Twitter is why we can’t have nice things.
Social media snark tore apart what was clearly intended as a well-meaning and intentionally goofy video of WTOL-TV, Channel 11’s, morning team using slang to encourage Toledo Public Schools students during state standardized testing.
In the video, anchor Melissa Andrews opened with, “Good morning, TPS students, it is testing week, and it is time to slay all day.” This was immediately followed with co-anchor Tim Miller offering his support: “Yeet! Stay woke, be on fleek, and get that Gucci breakfast.”
Meteorologist Chris Vickers and traffic reporter Steven Jackson contributed to the hip banter with, among other slang, separate “Okurrrrr”, a reference to Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B's catchphrase.
The video is odd if you don’t know why it exists. But why exert a modicum of effort to contextualize what you see posted online, rather than making an impassioned and reactionary judgment in less time than it takes to open a can of beer. Thanks to millions of other like-minded digital wordsmiths, Twitter, a valuable tool for human engagement, is now a Dumpster fire of ridicule, finger-pointing, and toxicity.
So, let’s put the WTOL viral story into context.
Public school students in Toledo, Ohio are getting ready for testing and their local TV news team has their backs. The WTOL news anchors delivered a special message using a language that only teens will understand:https://t.co/zRm7NVMbRR https://t.co/zRm7NVMbRR
— Xtreme 107.1 (@xtreme1071) March 28, 2019
Toledo Public Schools, as part of a committee-led community awareness campaign, reached out to city leaders, business leaders, and essentially local celebrities to provide what TPS spokesman Patty Mazur said were “inspirational videos for our students and staff wishing them well and to do their best on the tests.”
In fact, there are a dozen of those videos featuring, among others, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, anchor Kristian Brown of WTVG-TV, Channel 13, and Toledo Fire Chief Brian Byrd along with the recruits offering mostly straightforward words of encouragement.
Channel 11 and its morning team exercised creative freedom in their presentation, which confused some and delighted others, Mazur said. But of actual importance is that online feedback from students and teachers was positive.
“Our teachers and their kids who watched the video said they enjoyed it and got it,” she said.
Twitter missed that, incidentally, and by late Wednesday morning Twitter was in a twizzy about the video. By mid-afternoon, WTOL and TPS, separate from another, removed the video from online.
By Thursday morning, the video was viral because, of course, everyone has something important to say about something they know nothing about. And that leads us to coverage in the Washington Post, which consisted mainly of Twitter reposts of mostly incredulous, sardonic, and worse comments about the video, though there were a few positive ones included.
In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, WTOL General Manager Brian Lorenzen explained the station’s intentions with the video, which “was to help TPS students take the tests and to get the district the funding it needs. “WTOL went to work to try to encourage and to, well, connect. We created a not-for-television-broadcast video that could be shared with students and on social media.”
Reaction to the video amounted to “a group of people sitting in a bar arguing back and forth,” said Jim Foust, professor and chair of the Journalism and Public Relations department at Bowling Green State University. As a sitcom dynamic, that’s entertaining, but as news, “this gets too much coverage,” he said.
“It's a thing that more or less exists within the confines of Twitter — until the media takes it out and brings it into the mainstream,” Foust said. “There is some thoughtful analysis on Twitter, but the good stuff hardly ever gets covered. We’re attracted to the bright, shiny object of controversy. Somebody comes up with a snappy comeback, and it becomes a thing.”
First Published March 29, 2019, 2:51 a.m.
