Soap boxing defined by Answers.com is; ””To engage in impromptu or nonofficial public speaking, often flamboyantly.Idiom: on one’s soapbox, speaking one’s views passionately or self-importantly.”
In the tradition of the great American discourse, we discover that “soap boxing” was used to get the crowd listening. The oral tradition was in many ways, the best way to be heard. Illiteracy has been a weakness of the United States throughout its history, and as a result the oral tradition was necessary. The message would be spread through a passionate, emotive transfer of ideas. Every major political movement of the past 2 centuries was spread more by the fire of the tongue, than that of the fire of the pen. We still see that to be true in the form of mass media, television, talk shows, news networks, etc. Soap boxing has taken on many forms. The lost art of orator, by way of spreading ideas has not really gone away, but rather, it has been transcended into new form of delivery. I believe the term soap boxing has morphed into a new form; Soap Blogging. Soap Blogging represents that “third place” phenomena that Ray Oldenburg describes as, ””the core settings of informal public life”. (Oldenburg, 16)As the pub, church, and other free or inexpensive local third places have disappeared, for many of us the feeling that community is lacking has increased. Third places, according to Oldenburg, are necessary for community to arise. They are places where members of a community interact with others and come to know the ties which they have in common.” (taken from Robert Paterson’s The Death of the “Third Place” and the Birth of Virtual Community). We now have what I determined to be a replacement of the “third place”, the internet. We now, through use of the social-network, “soap blogging”, we now stand upon our virtual soap-boxes, and send out our thoughts, feelings, messages with a speed that could not have been imagined by our founding mother and fathers. Will it ever take the place of total human interaction? I hope not, I believe that there are no wordsmiths out there that can truly deliver the meaning of flashing eyes, until you have actually gazed into a set.
It is my belief that soap boxing has been expanded to “soap blogging.” ME is hereby the queen of soapblogging!
