Earth Hour Generates Instant Online Community of Independent Thinkers
Earth Hour Takes Affect in Toronto at 8:30 PM EDT March 28, 2009
You may or may not have been privy to the non-event on Saturday night, March 28, known as EarthHour. Quite simply, EarthHour was intended to draw attention to overall planetary energy consumption by making a token effort of turning off one’s lights for 1 hour. You know, the Power of One, etc. Now if you don’t know what to do on a Saturday night with the lights off for one hour, I’m not going to tell you. But what many did was sit down at their computer and opine in social media forums about EarthHour. And in doing so, communities came together to discuss, debate, bicker, ridicule and commiserate. There was no shortage of opinion. And there was no shortage of community either.
I used as my barometer the search tool in Twitter. In the course of the one hour that I sat in the dark, there were over 3000 “Tweets” about #earthhour and the sides were quickly drawn. @antiidiots let us know, “Turning On my Dry Washer, Lights and Ironing all my shirts, #earthhour Sux”. @BrianMcDaniel spouted, “If you want to live in the dark, then move to North Korea.” And @ianessling informed, “And so it begins. That Trace Adkins song is now playing and my place is buzzing like a ComEd substation.” From the Greenie side, we learned about dinners being eaten or games of Uno being played to candlelight. How some people are afraid of the dark. Or my personal favorite from @apieceofquiche: If nothing else #earthhour has helped me realize how badly i am in need of candles. lol!
Mentions about the Vegas strip planning to go dark or the iconic Citgo sign in Boston that was turned off and other anecdotal experiences were viral-ly forwarded from one Tweeter to another. Perhaps @siobhand said it best with, “ i love the @earthhour tweets. makes me really feel connected across the globe” In sum, thousands of stories, opinions and responses to the issue of energy conservation shared 140 characters at a time among a lot of independent thinkers drawn together online for a brief moment in time.
