The internet showed how it morphs and forms itself this week.
It started with Clint Eastwood's appearance at the Republican National Convention where he talked to an empty chair as if it was Obama during his endorsement of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The sequence starts at 3mins 25 secs...
The chat to the chair became an online craze almost immediately. The next step was images were photoshopped into the Chair including the Princess Leia hologram and scowling Olympian gymnast McKayla Maroney.
This spawned a whole lot of things including a Simpsons newspaper front page with Grandpa Simpson and the headline became "Old Man Yells at Chair" (originally it was: "Old man yells at cloud")
Comedy site HUMORdy published a video of the chair's imagined response ("my record of providing excellent lumbar support is beyond reproach"). It is hilarious!!! Watch it here:
Then a @InvisibleObama appeared on Twitter.
What was fascinating is that, according to Ohmygov in the 24 hours after the Convention, Romney gained 23 thousand new Twitter followers and Ryan gained 18 000 new followers but @InvisibleObama ended up with 42 000 new followers- more than Ryan and Romney combined.
After the final night of the convention, Robert Gehrke (@RobertGehrke) a reporter with the Salt Lake City Tribune, had a colleague take a picture of him pointing at a chair and tweeted it with the tag "Look its Eastwooding". Within hours they were joined by over 25,000 "Eastwooders" on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram all sharing pictures of themselves pointing at empty chairs.
This was followed by babies, cats and dogs staring at empty chairs.
Even the US President (or a clever adviser) joined in the fun tweeting a photo of himself at the office in a chair marked "The president", with the comment "The seat's taken".
It is fascinating to see how Social Media can ru with something, develop and nurture it. If you want to see more of the Eastwooding pictures, check out my Pinterest board:
It started with Clint Eastwood's appearance at the Republican National Convention where he talked to an empty chair as if it was Obama during his endorsement of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The sequence starts at 3mins 25 secs...
The chat to the chair became an online craze almost immediately. The next step was images were photoshopped into the Chair including the Princess Leia hologram and scowling Olympian gymnast McKayla Maroney.
Invisible Obama .@mittromney is holding a "victory rally" in Cincinnati. "Mission Accomplished", Mitt. Was looking for the banner, but it must be invisible.
If I was a Droid, my name would be C-Thru-B-O.
