The Po Show

Blog or Die?

So I understand there's this big going-on this month, promoted under some name that features a lot of word fragments. here

Participants are supposed to blog at least once a day throughout the month of November. Since I fortuitously blogged on the first day of the month (by pure coincidence, since I blog like twice a month), I thought that, simply as an exercise in self-motivation (since I find it hard to be motivated to do ANYTHING these days), I'd try to do it.

I was struck by the tongue-in-cheek slogan Blog or Die, though. Obviously this is in reference to the Vote or Die motto that was pushed by various "youth cultural warriors" (i.e., people who had made a lot of money off of selling music and other media to kids) during the 2004 election.

Boy, has that slogan come to bite them in the ass.

18-21 year olds did go to polls in substantial numbers in 2004, though how much of it was influenced by Vote or Die, it's hard to say. And now, so many of those kids are even more cynical about the voting process. WTF, they say, we voted and nothing changed. It got worse. WTF is the use? So voting advocates who are targeting youth now say they totally have to approach them differently, rather than blythely saying Vote or Die.

But in an electoral year in which the way the votes swing may indeed impact how many more people will go over to Iraq to die, it's not an empty slogan. It's real and it's important.

Hmm, see, this is why I don't blog very often! I like to wait until I have a solidified concept in my head, and I've run it past myself a few times to make sure it makes sense. What I just wrote smacks of babbling. But then I guess that's not unusual in the blogsphere.

I'll try again tomorrow :p.