One month ago, on the night of Sunday, July 31st, I tweeted:
Over a dozen people immediately responded or re-tweeted it. Amused by this response, I went to brush my teeth. I believe it was while brushing that the name “slowclapforcongress.com” floated into my head.
Here, for archival purposes, is what happened next.
Sunday night
Monday morning
Walked to work. Set up my laptop. Recorded this:
Uploaded it under the words:
Tweeted this:
And emailed a few friends.
Later that day
Initial response was positive.
Hey! We even got a couple more!
And by that evening, the page was looking rather full.
But I was tired and had to turn in.
Tuesday
Oof. Woke up to find several new videos in my inbox. Then my friend and teammate Adam made a mashup of the ones I’d posted so far. Fun! I threw it at the top of the page.
Tuesday Afternoon – First Press
When I’d put my real contact information in the Whois database for the domain, I had a vague sense that it might actually be used. Nick Judd from TechPresident was the one who used it. He contacted me, asked a few questions, and then wrote this story:
The Internet is Getting Together to #SlowClapForCongress
As the day progressed, a few big-name Tweeters shared the link, including Katie Stanton, and an actress I didn’t recognize but had somewhere in the range of a million followers. (I’d link to her tweet, but I don’t seem to have saved the URL.)
And theeeeeennnn
{blink}
Wait, what?
@Lawrence, host of @TheLastWord on MSNBC?
Wow. What a way to cap the whole thing.
And that was that. Quite a thrill, and a fun way to spend a couple of…
Wednesday Morning
Boing Boing: “Slow Clap for Congress: Sarcastic Youtube Meme”
Oh cripes.
As the merit badge states, “You’ve had a project mentioned on the Great Big Blog!”
Gosh, about the only way this could get better is if…
Wait, what?
Please tell me that’s a verified account, please tell me that’s a verified account, please tell me that’s
Okay, it’s verified, but that doesn’t mean it’s….
Oh cripes.
Is this thing on?
At this point, I respond with:
Successfully making myself look 13 years old when this tweet is subsequently quoted on the blog that originally broke the story and has now posted an update about its progress.
Chagrined, I note to myself:
OH HAI CNN
(or)
In Which It Gets Meta
(or)
CNN Reports About Chris’s Tweet About Reporters Reporting Chris’s Tweets
CNN Blog: “Congress gets (slow) applause for raising the debt ceiling”
And on the Tee-Vee
“Tell me about this website slowclapforcongress.com”
“Yeah, apparently somebody came up with another great idea. This slow clap, I think is the best way to show someone how little you appreciate someone [...] in this case it’s very sarcastic. You can watch these people slow clapping… this is how happy Americans are.
“It really is excellent.”
“I love this idea. Love it. Perfect.”
And…
And finally…
The Washington Post Opinion Blog: “Congress responds to ‘slow clap’ to resolve FAA mess — for now”
Now, I’m not dumb. I know that headline is by an opinion editorialist. It’s not factual reporting.
But if that was even 1% true… holy moly.
Friday August 5th
At this point, Slow Clap had nearly run its course.
The traffic to the site had evolved something like this:
On Friday morning, a local Baltimore news station had finally caught the story, and was really keen to do an interview. They called my house, they called my work number, they wrote in to my personal email, to my work email, they even filed a support request to the entire Figure 53 team.
By this point, though, I really didn’t have anything else to say about Slow Clap (not that there had ever been much to say in the first place). I was anxious to get back to focusing on my work, and not at all attracted to the idea of interrupting yet another day with a nerve-wracking interview. It took several attempts to convince them that no, I really didn’t want to drop everything to talk to them, but eventually they took the hint.
And that, finally, really was that.
Was it constructive? Not clear. Did it feel good to be heard? Yes.
Serendipity
Around this time, and completely by coincidence, I stumbled across an article reporting that we should “Use Sarcasm Instead of Outright Anger for Better, More Productive Conflicts”:
The study also showed that students exposed to sarcasm performed better on problems that required more “cognitive complexity,” or the ability to look at issues from more than one angle, than those that didn’t hear such comments. The researchers suggest that while the underlying anger helped to focus the students, the inherent humor of sarcasm helped to offset the damage that anger can do.
So maybe it was just the tiniest bit constructive after all.