Vote Different: the anonymous "1984"ad

In case you haven't seen it yet, watch this mash-up of Apple's "1984" ad with elements of the 2008 Democratic primary mixed in:



Pretty much everything that's going to be said about this particular video has been said already. We've graduated from the JibJab flash cartoons of 2004 to the Youtube election of 2008 and all I can say is watch out -- this is only going to get worse. The word going around is one of amazement, that some anonymous kid on the internet got his hands on the all-powerful 30 second spot and took it back from the big networks, that Youtube mashups like this will do to TV commercials what blogging is doing to journalism.

Well, not everyone can write well, which means that the majority of bloggers and journalists are people with at least an ounce of intelligence and a semi-valid idea of some sort in their heads. If they didn't, then they wouldn't even be trying to write. However, as we've seen with Youtube's predecessor, Flash, you don't even need that much to communicate using the visual medium. The proof of the pudding can be found on sites like Newgrounds and eBaums World, where any mouth-breather can proudly display their new animation of Martin Luther King Jr. dressed up as an African tribesman.

For every well-thought out JibJab cartoon, there are thousands of these crude scribbles, just as for every "1984-Obama" mashup there are thousands of videos of kids lighting their own farts on fire. Putting the political advertising battle online removes all of the boundaries of traditional television advertising , and seeks to amplify everything that's wrong with an already-flawed method of democratic discourse.

Like bloggers, Youtubers aren't held accountable like journalists or political action committees when they write or tape something that is verifiably false -- and that lack of accountability will be dangerous. While a user-created political ad like this is certainly not a first, you can be sure that the visibility of this one will spawn an entirely new genre, one that will try to make the national discussion more accessible but only succeed in dumbing it down on the whole.