TIME’s selection for Individual of the Yr is stored beneath wraps even contained in the newsroom. So it was just a few weeks earlier than my first POY closed that I informed a bigger group of colleagues that the selection for 2006 was “You”—user-generated content material. The duvet would have reflective Mylar on it so readers might see themselves. The thought was that within the age of rising social media, content material creators have been altering the world. At that assembly, a author with a well-deserved popularity as a contrarian mentioned to me, “You recognize you’re going to be mocked for this.” I revered his candor, however I shrugged it off.
Learn the Authentic Story: You (Sure, You) Are TIME’s Individual of the Yr
Nicely, he wasn’t mistaken. The New York Each day Information wrote that it was one of many 10 most controversial POY covers in historical past, proper up there subsequent to Stalin and Hitler. Jon Stewart held up an image of me holding the duvet and mimicked me trying within the mirror. Frank Wealthy within the New York Occasions referred to as it a “stunt” and mentioned it’d sink TIME. Numerous faculty seniors wrote on the finish of their résumés, “TIME Individual of the Yr, 2006.” That also makes me snort.
However give it some thought: This was 2006, not lengthy after Fb launched. MySpace was big. YouTube was a 12 months outdated. Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat didn’t exist. It was the beginning of a revolution that has made user-generated content material the muse of the world’s media. As a substitute of the few creating for the numerous, the numerous now create for each other. The thought was and nonetheless is a radical one. If I acquired something mistaken, it was in not anticipating the draw back of this new data calculus, the rise of hate speech and disinformation, and the way a democratized system might be used in opposition to the very thought of democracy. I nonetheless suppose that the advantages outweigh the prices—and that the way forward for the media nonetheless will depend on, effectively, You.
Stengel, a former editor of TIME, is the writer of Data Wars: How We Misplaced the World Battle Towards Disinformation
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