The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Bullshit 2.0

SX column for the week. But first, just a friendly reminder to the Woollahra Ladies Who Luncheon: Visers come OFF once the lady comes OFF the Paddington Lawn Tennis club courts. Wearing said visers down Queen Street is an affront to everything that is pure and good.

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This year’s federal election is the first in which the Web 2.0 phenomenon is playing a major part, and watching our pollies navigate the new media ranges from amusing to downright tragic.

If, like me, you’ve ever emailed an MP and saved their address in your folder, you may have unwittingly become their Facebook friend. I’m now ‘friends’, for example, with Malcolm Turnbull, Lindsay Tanner and Penny Sharpe, even though I’ve never met any of them personally and none of them would know me from their parties’ equally ignominious GLBTI policy documents.

Likewise, many of us read about the Labor hacks who instantly beefed up Kevin Rudd’s Facebook profile friends into the hundreds upon its inception – but poor old John Howard only had eight friends for the first few days of his. Still, Howard’s not about to miss out exploiting a medium on these new fangled intertubes, and his weapon of choice now is to announce policy directions and strategies, such as the ‘Mersey dash’ to Devonport, on YouTube. Obviously, somewhere an adviser is bending Howard’s ear on the far-ranging scope and instant accessibility of new media outlets, perhaps in an attempt to neuter the growing perception of Howard’s age and anachronistic conservatism rendering him redundant to a large chuck of voters under 35.

But as its proponents often argue, Web 2.0 is less a technology than an attitude. And although millions of people now have a blog, Facebook profile or MySpace.com page, we’re also very wary of how new media is used and exploited. Coke’s ‘Zero Movement’ 2.0 campaign failed spectacularly, for example, because cynical visitors to the site soon exposed the fake blog posts that sung Coke Zero’s praises as being nothing more than Coke’s employees writing scripts from the company’s head office.

Likewise, the same cynical younger audience will quickly tweak to political bullshit, even if it’s in a hip, funky format. Kevin07, Labor’s US presidential-style online love-in of all things Kevin, is nothing if not a well-crafted and designed one-stop shop of all major new media, but only time will tell how effective it is in both raising Rudd’s profile, and enticing undecided voters to vote for him.

For the moment, new media seem to favour the left side of politics. Conservative commentators have already condemned the egalitarian nature of Wikipedia – ‘the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit’ – highlighting how easily entries can be incorrectly and even libellously edited. Perhaps this is why we’re yet to see a John07 website, although you can enjoy his thrilling YouTube presentations on the federal Liberal site.

Still, bullshit by any other medium…

Labels: 2007 federal election, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Kevin07, Web 2.0

posted by Sam @ Tuesday, August 14, 2007