I decided to check out the links provided in the sidebar of this video, and was taken to a list of people in Iran twittering about exactly what was going on as they saw it. I was reading people's firsthand accounts of a revolution of sorts; their excitement for the upcoming elections, their outrage as their candidate lost in a "landslide" win, their decision to finally do something about it. Since then, I have been hooked on the issue. 

I soon figured out what the tag #cnnfail was in reference to. People were shocked that CNN (and really all of the other major news sources in the US) weren't giving Iran the coverage it deserved. I decided I wanted to see if I could find it anywhere on television myself. I know the BBC usually gives the best news, but that wasn't on my DirectTV channel list, so I looked at BBC America. It had some random TV show. Then, I checked MSNBC, the channel I like to go to for my news. They were running a show about the stock market for the next two hours. I checked CNN, and finally found something, but I suspect only because of the Twitter #cnnfail fiasco. (My suspect was right, it seems...Rick Sanchez did a segment on how people were saying CNN's coverage was bad, and went through the weekend posting bits they had used to prove they had covered it.)

Twitter has become the outlet for the people of Iran to let the rest of the world know what is going on, and for the rest of the world to find out what is going on. Essentially, it is the website of this revolution. I have been so amazed at the support coming from all corners of the globe. There are people in other countries trying to find ways to help Iranians get around the internet blocks the Iranian government has put into place, people "going green for Iran" with their profile pictures, retweeting things said by Iranian people (using "from Iran" instead of usernames to protect identities), changing their time zones and locations in an attempt to keep the Iranian tweeters safe from the government finding them, and simply offering words of support and encouragement. Twitter itself even postponed site maintenance so that the site wouldn't be down during the daytime in Iran. I tweeted this earlier, and I really mean it: It is truly amazing to see so many people from so many backgrounds come together through the internet to help one another. 

It gives me hope for humanity, my generation, and the future of the world, to see so many people around the world supporting the people of Iran. What they are doing is truly inspiring. And it will pay off. America was the result of a revolution, after all. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Well, the oppressed are demanding...it's only a matter of time.