Normally I think xkcd hits it out of the park, but today's contribution I think is way off target. The premise of the comic is that it costs far more money to run ads on every major political news site than it would to "pay five college students $20/hour to camp the site 24/7 and post the first few comments the moment a story goes up, giving you the last word on the subject and creating the illusion of consensus."
The alt-text proceeds to mock comment structures based on "voting" up good comments and down bad ones. But the real answer is "most commenters on major news sites are morons, and most readers of those sites have to be aware of that fact." If persistent internet trolling was enough to seriously change views, Ron Paul would be President-for-life.
I have to disagree here. I think Randall's point is somewhat valid, and it just means Ron Paul had a huge way to climb. Perhaps there's a saturation point where appearing to have a consensus of the internet world won't get you a quite enough votes, but will bring your ideas out of obscurity. Interestingly, that's the exact same trend people are finidng with campaign spending generally: that it's much more important for getting your name/ideas on the table from obscurity, but less important for winning outright. If the saturation trend is the same in both, Randall's point holds even better than he might realize.
ReplyDeleteI think Andrew is correct with regard to primaries and other elections (e.g. at the state level or for Congress) where a candidate has to get out of obscurity. The example of Ron Paul's now becoming well-known (albeit not a likely GOp nominee) is apt. But I don't think anyone has been the presidential candidate of either major party for many years now while still being so unknown to voters that internet commenters' views would have an effect.
ReplyDeleteIf you had put "Ron Paul" in the title or first sentence you'd have hits, lots of them.
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