You are making the classic internet mistake. Your social circle is much, much more insular than you think it is. This is not a criticism, it's a result of the fact that you pick where you hang out, and so do the other people who hang out there. The internet is very effective at matching like with like - and the result is you think "everybody knows..." or "nobody has heard of...". Not so.
Well, let me give you an example. I know RP from lewrockwell.com (LRC). He's been a columnist there for literally years, long before he entertained any thought of a 2008 presidential run. LRC is a hub for hard core principled libertarians (and is friendly to libertarian anarchists). It's also pretty right-wing Christian, and can be a bit nutty. I don't care for that, but I come back for their libertarian articles. Ron Paul fits right in there. However, I wouldn't link an LRC article onto Reddit. What would be the point? Libertarian minutiae would never get voted up. So I'm a silent bridge between the two cultures. I expect a lot of the other more hardcore libertarians heard of him there. In another case, a hard leftist might have heard of him on DKos when he made the news for arguing with Giuliani over Iraq in the Fox debate. Each of these people bridges him onto Reddit. And if they decide not to be a silent bridge, but to open up the conduit and start linking articles, then suddenly people who never mentioned Ron Paul are crowing about him, and others are voting. But you don't see that, because you don't overlap DKos or LRC, so it comes like a bolt out of the blue for you. Who is this guy and where is his support coming from? It was already there, you just never got told.
Not to disagree with your main point, but Lew Rockwell stuff has been posted to reddit before: http://reddit.com/info/dmyp/comments/ made it to the top (it might have been the #1 all-time story for a while).
Comments
You are making the classic internet mistake. Your social circle is much, much more insular than you think it is. This is not a criticism, it's a result of the fact that you pick where you hang out, and so do the other people who hang out there. The internet is very effective at matching like with like - and the result is you think "everybody knows..." or "nobody has heard of...". Not so.
I'm talking about the change in the correlation between reddit stories and the conversations I hear, not its absolute value.
Well, let me give you an example. I know RP from lewrockwell.com (LRC). He's been a columnist there for literally years, long before he entertained any thought of a 2008 presidential run. LRC is a hub for hard core principled libertarians (and is friendly to libertarian anarchists). It's also pretty right-wing Christian, and can be a bit nutty. I don't care for that, but I come back for their libertarian articles. Ron Paul fits right in there. However, I wouldn't link an LRC article onto Reddit. What would be the point? Libertarian minutiae would never get voted up. So I'm a silent bridge between the two cultures. I expect a lot of the other more hardcore libertarians heard of him there. In another case, a hard leftist might have heard of him on DKos when he made the news for arguing with Giuliani over Iraq in the Fox debate. Each of these people bridges him onto Reddit. And if they decide not to be a silent bridge, but to open up the conduit and start linking articles, then suddenly people who never mentioned Ron Paul are crowing about him, and others are voting. But you don't see that, because you don't overlap DKos or LRC, so it comes like a bolt out of the blue for you. Who is this guy and where is his support coming from? It was already there, you just never got told.
Not to disagree with your main point, but Lew Rockwell stuff has been posted to reddit before: http://reddit.com/info/dmyp/comments/ made it to the top (it might have been the #1 all-time story for a while).