There was a rally last weekend and if you were on the Internet, you knew about it. It was held by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, who felt that the various Tea Party rallies warranted a progressive response (oddly, the many 'spontaneous' MoveOn.org rallies of 2004 and 2006 were simply democracy in action, they felt) and so it happened. Over 200,000 people showed up, they claim.
The problem? Stewart and Colbert think their basic cable shows have a lot more reach than they do, and Internet fans who promoted it aren't very happy. Reddit.com (owned by media giant Conde Nast) and Fark.com could practically co-brand their sites with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report but when Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian asked Stewart what role the Internet played in convincing him to hold the rally, the response was clear: "it didn't hurt."
"It didn't affect attendance one way or the other," Colbert said, enraging Fark.com founder Drew Curtis so much that he submitted an open letter to Fark.com, lambasting what he considered "backhanded compliments" by the comedy duo.
Mainstream media regard the Internet as an offshoot rather than a legitimate force, to be sure, but the founders of Reddit and Fark disagree; "This is about common courtesy," wrote Curtis. "If someone does you a favor, a thank you is a kind and appropriate response." Instead, Curtis feels Stewart's slight was a "slap in the face."
How so? Did Reddit or Fark rent buses? Were they the only two sites on the Internet who generated people? Reddit and Fark are both editor ('moderator', in the case of Reddit, but the same thing - if the submissions go into a folder and have to be manually approved, that is an editor) driven, which means their audiences are going to be a subset of the audience that likes what their editors approve. Could Reddit or Fark seriously have generated so much more actual attendance they merited a special thank you? Or do all sites get a thank you? If so, Alex and Drew, feel free to comment here and thank me for discussing your businesses on Science 2.0.
