I sincerely hope the giraffomania on facebook has run its course, and I suspect it has at least peaked. We may see a trickling of giraffe posts for months to come, but I think most people who were likely to participate have already participated.
It was an exercize in silliness, but it does point to something that most people would probably consider a weakness, or even a flaw in facebook, but which I see as one of its greatest potential strenghs: groupthink.
Spreading the Word
If we can get millions of people around the world to change their profile picture to a giraffe for 3 days because they got the wrong answer to a riddle, maybe we can get millions of people to all flush their toilets at the same time, or all wear something orange on a given day, or to open their windows and shout “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” or gather in public squares and sing The Eensy Weensie Spider, or go up to their rooftops and shout out Allah Akbar! Maybe we can get millions of people to refuse to shop at a certain store, or start recycling old toothpaste tubes.
Somebody posted this poem, (well, the last 5 lines of a poem) by Percy Shelley, on my facebook page the other day, (I’m writing it down from memory, so if a word is out of place don’t worry about it) and I think it perfectly explains the power that I’m talking about:
Rise like lions from your slumber
in unvanquishable numbers
shaking off your chains like dew
which in the night has fallen on you
Ye are many, they are few
www.gurukalehuru.com 