Reddit and Paul Ryan: Could A Model for 2012 Upstarts Emerge In Rob Zerban?

Now, for arguably the first time, the new dynamic of online advocacy has stepped into the political realm, targeting Ryan and his 2012 re-election bid. And the rules appear different from the ones we've understood over the last three years.

At the height of the 2008 election, pundits and politicos alike marveled at the potency of Barack Obama's netroots operation, which helped propel him to a surprising win in the Democratic primary and a sound trouncing of Sen. John McCain in the general election.

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The dynamic was simple: create a groundswell online, tapping into a community that had largely been ignored. Give it something to rally around, a principled figure with a clear message (albeit wishy washy in Obama's case). Drive them to the polls.

It worked. The Obama 2008 campaign created a new model for the convergence of online life and political campaigning -- a model mimicked by nearly every politician under retirement age ever since.

But the Tea Party's successful use of the model in 2010 led to a mix of buyer's remorse and indignation, causing a paradigm shift. These online folks, they are not sheep to be led. Enter Occupy Wall Street. The hive, once manipulated into following leaders, coalesced around itself. They set out to prove talking points and political pressure can flow from the bottom up and created some modicum of change, however intangible. 

The new dynamic is simple (and the opposite of Obama's): allow an organic backlash against social, political and economic ills to develop. Avoid a figurehead to rally around. Avoid partisanship. See if a chorus of outrage can induce change at the top.

But the hive-like online community can be easily riled, quick to make up its mind. In the new normal, being first (or lucky) sometimes trumps all other issues. Just look at Rob Zerban.

SOPA Triggers Backlash

Following OWS, Congress served up two bills that drew an online backlash: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The pushback led to calls for a boycott of GoDaddy to punish its advocacy of SOPA. The Web-hosting megalith played a key role in the bill's creation and passage. The embargo was to be carried out on Thursday. For arguably the first time, a company faced the prospect of hemorrhaging revenue because they pissed off the denizens of the web. GoDaddy eventually blinked and withdrew its support.

The efficiency and promised effectiveness of the boycott, which was yet to be quantified as of writing, emboldened online activists to switch to the political realm. Over the last three days, it searched for a target -- and landed on Ryan.

Reddit has become a veritable incubation chamber for these movements, so when activists sought to replicate the GoDaddy kerfuffle in the political realm, discussion started with a proposal to target Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C. All well and good, except for one snag: Graham does not face an election in 2012. Shoot. Alternative? Paul Ryan. Why not? It should be noted that others have also been targeted, though none were picked apart as quickly. And no other effort to date has kick-started the campaign of an opponent, as the anti-Ryan movement did for Zerban.