Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>>Paul Mason: What do you think about that? What would you say -- where does this go?
Because once the cork is out of the bottle, the genie is out, where is it going to end?
>>Bassem Youssef: Well, there's two sides of it. First of all, 10 years ago, social
media didn't have that much of leverage or effect on how things were viewed, but we -- we
really have to put it in their own -- its own side.
It's not a Facebook revolution. It's not a YouTube revolution. It's just part of it.
Because in Egypt, we only have less than 30% penetration of Internet.
So you have 70% of the people living out there that doesn't know anything what's going on
on Facebook. The mistake that people in social media -- the
social media gurus on Twitter and Facebook think that if they create a Facebook page,
that they will actually change things. It doesn't. Because so many -- I mean, I remember
the referendum, a year ago when we had the referendum, the "yes" or "no" on the amendments,
and of course the religious groups were advocating for "yes" and everybody else, like our generation,
will select "no." And if you look at Facebook, it's like, oh, my God, it's going to be like
a 70/30 or an 80/20 "no" vote, and it was a 78% "yes."
We were shocked because we had actually to get out of the bubble.
Yes, of course it is a very good aiding tool, but it's not everything. We just have to put
it in its own perspective and we actually have, at the end, to work on the ground, because
the poor person with kind of a minimal socioeconomic level will listen to the guy who gives him
food, who gives him support, who talks to him in the mosque, not the guy behind a screen
on a keyboard making Facebook pages.