The online conversation diverged down two distinct paths: over-connection (with the Republican Party Iowa caucus) and dis-connection, with a 2012 trend out of the gate for more time offline.
Let’s take the first, more distasteful path (why not?) and take a look at former Senator Rick Santorum. He seemingly came out of nowhere to come within 8 votes of toppling front-runner Mitt Romney in Iowa this Tuesday. This led to gay sex columnist Dan Savage’s ultimate wet dream.
The notoriously homophobic Santorum once equated gay sex to something widely paraphrased as “man on dog”. Savage ran a contest to nominate the most disgusting byproduct of anal sex and then ran it up the Google flag pole to the point that if you Google “Santorum” you will not get this lovely picture of the Senator we’ve posted here, but rather something that will make you go Ewwww! Despite pleas from Santorum to the Big G itself, Google claims there is nothing they can do about “Santorum’s Google problem.” The more people that search his name and then click on Dan Savage and friends’ definition, the higher Santorum as anal sex byproduct goes. Try it.
Makes sense as to why the path offline is getting a lot of foot traffic this week. A story in the New York Times by Pico Iyer (“The Joy of Quiet”) underscored all those New Year’s resolutions about spending more time offline. It’s given legs to catch phrases like “Internet sabbath” and “solitude is the new luxury.” People are trying to log off for a whole day each weekend or are willing to pay premium dollars for a getaway with no TV or wi-fi. For those who can’t go cold turkey, Mashable reviewed the top 6 apps for helping you break your online addiction. We hope they don’t get in the way of you reading our Online Media Roundup, though!
What else are people talking about online this week? Overall, it was a slow week. A Steve Jobs action figure hit the market, a woman known as the Human Barbie was being roundly criticized for giving her 7-year-old daughter a gift certificate for liposuction (not valid until the girl is 16, btw), Facebook has been cited in up to one-third of UK divorce cases and Fidel Castro is still not dead (in spite of Twitter reports to the contrary).
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
