FORTUNE — When was the last time you heard anybody mention Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn (LNKD)? It must have been at least 17 seconds ago, right? And that’s exactly the problem that Mashable set out to solve when it started pushing for Social Media Day. Today – June 30, 2011 – that day has finally come, with official proclamations by the governments of Toronto, Dublin, Las Vegas, San Jose, Calif., the State of Arizona and others.
According to Mashable, a news site that covers, uh, social media, “Social Media Day is a global celebration of the technological advancements that enable everyone to connect with real-time information, communicate from miles apart and have their voices heard.”
Because what’s more important than making sure that everyone’s voice is heard? Every voice, after all, is just as valuable as every other voice. What makes Francis Fukuyama more worthy of our attention than, say, Fart Sandwich? If we don’t hear each and every voice, preferably all at once, what then?
Today is the day, Mashable says, “to celebrate the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue…”
¡Viva La Revolución! People, it’s now up to you. Do your part to raise awareness of social media and show how social dialogue is replacing fusty old concepts like thinking and learning. It’s up to you to make sure people know about the trending Twitter topic #whyyoubelikedat?, and about Brenda Thompson’s toddler who said something really funny last night. It’s up to you to pay attention that unusually sexy woman who just started following you on Twitter, and to accept that her “money-making SEO secrets” are 100 percent legitimate. It’s up to you to click on that viral Facebook link to find out why “you won’t believe what this man found in his McDonald’s hamburger!!!”
For what will our progeny think of us if we ignore social media and just let it lie there, forgotten, abandoned, our attention diverted by the threats to the global economy, nuclear disasters and Michele Bachmann’s confusion of Iowa towns? They’ll think we just didn’t care, that’s what.
Today, Social Media Day, is the day that the violently racist YouTube commenter and the insufferably hip Gawker reader come together as one. It is the day that the Rethuglicans of Redstate.com join hands with the Dimmycrats of Daily Kos to let the world know that, though we may disagree among ourselves (and in fact, hate each other’s guts), we are all one body, united by our shared rage and near-illiteracy. Except for those 911 Truth people. Nobody wants any part of them.
