NP: John Cage, 4'33"

I've now gotten two unsolicited e-mails from some woman running for Congress in Florida looking for donations. First of all, I live in Illinois. Second, I never signed up to receive any such e-mails. Two possible explanations come to mind. First, that this is an increasingly sophisticated phishing scam. The only other thing I can think of is that I signed up to receive MoveOn.org e-mails regarding, I think, an FCC issue some time ago. When I did, I explicitly recall asking only to receive e-mails on this issue. Several months later, I started getting spammed with more general political nonsense that made lots of assumptions about my political mind based on my position on a single issue, and I immediately unsubscribed.

This possibility has me a little concerned about the much-ballyhooed "netroots," because it's somewhat emblematic of how groupthink can take over an online community to the point where many in that community assume that even the peripheral elements -- like people who sign up for e-mails pertaining to a single, unrelated issue -- are completely on the same page as they are.

If I sound like I'm jumping to conclusions on this, it's more that I've been thinking about how the netroots movement actually works. And doesn't work. On the one hand, it's been an unqualified success for fundraising on the left. And yet the GOP still won the Get Out The Vote part of the contest in 2004. The quick interpretation is that online communities are great for things that don't require actually getting up and going outside, and while this does play into stereotypes of the mouse potato, I think it's at least part of the issue. "Netizens" have become a powerful force in politics, but they may be overestimating their position in food chain. I may need to pick up a copy of Crashing the Gate to examine this further.