How the Internet Aided Ken Bone’s Rise and Fall as an Internet Meme
America’s reaction to Ken Bone – a plump, mustachioed undecided voter dressed in a red sweater who asked a question on energy policy at the 2nd presidential debate – was swift and immediate. Short clips of him addressing the presidential candidates and taking photos afterward were shared millions of times across social media, as his name seemed to become almost as mentioned as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump after the debate. The denizens of the Internet immediately promoted him to stardom as his twitter page went from a handful of followers to over two hundred thousand in just under 48 hours. When Ken Bone went to check his phone 15 minutes after the debate (which he was not allowed to have during) he was blindsided by thousands of messages and followers across his social media accounts. The power of the Internet took him from complete anonymity to being under the full spotlight of the American media.
The actual quantifiable power that social media can have in anointing an unknown to Internet stardom is quite impressive. The very next day he was on Jimmy Kimmel Live, receiving sponsorship deals from Uber, and working on his own t-shirt line. Yet the very social media accounts that made him famous also can cause him to fall out of public favor. His old public tweets were dug up and gleefully retweeted by many, but his Reddit account proved to be more controversial. While doing an interview on website Reddit (called an IAMA), he used his own personal account rather than creating a new one, which allowed millions of people to observe his own less-than-tasteful comments which he wrote under a condition of anonymity. His comments included reviewing girls on an array of pornographic subreddits, acknowledging committing insurance fraud, and about enjoying Jennifer Lawrence’s leaked photos. Many different types of social media are built around anonymity as they allow users to speak their true feelings and feel safe from personal criticism, but when those walls of privacy come crashing down they can leave a trail of unseemly information about oneself that can damage a person’s popularity and their network of followers – as is the case with Ken Bone. The internet giveth, and the internet taketh away.
Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/us/politics/we-may-be-leaving-the-ken-bone-zone.html