Dont tase me bro

What you do can be seen by everyone: Dirty Laundry exposed

viral videos

Case 1 Andrew Meyer, the student who begged: 'Don’t Tase me bro!', becomes internet star

In september of 2007 a new slogan apeared on the internet resulting from a question and answer session gone terribly wrong. Former US Presidential canidate, John Kerry, while visiting a Florida university gave a question and answer session. Durring this session a student by the name of Andrew Meyer jumped in line and begain shouting out questions deemed “contriversal” to Kerry. When Meyer's microphone was cut off by the administration and police were asked to escort him out of the building Meyers begain flailing his arms about and screaming to the audience to intervine. This lead to more police securing him, and placing him under arrest. While in handcuffs a police officer warned him that if he continued to resist arrest he would be “tased.” Tased is a term related to a small non-lethal device called a taser that emits an electric shock on its recipient, temperarily disabling them. Soon after this warning one of the officers tased Meyer as he screamed “dont tase me bro!!” and cryed for help from the audience. This situation was not the first time police have used non-lethal weapons to enforce their will, but this was the first time such an event was videotaped and became viral on youtube.

Within hours of the videos upload the situation became a national topic.

Google reported http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/09/dont-tase-me-br.html

the term “dont tase me bro” became the 9^th most searched for term on their popular internet search engine. The video recived over 2.6 million views and almost 40,000 comments soon after being posted.

It has been suggested that the insident was a publicity stunt by Meyer. The video released online was recorded with his own camera and he also preficed the incident by checking that camera was in fact recording.

Many responses voiced about this event sway from one side to the other. Questions involving police brutality, freedom of speech, and common decency have been raised. Because of the widespread news of the incident via the internet many people have been allowed to participate in a discusion that, had this been a few years ago may have stayed on a single collage campus. One thing the internet does not allow however, is for this situation to “blow over.”

Tee shirts, bumper stickers, ringtones, music videos, cut and paste remixes of the various footage posted online (known as mash-ups) are all avalible online as everyone on the internet attempts to recive some glow of this situations lime light.

Due partialy to the large voice of the masses via the internet, the school has been forced to suspend the police officer responsible for the tasing and an internal investigation is on way. With everyone carrying a camera equiped cellphone and a high speed internet connection, it becomes more and more difficult for people in contriversial situations to keep out of the spotlight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3FFnpS-eYA