Opinion: Obama’s dog days: McCain’s YouTube surge dashes audacious hopes

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At the weirdly named Silicon Alley Insider, Sean Ryan notes that JohnMcCainDotCom has been trouncing BarackObamaDotCom in YouTube viewership throughout August.

While the shamelessly pro-Obama media have focused on the Democratic nominee’s fancy video footwork and the hot, hot hotness of McCain’s detractors, McCain has carved out a big YouTube advantage today, this week and this month. All time, Obama still enjoys a commanding lead, and McCain has yet to break the Ron Paul barrier.

McCain’s lead is even more commanding in terms of per-screen average: As of right now, he has posted a mere 241 clips, as opposed to Obama’s 1,089.

Now consider David Sarno’s discovery that there is no Digg ‘Bury Brigade’ that has been conspiring to suppress pieces critical of McCain, and that the burying of anti-McCain material has been a popular, community-wide phenomenon. Could McCain have a higher rating among the web-savvy than is generally believed? That runs counter to the hipster narrative my colleagues all want to believe, but I found out way back in the nineties that hipsters are as useless online as they are in real life.