Tonight I went to Paradise City Restaurant and bar in Northampton to watch the third debate between McCain and Obama. I met up with my friend Adam and his girlfriend Liz.
This was the first debate that I didn't watch in my living room while avidly following twitter. In fact I didn't look at twitter once tonight!
What a different experience being surrounded by people's real time reactions in a bar as opposed to twitter.
It was pretty clear to me this time that Obama won, keeping his cool as usual.
Now with respect to a couple of things Senator McCain said, the notion that I voted for a tax increase for people making $42,000 a year has been disputed by everybody who has looked at this claim that Senator McCain keeps on making.
Even FOX News disputes it, and that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me.
I'll talk more about this later as I think I'm getting sick. I know I'm gonna feel worse in the morning... not going to classes tomorrow.
I used twitter again last night to (attempt?) to converse with others and share quips about what was going in the second Presidential debate.
I used both #umassprez2 and #debate08 for hashtags. Both hashtags were trending on the twitter search throughout the night. I was surprised that the UMass tag made the trends! It made me feel like I was really a part of something when I participated in it.
I made a lot of new twitter friends; I found some familiar UMass faces twittering on #umassprezz2. At least 6 other people from places like Missouri and Greenwich Village decided to start following me too! I have a following!
Shelby Landeck in Steve Fox's Politics, Journalism and the Web class commented on their entry that she found participating in twitter, watching the twitter tag feeds, and watching the debates was overwhelming. I very much feel the same, reading other twitters and thinking of my own caused me to focus less and really get a grasp on what was being said.
Both Obama and McCain had a few snide remarks, Obama even laughed to himself while McCain was speaking. It seemed a lot more catty than the last debate.
Tom Brokaw, the moderator, tried to keep them in check with the time limits from the start, he had to get more aggressive towards the end because neither cared to keep it to 1 minute.
Fellow UMass Twitter SPsullivan caught McCain botching a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I like the live fact checking.
A lot of people picked up on McCain's new "my friends" phrase that he unabashedly overused.
The debate really focused on the state of the economy, with good reason. Yesterday the economy in Europe was also having major trouble.
John McCain refused to prioritize between healthcare, energy and entitlement reform (social security and medicare). While Obama, actually ANSWERED the question and prioritized... like a president would.
Brokaw: The three -- health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?
McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it's very important that reform our entitlement programs.
There was of course another big issue with lag on twitter. You could really see people getting riled up in their twits, too many twitters = FAIL. I know a few times the site completely stopped for me and I had to refresh.
It was interesting to see what both professors and students were saying.
I personally focused on being a bit petty at the beginning and digging at McCain's ancientness. As the night wore on I tried to be a bit more civil and focus on the meat of the debate.
I find it hard to call a winner in these debates. It might help if I read over the transcript of the debate. Between twitting and following others I don't believe I was able to absorb enough of what was actually going on. Twitter can be distracting, I found myself hitting refresh every minute to try and keep up. But perhaps that is my mistake. I should look at twitter and use it at my own pace, and concentrate on the event more.
Twitting to a live event is my favorite way to use it. The commentary and insight of others is invaluable. They catch some things that I didn't, like the botched quote.
Here's the whole debate if you missed it, or y'know, if you want to just relive all of the excitement!
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.
