MySpace And Politics Don’t Mix

Attempts have been made before. Politicians trying to connect with younger generations. They dress down. They remove neckties for college crowds. They don threads of their alma maters at outdoor events. Some have even gone wind surfing and have done some light all-terrain biking to show their cool sides. And there are quite a few who really do mean well and don’t only look for the photo ops. (Those come with the territory.) Unfortunately, few can pull such behavior off successfully.

Today, every serious (and some not so serious) candidate for President of the United States has a page of his or her own on MySpace. One made the first leap into the pits of the largest social network on the planet and the rest followed. It’s now required of all the hopefuls. If you’re not on MySpace, you’re not in the race.

I wish it wouldn’t have to be so.

A headline on TechCrunch published March 27th reads “John McCain’s MySpace Page Hacked.” A good case in point. The hack was fairly minimal. No doctored image of McCain. No tiled unicorn JPGs for a background. The only damage done was the replacement of the options box (buttons labeled ‘Send Message’, ‘Add To Friends’, ‘Rank User’, and others) with a “Dear Supporters…” memo constructed in Newsvine-like fashion (text, coloring, etc) surrounded by a profile space toned more darkly than was originally posted.

In the message, the hacker declared McCain’s support for gay marriage.

I’m sure plenty of people got a chuckled out of that, and still do, and some were likely fuming over the material, and still are. I don’t particularly have an issue with this case of Internet vandalism. If we didn’t have all the blackhats, greyhats, and whitehats that we do, software would suck. So there’s a good side all the “havoc” wreaked in various venues - as long as it doesn’t cripple databases, erase lots of ones and zeroes, and all that nasty stuff.

Regardless of this event, however, politicians don’t belong on MySpace. Their messages don’t belong on MySpace. The debates being had over domestic and foreign policies don’t belong on MySpace. Why? Because MySpace is the antithesis of seriousness. Because people lie so profusely, so openly, and so carelessly on MySpace that even the muck politicians throw around regional, national, and international forums ends up looking sparkling clean.

Social networking with politicians is fine. It’s actually a great idea. More one-on-one discussions should be had. More video captures of political slips? Absolutely necessary. Spread them about YouTube and all the various other video venues. Expose liberal candidates and their mistakes to millions of readers and viewers. Do the same to conservatives. And middle-of-the-roaders. We haven’t seen this kind of open democratic back-and-forth take place since… forever. As much as candidates want to keep things clean and safe, they can’t anymore. And that’s a good thing.

Nonetheless, MySpace is not the place for the candidates themselves. It’s where they get judged for how many thousands upon thousands of friends they can log in a week (the tallies lost all meaning long ago), not the bills they’ve voted for or against. It’s where the term “discussion” is spun about in ways that aren’t even worth noting. It’s where politics becomes American Idolized. We’ve already had too many elections where that’s been the case.

The social networks surrounding the political debates in countries throughout the world shouldn’t bore anyone, but they shouldn’t insult the intelligence of knowledgeable peoples either. People can choose to be informed about policies and the effects of their implementation. Or they can favor ignorance. The second road leads us toward the election of representatives people would like to drink beer with. Hopefully, we’ll utilize the technologies Web 2.0 affords us in more productive ways (at least when it comes to affairs like civil liberties and foreign policies) and collectively lean more toward option number one.