While the Sadie Lou Blog is not about to become a place solely devoted to political thought, it is worth noting yet another election-related tidbit: the impact of the Internet. While Wired cites cyberspace as a propellant force on this year’s campaign trail, The Morning News goes for the personal.
How many times during this election season (and even before) did you receive Facebook invites to a group specifically devoted to the promotion of a presidential candidate? And how many friends of yours “donated” their profile statuses to help get the vote out on Election Day? In a piece titled Friending The President, Lauren Bans asks similar questions, using social networking sites as a springboard to see just how much influence the Internet had during Election 2008:
On Facebook, politics is just another flag to wave, to attract or repel. I never updated my status before this election. And often I try to stop and ask myself why, and why on Facebook of all places? Sometimes I have a quasi-valid reason, like I read a good article on Obama’s tax policy and I want everyone to see it—but am I caught up in altruism or actually the smug satisfaction of saying “Look what I found!” Other times it’s just a compulsion keeping up with the buzz. I feel a little like how Ted Haggard must have felt when he guiltily indulged in a male prostitute—guilty as sin, but oh-so-sated.
On the flipside of that, Bans also wants to know what the Internet can tell us about how we psychologically process major events like this year’s election:
At times it feels like my fellow Facebookers and I are posting our political opinions for the same reasons we’re posting pictures or updating our relationship status—to create an alluring, albeit one-dimensional, identity for our friends, potential friends, and total strangers to see. We may admire Obama for his lengthy and nuanced explanations, but we speak in Republican-ese, in catchphrases more in common with “drill, baby, drill.”
To put it another way: If diehard Barack supporters asked themselves, “What would Barack do?” one answer would be: probably not pen a pithy, show-off jab at Sarah Palin for the top of his social network page.