The catchphrase has captured the rage and anger of the American and has sparked and out lash against politicians in Washington D.C. for everything from the BP Gulf Oil Spill, to the use of terrorism to violate American’s civil rights to not holding Bush and Obama accountable for torture.
“Fuck” is not profane. Willfully ruining the economy for political gain, that is profane. #fuckyouwashington
TBD reports:
If you’re the type of person who spends your weekend on Twitter, then you’re already well aware of new-media
prophetbloviator Jeff Jarvis’ #fuckyouwashington campaign: his attempt to make that hashtag trend on Twitter, an expression of our collective anger over the stalled debt-crisis talks. Non-tweeps might even know the story by now, as CBS News’ What’s Trending blog posted this yesterday morning, followed by Slate’s David Weigel.On his blog, Buzz Machine, Jarvis explainsthe hashtag’s genesis:
Begun on Saturday night, #fuckyouwashington peaked later that night, then surged again on Sunday afternoon — presumably, as news articles about the topic appeared, or perhaps as a result of the Sunday news programs — and is still alive, with several tweets per minute, but petering out. (The topic never did trend on Twitter, apparently, perhaps because the site moderates topics.)
While Jarvis’ anger was directed at Washington politicians, some D.C. residents took offense that he hadn’t chosen his words more carefully; instead of “Washington,” he could have gone with “Congress” or “politicians” or the like. I’ll admit I was a little rankled, too, by the hashtag — not because I felt it targeted us in D.C., but because thousands of people on Twitter joined what was, in the end, a rather juvenile protest.
The Raw Story reports:
#f@ckyouwashington hashtag takes Twitter by storm
Most suddenly-popular Twitter hashtags refer to events or celebrities that currently are in the news. But every once in a while, one erupts out of nowhere to capture the mood of the Twitterverse.
The hashtag #fuckyouwashington is currently making the rounds in just that fashion. As explained in a post at tagdef.com, “Thousands of tweets erupted in a matter of hours on #Jul23 protesting the US’s failed debt ceiling talks and general policies. Spurred by @JeffJarvis . Seen by some as part of #WorldRevolution or #USRevolution.”
A second post helpfully adds, “Our discontent with the way things operate. It’s gross.”
Although the tag may have been inspired by the current impasse over raising the debt ceiling, it seems to have released a much wider sense of frustration. Within a few hours, message boards like Democratic Underground were gathering some of the best tweets using the tag.
“#FuckYouWashington For Forgetting WHO you represent, Families, Elderly,Moms,Kids, WORKERs..NOT the CoporatePigs who you cater to…#ShameOnU” one reads.
“#fuckyouwashington for sending our soldiers on 6, 7, 8 tours to combat zones yet thinking it’s too much to ask the richest to pay taxes” say another.
And @YourAnonNews — a Twitter account associated with Anonymous — tweeted, “#FuckYouWashington for thinking activists are the same as terrorists.”
Other tweets gathered by CBSNews blasted Washington for everything from the handling of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill to the criminalization of marijuana to going after WikiLeaks while not holding Bush administration officials accountable for torture.
While twitter has banned the hashtag from trending topics while allowing topics like blamethemuslims to trend for days it hasn’t stopped the proliferation of tweets from angry American citizens from saturating the internet.
Jarvis explains himself on The Guardian:
How my message to Washington got taken over by the people
I vented my rage about the US debt ceiling deadlock on Twitter. Then the hashtag gained a life of its own
#fuckyouwashington strikes a chord across America thanks to TwitterAnd then it exploded as I never could have predicted. I egged it on for a while, suggesting that our goal should be to make #fuckyouwashington a trending topic, though as some tweeters quickly pointed out, Twitter moderates topics. Soon enough, though, Trendistic showed us gaining in Twitter share and Trendsmap showed us trending in cities and then in the nation.
Right. Some folks are coming into Twitter today trying to tell me how to manage this, how I should change the hashtag so there’s no cussin’ or to target their favourite bad man, or how I should organise marches instead. Whatever. #fuckyouwashington, not mine any more. That is the magic moment for a platform, when its users take it over and make it theirs, doing with it what the creator never imagined.
I was amazed and inspired. I was also trepidatious. I didn’t know what I’d started and didn’t want it to turn ugly. After all, we had just witnessed the ungodly horror of anger – and psychosis – unleashed in Norway. I’ve come to believe that our enemy today isn’t terrorism but fascism of any flavour, hiding behind anger as supposed cause.
But at moments such as this, I always need to remind myself of my essential faith in my fellow man – that is why I believe in democracy, free markets, education, journalism. It’s the extremists who fuck up the world and it is our mistake to manage our society and our lives to their worst, to the extreme. That, tragically, is how our political system and government are being managed today: to please the extremes. Or rather, that is why they are not managed today. And that is why I’m shouting, to remind Washington that its job is to manage the business of government.
The tweets that keep streaming in – hundreds an hour still – restore my faith not in government but in society, in us. Oh, yes, there are idiots, extremists, and angry conspiracy theorists and just plain jerks among them. But here, that noise was being drowned out by the voices of disappointed Americans – disappointed because they do indeed give a shit.
Their messages, their reasons for shouting #fuckyouwashington and holding our alleged leaders to higher expectations, spark a glimmer of hope that perhaps we can recapture our public sphere. No, no, Twitter won’t do that here any more than it did it in Egypt and Libya. Shouting #fuckyouwashington is hardly a revolution. Believe me, I’m not overblowing the significance of this weekend’s entertainment. All I’m saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people – not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll – I see cause for hope.
I didn’t intend this to be anything more than spouting off in 140 profane characters. It turns out that the people of Twitter taught me a lesson that I thought I was teaching myself in Public Parts, about the potential of a public armed with a Gutenberg press in every pocket, with its tools of publicness.
CBS has collected a series of tweets on their article on the topic.
Tweeters rage against the D.C. machine
(CBS/What’s Trending) – Updated 5:00 p.m. ET
Spurred by a blogger to vent about gridlock and political posturing in Washington over the debt ceiling crisis, the Twittersphere was burning this morning with citizens’ grievances against their government, announced with an expletive-filled hashtag – vulgarity mixed with insight and a lot of common sense.
Jeff Jarvis (of Buzzmachine.com) promoted the flood of Twitter messages with the hashtag #F—YouWashington. A sample is presented below, spelling and punctuation uncorrected.
aNOLAamous: … for over a million gallons of corexit dumped on coastal Louisiana.aNOLAmous: … for letting corporations steal our natural resources and sell them back to the people for profit.
amthewalrus: … for forcing me to be a criminal by using #cannabis as the #medicine it is!
amyalkon: … for violating my 4th Amend rights & having a govt lackey sexually assault me as a condition of normal biz travel this am.
bellelass: … because the less you listen, the more radicalized we’ll become. It starts here, just like Tunisia and Egypt.
dancegenie: … as you hide behind your #political agendas while the #Equines suffer at your hand!
HedgefundPLAY: … We don’t care about any of your reelections.We just want our country to function.
i_magpie: … for preaching “freedom & democracy” while ignoring, nay supporting crimes against humanity. #Syria
ILikeyouLloyd: … for giving $3b to Israel when they continue to build illegal settlements & engage in human rights abuses
jmb2612: … for putting party before country
kgosztola: … for going after #WikiLeaks & #Anonymous but not Bush Admin officials for torture & destroying rule of law
poissonjensen: … For almost driving the Earth to it’s knees… #ThankYouWashington for giving ordinary decent people courage to speak up..
poissonjensen: … For being arrogant…
poissonjensen: … for lying to your constituency… WE the people?
poissonjensen: … for making corruption legal…
skymama65: … Because “made in America” was once what Walmart stood for & is now cheap plastic crap
timgummer: … for not even considering serious #military cut$: 39% of your taxes and 43% of the world’s war spending
USRevolution_v2: … You would rather collapse the global economy than reinstate the normal tax on the 1%
windloochie: … For proving the best way to get back into power is to sit on your hands and hope everything burns to the ground.
Wriseup: … for setting up a fail so epic it’s gonna make the Great Depression look like a damn Sunday School picnic.
YourAnonNews: … for thinking activists are the same as terrorists.
UPDATE:
Sunday afternoon the #F—YouWashington hashtag was still going strong, even as tweeters complained it was not trending in ways traffic and retweets suggested:
astriddare: … for adding an asterisk to “Liberty and justice for all*”TheNewDeal: America is the Only Wealthy Nation That lets it’s People Die If They Can’t Afford Their Over-Priced Healthcare
chairmanben: … for Going to Hell in a Handbasket
psychnurseinwi: … for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old.
TangerineBolen: … for turning your backs on war crimes and banksters. For the maturity level of 6th graders. For being shockingly lame.
jellencollins: … for making ‘debt’ a four letter word and ‘f—’ an appropriate response.
Trcfwtt: … I’ll gladly eat my peas, but I’m tired of paying for rich ppl when they’re getting all the dessert.
Pattydelgado: … for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they’re selfish.
LiberalPagan: … for allowing Citizens United to stand, and for Super-PACs
FourYawkeyWay: … for considering the stock market indexes as reflective of the American people.
TheNewDeal: … For Tightening Our Belts So That a Billionaire Can Get Another Tax Break They Don’t Need.
KimClune: … for keeping the American Dream alive for just 1% of the population and funding it with the other 99%.
mrfreight: … For taking away our civil liberties, something the founding fathers (whom you claim to love) would have NEVER done.
LeftsideAnnie: … for pretending that the Tea Party is relevant.
andrewbrust: … I would open my window and scream it, but that would let the air conditioning out. So I’ll stick with hashtags.
There were dissenters, too, or just those who felt dissent at 140 characters was too little, too late:
wookhansen: … for making the citizens of this nation resort to twitter to make our voices heard.peterdaou: One problem with the #f—youwashington tag is that it’s not just Washington’s fault when most people don’t hold their electeds accountable.
jgilliam: … for making this tweet feel like it’s worth more than my vote
dphaw: The #f—youWashington “movement” was already started by the Tea Party, you are a few years late losers.
ReverendManny: the reason I’m not fully behind #F—YOUWASHINGTON is because both sides DON’T share equal blame for this budget mess
P0TUS:… for running things so badly that our citizens feel compelled to tweet ‘#F—YouWashington’
But in addition to tweets blasting Washington (Congress, the White House, SCOTUS), messages were also directed at Twitter, suggesting that there were nefarious forces at work to prevent #F—YouWashington from showing up on Twitter’s trends (even though it was appearing – quite boisterously, in fact – on Trendsmap.
progBuzz: … for censorship – the # has obliterated my country on trendsmap but its not trending …ANONopn: … anyone else find it strange that #blamethemuslims is trending but #f—youwashington isnt?
Trend map of #FuckYouWashington Tweets
A Trendsmap image from Sunday, July 24, 2011, of the Twitter hashtag #F—YouWashington.
(Credit: Trendsmap)
Further Update:
Jeff Jarvis announced that the hashtag will henceforth be #FYW, to prevent profanity from being the cause of any possible censorship (or coyness on the part of media reporting on the story).
The Daily Kos reports:
Vox Frustrati (Vol. 8): #F—YouWashington
Transcript:
This is Vox Frustrati, a voice for progressives everywhere.
Vox nominates Professor of Journalism Jeff Jarvis as Frustrati of the year for his FUWashington twitter storm that has ignited a fierce, deserved and continuing protest on our shameless politicians and their corporate and warmongering overlords. As he explained in his blog:
So I was angry. Watching TV news over dinner — turning my attention from scandals in the UK to those here and frankly welcoming the distraction from the tragedies in Norway — I listened to the latest from Washington about negotiations over the debt ceiling. It pissed me off. I’d had enough. After dinner, I tweeted: “Hey, Washington a**holes, it’s our country, our economy, our money. Stop f***ing with it.” It was the pinot talking (sounding more like a zinfandel). . . . And then it exploded as I never could have predicted. . . .The tweets that keep streaming in — hundreds an hour still — restore my faith not in government but in society, in us.
Vox validates this vituperative viral onslaught on our venal politicians by giving voice to a selection of tweets from the vox populae.
#F—YouWashington For Tightening Our Belts So That a Billionaire Can Get Another Tax Break They Don’t Need.
#F—YouWashington Social Security and Medicare didn’t create the deficit, the wars and tax cuts did.
#F—YouWashington For using a created crisis as cover for shifting even more wealth from the 98% to the 2%
#F—YouWashington for Asking the Working Poor to Sacrifice While the Rich Have it Better Than Ever Before
#F—YouWashington – you would rather collapse the global economy than reinstate the normal tax on the 1%
#F—YouWashington for telling us that tax breaks for the rich will create jobs.
#F—YouWashington and your corporate welfare policies
#F—YouWashington 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined
#F—YouWashington and your Alan Simpson catfood committee
#F—YouWashington for thirty years of failed Trickle-down economics
#F—YouWashington for giving more tax cuts to corps who have record profits during the Great Recession
#F—YouWashington for setting up a fail so epic it’s gonna make the Great Depression look like a damn Sunday School picnic.
#F—YouWashington for wasting weeks creating a fake crisis out of what should have been a routine vote.
#F—YouWashington Social Security didn’t cause the deficit. It’s solvent and has a giant surplus.
#F—YouWashington for your disaster capitalism and Shock Doctrine tactics. Pass a clean debt ceiling bill,no cuts
#F—YouWashington For Tightening Our Belts So That a Billionaire Can Get Another Tax Break They Don’t Need.
#F—YouWashington Cut the money from things that CAUSED the deficits – Wars and Bush tax cuts
#F—YouWashington for Calling it #SharedSacrifice when we all know it should be Called #TakefromThePoorGive2theRICH
#F—YouWashington for spending $4 Trillion on wars in the past decade on blowing shit up
#F—YouWashington for squandering our engineering dollars & minds on war instead investing them in peace.
#F—YouWashington for creating more terrorists every day with your wars, generations who will hate us
#F—YouWashington 4 sending our soldiers on 6,7 8 tours…yet thinking it’s too much to ask richest 2 pay taxes
#F—YouWashington for building ~1000 bases outside your borders instead of taking care of your own people.
#F—YouWashington for lying us into wars
#F—YouWashington for continuing to $hovel our $$ down the black hole of defen$e + ‘homeland $ecurity’ $pending
#F—YouWashington While your people starve, live on the streets, cant afford medical care, you spend trillions on missiles and bullets.
#F—YouWashington for never ending war
#F—YouWashington for making the healthcare reform law not worth the paper it is printed on
#F—YouWashington for not using bargaining power of Medicare/Medicaid to get fair drug prices from PhRMA
#F—YouWashington and Obama for making me worry about my disabled son’s medicine and treatment by risking medicaid
#F—YouWashington for Every Dead American Who Couldn’t Afford Healthcare #p2
#F—YouWashington Americans don’t want cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid
#F—YouWashington For Failing to Hear Majority of Us at the Bottom Over Lobbyists and Corporate Cash from the Top
#F—YouWashington and the lobbyist you rode in on.
#F—YouWashington for valuing corporations more than people
#F—YouWashington for putting Big Business and Big War over the needs of the people
#F—YouWashington and your no bid contracts
#F—YouWashington for protecting criminals.
#F—YouWashington For making the market and the military your masters while ignoring your people
#F—YouWashington for Every Person Sleeping on the Streets Tonight #p2
#F—YouWashington for legalising bribery in the form of campaign contributions. most corrupt system in the world.
#F—YouWashington and your Wall St exec WH chief of staff
#F—YouWashington for letting the bankster criminals walk
#F—YouWashington and your useless Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill
#F—YouWashington for giving Bank of America a $1.9B tax refund, although it made $4.4B profit
#F—YouWashington Not one Wall St exec prosecuted for their gambling and crashing the economy
#F—YouWashington for doing nothing about corrupt foreclosure process, not helping people stay in their homes
#F—YouWashington for putting Wall Street before Main Street
#F—YouWashington from wife of a #99er who has helplessly watched our whole life crash&burn as wallst&corps prosper
#F—YouWashington for rewarding corporations for sitting on cash rather than creating jobs. Way to go.
#F—YouWashington for Every America Job Sent to Another Country
#F—YouWashington for Every Person Who Can’t Find a Decent Job to Feed Their Family #p2
#F—YouWashington for enabling multinational corps to give our jobs away
#F—YouWashington For the 30 yrs of job offshoring that was made possible by owned politicians who support “free” trade!
#F—YouWashington 4 creating a culture in which my parents have become overworked exhausted tired and alone. F you very much
#F—YouWashington 4 trying 2 pass off Free Trade Agreement w #Colombia #Panama #S.Korea as good 4 US workers..
#F—YouWashington for not focusing on what should be top priority: Jobs Jobs Jobs
#F—YouWashington for allowing Monsanto to corrupt our food.
#F—YouWashington for standing silent while states bust our #unions.
#F—YouWashington for thinking that #1984 was an instruction manual
#F—YouWashington 4consigning an entire generation of studnts to perpetual debt while bailing out monstrous multinational corps
#F—YouWashington America was founded on ideals of life, liberty & pursuit of happiness Not DOW, Banks & pursuit of war
#F—YouWashington and your huge subsidies for oil companies
#F—YouWashington for trying to create a level of Fear in our country as a way to keep us quiet & go w the program
#F—YouWashington for fiddling while Rome burns
#F—YouWashington 4 trying to DIVIDE American people by pitting us against each other..all a distraction from your oligarchy
#F—YouWashington for your warrantless wiretapping surveillance, spying on innocent Americans
#F—YouWashington For reapeatedly violating the constitution and the will of the people
#F—YouWashington for turning your ugly backs on the most vulnerable
#F—YouWashington for representing only those that can afford your representation + deeming the rest of us expendable
#F—YouWashington for your greedy, neoliberal, capitalistic, winner-take-all politics and game-playing.
#F—YouWashington and your trashing of our Constitution
#F—YouWashington I Dedicate This Tweet to Every Working-Poor Republican Who Fights so Millionaires Can Have a Better Life.
#F—YouWashington for 30 yrs of media consolidation! banks are TBTF and the MSM is #tobigtotellthetruth!
#F—YouWashington for thinking it’s all about you and not the people
#F—YouWashington for your very clear attitude that the American people are expendable.
I call for a #F—YouWashington super-committee that would make its recommendations to Congress on a fast-track basis
#F—YouWashington for Not Realizing There are More of Us Than There are Of Them…
#F—YouWashington for not serving the interests of the people you were elected to represent
#F—YouWashington Time to hit the streets
#F—YouWashington I’m ready to hit the streets who’s with me?
#F—YouWashington I’m taking it to the streets !!
Vox floccinaucinihilipilificates that feckless faithless faction of four flushing fakers, those phony fraudsters, those fawning feigners who of democracy who deceive not defend who dissimulate not do and who so decidedly deserve these damning definitive disclosures of determined discontent.
© Vox Frustrati