Obama's Victory and the Internet

The internet age is a strange thing. The old cliché is that the web is an information superhighway, a place where you pick and choose your content like you pick and choose a rest stop. The truth is that most content these days is user created, which means the choice becomes everyone’s and no one’s.

Even if you were one of the few people who was trying to escape all the election hubbub by playing an online game or surfing your favorite website, chances are that you were getting up to the minute information anyway. This superhighway looks suspiciously like whitewater rapids to me.

Still, it’s entertaining to watch the internet react to history in the making. For some reason, everyone on Facebook got on the same wavelength and felt compelled to express their feelings about the election results in a pithy line on their status bar.

Some celebrated that they wouldn’t have to move to Europe or Canada, while others expressed an intention to start packing their bags. Some encouraged us to enjoy our “new socialist regime” while others sought to remind us that only Ron Paul “could have saved this country”. Some were overcome with a fervent fear and said that they would “spend the night in prayer”. A lot of them just said “Yay! Obama!! <3” and a few expressed amusement as they watched everyone else panic and jubilate. One republican responded with a simple ellipse, “…”. How mysterious.

It makes me wish Facebook had existed during the attack on Pearl Harbor or the Fall of the Berlin Wall. How we managed to get through these events without the witty and insightful commentary of college students is truly boggling. You can’t really know how depressing the Great Depression is until you see a status feed which reads “OMG this sucks :( ”.

The internet allowed people to notice this status feed trend and start commenting on it, as it was in progress, on forums. Entire thread pages were dedicated to humorous Facebook reactions from both sides. Inevitability, these threads would then devolve into a political mudslinging contest. No surprise there.

The mudslinging, without fail, would invoke Godwin’s law, which states that sooner or later somebody will bring up the Nazis, by comparing either Obama or McCain to Hitler. This, in turn, would immediately invoke Dodds Collary, which states that whoever brings up Nazis automatically loses the debate. Often times, the Hitler reference came straight from a Facebook status, nullifying everyone’s argument before anyone said anything.

Even online gamers couldn’t escape the politics. In the World of Warcraft, Night Elves and Dwarves fiercely debated with one another. Some of the Elves preferred Obama, citing his environmentally friendly policies. Many of the Dwarves backed McCain, stating that they needed a strong military to fight off the Orcs. But, while his old age was seen as a detriment to many voters, the Undead found McCain too young for their liking and the Trolls wondered whether or not Obama could properly handle the illegal immigrant issue. Several gnomes supported Ron Paul based on appearance alone.

Each town was filled with play-by-play commentary by the denizens of Azeroth, as they watched CNN and shopped for gear at the Auction House. Much like the forums, conversations would quickly and often dissolve into chaos as wizards and warlocks threw verbal fireballs at one another from opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Obama’s victory was known throughout the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, the very moment it happened. Even if you traveled out to the farthest forest or the highest mountain, it was guaranteed that you’d get a message from a friend saying: “Obama won! : P ”. It’s almost like you’d have to wander out into a real forest to get away from it all.