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Time's Person Of The Year: You (And Me)

This being the year of the YouTube election, it makes perfect sense that Time magazine today named "you" -- as in you, me and everyone else engaged in the new media revolution -- as "person of the year."

Other factors included the public's embrace of blogs, podcasts, the online collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia, social-networking sites like MySpace, and even virtual likenesses of ourselves at Second Life.

Here is the magazine's explanation for why it granted the award to the army of Davids and gate-crashers who are winning the war of Web 2.0:

For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you. ... This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person.

Of course, a mainstream media outlet like Time couldn't possibly say something flattering about "the people" without also poking a stick in the eye of America. So "you" also gets this unroyal rhetorical treatment:

Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.

The criticism is fair, as anyone who has spent time online knows. But it certainly wasn't necessary.

It's not the first time average Joes and Janes have been won such recognition. ABC News named bloggers as the "people of the year" in 2004, in part for their political coverage during the presidential election, and Merriam-Webster recognized "blog" as the top word of that year.

UPDATE: Captain's Quarters called Time's selection the "suck-up version" of person of the year. "Naming all of us may make us feel good about our anonymity, but in the end it's either pandering to millions of readers or a refusal to take a stand on anyone," Ed Morrissey wrote. "Choosing everyone is an abdication on the entire purpose of the project."

UPDATE II: William Beutler at Blog P.I. presciently predited Time's cover back in October and even crafted his own version of a potential cover.

More blog reactions to the person of the year are in the extended entry.

-- Althouse: "I'm sorry. This is just too unfathomably dorky to talk about. ... Do not let them succeed in their attempt to use you -- to use 'you' -- to go viral. And since you probably already did, please stop now. You dork!"

-- BuzzMachine: "[T]here's no news here. This is nothing new. We have always been in charge. It's just that the people who thought they had the power now have no choice to but hear us and recognize that we are, and always have been, the boss."

-- Eschaton: "It's a truly wonderful thing that the internets lets everyone self-publish for free and potentially have an influence. But, you know, most people don't actually do any of that. And fewer of those who try have any success."

-- Russell Shaw at The Huffington Post: "To me this thinking is condescending, patronizing, marketing-driven hooey. I mean you can -- and quite probably do -- have millions of little islands of citizen created content where the majority opinion is that the Bush war in Iraq was/is a bad idea, and we should get out much sooner rather than later. But at the end of a year when "you had all this influence, guess what happens. Bush ignores the Iraq Study Group and is thinkng hard about how to inject 20,000 or so fresh troops into the Iraq theater."

-- TalkLeft: "It's really not us, of course, it's the web. But I guess saying it's us personalizes it a bit. ... I guess we've arrived. (sarcasm)."

-- Wizbang reminds us all about how comic art imitates life by recalling a comedian's skit about magazines that show "how increasingly narcissistic Americans are becoming."

-- Go to Memeorandum for even more news and commentary on the "person of the year" front.

Posted by Danny | 01:03 PM

Comments

All criticism is necessary, Danny, especially, but not exclusively, that which is fair. That is the point of the 'new media revolution.'

Endymion | 12.17.06 06:30 AM

And remember: You're unique, each and every one of you.

Bob Hawkins | 12.17.06 02:12 PM

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