Weathering the Storm

Monday, October 29, 2012

As many of you probably know, Hurricane Sandy is barreling down on the Mid Atlantic. Classes here at the University of Maryland are canceled today (a major relief for many, I can assure you). Right now, as I look out my window, things do not look so disastrous, though as the wind and rain pick up, it's easy to see the slow build to what is likely to be an evening to remember.

So, with nowhere to go and little to do, I can actually get this blog out today at a reasonable time! Nothing to stop me, right? (unless the power or internet goes out...we will hope that won't happen. Or at least that it stays on for a good long while.)

So seeing that the storm is keeping me inside today, and that running around campus trying to post on things would be unproductive anyways, I figured that today I would tell you about two very intriguing posts that I saw over the weekend. Posts that I have nothing to do with, but that are mind-boggingly similar to Post It Politics.

The first has been the work of the UMD Tri Delta chapter. It seems that these sorority girls have been doing a kind of "You're Beautiful/Love Yourself" movement on campus.

Now, admittedly, this chalking campaign does not differ to much from those of other student groups (Jesus Loves You chalking, Free Hugs, etc etc). However, I do appreciate that some of these Tri Delta do-gooders have started to use a media that I am all too familiar with

Granted, none of these posts are made to change the meaning of any existing material. It's not as if they are putting these messages on top of pictures of "flawed" men and women (which would probably ruin the message of the whole thing anyway). But hey, they're still putting messages out there in a new, creative way to get people to view their surroundings differently. Good on you Tri Delta! I wonder if you've seen my tweet.
*On a somewhat unrelated note, I am very curious about what kind of Post-its they are using. For some reason they are much stickier than the ones that I bought on campus and have been using. I could use me some of those.

The other posts that I found caught me completely off guard. My girlfriend and I came upon them in the DC Metro station on U Street.

Now what exactly is this, you might be asking yourself. The poster in the background was posted by a group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and anti-Islam/anti-Muslim group that is organized out of Pamela Geller's Stop Islamization of America. The poster reads "IN ANY WAR BETWEEN THE CIVILIZED MAN AND THE SAVAGE, SUPPORT THE CIVILIZED MAN. SUPPORT ISRAEL. DEFEAT JIHAD."

I first became aware of these posters from news stories about them being put up in New York City subway stations, and how people were concerned not only about their racist message, but also about the effects these posters could have in wake of the deadly riots across the world that were set off by the release of an anti-Islam movie trailer. I had no idea that these posters had been put up here in DC until I ran across this one.

Now what seems to have happened here is that Palestinian supporters (and perhaps others who feel that this poster is racist and wrong) went ahead and fought this poster's message, turning what used to be a crass call to action into a resistance.

Someone had even gone so far as to reword the sign for their own message

Now I'm not sure if everything that was done here was organized or spontaneous. From what I could see, there were no organizational markings or anything of that nature, and most of the notes were written with different hand writing. Maybe it was organized to begin with, and has taken off from there. Regardless, I threw my own post into the fray. When I flipped my coin, it ended up, so that's how I posted. Not quite sure how that will be interpreted by passersby. Am I supporting the original poster, or am I supporting my posting brethren? When I tweeted the photo, I sent out tweets with tags both for AFDI (#SIOA) and those resisting these ads (#MySubwayAd) to gauge any kind of reaction.

When I looked into who might be doing these postings, I was unable to find any specific group, though this New York Magazine article does explain how people have reacted with imagery to the posters in the New York Subway. Also, going around is news of Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American writer and activist, and her vigilante attempt to fight these posters. See the result here. I believe this whole exchange puts the struggle between freedom of speech and its consequences better than I ever could.

Once again, though I am unsurprised that others have the idea to post in the same way I do, it's fairly moving for me to know that there are those who also see propaganda and want to put it into dispute. Now, I just wonder whether or not I'll have a chance to spread this from controversial advertising and into political propaganda as a whole with a little more than a week to go before the election. Hurricane Sandy is certainly not going to help any...

For now, stay safe, and as dry as you can.

@Post_It_2012

The Three Bs of 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012

And with the last presidential debate of 2012 comes the last debate related meme. It's kind of bitter sweet. I'm going to miss building up my week waiting for the next big thing the internet is going to draw from the fray.

Honestly, I was rather surprised that a political meme came out of the foreign policy debate as easily as it did. Though on the surface Obama and Romney might claim to have major differences in their plans for America as far as foreign policy is concerned, I don't believe they are that different, or at least not in terms of how they want to appeal to the public. Both want to come across as very strong, very able to deal with threats to America when/if they arise. They both aim to appeal to voters by being wary of Iran and China, concerned about Libya and Syria, and by showing unwavering support for Israel. So as far as their approach to dealing with any foreign issues is concerned, though they both may squabble over what's working and who has said what in the past and so forth, I don't believe either would do anything too differently. They're wary to use the military, but military force is not off the table. They want to negotiate for peace. They don't want jobs to go overseas. Yada yada yada.

And perhaps that is why the nature of the meme that has come out of third debate is so different, for while most of the memes so far in this debate have been drawn from gaffes, this one came from one of the candidates completely meaning what they said, and probably knowing that the audience would respond well. Here's a clip showing that moment in the debate.

*Zing* 

Correct me if you think I'm overstating this, but you have to hand it to the president here for being quite the tactician. He took what had seemed to be a strong point by Romney, turned it on its head, and stuck it right back at Romney in a blistering, ad hominem fashion. Romney never got a chance to defend himself or respond, and even if he did, he probably would have had to do so by at least partially retracting his previous statement, which would have come off across as weak. Regardless, Romney took a blow. Now, all of a sudden, the internet believes confusing foreign policy with a game of battleship is part of the Romney agenda...

and that he actually wants more more horses and bayonets in the military. It was also unfortunate for the Romney campaign that this picture of Romney riding a horse was already available, just begging to be photoshopped.

Now, because this meme came directly from what one of the candidates said, as opposed to taking something they said or did and reinterpreting that against them, I feel that it does deviate from Post It Politics's main theme of guerrilla strategies in political imagery (or how of applying alternative meaning to already existing images redirects political dialogue). However, one must consider how smears like this one by Obama, no matter how deftly they're done, are guerrilla-ish. I mean, I don't want to get all metaphysical on you or something, but in this last debate, at that moment, Obama took Romney's overall image, removed all of its good qualities, and reduced it to nothing more than a bayonet. And, as this Gallup poll shows, the public responded. Despite having no clear differences between them, Obama came out of this debate with  56% approval from independents, while Romney only had 27%.

And thus concludes the 2012 debates, which I believe should forever go down in history as when three (or five if you count the VP debate) images seemingly replaced the significance of every issue discussed. And lo and behold, it seems that even the meme creators agree with me.

I do appreciate this next one. Simplifying this elections key points into a children's book format is a nice touch.

And this next gif is a worthwhile commentary on what these have (seemingly) reduced much of the electorate to.

Now, all we can do is wait and see what the next 12 days have in store. More memes perhaps? We'll see ;)

Ok, so reporting in on the actual running of Post It Politics. I can now report the results from my mass campus wide posting that I previewed on Tuesday. I went to nearly every academic building on campus looking for bulletin boards with material for either the Dream Act Rally (that happened earlier today) or that remained from the Marriage Equality Rally that happened two weeks ago. While doing this, I also happened upon some materials urging us to rethink drug policies here in the US that were posted by both the Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Students for Liberty here in College Park.

All in all, I ended up posting on 36 fliers around campus, not too shabby in my opinion. My main purpose was to just get my image out there, put it on some people's radars. I'll have to see whether or not that actually works by monitoring my Twitter account, and also keeping an eye out for other signs of familiarity (people posting on their own, talking about it, asking about it, etc.). But of course, I also wanted to see how people responded.
In the end, based completely on how my coin flipped, I posted up 13 times, and down 23 times (maybe my coin had a really negative temperament, I don't know). When I went back to check up on my handiwork, 9 of my up thumbs remained, and only 8 of my down thumbs. The rest had been removed or changed. Here let's break down the data.
*Also, I must admit, the gathering of this data has been rough. Many of the posts that I made/much of the data collection was done quickly and has sometimes proved hard to track down. And some thumbs may have been changed, then removed, further complicating things. Therefore, some of these numbers are close estimates. But hey, IRB told me that I'm not technically doing research, so I'll let myself get away with it.
**I would also like to note that many if not most of these posts were done in the Biology-Psychology Building. I swear, there are more bulletin boards in there than bare wall space. Probably because of how often they are looking for test subjects...

Now, too be fair, the number of thumbs removed may be exaggerated. Many of the thumbs posted on fliers for the Marriage Equality Rally were taken down along with the flier itself because of how old they are. Of the 15 down thumbs that were missing, I'd say about 8 where taken down with the flier itself. This probably also accounts for two of the missing up thumbs.

Here are some general observations about these images

• Not once was there an image that had been flipped like the one on the display case from last Tuesday. I imagine this may be because of the reasons I discussed in that blog (display case, Obama, etc.)
• Thumbs posted in buildings where lots of social science/humanities classes are held featured more activity. Only 1 thumb posted in a science heavy building was taken down (though, to be fair, this could be because of a small sample size. It's really hard to find political stuff to post on in math and science buildings)
• Thumbs of any kind near faculty office bulletin boards were taken down. Maybe they just don't like clutter.
• 4 thumbs had been altered, but none of them had been posted back on to material. Sometimes, people would even remove the flier, but take the Post-it and stick it back on the bulletin board. However, they'd put it back with disregard for how the thumb was originally posted.
• One really unique instance was when I posted down on two fliers side by side, one post against marriage equality, one against the Dream Act. When I checked back, the post against marriage equality was gone with the flier still up, but the one against the Dream Act remained. It could be that the first one just fell off, but if not, this could say something about the posting community. (Or not. It's really hard to qualify stuff like this when you can't quantify it first...)

So, I shall post on. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the less than 40% survival rate for thumbs down. Keep an eye out for my postings/things to post on.

Lastly, a member of YAF finally did get back to me regarding No More Che Day. I will report back to you next week regarding any info I receive.

For now, enjoy the election home stretch! 

@Post_It_2012

Posting on a Dream

Monday, October 22, 2012

So, did any hilarious new memes come out on the internet over the weekend? Indeed one did.

This is Josh Romney. One of Mitt Romney's sons. This still was taken from last Tuesday's town hall debate between Romney and Obama, uploaded on October 17th, and started seeing heavy circulation on the 18th. Josh seems to be taking the debate very...seriously. Too seriously. Like a "I'm secretly a killing machine" kind of serious. Poor Mitt. He seems to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to debates, especially when it comes to the internet simply finding unfortunate material on him that's not particularly his fault. As discussed in previous blogs, whether or not this is because Romney is just a more embarrassing guy or because the internet community generally has it in for him remains to be seen. 

But I digress. Bring on the memes!
Here's Terminator Josh

Here's Josh keeping tabs on the Obamas

And here's a reference to the Binder meme that came from the same debate.

In other meme news, it seems that the Republican National Committee has made an attempt to reclaim the binder meme (with questionable success, in my opinion).

Also, this video was put out by jest.com regarding parody Twitter accounts, which throughout the campaign have complemented memes. I believe it makes an interesting critique on whether or not these memes are able to influence anyone due to their failure to remain relevant. 

Now I believe that this video might be a bit harsh by portraying these accounts/memes as frivolous. Though I did discuss the effect that memes might have on distracting the debate from real issues, I will admit that it brings attention to politics that would not otherwise be there. They serve their purpose, and we move on.

For Post It Politics news, it's official, there are now things to post on here at UMD!

The first is somewhat like the Marriage Equality Rally material that I discussed last Thursday. But this time, the material is surrounding an October 25th Rally for the Dream Act (which will be Question 4 on the ballot). I have found fliers for this absolutely everywhere here on campus. In fact, so many bulletin boards have so duplicates of theses fliers, that I find myself only posting once for each bulletin board for the sake of time and resources.

It will be interesting to see how people react across buildings based on whether I posted up or down. 

I wonder if the reason that so much of this material has been distributed has been due to how many campus groups and organizations are involved with this event (far more than the Marriage Equality Rally). Take a look.

I tweeted a picture of a thumbs up (which was the first post I made on one of these fliers) to a few of the organizations that have been very active on Twitter about this event, specifically the College Democrats (who may finally be showing some activity on campus), Lambda Theta Alpha, the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting, and once again, the UMD Student Government Association. And once again, I am surprised to see the SGA becoming so deeply involved with such a political issue, though this time slightly less so, seeing that the Dream Act is an issue closely related to higher education. And though they never did respond the last time I tweeted at them, this time the SGA was kind enough to retweet me. Very exciting. We shall now see if any of this work translates into real world activity or interactions, especially after I take the opportunity tomorrow to go to academic buildings all over campus looking for fliers to post on.
*Also, didn't mind posting up/tweeting for a liberal cause. I was beginning to get concerned about my project being seen as anti-liberal due to the way my coin has been flipping for the past week or so. Happy to be provoking both sides again.

The next was in response to some of the work of All Terp Everything, a collegiate apparel line run by the Sneaker Cartel, a Maryland student and alumni based urban wear business out of College Park. Recently, during the campaign, they have put out an "All Obama Everything" shirts and have been selling them around campus. And because of their campus connections, they have been allowed to put up this product in the display cases in the student union. So I posted there.

Interesting for the student union/university to display such overtly political material so publicly. And though I understand that this business's main customers probably aren't Romney people, I questioned why only the president get's any support when I tweeted this photo at them.

Still, perhaps this being so visible worked out better in the end for my project, for when I checked back later, I found this.

The thumb has been flipped! I feel this is a major moment for my project. Up until now, I've been wondering whether the inactivity of others surrounding my project has indicated that people don't care about showing approval or dissent, or perhaps they simply ignore political materials all together. But something about this post contradicted that. Perhaps it's because people are willing to fight dissent. Maybe people don't like seeing criticism of a popular student business. Or maybe it's because how visible this post was, what with display case and t-shirt and all. Regardless, I can now confirm that using images to send political messages can create real life reactions. The potential for discussion is alive on this campus. Now may it awake!!!

Alright, so there's my flair for the dramatic in this blog. Thanks for reading folks. Will give you an update on how everything is going on Thursday. Plus, we'll see how the internet reacted to the last of the 2012 presidential debates. Hopefully it should be pretty exciting ;)

@Post_It_2012

Romney Binders

Thursday, Oct 18, 2012

Ok, so today I'll start with the actual running of Post It Politics. Then I'll move on to what I believe to be one of the most surprising and random moments of a 2012 campaign that has already featured talking to chairs, Etch A Sketches, and firing Big Bird.

For anyone following along on the YAF/No More Che Day front, I can let you know that I've reached out in various ways to those who were involved in that project. So far I haven't heard anything from them. Looks like I might need to find some new ways to get in contact.

However, I was able to do some on campus posting! As some of you might know, there was a marriage equality rally on campus last week where some high profile people spoke, including Senator Ben Cardin. This had me very excited, because I thought this would lead to lots of advertisements about the event that I could post on.

This never really occurred. On the parts of campus that I frequented, I saw nothing. No chalking. No flyers. The only place I really saw anything about it was on Facebook.

However, last Tuesday while walking through a part of campus that I usually don't make it to, I found a flyer taped to the ground! And because the Marriage Equality Amendment remains a political issue, even though the event has passed, I went ahead, flipped a coin to determine up or down, and posted on it.

Ok, now full disclosure. I, personally, am in favor of marriage equality, and plan on voting in favor of Question 6 on November 6th. And therefore, making this post made me feel slightly uncomfortable. Now, I've posted thumbs down in the past for candidates that I actually support, and approved of candidates that I have no plan on voting for, but I always felt kind of ok about it. People might support or disapprove of a candidate for a variety reasons, coming from the left or the right, regardless of party. So I always felt that my fake approval/disapproval could be at least interpreted in different ways. However, when it comes to showing disapproval for Question 6, I felt like that could only be interpreted one way, a way that many very close friends of mine would probably not forgive me for.

However, I also know that maybe posting down in the end could prove beneficial for my project. On a campus that largely supports LGBT rights, showing disapproval for the rally could show the biggest reaction. Plus, in a way, I could understand someone who plans on voting yes for Question 6 still not being totally behind the rally that occurred. After all, the rally was hosted by the UMD Student Government Association, a group that has been given the authority to represent all students on campus. And while all students might be for lower textbook costs and the like, not everyone is for marriage equality. In a way, it seems that the SGA doesn't care about these students. I tweeted the above picture to the SGA (as well as the Human Rights Campaign and Marylander's for Marriage Equality) and let them know as much.

I went back to check on this post earlier today. The Post-it was gone. Whether it had been taken off, or simply walked over I don't know. There's been no activity on Twitter or anything else to use as an indicator. For good measure, I posted again, and will check back. Also, as fate might have it, walking back to my dorm, I took a new route, and once again found another rally flyer. Once again, I flipped a coin, and this time it came up heads, putting my conscience at ease.

So, as you probably know, there was a moment from Tuesday's town-hall style debate that everybody is talking about. But if you don't follow politics at all, and somehow have avoided the internet for the last three days, let me show you what I am referring to. I'll let you know that Romney was answering a question from a young woman in the crowd (in his usual round-a-bout let-me-rephrase-what-we're-talking-about kind of way) about women in the workforce not being paid the same as men for the same work. 

Now what do you think about this clip? I mean, while I was watching the debate and heard Romney say this, I didn't think it was the most eloquently stated thing in the world, but since when has Romney putting something not-so-eloquently been a surprise? Perhaps I just didn't see its significance at first because I'm not aware of the nuances of comments that can fire up American feminists.

But let me tell you. This did. 

Drawing from practically every existing meme on the internet, people stuck it to Romney for his bungled narrative. Creativity ran rampant, taking jabs at Romney from everything from his apparent awkwardness,

to his Mormon faith

to the fact that many women just weren't too impressed with his response to the original question at all.

My favorite images from this moment may not really be considered memes at all, but more of an internet trend, in which people started going on to amazon.com and leaving product reviews for binders. Here are two particularly witty (and politicized) ones.

Now I'm starting to understand why the botched binder example was so ripe for political imagery. Even though Romney was trying to make a point about what he has done to improve the working status of women in America, the very concept of him having an easy fix by being able to draw from a conglomerated stack of resumes doesn't have the appeal that Romney might have thought. And though Romney has been closing the gap in some polls of women voters, those who do oppose him have been pretty vehement. Even though the Romney campaign has lately been trying to portray the former governor as moderate on women's rights, I feel that many are still caught on the conservative Romney we saw when he was still having to establish himself amongst conservatives during the primaries. Plus, the word "binder" and all that goes with it was just a bad choice. If he had said folders full of women, would it be a different story? Perhaps not, but it might have been toned down a little.

Regardless, as the campaign edges closer to Election Day, with the last debate taking place on Monday, now Romney has yet another internet fiasco to deal with. In a way, it seems the Obama campaign is just costing through 2012, or at least in regards to social media, accepting the fact that meme culture seems to have it in for Romney. However, after reading this article from the Christian Science Monitor, I question whether or not this is necessarily a good thing for the campaign as a whole. In the article, Liz Marlantes compares Obama vs. Romney to Bush vs. Kerry, in which the sitting president just focused in on certain parts of the electorate and watched as his opponent grappled with the rest. The result: distraction from real issues. The way this election is going may work against the president in the long run. If reelected, he may have to deal with a constituency who is only willing to tolerate him, instead of the enthusiastic population that he represented coming out of 2008.

Whoa, s**t just got real. Political imagery real-world consequences for the win!

@Post_It_2012