The Newest Phrase To Sweep The Web

Wired’s Threat Level blog recently published a news brief on a Web trend that might be of vital interest to some of you out there in Profy readership land, so I thought I’d do you a nice little favor and pass the word.

The trend has taken shape in the form of the phrase: “Don’t tase me, bro!”

Ring any bells? I’m sure it does for at least a few of you. That’s because those four magic - some might rightfully say “electric” - words have all but overtaken the Net as the newest hit in the realm of viral phenomena.

Sarah Lai Stirland, a blogger at Wired, asks us to consider a few points about the line. Firstly, it’s taken a seat as roughly the 10th most searched “term” on Google, as discovered via Google Trends. Also, the video that sparked the entire “Don’t tase me, bro!” frenzy, in which a student of the University of Florida was witnessed being forced to the floor and tasered by police inside a lecture hall visited by the defamed American Senator John Kerry, has climbed the ladder of the viral video arena to take the #1 overall spot (as of 48 hours ago), so says online marketing firm Unruly Media. Thus far, the actions of the taser-happy arrestors have been viewed in Web video clip form over 2.6 million times since the start of the week. T-shirts designs have emerged, bumper stickers have been produced, and a seemingly ever-abundant supply of “video responses” to the incident have made their way to YouTube’s servers.

Can’t get much bigger than that on the Internet, can you?

What the reasons were for security personnel to revert to electro-shocking the student-turned-unfortunate-Internet-celebrity while a good number of his peers (and now the entire frickin’ world) looked on beats me. Perhaps for speaking in a less than cordial manner? I don’t know. Some of those present during the event have said that Andrew Meyer, the protagonist of the tale, barged to the front of the line of questioners assembled at the forum and refused to comply with organizers when they asked him to step away from the microphone. The rest, as they say (very accurately so in this case, I might add) is history.

Want to see what graphic designers have come up with so far? Head on over to Wired’s Threat Level blog post on the subject, or visit the sites Goodstorm.com and Tshirthell.com to get some fabrics of your own. In need of anything else? Visit your favorite search engine, enter those four magic words, and see where it takes you.

By the bye, if you’re curious as to what my take on the matter is, it’s really quite simple. Assuming that is everything and nothing but the truth with concern to the issue, the removal of Mr Meyer from the forum was necessary, but that, upon inspection of the video, the use of a taser gun on the student, while he was clearly within the control of authorities, was entirely unnecessary, to say the least. A very irresponsible use of force, no doubt. 

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