Viral Sicko
Michael Moore is soliciting home videos from folks about their health care horror stories and collecting them together on his Sicko YouTube Group. He plans to take these videos to Congress as part of a lobbying effort for universal health care. There are already a couple of dozen videos posted and I imagine there will be thousands of these painful stories uploaded by the time Sicko is actually in the theaters.
I'm intrigued by this use of YouTube on both the viral marketing and viral activism fronts. We tell these stories to each other so often, people may find a powerful sense of solidarity in sharing what they so often experience as private, individual tragedies in this very public, collective way.
The film critic Mark Kermode made a reasonable point re: Moore's marketing strategies. Whenever he brings out a film, he always seems to turn up at Cannes apparently on the run, claiming that the CIA are about to arrest him and that his film is going to be seized. Of course, this never happens. But it boosts his box office.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Moore, by flirting with YouTube in this way, may actually unleash the power of the grassroots (which he cynically exploits) in a way which cannot be contained by his own agenda.