Disinfo Rehab

There’s some new show on ABC coming out, “Fast Forward,” where everyone in the world passes out for 2 minutes, then wakes up with visions of the future. I’m beginning to wonder if some variant on that, perhaps a nation-wide “time out” is needed for America to chill the frak out and dial down the screaming crazy that passes for politics these days.
To hear the crazies on the Right, we’ve elected Voldemort, and it’s time to send bullying mobs out to beat up anyone and smash up cars for anyone that dares express an opinion that’s not politically correct, according to the folks in DC, talk radio or whatever. Apparently we also need to freak out about every single thing the President does. Oh noes! He had dijon mustard! ZOMG! He drank a beer! OMG! He’s just like a guy who killed millions of people in World War II and I better scream and yell and cry and act like an idiot! Oh no! A non-white guy is in charge – that means it’s time for us to lose our sh*t and act like maniacs because THAT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.
Eeeyah. These are people I want in charge. Not.
The Republicans have lost it in the same way the liberals lost it when Reagan got elected – maybe even more so. There are plenty of valid criticisms of the current President, and they should be aired. But to go to the crazy “stoke the fire” extremes make them look as loony tunes as the folks on the left or those stupid trustafarians who throw rocks at endless war protests? Not exactly making yourself look like you should be running anything but a 2 car parade. (BTW, the right had no problem calling any person who disagreed with Bush anti-American – suddenly that’s not ok anymore now that the Prez is Not A Republican?)
Likewise, the lefty types are a bit tiresome, particularly those in liberal bastions, who are screaming and yelling that Obama has not waved his magic wand, changed the country overnight into a liberal utopia, unicorns aren’t jumping over rainbows and all is perfect. Give me a break. The guy’s been in office what, 7 months? He inherits the economic equivalent of a row of crackhouses, post-raid, and is doing clean up. He’s got boneheaded Democrats in Congress who could care less about him, and care more about collecting some lobbyist bucks, and hey, he’s the new guy. To start screaming and yelling that every single thing hasn’t changed overnight is stupid.
Finally, I’ll say this – the double talk on both sides needs to stop. If it’s not ok to bully people, smash up autos, and scream obscenities and act like an overall asshole, then it’s NOT OK. I don’t give a hoot who you are. It’s not ok when it’s right wing bullies, spurred on by talk radio, and it’s not ok when it’s left wing bullies, spurred on by the Internet and whatnot. Until we stop this whole “it’s ok if it’s my guys doing it and not ok if your guys are doing it” mentality, we’re gonna get nowhere. (Remember when Bush was president how you were told by the right if you opposed the President you were “un-American?” What changed…oh yeah, right.)
As for me, i just tune out the nutjobs on all sides. The boorish thug bellowing about birth certificates or death panels is not worth paying attention to at this point. The boorish thug bellowing about how Obama hasn’t made us a socialist paradise and used his magic powers to change the USA overnight is a fool as well. Those that offer constructive, realistic solutions to fixing this country, however, are folks I wanna hear from, on any side.

There’s no doubt that in the political campaign world, Facebook is the Bright Shiny Thing everyone’s got their eyes on, especially since a first-term Senator from Illinois won the presidency last year. But all this activity triggers a question that doesn’t have an easy answer: How many campaigns are actually using Facebook effectively, and how many are just wasting their time?
Case Study: The Race to Get Lots of “Friends” and “Fans” on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook for more than 5 minutes, you know how easy it is to passively express affinity for anyone, or anything. Maybe you see a friend has become a “fan” of (Not Being on Fire, ESPN, Flipping the Pillow Over To Get To The Cool Side, Batman, some cool local blog, and so on) and within a couple of clicks of the mouse, you join the bandwagon. It’s fun, and it’s a social “me-too” function that’s an integral part of Facebook.
After Barack Obama’s much-publicized efforts to collect Facebook friends, politicians and their advisors have jumped on this. Now it’s common to see candidates for office engage in a “friend recruitment war,” sending out repeated pleas to their supporters to “get more friends” for them, and to hit some magic target. As this desperate struggle for “more friends” continues, politicians risk looking less like capable leaders in difficult times, and more like insecure teenagers running for Homecoming King or Queen instead.
More importantly , these drives to “get more friends and fans” on Facebook miss the potential power of social networking for campaigns as a field organizing tool, not a popularity contest. Obama’s efforts on Facebook were part of a larger effort that combined field work – on and off Facebook – and took advantage of the medium’s novelty. Today, when Facebook is larger and more established, it’s much less important if politician has thousands of “fans” on Facebook. That’s particularly true if none of them do anything offline to help out the campaign effort.
However, if a campaign only has a few hundred “fans,” with every one of those fans knocking on doors in their hometown, raising money, and telling their friends – on and offline – about the campaign, the candidate will be doing a lot better where it really counts – at the polls on Election Day.
If political consultants want to help their clients the most with social media, they need to look at social networking not as a gimmick, bolted on to a traditional campaign plan, but instead as an extension of their field plan, just done online.
Using Facebook (and Twitter and other social networking sites) and their many tools to identify, recruit and organize supporters online, is great. Giving them something meaningful to do, will ensure that their campaigns are more successful than the insecure teenager begging for more friends.
UPDATE: In 2010, this article about how the number of Twitter followers does NOT equal influence did some hard research proving this point. Go read it now! Especially if you cover politicians who blab on about Twitter like they know what they’re doing.