By now, a couple of generations of moviegoers are familiar with the disembodied voice in a cornfield that leads Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) to risk all for a baseball diamond. Web developer Pascal Rettig is not in as precarious a position as that fictional farmer, yet he has challenged himself by constructing a social stadium of sorts.
Political Screaming Match is a digital seed sower’s attempt to answer his own question: “If I build it, will they scream?” The website asks visitors to input their phone number and select their position on “Obamacare.” They are then connected to an anonymous phone call with a user of the opposing view.
A screen grab from the website politicalscreamingmatch.com.
Rettig, the chief technology officer of Fundraise.com and a seasoned computer consultant, had long been observing the theatrics of heated television round tables with skepticism. “I have very strong opinions on all these things — but I don’t think I would ever get into a screaming match about it,” he says.
However, spend any period of time in the comments under an online report on the health care debate, and it quickly becomes obvious that there are certain forums where people will talk a big talk.
“I want to see if we create a platform that pushes it as far to the extreme as possible, how will people react to that … what [will] people do?” Rettig says. He hypothesizes that genuine screams would be few and far between.
“I don’t think that’s how normal people talk and discuss,” says Rettig. That was his jumping-off point for developing the website with his wife, Martha, whose design skills lent themselves to the braying donkey and trumpeting elephant positioned on either side of “Political Screaming Match.”
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