Post-Internet politics

[Yoda]

So, I've actually been thinking about this for a long time, but since something came up in The Shoutbox today that reminded me of it, I figured I'd slap together a thread:

What's going to happen in another 10-15 years, when people my age, who are currently young enough to have grown up with the Internet, start becoming public figures and running for office? It stands to reason that we'll be able to go back and see every stupid little things they've said. Every angsty status update after their girlfriends or boyfriends break up with them, every drunken Facebook photo, every vulgar joke tweeted, and especially, every weird political position they may have taken from 13-19 when a lot of them were probably still jumping from ideology to ideology to figure out which one they really believe in.

Obviously, this will happen, and at some point it will be a story. The question is, how big of a story? Will it have legs? Will the press more or less collectively decide not to go digging up things like this unless they relate directly to something happening with the candidate in the present? And if they do dig it all up, with the public give them a pass on anything before a certain age, because they know how inevitable that kind of thing generally is?

I'm leaning towards the latter. I think we get a few early quasi-scandals or embarrassments, followed by a whole lot of "oh, who cares, they were 15" type responses, followed by fewer such revelations over time, except for when it plays directly into some preconceived notions about the candidate. IE: someone calls someone an extremist in some direction, and something they posted online when they were younger fits that accusation on some level.

What do you guys think? No drama? Lots of drama? Drama that tapers off as people adjust to the new "rules" of the sorts of things we start learning about public figures?

[will.15]

I don't think it will amount to anything. Now if someome runs for Congress and he said when he was 15 Hitler was a great guy, that's different.

[Sexy Celebrity]

Why stop at politicians? This is something everybody has to deal with. The thing that still amazes me is how everybody has taken to the internet, everybody has Twitter and Facebook, everybody is doing something online. I mean, when I first started coming online in the mid 90's, it was cool to have the internet in your house and all that and be able to experience it all, but there was still a big thing where being involved with the internet too much made you a nerd. Now, everybody's got their lives on the internet, now you can find your whole family online -- I used to never know my dad's side of the family growing up and now I've been able to write to them on Facebook.

I don't think we've been fully prepared for sharing ourselves over the internet. It's all still relatively new and I know that I didn't fully grasp how things I've said on the internet was gonna stick around years and years. I've got these Christian quotes that you took from me, Yoda, for your old quote website that are still hanging around -- things that aren't even me anymore and yet I'm stuck with them forever, it seems. In fact, I was doing a search on this recently and someone was thinking about putting one of my quotes on their body as a tattoo. That shocked the hell out of me. And look at me now -- what am I gonna think when I'm 60 years old and the internet brings up searches of me talking about how hot Jake Gyllenhaal is when I was in my 20's? I guess the internet will be our databank of life stories. Grandpas everywhere will be like, "Did I ever tell you about the time I met your grandma?" and the grandchildren will go, "Shut up. I read that on your old blog already."

[John McClane]

It will be no different than the way we handle things today. For instance, I remember when a candidate was running for office here in VA and he wrote his Master's thesis attacking feminism...20 years prior to him running for office. No one cared. Oh yeah, he also won that election, too.

[will.15]

Nazis is different.

[mark f]

Not again.

[honeykid]

Having given it about 3 seconds thought, I'd guess that it'd be the same as it is now. If something is found which those who oppose someone/something thinks will benefit them/discredit their opponent, they'll bring it up in the hope it helps them.

[Yoda]

One thing to consider: while there are certainly stories now about what this candidate or that thought when they were younger, it can be a very different thing to have a direct, verbatim quote from the candidate themselves. I think people find it easier to dismiss these things now because the record of them isn't usually explicit and undeniable.

[John McClane]

One thing to consider: while there are certainly stories now about what this candidate or that thought when they were younger, it can be a very different thing to have a direct, verbatim quote from the candidate themselves. I think people find it easier to dismiss these things now because the record of them isn't usually explicit and undeniable.Again, I don't think it matters at all. Case in point: they pulled some pretty nasty stuff from that guy's thesis and he still kicked major butt in the election. Voters are a lot smarter than some give them credit for because come on, they know the guy was young when he said it.

[Yoda]

Well, what scale are we talking? Mayor? State House? That probably makes a massive difference. And I'd be loathe to dismiss the idea based on an anecdote; there are contrary anecdotes about the very same thing, though it doesn't seem to come up too often.

I'd also wonder if academic things aren't granted a bit more leeway, for a number of reasons.

[Powdered Water]

I'm a pessimist to say the least. It will be more drama and nastier than ever in 15 more years. Look at how ridiculous and nasty commercials are now. Soon all that hatred and nastiness will be pumped directly into your little watch screen internet viewing devices. That's progress, I guess.

[ash_is_the_gal]

i think a good analogy for this is the Nixon/Kennedy debates in 1960. it was the first televised presidential debate since television had been invented. before the debate aired, Kennedy and Nixon were neck and neck in the polls, but Kennedy pulled into the lead easily as soon as America got a glimpse of the poised Massachusetts junior senator with the boyish smile.

the public has always been easily swayed by appearances, and when it comes to politics and elections, i believe this will always be taken advantage of.

[planet news]

Drama that tapers off as people adjust to the new "rules" of the sorts of things we start learning about public figures?Yes.

Nice example of a successfully mediated paradigm shift above.

[Yoda]

Great example of a largely failed paradigm shift, just for fun: the fact that we still regard people as "famous" for being on TV even though way, way more people are on TV than ever before. Fame, in general, has been tremendously inflated, and I don't think media consumers have really adjusted.

[will.15]

i think a good analogy for this is the Nixon/Kennedy debates in 1960. it was the first televised presidential debate since television had been invented. before the debate aired, Kennedy and Nixon were neck and neck in the polls, but Kennedy pulled into the lead easily as soon as America got a glimpse of the poised Massachusetts junior senator with the boyish smile.

the public has always been easily swayed by appearances, and when it comes to politics and elections, i believe this will always be taken advantage of.
That was a good thing, people elected Kennedy over Nixon. Nixon won next time because he was running against someone even less photogenic than him, Hubert Humphrey, a fat, squealy voiced crying bag of gas.

[honeykid]

I disagree. One of the worst things to happen to politics in the last century. Sadly, 40 years later, it lead to us over here being infected. :(

[will.15]

I used to go with the conventional wisdom, that television has been an intrusive element in selecting a superficial candidate, but I don't anymore.

Being just a pretty face and even a good speaker ain't enough to get elected or even the nomination. Look at John Edwards. But putting the two together you might get that candidate that comes across and excites people and that is an important element of leadership. Lyndon Johnson. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush I didn't have it. Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and arguably George II did. Obama without that star quality would have little chance of being re-elected.

[nebbit]

Everybody does or say things when young :yup: that we may regret when we are older and wiser http://www.myemoticons.com/images/communicate/praises/smart.gif so hopefully the next generations will be more forgiving than mine or the ones before me :yup: we are not our past :nope:

[rufnek]

So, I've actually been thinking about this for a long time, but since something came up in The Shoutbox today that reminded me of it, I figured I'd slap together a thread:

What's going to happen in another 10-15 years, when people my age, who are currently young enough to have grown up with the Internet, start becoming public figures and running for office? It stands to reason that we'll be able to go back and see every stupid little things they've said. Every angsty status update after their girlfriends or boyfriends break up with them, every drunken Facebook photo, every vulgar joke tweeted, and especially, every weird political position they may have taken from 13-19 when a lot of them were probably still jumping from ideology to ideology to figure out which one they really believe in.

Obviously, this will happen, and at some point it will be a story. The question is, how big of a story? Will it have legs? Will the press more or less collectively decide not to go digging up things like this unless they relate directly to something happening with the candidate in the present? And if they do dig it all up, with the public give them a pass on anything before a certain age, because they know how inevitable that kind of thing generally is?

I'm leaning towards the latter. I think we get a few early quasi-scandals or embarrassments, followed by a whole lot of "oh, who cares, they were 15" type responses, followed by fewer such revelations over time, except for when it plays directly into some preconceived notions about the candidate. IE: someone calls someone an extremist in some direction, and something they posted online when they were younger fits that accusation on some level.

What do you guys think? No drama? Lots of drama? Drama that tapers off as people adjust to the new "rules" of the sorts of things we start learning about public figures?

10-15 years from now all this technology is gonna be so out of date that digging up what was said on the internet 15 years ago will be like finding what's on your mama's old 8-track tape. Even if you find the tape where you gonna get a working machine to play it on? It's like home movies--when's the last time you saw a Super-8 projector for sale?

Besides look at all the stuff being posted--I've got thousands of entries in this one forum alone. Trying to go back and wade through those and then figure out who the hell "rufnek" really was would be an awful lot of work for very little return.

It's like that old advice--never do anything you wouldn't want your mama to read about in the newspaper.

[Yoda]

I have two thoughts in response. The first is that the reason we don't see things pop up from old technologies is because they were all analog, and are not easily searchable or backwards compatible. But going forward, it seems reasonable that almost all of this content will be preserved in some form.

This ties into my second thought, which is that while it can take awhile to sift through things, a) people sift through all sorts of hard Congressional documents to uncover things even today, and b) it'd take no time at all to search for specific phrases or words in your many thousands of posts.

So, not only is content preserved far more often than it was in previous mediums, but it's also much, much easier to search.

[planet news]

The only way content becomes inaccessible is if it is thoroughly deleted or falls into the deep web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web) from broken links. Either would imply the collapse of Facebook-Twitter dominance in favor of something else.

Can any of you imagine the emergence of a new alternative to Facebook in the near future that could usurp the current one, or is it already an abstract enough system to where nothing more appealing could be created (i.e. has it become synonymous with the online social sphere in the same way that capital has become synonymous with value?)?

Also, how much of web content can be eradicated easily?