Where we left off we were focused on the internal workings of the Make a Wish foundation’s transformation of San Francisco into a sunny Gotham city. There is another equally interesting and fascinating side to the story, that is the community of social media users who rallied around Miles, the 5 year old Batkid.
On Friday when Batkid sprung into action to protect Gotham, social media users instantly took to their respective platforms to share photos, videos, articles and even personas. By 4 p.m. Friday over 10,000 photos had been uploaded to Instagram under the #SFBatkid. Not to mention enough media posted on Facebook to make the 5 o’clock news irrelevant with any coverage of the story.
I would like to mention the aspect of community in all this, as one could infer the Make a Wish foundation is a community within itself, but in this instance it opened up to a larger population with open arms. People responded in any way they could, some went and participated first hand and those who couldn’t participated online join a much broader and expansive community, but a community non the less. All the significant figure in San Francisco took part, from the San Francisco Giants to the coach of the 49ers taking to twitter to cheer on Batkid. Others included previous Batman’s Christian Bale and Micheal Keaton declaring there support and praise for Batkid, Ben Affleck also tweet that Batkid was the best Batman ever! However the real show stopper was President Obama who released a Vine congratulating Miles for saving Gotham.
Amid the teary eyes who witnessed this first hand or followed along online, I was taken aback by the power of the social media community. The force of good and positivity it can provide within our worlds online, something that is often taken for granted in our modern society. Batkid, (and Miles), to me represent the goodness and purity of social media that is often shadowed by commercialism and negativity; one could only hope that we all can one day be as good as the real everyday superhero Miles.
President Obama’s Vine: https://vine.co/v/htbdjZAPrAX
Articles: http://mashable.com/2013/11/15/batkid-instagrams/
http://mashable.com/2013/11/15/batkid-department-of-justice/