Definition of nation: it is an imagined political community…imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, even meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.
-Benedict Anderson*
Right now the only thing I know I share with other Canadians is perpetual anxiety over what it means to be Canadian.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commision (CRTC) was concocted to regulate and supervise Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications thereby fomenting a Canadian culture and thus identity.
The CRTC has never been very good at making me feel Canadian. They sure did help sustain myriad mediocre bands and television shows. Where would I be without having heard Kim Mitchell and Blue Rodeo ad nauseam? What would I have done on Sundays without the franchised version Bowling for Dollars and the sinister host on Big Top Talent? I guess I would have been entirely Americanized by the music and television that I actually enjoyed most of the rest of the time.
It’s even worse now because of the internets. The CRTC is completely lost and now actively dangerous. They’ve opened up an online consultation about net neutrality but there is a real and horrifying possibility that they will side with the lobbying Canadian telcos against the interests of actual individual Canadians. On the other hand, evidence on their website of their knowledge of the implications of their decisions either way are non-existent. If you search for Twitter on the CRTC site, it suggests you are perhaps searching for “titre.” Furthermore, its social networking articles are years old and completely out of date.
Hey CRTC sillies! The solution is simple. Twitternation might have American culture pundits seeing a cultural bloodbath but it holds the key to our perpetual Canadian identity crisis:
Cancel the CRTC, take that money and buy Canadian-created twitter-clone identi.ca. Close membership to ISP’s outside of our national borders and force everyone to join like you forced us all to endure Rush and Definition. Inside our walled Twittery garden we will feed and nurture the image of the possibility of our communion in 140 characters or less. Then affordable texting, data rates and flows will become a matter of national identity and we will kill two birds (Twitter pun intended) with one stone.
Voila – severely modern imagined community! Canadianess finally realized, protected and most importantly totally effing cool.
*Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism by Benedict Anderson – Political Science – 1999 – pg 6
Legong: I know I am replying to this pathetic, racist statement a little late and the whole ignorant rant probably doesn’t even deserve a reply. Wanhenglo, if we were all to generalise about...
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