Nerd Arts

Another article about the effect that YouTube and the internet are having on the current presidential campaign. Once again, there’s a huge elephant in the room, and that elephant has won almost every single post debate poll after the debate (before they stopped conducting them). That elephant is Ron Paul, and I’ll be honest. I’m going to get a little traffic bump just by mentioning his name. Whether or not this is part of a continuing internet cycle is yet to be determined. Whether it is Ron Paul or an I Phone, the traffic results will be fairly similar if you write about them. I just don’t understand how the mainstream media can continuously write about the youtube effect on elections and not even mention Paul at all. It dosn’t matter if you support him or not, one simply has to acknowledge that he owns the political space on the web. The only thing that comes close is the pro Barack O Bama anti Hillary Clinton 1984 youtube video. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, after the next Republican presidential debate go to YouTube, then to the “News and Politics” section, and you will see for yourself a handful of Mitt Romney videos (generally from the official campaign site) maybe a John McCain saying something stupid video, and the rest will be all Ron Paul. After going to YouTube, just cruise on over to Technorati.com and have a look at the current tag cloud. I guarantee you after the next debate, Ron Paul’s name will be the largest once again.

So whats this say for the mainstream media? Well, instead of some sort of conspiracy that they want to exclude Ron Paul from the entire political process (something that the Republican Party really is trying to do) I think it shows just how out of touch print media and television is with the internet. Video killed the Radio Star, and the Internet is about to Pwn all the saps left in Television, Film, and Print. Adapt or face extinction.

Both articles point to the fact that the most viewed videos are for John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. But in both circumstances these were videos that were negative to the respective candidates. Sure, a guy falling on the ice is going to get more views than a girl giving a bunny a flower. Big Surprise. If you want to see what’s hot you look at the number of actual videos about a candidate. If you want to gauge which campaign is more fired up, you look at how many ordinary people are making videos to support a certain candidate. Anyone who frequents youtube knows one thing. Ron Paul absolute destroys any other candidate in terms of influence, as well as numbers on the internet. And I’m not saying this as someone who is going to vote for Paul (I think saying who you will vote for this early is a bit ridiculous) all I’m fed up with is this sort of journalistic dishonesty. Either they know they’re lying, or they’re just plain stupid, and don’t know shit about the internet.

Current video count on YouTube as of June 13th (one must also take into account that Ron Paul was virtually non existent on YouTube prior to the debates)
Ron Paul 13,400
Hillary Clinton 11,100
Barack Obama 11,000
John McCain 4,660
Rudy Giuliani 3,380
Mitt Romney 2,590

If you don’t believe me go to youtube, and conduct the experiment for yourself.

From the wall street journal:
YouTube Fuels — and Foils — Campaigns
By AMY SCHATZ

WASHINGTON — For months, the presidential wannabes have been churning out serious, talking-to-the-camera videos for YouTube. So far, viewers prefer the spontaneous, unauthorized, less flattering fare.

Traffic on YouTube related to the 2008 presidential race spiked in March and April, largely on two unofficial, critical videos, one about Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, the other about Republican John McCain, according to a study of YouTube traffic by Nielsen/Net Ratings.

An anti-Clinton “1984″ video, in which the New York senator is portrayed as a Big Brother-ish figure, accounted for about 75% of all traffic to candidate-related videos on YouTube in March, Nielsen found.
Link

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A somewhat better view can be found here

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