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I thought this was brilliant:

http://exiledonline.com%2Fthe-rally-to-restore-vanity-generation-x-celebrates-its-homeric-struggle-against-lameness%2F&h=03412

The gist is, the primary political focus of many people -- not politicians, but civilians --today is to find a political ideology or movement that they can identify with and feel they are a part of without being subject to ridicule, and so we've seen the South Park Republicans show up after South Park relentlessly attacked many liberal ideas in its early seasons, and now we have the movement here called "Daily Show Democrats" whose major motivation seems to be making fun of Republicans.

It's fitting that the rally was spawned from the bowels of reddit, that concentrated extract of internet hipsterdom.

Choice quotes:

Sure there are a lot of problems out there, a lot of pressing needs—but the main thing is, the Liberals don’t look nearly as stupid as the other guys do.

In other words, “you” started to become effective. Not in the way a petulant Gen-Xer wanted it to be though, because one had to look lame to be effective. One had to be like CodePink–and CodePink isn’t cool. Gen-X/Y didn’t sign up for lame, they signed up for Obama, the sentimental favorite!

You see, this is why so many cool Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers were so jazzed up about going to the Stewart rally–by definition, they were guaranteed not to look stupid by going to it, because it’s not really a rally. They’re not putting anything on the line. They’re just going to chant the equivalent of that annoying Saturday Night Live Update skit “Really?” No generation ever looked so cool so late in their lives as my generation.

scythe wrote:It's fitting that the rally was spawned from the bowels of reddit, that concentrated extract of internet hipsterdom.

This is a common misconception. Although Reddit did throw its support behind the rally early on, it was not conception point. The idea was formed by Daily Show staff months before it went public.

You see, this is why so many cool Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers were so jazzed up about going to the Stewart rally–by definition, they were guaranteed not to look stupid by going to it, because it’s not really a rally. They’re not putting anything on the line. They’re just going to chant the equivalent of that annoying Saturday Night Live Update skit “Really?” No generation ever looked so cool so late in their lives as my generation.

I thought this was a great analogy.

hairscapades wrote:

scythe wrote:It's fitting that the rally was spawned from the bowels of reddit, that concentrated extract of internet hipsterdom.

This is a common misconception. Although Reddit did throw its support behind the rally early on, it was not conception point. The idea was formed by Daily Show staff months before it went public.

The rally started in this thread right here, which occurred independent of any sort of hinting from Stewart or Colbert, and it was just a few days after the e-mail bomb that Colbert started yammering about "announcing his announcement". Did the Daily Show have some sort of nebulous plan before that? Absolutely: in the original conception, Stewart wasn't even a part of it, so the fact that he jumped on it so eagerly must have meant that he was already in favor of something or at least liked it more than Colbert, because in the end he was the keynote speaker. But the momentum started at reddit, independent of Comedy Central, and so that's who I'm pinning the rally on.
It's kind of lame that reddit's last big political idea, which was actually kind of inspired, failed in the planning stages because they couldn't agree on a name for the party.