andydidyk.com

Okay, so lots of people are talking about presidential candidate Ron Paul. I’ve read about him quite a bit, and can’t say I agree with everything, but one thing I really appreciate about his campaign is that he is easily the most forthright and defined candidate when it comes to national issues. Again, not saying I agree with all of them, but you won’t find a lot of wishy-washy political speak on his site, and that’s something that a generation of people who are seeking genuine experiences can appreciate, whether you agree with Ron Paul or not.

At any rate, what I found most interesting recently about his campaign occurred when I viewed his LinkedIn profile (and yes, you too can be LinkedIn with the likes Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, or Dick Cheney (although poor Dick is currently listed at 0 connections)). This caught my eye, so I copied and pasted it directly from Ron Paul’s “Experience” section on his public LinkedIn profile:

“I have stronger Internet support than any other candidate of either party (as of 11/24):
• Most campaign website internet traffic (Alexa.com)
• Meetup: 67,000 Ron Paul Supporters in 1,230 Groups from 958 Cities
• MySpace: 87,000 friends
• Facebook: 46,000 friends & 40,000 supporters
• YouTube: 6+ million views, 38,000 subscribers
• Technorati: consistently a top blog-search term ”

This is amazing. I’m reminded of Sally Field’s oscar acceptance speech, “You like me, you really like me!” Let’s be honest…achieving this kind of internet notoriety is an admirable feat, especially for a political candidate. Communities in social media tend to err more on the side of being genuine than not in their interactions and support of one another, so this could be a really good indicator for Ron Paul. His polls are rising nation-wide, and his single-day fund raising record had everything to do with online support.

But shouldn’t it strike us as at least a little odd that a qualification for President of the United States is that you have 87,000 “friends” on MySpace? I mean, if that’s really a qualification, then the venerable “Tom“, with over 214 million friends, should rule the world for sure. And if 6 million+ YouTube views are important, the candidates better move out of the way for this guy, with over 68 million views. I think that touting statistics like Ron’s are just another example of the world not quite understanding the true impact of the social and information age. We’re still not sure what to do with all of our new toys, and it’s only by experimenting and living with them that we’ll eventually settle down a bit into a new status quo. I hope.

Until then, I’m going to keep Linking In, although probably not with Ron Paul. And who knows, if this blog gets popular enough, maybe I’ll run for local office. I can see it now, “Andy Didyk. Strength. Leadership. 87 LinkedIn connections. Zero MySpace friends. A blog with moderate readership. For America.” Look out Ron and Hillary…here I come!