Residents of Middle Tennessee found unprecedented common ground tonight as every citizen simultaneously made the same joke on Facebook and Twitter about the arrest of Carnival Kia owner, Chris Bostick. The local auto entrepreneur turned himself in to Brentwood police today on charges of domestic assault and being a felon in possession of firearms. Within moments of the news breaking in local media outlets, it is believed that every single resident of the greater Middle Tennessee area had made the exact same joke.
“Basically, the set-up was just too good, too easy to pass-up” noted Dr. Franklin Fillmore, a professor of Applied Social Media at Lipscomb University. “The man has spent years branding himself with a one-liner, and a vaguely threatening one at that. When something like this happens, well, you can see why so many people jumped immediately at the most obvious punchline. Frankly, who wouldn’t? But still, the fact that literally every single person in about 25 counties made the exact same joke at once? That’s got to be a new record. And that’s just online; we have no method for tracking how many people made that joke at the dinner table or around the proverbial water cooler, both of which are prime arenas for simplistic, obvious humor.”
Bostick, owner and spokesman of Carnival Kia, has used the tag-line “Don’t you leave until you see me!” at the end of his television and radio advertisements for several years. He currently is being accused of allegedly assaulting his wife during a domestic dispute Sunday. During an investigation following the incident, Brentwood police discovered an AK-15 rifle and a handgun at Bostick’s home; due to a prior felony conviction for carrying a concealed weapon, it is illegal for Bostick to possess firearms. He has been released on $5,000 bail pending a November 15th court appearance.
Initial estimates indicate than no less than 20,000 status updates and 9,000 tweets read “I guess someone left without seeing him” only moments after news broke today of Bostick’s arrest, an unprecedented act of social media solidarity. Dr. Madeline Bayline, a sociology professor at VanderbiltUniversity, says she feels that the mass-punditry may have been indicative of a general need for fellowship and emotional-release following such a highly-contentious event as Tuesday’s Presidential election.
“Even within Tennessee, an undisputedly ‘red state’, we are still a people divided,” explained Bayline. “We feel a great deal of animosity amongst even our closest friends and family over irreconcilable ideological differences, and yet, our basic human need for a feeling of camaraderie and community cries out to be met. By being given the opportunity to make such a easy, obvious joke, and to do so in such a public forum with literally thousands of your friends, relatives, and peers alongside, it allowed us as a people to experience a catharsis that we very much needed. Frankly, we as Tennesseans haven’t all been able to point and laugh in unison like this since Basil Marceaux stopped running for office, and that’s been sorely missed.”
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Chris Bostick photo found at http://www.1075theriver.com/pages/personality_wj.html?article=10560584
The Rhinestone 