Speed of Internet

"Don't tase me bro"

On Monday, September 17, John Kerry was giving a speech at the University of Florida. A student, one Andrew Meyer, was heckling Kerry, when police started dragging him away. Meyer asked, rather loudly, why he was being taken away, that he had done nothing wrong, all the while his friend was videotaping the scene.

At one key moment, prior to the police attempting to subdue him (he was already on the ground), he yells out, rather infamously:

"Don't tase me bro"

After which, they proceed to tase him.

Any regular reader of Reddit will know that police like to tase rowdy people, even as some have complained they enjoy it too much, that the amount of pain inflicted doesn't justify the frequency that it's used. Indeed, sometimes police, with little provocation, certainly none like Andrew's heckling, still insist on using a taser. It's been suggested that each time the police use the taser, a device meant to send high currents of electricity to incapacitate an alleged perpetrator, they should have it used on themselves, so as better to understand what they are doing to others.

But the key is this. In a time before the Internet, before YouTube, this incident would have had little ripple in the news. Now, you can buy t-shirts and other memorabilia less than a week after it happened.

Literally, this phrase was popular days afterwards, with people seeking to cash in literally Wednesday, two days after the speech. Columns have already sprouted about how to handle the police if caught in a similar situation (advice: don't say "Don't tase me bro").

Heck, I'm writing a blog entry about this.

But mostly to remind myself about the incident.

And who uses bro anyway?

So seventies.

Bro.