Friday, November 12, 2004

The Election's Over - Get Over It!

The blogs advocating that the election was stolen are too numerous to name. But the NYT, of all places, has an article demonstrating the relative ease with which these conspiracies are being debunked:

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go.

A couple of observations:

1. The story needs to focus on Liberal blogs, instead of lumping all blogs together. While there are Conservative blogs that peddle conspiracies, the major Right players have demonstrated their propensity for getting it right, a la Rathergate.

2. This article demonstrates the maturation of the blogosphere. In its infancy, the blogosphere toiled in relative obscurity, read only by message board geeks. However, now that the universe of blogs has become mainstream, numerous experts routinely troll the sites, quickly debunking the myths. This free marketplace of ideas has reached a frightening efficiency in which theories can be challenged and through swift iteration, be proved true or false.

3. To all Liberals, when one of your main channels of ideas, the NYT, bursts your conspiracy bubble, it's time to pack up and go home.

UPDATE: Instapundit is running a similar post on Observation #1, but you can say you read it here first...