PLUG

Like all major affairs in the media, the bout between NBC’s late night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien spurred a good deal of creative heckling in the month of back and forth over the future of “The Tonight Show.”

Every time something big goes down with major celebrities, the mass media is just one of the parties involved in event-naming, fun-poking and marketable mockery.

TeeFury.com sold a “CoCo and Leno-head” T-shirt for one day only on January 16.

Hollywood blog The Wrap dubbed the incident “LateNightCrisis 2010” and Examiner.com went with “Late Night Gate.” Even MTV joined in on the fun, featuring a battle of comic book cameos.

And we can’t forget “CoCo,” Conan’s first nickname in his 17 years of television. “I’m with CoCo” spurred Facebook groups, Twitter conversations, an epic-looking graphic and even a rally in the rain outside NBC’s Los Angeles studios.

All from those in support of O’Brien staying on board at NBC.

And people call our generation apathetic.We mobilize when we need to, in support of those we believe in and against what we don’t.

But it’s important that we remember to utilize the tools of the Internet and social media to spur real-world change, because, frankly, nobody ever won a war by creating a Facebook group.