Just two days after it was yelled out in a University of Florida lecture hall, "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon.
So what did you think. The police [those fat, corpulent, dull-looking chaps] manhandle in India only. They do it all over. For no great rhyme or reason. Including the US.
For those of you who've been on vacation on a Greek Island, or are just logging onto your computer from a remote location in China, the incident sparking the worldwide uproar is the Monday arrest and tasering of Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student.
Meyer barged in line to harangue Massachusetts senator John Kerry during a campus talk that day. The student refused to pipe down after being asked to by the forum's organizers, and after he carried on pressing Kerry for answers, police hauled him off. They forced him to the ground, and tasered him. [Sourced: WB Network]
In the whole ruckus, the student yelled, rather haplessly: Don't tase me, bro.
That was it. The word spread. It is a rage. It is all over. Sample this:
- The term hovered between 9th and 11th place as the most searched for term on Google for Wednesday, according to Google Trends.
- The above video has been the number 1 Viral Video for the past 24 hours, according to Unruly Media, an online marketing firm in London that tracks viral video activity on the Web. The Meyer arrest video has received 2.6 million views and almost 40,000 new comments since Monday.
- In contrast, the much-talked about John Edwards' rebuttal to President Bush's progress report on the Iraq war received 114 thousand views and 43 new posts.
- Many of the leading opinion shapers on both the left and the right, as well as newspaper blogs, offered their thoughts and insights on the incident.
- Television pundits across the dial offered their opinions, and those opinions were archived for posterity on YouTube.
- Several enterprising individuals have even snapped up variations of the spelling of the phrase as Web addresses. One of them points to a Wikipedia entry for the University of Florida.
- Mashups are proliferating on the Web.
- A couple of t-shirt designs, and bumper stickers have emerged.
- Dozens of people have felt compelled to record their own video responses in a YouTube forum discussion on the matter.
A fast digital world, bro.
Sameer
