Baratunde is a politically-active, technology-loving comedian from the future. He co-founded the black political blog, Jack & Jill Politics, serves as Director of Digital for The Onion and is a regular guest on Leo Laporte's TWiT. His book, How To Be Black, will be published by Harper in February 2012. Basically, he's a smart, funny, extremely handsome dude. >> Full bio.
Two years ago, YouTube's News & Politics channel sponsored a program encouraging people to read passages from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. I chose a passage from his "Beyond Vietnam" speech on budget/defense priorities and "spiritual death" and recorded the video at a parking lot in Pittsburgh, PA.
In the same year, Vanity Fair commissioned me to write this piece. It ranks high among the work I'm most proud of across my entire life: What Would MLK Make Of Twitter?
At this time every year, commentators across the United States engage in an exercise I’ll call Hypothetical King, in which we try to imagine what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say about the war in Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, or Mo’Nique winning best supporting actress for Precious at the Golden Globes. We extrapolate from his words and deeds and hope we’re right but can never be sure.
I’d like to engage in an exercise that’s almost the reverse of that. Instead of imagining Hypothetical King in 2010, I’m imagining a world in which today’s tools exist in King’s day. Specifically, I want to know what Dr. King would make of Twitter, the insistent social-media service that asks its users to describe “What’s happening?” in 140 characters or less.
This is a thing I do when these crap movies based on crap books are released (see video of New Moon hating). Twilight is bad for America and the world. The latest installment, "Breaking Dawn: Part 1," is no exception. I do this so you don't have to. Enjoy.
For three hours (0120 to 0420), I remotely covered the middle-of-the-night police action against the peaceably assembled at Zuccotti Park in New York. My sources were location-based twitter search, citizen and reporter tweets, live web feeds, the NYPD police scanner and traffic cams. Here is everything I tweeted in a pretty Storify slideshow. (you can see the flat version here)
Take the video above. Toward the end, as the tension builds, I'm expecting the sailors to get attacked, kidnapped, beheaded or something. Instead, the closing shot is of the servicewomen dancing with a fully-masked, fully-armed, presumed-terrorist. This begs much larger questions than "Did these ladies overshare on Foursquare?" Questions such as:
What sort of security is the nightclub operating under? Maybe the MoD should do a public campaign about the dangers of shit bouncers?
What sort of British sailor spots an armed terrorist and chooses to dance with him? Granted, a lot might have happened off-screen. Maybe the terrorist threated to murder every single club-goer if these sailors didn't dance with him. Maybe that's what he really wants in life, not money, not the release of a political prisoner. Maybe he just wants to feel sexy for once in his life.
I used Storify to capture my tweets and add commentary.
So I'll put the punchline up high:
In conclusion, I don't think Glenn Beck leaving Fox is a massive victory for the left, though pressuring his advertisers to stop backing super ridiculous and damaging hate speech is a victory of sorts.
Like a mutant Japanese monster, though, Beck may simply become stronger. His GBTV positions him as a sort of digital Oprah, with his own virtual network and shows, not all hosted by him.
The clothing is weird, but so is Newman's salad dressing. The inspiration behind it is interesting. Beck has built not just a loyal following but a business empire, freeing him to do even more of what he wants than a cable network might allow.
I don't agree with the man. I've seen him try and partially succeed to destroy the life of a friend. But there are lessons to learn from his strategy. Beck talks up to his audiences. He broke many rules of television, selling complicated ideas in long form. He got people away from their televisions and into the streets, and now he's setting up his own platform with digital and physical monetization which will free him even more to realize his dream.
I only wish his dream were more along the lines of a rocket ship and less about half-plagiarized conspiracy theories seeking to explain why "they" want to take "your America" away.
(to make more sense of this, re-live the coverage below)
I'll be straight up with yall. I love Twitter. I love the service. I love the idea. I love the people I know who work there. Plus they have a badass cafeteria. I just checked out the following video announcing the new Twitter.com interface. You gotta see this
I've been increasingly impressed with the native functionality of Twitter.com, so much so that I rarely use the multi-column Adobe AIR apps like Seesmic and Tweetdeck that used to define my stream-happy eXistenZ. I've come to relish the simple. On my mobile I use Twitter for iPhone, but I also use Twitter's own mobile site which offers some functionality the iPhone app doesn't (notably, the ability to toggle SMS updates for accounts you follow).
The video above shows an elegant navigation style and integration of media which we first saw in Twitter's native iPad app. Check this screenshot of Gina Trapani's recent tweet with a Flickr link on my iPad here:
Screenshot of Twitter for iPad showing cascading panels that allow for media viewing and tweet navigationYou'll actually see two below Gina's tweet, Tom Coates makes the same observation I'm making. I love the integration because it brings a level of Instapaper, Flipboard and Pulse into the main client I use on a continual (not daily, continual) basis: Twitter itself.
I'm glad to see this interface hitting Twitter.com. Perhaps we can start doing away with all this platform-specific app development and return to using that multi-OS, multi-device, multi-platform commons known as the Web.
Update Wednesday 15 Sept @ 12:56
A few more observations.
Downsides.
1) Inconsistent feature set across Twitter interfaces.
Specifically, Twitter for iPhone/iPad allow you to "quote" a tweet, adding commentary to your retweet, but the web interface still does not allow this, forcing you to manually cut and past or, as I often do, pull up the tweet on my iPhone and quote it from there.
2) New wider content area severely reduces profile page wallpaper branding
Look what they did to my beautiful background image!
Bigger avatar, but smaller wallpaper area
2) Change to the "Your Tweets, Retweeted" listing
I loved in #oldtwitter how you could view all of your tweets that had been retweeted and get a count all in one glance. This is very useful in terms of gauging the popularity of your content, and as a comic, I use this view on at least a weekly basis as I prep for shows.
#NewTwitter, on the other hand, is more lovely, yet forces you to click on each tweet to bring up the side pane exposing the number of retweets.
Upsides
1) really pretty single tweet pages
Isn't she lovely? Isn't she wonderful?2) Seriously, the web is the thing.
I already mentioned above how this new web interface is a lot like the iPad app and is a nice reminder that the Web is a perfectly good place to build rich experiences without spending hella time and money building for specific operating systems and platforms. Mashable agrees, writing in The New Twitter Is An Attack On All Desktop Apps
The new web interface effectively makes Twitter desktop clients irrelevant in the long run. Because what’s the point of downloading software and running Silverlight or Adobe Air to engage with Twitter when there’s a brand new, multimedia-rich Twitter experience waiting for you inside any browser?
conscious comic & vigilante pundit Co-Founder, Jack & Jill Politics Web Editor, The Onion Host, Popular Science's Future Of (Mondays 9p, Science Channel) http://bit.ly/thefutureof
Twitter may seem like a lot of work--yet another way you have to keep up with people's boring minutia and thoughts on Michael Jackson's doctor. But it doesn't have to be! If you pick the right folks to follow (comedians who are not only hilarious in real life but on Twitter too) the whole thing can be fun. They are in no particular order, so make sure to scroll all the way through (DO IT). Please let us know about other funny feeds we missed in the comments section!
Thanks to HuffPo for the inclusion. The list is super dominated by dudes and "official" funny people though, so below I offer my own list of funny people to follow
On Monday August 10th, I hosted a launch party for my new TV show, Popular Science's Future Of on the Science Channel (part of Discovery). I wanted to throw a massive public affair but was limited in space and time. We held the party at the lovely apartment of a generous friend. Words were said. Drinks were had. Television was watched.
Also in attendance were two flip cameras operated by my friend Rina Vazirani and Internet pioneer and video maven Bill Cammack. We have Bill to thank for integrating the footage and editing together this piece. I didn't have time to do the titling, but below the video, I'll give props to all who attended (or at least most). It was a great party for a cool new show, and I am humbled to have had so many luminaries, twitterati, facebookerati and just plain old good people honor me with their presence
You too can throw a Future Of watch party in your city. Just do it!
Guests In Attendance:
Andrew Scafetta, Communications man at Discovery
Anil Dash, one of the first employees at Six Apart. Also just a bad ass mamma jamma
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 10:26 | ;)
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