Ryan MacMillan

“Our goal is simple”, declare the boys over at truththroughaction.org, thereby raising the possibility that they are, too. But we carp needlessly, for their goal is a lofty one:

to engage young voters in an innovative and cost effective way, providing them with the sort of entertaining content that reminds them that being Democrat is “cool,” the sort, perhaps most importantly, that they are willing to spread virally online. By supplementing the message coming directly from the party and campaigns, we’re making sure we use every available method, and every new technology, to win back the White House this November — and keep it.

If - and it is I realize, gentle reader, a big ‘if’ - you can struggle manfully past the “cool”, Daddy-O, then it’s an interesting project and one which will bear monitoring. I’ve long been suspicious of the willfully-viral, that is to say of social media that explicitly calls itself viral (or similar) before (to stretch a metaphor) there’s any epidemiological evidence for its spread. It inspires in me the same discomfort as people who give themselves nicknames. Such things must be done by others, not by yourself. The truly great, truly epidemic (there goes my metaphor license) social media (think Icanhascheezburger or Will.I.Am’s ‘Yes We Can’) never said they were viral, never claimed to be anything more than amusing or fun. What they are, though, is good, which is why they spread. At truththroughaction.org (entirely too many ‘th’s’ for my taste) they seem aware of this, writing that each video will have “a bit of an edge and clever hook”. Quite whether this will be enough to pass the KUDOS test remains to be seen…