
Your Thoughts?
What do you think will be social media’s biggest impact on the political process? How long until we see a winning campaign strategy that is purely social? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
More Political Resources from Mashable
- How WikiLeaks Became the Story of the Year in 2010 [VIDEO]/> - The Future of Social Media and Politics/> - How Political Campaigns Are Using Social Media for Real Results/> - How the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” Nailed Social Media/> - 17 Web Resources to Help You Decide on Election Day
For more Social Media coverage:
class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
If you’re a fan of cheesy films like Manos: The Hand of Fate, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Troll 2, you’ll love this one. Uncle John saw it last when our local Bad Film Society screened it, and as he was watching, it occurred to him that it actually gave new meaning to the word “bad.” (But somehow he couldn’t stop talking about how great it was.)
THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
On June 2003, a film called The Room premiered in a handful of Los Angeles theaters. It’s the story of a love triangle between Johnny, a banker; Lisa, his girlfriend; and Johnny’s best friend Mark. The film was the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, the actor who plays Johnny. Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, and distributed the film. He financed The Room, too, shelling out $6 million of his own money to make it, plus thousands more on print and TV ads and a single giant billboard overlooking busy Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.
The Room was Wiseau’s first feature film. He hoped to use it to launch a Hollywood career… but all he succeeded in doing was blowing $6 million in record time. The Room played to nearly empty theaters for just two weeks before it was yanked from the screen; in that time it had grossed only $1,900, not enough to cover even one month’s rent on the Highland Avenue billboard. Put another way, for every million Wiseau spent, The Room earned less than $320, making it one of the worst box-office flops in history.
(YouTube link)
CITIZEN PAIN
Is there anything about The Room that isn’t bad? The acting is stunningly incompetent- none of the actors had ever had a major film role before, and Wiseau was incapable of providing decent direction. And the love scene between Johnny and Lisa is creepy (picture a Troll doll having its way with a seat cushion, except that Lisa is the cushion). Wiseau recycles the footage in a second love scene 20 minutes after the first, so you get to watch it twice.
As a screenwriter, Wiseau was even worse. New characters appear out of nowhere and aren’t properly identified, so it’s never clear who they are. A number of subplots -such as drug abuse, unrequited love, and bad real estate deals- are introduced, then quickly abandoned. (“I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer,” Lisa’s mother tells her, and the subject never comes up again.) And though the thickly-accented Wiseau refuses to this day to say where he comes from, English is clearly not his first language. The Room is full of clunky, confusing, and unintentionally funny dialog: When a (never-identified) character catches Lisa and Mark kissing at Johnny’s birthday party, and confronts them, Mark yells, “Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!”
(YouTube link)
PATRON ZERO
The movie likely would have died a quick and unmourned death had an aspiring young screenwriter named Michael Rousselet not happened to see the film near the end of its two-week theatrical run. As Rousselet sat alone in the empty theater, he was stunned by what he saw- bad lighting, out-of-focus scenes, dubbed dialog out of sync with the lip movements onscreen, poorly designed sets (it’s never clear which room is the room, or why the room is so important), one wooden, sophomoric acting performance after another, and much, much more. Whenever Rousselet thought that The Room had given all that it had to give, it would cough up some wonderful new chunk of mediocrity and incompetence for him to savor. It was unlike any film he’d ever seen. Sure that such a flop would never make it onto DVD, Rousselet sat in an empty theater (while the movie was still running) and called everyone he could think of on his cell phone, telling them they had to see The Room for themselves before it vanished forever.
(YouTube link)
MISERY LOVES COMPANY
That theater didn’t stay empty for long. Though The Room died at every other venue where it was shown, Rousselet’s promotional work paid off at this one. A small crowd of friends joined him at the next showing, and as these people phoned their friends, the numbers grew steadily at each remaining screening. “We saw it four times in three days, and on the last day had over 100 people there,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2008.
By the time The Room ended its theatrical run, a small but dedicated fan base had already begun emailing Wiseau to thank him for his efforts and ask him to screen the film again. Wiseau received dozens more emails in the months that followed, and in June 2004 he booked a small theater in West Hollywood for a single midnight screening. That event was a hit -so many people turned out to see the film that Wiseau booked another midnight showing a month later, then another, then another.
As the crowds continued to grow like lookie-loos at a traffic accident, he expanded to two screens at the multiplex, then three, then four, and then five. Strong word of mouth among a steadily growing fan base of “Roomies,” as they call themselves, led Wiseau to schedule screenings in cities up and down the West Coast, then in other parts of the United States and Canada, and eventually in Great Britain. And with foreign-language editions reportedly in the works, The Room may soon have fans all over the world.
(YouTube link)
SPOONING
Have you ever been to a showing of the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show? As was the case with that cult film, The Room’s fans have created audience participation rituals all their own. Roomies attend screenings dressed as their favorite characters, shout out their favorite bad lines at the appropriate moments, yell “FOCUS!” during blurry scenes, march out “in protest” during the troll doll/seat cushion love scenes, and throw plastic spoons whenever the spoon photograph in Johnny’s apartment appears. There’s no question that the Roomies are there to laugh at Wiseau and his masterpiece, but he says he doesn’t mind. “As long as they laugh or enjoy themselves, I enjoy with them,” he says.
(YouTube link)
NO ROOM AT THE ROOM
If you’re ever in L.A. on the last Saturday of the month, go see The Room. Buy your tickets early- even when the film is being shown on five screens, The Room sells out quickly, especially when Wiseau or other stars appear in person. Wiseau’s fabulous flop has been reborn as the hottest cult phenomenon in decades, and at an estimated gross of more than $1,000 per screening, The Room is on track to break even sometime in the year 2504, maybe sooner if you consider profits from The Room t-shirts, CDs, DVDs, movie posters, and talking Johnny bobblehead dolls.
___________________
The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
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The first impressions in light of President Obama's speech at tonight's memorial for the victims of the Arizona shooting, and, at least on Fox News, the reviews are overwhelming positive. Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, ...
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The first impressions in light of President Obama's speech at tonight's memorial for the victims of the Arizona shooting, and, at least on Fox News, the reviews are overwhelming positive. Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, ...
President Obama's dramatic news at last night's memorial service in Tucson that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' has just minutes before opened her left eye for the first time since the shooting has created some confusion in light of news from ...
bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviewsA bomb specialist enters Fitzsimons Park near Nichols Middle School in Evanston on Tuesday. (José M. Osorio/ Chicago Tribune) In the dead of night, an explosion ripped through Evanston's Fitzsimmons Park, shaking houses and waking ...
The first impressions in light of President Obama's speech at tonight's memorial for the victims of the Arizona shooting, and, at least on Fox News, the reviews are overwhelming positive. Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, ...
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bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviewsA bomb specialist enters Fitzsimons Park near Nichols Middle School in Evanston on Tuesday. (José M. Osorio/ Chicago Tribune) In the dead of night, an explosion ripped through Evanston's Fitzsimmons Park, shaking houses and waking ...
The first impressions in light of President Obama's speech at tonight's memorial for the victims of the Arizona shooting, and, at least on Fox News, the reviews are overwhelming positive. Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, ...
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The first impressions in light of President Obama's speech at tonight's memorial for the victims of the Arizona shooting, and, at least on Fox News, the reviews are overwhelming positive. Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, ...
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The first impressions in light of President Obama's speech at tonight's memorial for the victims of the Arizona shooting, and, at least on Fox News, the reviews are overwhelming positive. Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, ...
President Obama's dramatic news at last night's memorial service in Tucson that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' has just minutes before opened her left eye for the first time since the shooting has created some confusion in light of news from ...
