Blagnet.net

Internet geeks aren’t largely libertarian

The Ron Paul fan club made a big deal about his extensive support on the internet, as evidenced by the success and popularity of Ron Paul forums, his success in so many online polls from news outlets (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc.) after debates, his online donations that totaled a lot of money but had a relatively low dollar amount per donor, and all the YouTube songs and videos. I wasn’t too surprised when I read, from Jeffrey Tucker and possibly elsewhere, that computer geeks would be expected to be libertarian more often than the overall population because of their logical, analytical minds, their individualism, and their fascination with the basic details of how things (should) work.

While that probably describes me, Kelly, and lots of other computer/internet geeks, it doesn’t translate into libertarianism very much of the time. If it did, Ron Paul probably would have gotten a lot more votes in the primaries (assuming a typical percentage of computer-geek libertarians voted). When I thought about my experiences at Fark.com, a very popular site among computer nerds, with thousands of comments in their discussion threads and millions of visitors every day, I became very skeptical about the libertarian leanings of the geek community at large. The willful ignorance, envy, hatred of freedom, hatred of businesses, love and adoration of the State, and absolute intolerance of non-Statists exhibited by many Farkers are astounding and disturbing. Many also loathe, and I mean absolutely loathe to the point of hysterics and blind rage, all religion and religious people. I don’t feel like giving any details because I don’t really care about Fark or visit it even once a month anymore, but that was just my two cents on the politics of the internet-geek community at large.