Buy Or Don’t Buy

This happens about every 4 years or so. There is a big push to get 18 - 25 year olds to go vote. P. Diddy tried it with his Vote or Die (which didn’t really work because Diddy was on his way out like a decade ago). Or how about when there was a push 4 years ago to prevent Bush getting a second term? Remember that? Hey, this doofus is gonna be in office again if you don’t vote! Well, that didn’t work. So what is the new thing now’adays?

Well, lucky for us, Obama has a cool name and rockstar appeal. He’s made it into hundreds of viral videos even before he became the nominee, videos that included celebrities, parodies, and clips from talk shows and speeches.

Fine, I get it, we’re a digital age, these things tend to come out. But now they are being used to show how cool the local news can be. Who here has heard of JibJab? Everyone? Yeah… exactly. If you haven’t: they are two brothers that made a poorly animated video that spread like wild fire during the Bush and Kerry election. And, in true form, JibJab returned with another video just in time for this year’s election.

Now, once again, I am not ragging on the video, because it seems pretty accurate with its satire. However what I’m not buying is how this video is all over the news. Last night, I was watching the local NBC news and they kept using the JibJab video as a hook for the next segment. Fox news even had the creators come on their show.

Reporting these videos doesn’t make me want to watch your network over another. Mostly because they are probably doing the same story. More importantly, showing me these videos doesn’t really make me want to vote either. In the JibJab video, every politician is parodied and each parody has a grain of truth to it, which makes me think, why would I want to vote for any of these clowns? Either way, viral videos are old news and they don’t make you “cool” if you know about them. And, because they are viral, they probably already spread to the television audience that would even care about something new on the Internet.