Trending Topics
As of 11 hours ago, America’s favorite counterterrorism agent was trending on Twitter. Why? Well, you have seen the news right? No? Turn on a TV. Or a radio. Maybe buy a newspaper, they’re quite cheap, I hear.
Some, jokingly, speculated, this is what the ex-CTU agent was up to since last being seen saving New York City from nuclear destruction and being hauled off by private police. His current whereabouts are unknown. (No, I will not SPOIL the end of 24 for you)
Dammit!
No, no. He wouldn’t yell at him as he shot the most evil terrorist in the face. But it’s an interesting idea. What would Jack Bauer think of the recent news of Osama Bin Laden’s death?
“At some level, this was the ultimate Jack Bauer play,” Howard Gordon, executive producer of 24, told the Wall Street Journal Monday. “9/11 was the lens through which ’24′ was watched. This is a cultural touchstone. It wasn’t a drone attack that killed him but a tactical team that went in. It’s the conflation of the fictional world of Jack Bauer and real-life heroism.”
Twitter Traffic
Given the 10:30 p.m. broadcast announcement (and interruption of the Apprentice — and no, it wasn’t because Obama had more Trump jokes to tell. But then again, who doesn’t?) and subsequent delay to President Barack Obama’s speech in the East Room, many wondered what exactly was going to happen last night.
Was it about gas prices? Housing crisis? Banks? Then word started to leak out from various media outlets, and it set Twitter on fire.
According to the Huffington Post: “Twitter said it recorded the ‘highest sustained rate of Tweets ever’on Sunday evening, when an average of 3,440 tweets per second were sent between 10:45PM EST and 12:30 AM EST.
“The tweets sent per second reached a peak of 5,106 at 11PM EST on Sunday evening. It’s an impressive figure, but one that falls short of the rate recorded during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (5,530 tweets per second) and New Year’s Eve (6,939 tweets per second).”
Other interesting tidbits:
- Global web traffic spiked 24 percent with the news of an announcement, and subsequent confirmation Osama Bin Laden was killed, the Huffington Post said.
- Sadly, it didn’t beat Will and Kate
What do you think? What would Bauer have done? Tortured him? Captured him? Maybe a nice monologue before a double tap to the chest and one in the head? You decide. After all, he’s fictional.
Haha, this is a funny post. I could not believe the activity on social media after the news was announced. I stayed up late simply to read the facebook posts/tweets on the topic. You really see individual’s true colors on social media- somewhat of a raw emotion for some.
Very philosophical post. It has been very interesting to look at what people have said on twitter since that news was released.
Love this post. And Jack Bauer. I’m really a die-hard 24 fan and have watched every season consecutively (over two years, I’m not that obsessed) but when is the movie coming out?!
In all seriousness though, Bin Laden’s death does seem somewhat surreal to me. I believe that we, generally speaking, have become desensitized to such critical civil issues.
I feel that this is partly due to digital development, meaning that most of our interaction and learning now occurs through a digital screen of sorts.
At least for me, if the video of his assassination was to circulate, I might not have a difficult time convincing myself that it was just another clip from 24.
I also feel that the desensitivity partly comes from how our culture makes “news” out of things that really aren’t news. As a journalist, Chris, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about: proximity, significance, timeliness, impact, prominence, conflict…
Anyways, thanks for sharing. It was interesting to see the stats on SM traffic.