ACCIDENTALLY VIRAL - HOW COFFEE STRIKES AT THE CANADIAN SOUL Some days are stranger than others. Most days I have a plan – it’s not a very exciting one, given that it’s a predictable and repetitive mental ‘to do’ list comprising mundane work routines, endless chores, and the general flotsam of daily life. But It’s the plan I sink my teeth into, the automated trip route programmed in to the existential GPS of my life that keeps each day on track. I expect most of the unexpected with a certain self-indulgent sense of irony. These are the trite but laughable frustrations that just barely fall short of a Laurel and Hardy skit --- realizing I forgot to get gas just as the warning dash light comes on … pouring a bowl of cereal only to realize we are out of milk … searching for my glasses only to discover I’m wearing them … tripping over the cat in the dark on the way to the bathroom … getting the only cart in the grocery store with one wonky wheel that both squeaks like an angry macaw and veers perennially hard right … finding the remote control inexplicably stashed in the laundry hamper … staring at the car keys safely dangling from the ignition from the wrong side of the locked door … that one indestructible mosquito wearing a portable amplifier buzzing me at 2am on an irritatingly muggy summer night…. These are the anticipated surprises life consistently offers up to test my somewhat under-developed patience. These curve-balls are hardly shocking, though often rather comedic. These qualify as odd but hardly strange. Strange is much rarer. Strange is the event that hits like a small meteor and leaves an indelible crater as its mark. It’s the OMG moment which still has your senses reeling days later, still trying to catch up to a chain of events which has clearly evolved its own independent momentum. You are in its wake, more that in its path. Strange is someone getting into the passenger side of your car with a cup of coffee and pulling a paper towel full of maggots out of the cup!! Strange is trying to process my sensory reaction to realizing what I’m looking at. Strange is the dawning reality of the implications of finding maggots in a coffee already half consumed. This was my strange Thursday … and into Friday too. That single moment turned out to be creepingly visceral. The initial ‘ick factor’ didnt fade. All we could say, over and over, was “Ewwwww…..Gross.” There just werent any other words to fit. It was the growing sense of violation realizing someone actually unintentionally ingested the squirmy critters! I grabbed my phone and snapped a few pictures; then posted them to my Facebook. I just couldnt wrap my head around it and had to share the weirdness with my friends. I expected a few comments like “Eww” “Yech” and “Disgusting” along with some predicable puns and a few bad jokes from my comedian friends. What I didnt expect was the traction my one post gathered almost immediately. Within a couple of hours hundreds of people had shared it. Most shared my revulsion, a few trolls stepped in with their requisite fare of curmudgeonly skepticism, and a few others exercised their militant natures with calls for legal action. I watched with abstract fascination as my timeline exploded. If I thought it had gathered inexplicable interest that evening, it was nothing compared to the next day. By morning, the sharing was in the thousands and the media was reaching out. By afternoon, it had officially ‘gone viral’ with the exponential sharing power of social media. My original post has metamorphosed into its own life force, journeying far beyond the charted territory of my own timeline. While it’s off on its on journey, I’m left to process the the hows and whys of such strange phenomenon. That social media is a powerful conduit is not news for me. I work in that industry and leverage social media regularly. In a business context, ‘going viral’ is the Holy Grail – the ultimate in desired reach for a concept, a product, a brand. But this is a personal timeline post. I’m a middle aged empty-nester whose Pinterest boards are dominated by craft instructions, recipes, and housekeeping tips. My Facebook photo albums are a fairly even mix of grammar-police memes, random pet photos, and shout-outs to myriad family and friends who also share their musings about kids, pets, and the vagaries of unreliable weather forecasts. I am, both by nature and by design, NOT interesting enough to ‘go viral.’ I am not hip – I claim my menopausal status as a well-earned rite of passage and my social media persona is merely an extension of the ‘mom-jeans-kind-of-gal” I am. Ergo, I was stunned to watch MY post take off like a space shuttle fueled by illegal diet pills!!! And I was intrigued – what does this mean? Why this particular post, buried on this particular quintessentially average timeline? Ive posted gross stuff before – the night before I featured the disgusting picture of a prehistorically large beetle/cockroach thingy (thankfully dead!) that I saw in the parking lot of my neighbourhood convenience store. Last year I shared the x-rays of my severed elbow before and after surgery. These were just as ‘icky’ and certainly, among my FB friends, they stirred up small avalanches of humorous, sardonic comments – but nothing in volume that could even be remotely interpreted as approaching ‘viral’. So what is the difference this time? I believe it is the resonance of the subject matter. It’s not just that is a major brand – it’s that is coffee. And this in itself is very revealing about grassroots motivators within our culture. Sure, people react because maggots are scandalous but would it have been as reactive if the maggots had infested something else? I think that we, as Canadians, so identify with our love of java that any contaminant which threatens its sanctity is akin to a blasphemous act. As I read the myriad comments proliferating around my post, I am struck by two dominant themes – either people are deeply offended that a purveyor of coffee could be allow the precious liquid to be thusly debased; or they are defensively clinging to disbelief as a protective barrier from considering the possibility this could happen to their coffee too. Either way…. It appears that the key to going viral in the social media sphere, at least in Canada, is to tug at the heart of the caffeinated Canadian soul.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 04:28:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015