Social software = Kool Aid dispenser?

Clay Shirky has some useful observations about the role social software may have played in the Dean debacle in Iowa. Did social software provide a false sense of comfort and reinforcement among a relatively few, who guaged success based on the volume of the already converted, not the number of new converts? Was the mentality behind the strategy of shipping in 3,500 kids (mostly) from around the country, wearing conspicious orange hats, one more of a "movement" rather than a "campaign," as Shirky ponders? In other words, were the Deaniacs drinking their own Kool Aid, and did social software just help dispense it faster? I think Shirkey has a point.

Dean did poorly because not enough people voted for him, and the usual explanations – potential voters changed their minds because of his character or whatever – seem inadequate to explain the Iowa results. What I wonder is whether Dean has accidentally created a movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where what counts is voting.)

And (if that’s true) I wonder if his use of social software helped create that problem.

We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because participation in online communities often provides a sense of satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the real world. When you’re communing with like-minded souls, you feel like you’re accomplishing something by arguing out the smallest details of your perfect future world, while the imperfect and actual world takes no notice, as is its custom.

What the "I have a Scream" speech obscured was how badly Dean lost Iowa--he didn't even get HALF of what Kerry got. He tanked--and well before the primordial scream. The problem isn't that the message didn't get out, it was that it only resonated in the echo chamber of progressive circles--helped by social software.