Carry on, Sergeant

In the UK, a relative small cluster of people can tease authority at low cost by "voting" in daft competitions. In Strictly Come Dancing, enough people thought it worth the laugh by calling in every weekend to vote for John Sergeant. First prize goes to the journalist who can make the BBC disclose how many calls that took...

Taking the mickey out of pompous broadcasting conceits is not a new phenomemon - the Today programme suffered with its equally daft "Man/Woman of the Year" competition, though enjoyed the associated publicity. SPOTY (Sports Personality of the Year) usually creates synthetic outrage in at least one category every year.

James Harkin, commenting in the Guardian, notes that, though the voting may be by phone or letter, the mood in these matters is often set in the online community.


It is online, however, that the electronic feedback loop between audience and authority is at its busiest. Here we can join a conversation of millions of enthusiasts feeding information back and forth about the machinations of those in authority. In cyburbia, conferring is part of the point. Faced with this onslaught of interaction, many mainstream media outlets and institutions are rather opportunistically inviting us into their information loop in order to improve the efficiency of their operation. What they fail to realise is that the whole ethic of life in cyburbia is hostile to authority of any kind, and tends either to burrow around it or to smash it up. If they, like the makers of Strictly Come Dancing, often get more than they bargained for, that rather serves them right.