Social Movements

            Throughout the book Hemsley and Nahone (2013) claim that virality has inspired complete social movements. They back up this claim by constantly providing real world examples. The first example they provide stems around the story of David Carroll. A guitar player in a small band who’s $3,500 guitar is snapped in half by United Airline’s workers during his flight. Carroll took up his complaints with United customer service, but they were in no rush to help him. United didn’t care about what happened to Carroll, they are a multi-billion dollar company so they didn’t feel like it was worth their effort to help on disgruntled customer. They messed with the wrong musician, because Carroll and the rest of his band retaliated in a way United could never have prepared for. They uploaded a YouTube titled, “United Breaks Guitars.” This playful comedic song about a bad flight experience had eclipsed millions of views in just a couple of days. Hemsely and Nahone put it this way, “[Roughly 2 weeks after the video was posted] it had been viewed 3.5 million times. That is 16 million minutes of negative, but funny advertising.” (p. 12)

            Hemsley and Nahone consider this to be a so-called “Black Swan Event.”  An event that one would expect to never happen, but when it does, everything is changed. Before Carroll’s video United never needed to stress about one disgruntled customer, but after this, one disgruntled customer became millions of disgruntled customers.

            The reason why social movements, like the one Carroll started, have become so popular through virality is due to the online community the Internet provides. S. Craig Watkins (2009) describes this phenomenon as a “Third Place” in an article of his. Watkins uses teenagers as the main example in his article stating that they needed a third place to socialize besides school and home. Back in the day this place would be a café or an arcade, but now it has become social networks.   Watkins continues be saying, “The online world gives teens something that generations of youth have coveted but not necessarily enjoyed: a place of their own.” (P. 59) Teens finally had a place where they could act without their parents watching over them. As Watkins simply puts it, “What I came to understand is that… [the] interest  is not in the technology, but rather the people and relationships technology provides access to.” (P. 49)

            All of this directly relates back to another social movement that Hemsley and Nahone give us as an example. They discuss the infamous Alexandra Wallace. Wallace was a student at UCLA, who posted a scathing video racially bashing the Asian student population at UCLA. The video “Asians at the Library” became viral instantly due to being shared repeatedly on Facebook. Relating back to Watkins article, Alexandra was using her “Third Place” to voice her opinion. On the other hand, the actually upstanding “citizens” of the Internet used this “Third place” to make sure this video was seen by as many people as possible. The online community was responsible for making this small, home made, video so well known that it forced Wallace to drop out of school.

            Through these examples Going Viral has proved that social movements occur through virality and the power of online communities. Whether it be about the future of customer service, or showing no tolerance for racism, virality has played a key role in changing today’s world.