February 27, 2015

One Perfect Tweet Explains the Ultimate Lesson of #TheDress


Twitter erupted into craziness Thursday night after a dress went viral. What color was the dress? Some thought it was gold and white; some thought it was blue and black. People had fun. Fun was had! Had was fun! It was a good time and times were good. But this being the world we live in some Serious Cops had to flash their lights and start ticketing people for having fun.

There are a lot of cops on the internet. Everyone’s got a set of cuffs and a gun—and whatever crime they think you’ve committed, well, they’re ready to slap those cuffs on you and sentence you to 20 years hard internet. A lot of commenters on this site are cops. Journalism Cops. I’m sure a bunch of people will comment on this post saying, “why is this news?”

Anyway, no one likes Internet Cops. Internet Cops is probably the only police procedural CBS has ever passed on.

The lesson of #TheDress? Put your gun down, Barney Fife. Your services aren’t needed.

P.S. The dress is blue. 

Disclaimer: Nick Baumann is a Senior Editor at Mother Jones. I gave him fair warning I was about to blog his tweet.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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