We Were All Witnesses, And It's All Our Fault.

Chuck Klosterman recently made the point on Bill Simmons' BS Report that the popularity of Social Networking sites like Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, was a direct the result of a sort of Post 9-11 fear of being forgotten, or having one's voice silenced. Posting a status update on Facebook is a vapid everyday habit for most of us. Klosterman argues that it really is a collective attempt by us all to leave some sort of legacy of who we are in case we're suddenly wiped off the face of the earth. In essence we're writing our autobiographies whether we intended to or not. I've been told that I'm one of the worst offenders. Looking at my facebook profile tells you exactly where I've been, and what I've done since the middle of 2007 or so. All of the most important moments of my life have been documented and broadcast to the internet (until of course I recently revised my security settings to Ft. Knoxian levels). I know a fair amount of people, and almost all of them have a facebook account, the ones that don't, they have a twitter account. Whether I realize it or not my opinions reach a pretty amazing amount of people compared to back in the days when I cranked out a couple of issues of my punk rock fanzine or did my late night radio show in College. Through the social networking sites I use the people I care about know that I'm around, and doing ok.

What happens when you're the most popular and dare I say most talented athlete we've seen since Michael Jordan? Facebook and Twitter are accessible to the average joe, but when you're LeBron James ESPN becomes your Facebook profile. LeBron may not have realized it when he agreed to make the announcement of his free agency decision during prime time on ESPN, (there seems to be some disagreement between the principles regarding how this came to pass, so lets for the sake of simplicity work off the premise that he was approached by the network to do this) but he was taking part in the most widely watched and most commented upon status update in history.

Obviously it didn't go over very well. Facebook and Twitter exploded, although they didn't crash like many people joked leading up to the event. Anti-LeBron sentiment won in a landslide. John McCain and Walter Mondale, you're off the hook. Here's the thing though, most of the anger was directed at the WAY LeBron made his decision, not with the decision itself. Tweets and status updates derided LeBron for being self aggrandizing, egotistical, making himself bigger than the game, a self promoter, I could go on...and on...and on. Have you ever published a status update where you shared a strong political opinion? Imagine the flood of comments you received in its wake and multiply it by the combined salaries of "Miami Thrice" (a nickname so hilariously terrible, that it's amazing) and you're just getting in the neighborhood of the negative reactions.

LeBron's decision was of little consequence to most viewers. It was THE DECISION that really bothered us. It wasn't that LeBron essentially wiped the city of Cleveland's nose in the mess that Cavaliers owner Daniel Gilbert left on the carpet (His own damn fault, plain and simple and no amount of vitriol wrapped up in Comic Sans font should misdirect you from that fact). What really galled us was the fact that LeBron thought that we all should care about where he was "bringing his talents in the fall". Newsflash folks...he was RIGHT. More people tuned into King James' status update than watched his basketball team play a single playoff game on national TV this past spring. 7.2 rating last night on cable television vs 6.3 on ABC. Nike was prescient...We Were All Witnesses. Because of our voyeuristic obsession with Facebook, Twitter and reality television we couldn't help ourselves. We had to watch, we had to react. We hated ourselves for it because of how it reflects upon each and every one of us.  We all over share, we all want our voices heard over the din and we all realize deep down in our core that it's a little embarrassing.  LeBron James and The Decision took the Facebook/Twitter phenomenon to its zenith.  It held a mirror up to us, we were all witnesses...and we hated what we saw.