I don't watch sports, OK?
Really. Never. It would be useless for me to even have tried to cover one of those events.
So I decided to twitter about the Vice Presidential Debates between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden even though I was at The Collegian.
This situation made it infinitely more frustrating. I streamed it live from CNN.com, first the audio was too quiet. Then I got to plug my laptop into some speakers, but every so often it started lagging BIG TIME. Then in addition to that, twitter was lagging for me. Sometimes what I wanted to type would literally take 2 minutes to show up. I just kept doing the best I could with the situation.
Then finally towards the end I realized people were watching it on TV in the other room. So finally things went my way, not until then though.
I tried not to be biased, but I kept only hearing Palin, I think because I find her voice so annoying. So therefore I more or less only commented on her.
She said a lot of phrases that I have heard her say repeatedly in the past such as but not limited to: "bless their hearts", "the maverick", "ingenuity", "McCain said...", "_____ rears his ugly head" and "I think what the American people need is something new and different" (hypocrite much?)
Palin didn't answer a lot of questions well, saying she wouldn't, similar to Jonathan Safran Foer.
I tried to keep up with the general discussion but my lag and the volume of response with #vpdebate on twitter was hard to follow.
In the end, two new people started following me on twitter.
The debate transcript is here.
Here is the Vice Presidential Debate in its entirety.
4 comments:
AGh I feel your pain! I tried to blog about the red sox because I had to work last night and i basically sat there confused with absolutely nothing to say. Luckily I got to go online at work so I went on CNN.com... I had all sorts of issues too -i needed to download some plugin cause i have a mac but then the wireless died so yea it was fun i had to use someone elses computer. and then there was that lag. haha. yay technology
Yeah, I can't talk about sports at all so trying to twitter about it would have been pretty bad, I didn't even want to try.
Two quick points here...
1. If you don't like or understand sports, can't you sort of tweet about other things you see and hear on the broadcast (announcer's story or ridiculous blazer, fan shots, commercials between innings). All are part of the spectacle of the broadcast of the game. And like you would at a dinner party, you are looking for ways to enter the conversation. We should talk about this point more in class. I am interested in hearing from more people on it.
2. I laughed when I saw the Palin-Foer comparison. I thought the same thing!
I have a lot of trouble following sports, as in following the actions of the game. I pay attention for so long then lose interest and seemingly miss all of the things people are raving about.
The fact that I would rather watch the VP debates than a sports game was a big factor in my decision though too. I just thought VP debates would be more worth my time.
But now that you bring up those other points, it seems like it wouldn't be so hard to have tried it. Though when I think about it, it reminds me of going to a party where you don't know anybody, and everyone is talking about the same thing... and you just feel like you can't relate and can't get a word in.
Which just makes me feel awkward ha. But heck, maybe if I twit(ter?) about sports, I will partly overcome that social fear as well.
And yeah haha Palin and Foer both made disclaimers! It really struck me.
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