I just discovered and became an instant fan of “Chuck Klosterman’s America,” a series running in Esquire magazine by, well, Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman’s style is provocative and hilarious, like Andy Warhol meets Jack Handy. His anecdotes are filled with irony and introspection, and even when the subject matter is outside of my experience, his inner monologue feels disturbingly like my own.

In his most recent installment entitled “The Ethics Paradox,” Klosterman describes a bewildering scene in a movie theater. At a screening of Ralph Nader’s documentary, An Unreasonable Man, Klosterman and a theater full of presumably socially conscious citizens sat by and uncomfortably ignored an elderly man in the back of the theater as he coughed, vomited, and maybe even had a seizure.

We were actively watching a movie about ethics, yet consciously ignoring every ethical impulse any normal person should have.

The scene illustrated the disconnect that we as Americans, or maybe just as people, can have between thinking about, promoting, or believing in the right thing and actually taking socially responsible action. In Klosterman’s example, one can see the disconnect “between the experience of watching An Unreasonable Man and the experience of being alive.”

I found the article particularly relevant to our blog’s discussion of new media. Even more so because of the title of this blog and the values we hold as a company. We intend to better understand how new media affects our industry, but we also mean to inspire action and have a positive effect on the world around us.

Klosterman’s article provokes some very interesting questions. Can the Internet make you a better person? Does the increase in social activism on the Web correlate to an increase in socially conscious action in the real world, or does a similar disconnect to the one Klosterman describes exist for even the most active of online social activists?

So, tell us. Are there social media sites out there that are producing the kind of real-world activism that they aim for? Has anything on the Web inspired you to act? Let us know.