This piece was co-written with JB Goodbody
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After the collapse of the Egyptian and Tunisian governments earlier this year, foreign policy experts predicted that a wave of Twitter uprisings would swiftly bring down regimes across the Arab world. However, a new U.S. State Department report reveals that these social media revolutions are being delayed by the many distractions inherent in social media.
The report, released Wednesday, shows that while student protesters in some of the most repressive regimes across the Arab world are desperately attempting to organize demonstrations and coordinate uprisings through Facebook and Twitter, they are often too preoccupied with the very social media tools they had hoped would help win their freedom.
Whether it’s thumbing through online photo albums of ex-girlfriends, obsessively tending to their Farmville crops, following the musings of @ShitMyDadSays and @TotalFratMove on Twitter or scouring Yelp! reviews, most would-be revolutionaries are caught staring blankly into the depths of the internet when the government crackdowns begin.
Craig O’Brien, a State Department spokesman on Middle Eastern policy, elaborated on the report’s findings that dozens, of what have been called Twitter Revolutions, have fizzled under the weight of social media usage.
“From intelligence agents on the ground to our surveillance of Internet activity in the region, we have evidence that the pro-democracy movement is still very active in the Arab world,” O’Brien said. “At the same time, we all know what it’s like to log on to your computer intending to respond to an Evite, answer an email or organize a massive gathering to protest food shortages, only to realize that after 45 minutes you’re still only on level 2 of Mafia Wars.”
O’Brien asserts that earlier this year, uprisings in Algeria were muted by a nationwide obsession with PetVille, a Facebook game that kept the partisan insurrectionists busy raising, dressing, and caring for each other’s cyber-pets.
The State Department’s most startling observation is that regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa are catching on to the stifling distractions that the internet provides and have learned from the mistakes of the Egyptian revolution.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tried to silence his critics by shutting down his country’s internet. As a result, millions of bored revolutionaries, cut off from blogging, feuding with government supporters on Facebook comment threads and viewing pornography, instead hit the streets and public squares, leading to the collapse of the Egyptian government in only two weeks
This lesson was taken to heart by Jordan authorities where King Abdullah II himself launched a nationwide game of Vampire Wars, quelling protests and keeping the populace tied to their computers and iPhones, thus avoiding the massive uprising that is currently besetting its neighbor Syria.
Often armed with only a cell phone, determined youth from North Africa to the Middle East are able to connect with each other like never before. But even if the Internet is shut off in their country, most phones still come with games like Brick Breaker and Words with Friends, often resulting in weeks of constant play before they even consider raiding a police station.
The report also suggests that even in countries where revolts have gotten off the ground, social media’s distractive forces threaten to delay revolutions due to a variety of cultural movements. For instance, a series of planned riots in Bahrain was postponed back in March when organizers became swept up in the announcement of the launching of Charlie Sheen’s Twitter account.
Similarly, in Yemen, the mass demonstrations that have rocked the streets in recent months were to have happened months prior were they not delayed by the country’s peculiar ongoing obsession with MySpace.
“Last month, we felt that we had put enough pressure on [Yemeni President Ali Abdullah] Saleh, that if we could orchestrate one more major round of protests, we might force him to resign,” said student activist Naser al-Masri. “But when I went to my computer to send out a Twitter invite to my network, I ended up spending most of the afternoon listening to a protest jam band’s new album on MySpace and tagging photos from our March 3rd rally.”
Looking through his photo album entitled “Takin’ it to the Streets!!!!“, Al-Masri was surprised to find a familiar face.
“Who do I see but Jameela al-Sharif? She’s in the background of a picture I took of a protest caring for a man who’d apparently been beaten by police,” al-Masri said with disbelief because he hadn’t seen her since third grade.
“So I look through here profile, and it turns out she already has 3 kids and married some douchebag from Al-Ahgaff University! I always had a crush on her so I was kinda bummed, but it was just crazy to see what she was up to,” al-Masri said. “Long story short, it was well past midnight before I could send out a Foursquare location as to where we’d be assembling our Molotov cocktails and tear gas protective gear and I never got around to it.”
O’Brien reiterates that there’s a lesson to be learned from the report. “To pacify your people, its best to keep them in their homes and in the internet cafés, allowing them to vent their frustrations on Twitter flame wars and mocking government officials on satire websites. Once you take away their access to interactive poker websites and Twitter accounts, you will open up a bottle of rage that can’t ever be re-capped.”
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Growing up outside of Cleveland, Ohio, Chandler formed a youthful and lasting love for sports, politics, comedy and melted cheese (full disclosure). The Chicago Dope is where his four loves often converge. He hopes you think this site is as dope as he does. 
