Picture parody site quickly captures Hillary Clinton's attention
In the latest example of the power of social media in politics, an Internet meme gone viral was able to reach the head of state in under a week.
Texts from Hillary (textsfromhillary.tumblr.com) is a phenomenon conceived by two Beltway public relations guys who saw a photo of the secretary of state looking particularly hard-core typing on her BlackBerry in a pair of shades, seated beside a stack of papers in a C-17 military cargo plane.
The image exuded power, they thought, and called for a serious spoof. So, they took their creativity to Tumblr, a blog posting and social networking platform that turned out to be the perfect host for their meme, which features fake Hillary Clinton text messages to and from some of the worlds most famous people.
Hey Hil, Whatchu doing? writes President Obama, reclined on a sofa, in one spoof text to Clinton. Running the world, faux Hillary replies.
In another, Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep sends Hillary a one-word question: Brunch? To which the secretary of state replies simply, Obviously.
The parody spawned by an image of an icy cool Hillary Clinton in the zone, managing the worlds affairs while volleying one-liners with the nations elite went instantly viral.
It also gave Clinton an excellent opportunity to show her own social media prowess.
On Tuesday, she invited the creators of the six-day-old site to her office. She snapped photos beside them with her shades on and submitted her own gag text, in which she poked fun at recent jokes about her dated hair accessories: ROFL @ ur tumblr! G2g-Scrunchie time. Ttyl? she wrote in a submission to site creators Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe. Thanks for all the LOLZ, she added in a written inscription.
Matt Peters, CEO of Hub-based Pandemic Labs, a social media agency, said Texts from Hillary is illustrative of the speed that social media allows things to move, with six days between the time the site was conceived and its co-creators actually met Clinton.
!Thats whats truly amazing, he said, adding, Part of me wonders whether this was a calculated political maneuver.