Pat Yourself on the Back, Internet!

There's something about the Internet. (See also: interwebs)

Yes, it's true that there are plenty of bad, evil things on the Internet. (See also: trolls, Nigerian Prince scams, dog's speaking English)

But at the same time there can exist a great force of good; a place where destruction, ridicule, and trolling just simply don't happen.

You can look at three recent examples of this.

Golden Ted
First up, the homeless man with the "Golden Voice." When his story hit the interpipes immediately the people got to working and now Ted Williams has another chance at making his life right. Huge kudos to the redditors of Reddit for pushing this story.

Red Cross: #gettngslizzerd.
This was an interesting, easily overlooked story. Gloria Huang, a Social Media specialist with the Red Cross, mistakenly tweeted on Red Cross' twitter account instead of her own, shout out to Hootsuite. Despite the "rogue tweet" getting removed by Red Cross, Michael Hayek from Dogfish Head Brewery took it upon himself to rally Dogfish Head beer fans and create a donation campaign for the Red Cross built off of the #gettngslizzerd hashtag.



No Red Cross parody twitter accounts rose from this, just a lot of people hearing the call to action from a beloved brand and doing what they could to make light of a simple, permissions error. Red Cross got donations, Dogfish Head got brand recognition, and Hootsuite even sent everybody some coozies!

Not bad, Internet.

RoboCop Comes Home (or Take that Mayor Bing, the People want Murphy)
Dead or alive, you're coming to Detroit (RoboCop Statue). What started as a tweet to Detroit's current mayor, Dave Bing, has ended in RoboCop (formally known as Officer Alex Murphy) returning to the streets in statue form. The collective Internet saw this tweet, saw Mayor Bing's response that there were no plans to erect a RoboCop statue and hopped into action by using popular crowd-funding site, Kickstarter.com. Surprise, surprise, they raised the money they needed to make this dream a reality. To see them actually build it, well that's a whole 'nother story.

And although I don't agree with the following revamp to the "Spirit of Detroit" statue, it does look kinda cool.



Just goes to show you; there are people on the Internet who dare to care and will help at a drop of hat for a cause they feel is cool, entertaining, or just the right thing to do.

So pat yourself on the back, Internet. You done good.

Also, tough call on which way of the spectrum this falls:



Sean Sutherland Associate Account Executive/Anti-Troll Troll