Fakes – RI Future

So, Politico’s Steve Friess published a story today about a phenomenon about the Gemma campaign I pointed out on March 20th. I’ve sworn off on saying anything more about Mr. Gemma, I’ll let other writers for RI Future and the rest of Rhode Island’s chattering class cover it

I also want to take the time to give credit elsewhere; I didn’t discover these social media oddities, a friend’s friend did, and I was alerted about it and went digging. Luckily RI Future’s editor, Bob Plain, had already been looking into it as well and provided me the screen shots and the other information he had. It’s a testament to him that he let me run with it.

That highlights that even our master strokes tend to come from elsewhere. Mr. Friess’ story is a brilliant piece of work, taking from my initial piece to picking up on WPRI’s Ted Nesi’s July 19th piece about the now-abandoned Twitter handle @gemma4congress. Mr. Friess has access to social media research that I simply didn’t on March 20th, and couldn’t access today. Now, as a result of the Politico piece, RIPR and even the The Providence Journal has covered the action (in fairness, their PoliFact RI arm had looked into issues about Mr. Gemma’s LinkedIn account last election cycle).

What bothers me is that it took so long for local media like The Journal to pick up on this story. We broke this in March, The Phoenix‘s Phillipe and Jorge mentioned it, WPRO’s Dan Yorke talked with Bob about it soon after, and then nothing until Mr. Nesi got tweeted at by whatever script was operating @gemma4congress (though Twitter was a bit more alive about it in March, if my recollections are correct). Perhaps it was the tone of my piece, or perhaps because Mr. Gemma had not made an official announcement at that point. Perhaps because I was willing to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt then.

Regardless, we broke this in March. It is July now. That’s the kind of news you can expect from RI Future. We cannot be everywhere. None of us get paid to do this. We’re the news that lives like you. Yet what we get is important, it matters. That same ability is going to be applied to the primaries and the general election. It’s going to be applied to races for the General Assembly. We face a lack of resources (I, for instance, commute to work by foot). Yet what we bring you will be strong.

I lacked the ability to take this story all the way; Mr. Nesi pushed it forward, and then Mr. Friess got it to where it is today (by not only providing social media research on Mr. Gemma alone, but doing the due diligence that an amateur like myself wouldn’t think of and looking into the surrounding organizations). It’s great when a small outfit like ours can toss the ball to a stronger outfit and then it gets passed to an even stronger one that can score big, like in a rugby game. Granted, I would’ve loved to have this all in March. But I also would’ve loved if this had happened sooner. It’s 4 months from March to July. RI media could’ve been on this without Politico showing us the way.

But perhaps the timing wasn’t right in March, coming as it did during a news lull; in contrast, shortly after Mr. Nesi mentioned his Twitter run-in with @gemma4congress, news broke about Mitt Romney having suspiciously inflated Twitter numbers. Perhaps that’s what finally made this matter. Oh well, next time, RI media, next time.

I hesitate to spend any more time on Anthony Gemma. I think we know his story; plumbing business, runs for Congress like he’s running for Governor, good breast cancer foundation, bad candidate virtually self-financed, surrounded by a diverse team of folks.

But then I see this from WPRI’s Ted Nesi: Anthony Gemma’s new twitter feed has already collected 13,600 followers in only nine days. Which makes this new Twitter account more popular than Sheldon Whitehouse’s, Jack Reed’s, Jim Langevin’s, and David Cicilline’s; combined. Now, maybe, our congressional delegation just sucks at this whole social media thing. That’s always a possibility.

Or perhaps, if we scratch the surface; we’ll discover that some of these names are just plain fake. In fact, a huge swathe, maybe 90% of @Gemma4Congress’ followers are dummy accounts who have never tweeted once. They just follow a couple of thousand people apiece. They have weird names (not as weird as the Facebook subscribers, but pretty weird). All of them have a basic first name-last name setup, virtually none are companies.

You’d think the Gemma for Congress team would’ve learned their lesson after the last time this was exposed. You’d think they’d take a more organic approach to social media; especially when their candidate faces questions of authenticity about his positions. But clearly, they’ve chosen not to go that route.

So, in honor of this new account:

7 People/Things Anthony Gemma Is More Popular Than on Twitter

Mr. Gemma’s account (@anthonygemma) clocks in at 970,942 followers. That’s our mark.

T. Boone Pickens: The Texan billionaire is a well-known corporate raider, and avid advocate of the natural gas industry (read: fracking). But the 328th richest person in America (the 1% goes and protests about wealth disparity on his lawn) has a piddling 62,288 Twitter followers; making his Twitter-worth equal to about 1/16th of Mr. Gemma’s.

Sweden: The country famously gives out its Twitter handle to a new citizen every week, and was apparently considering handing it over to Stephen Colbert to run. But this Scandinavian nation, with more than 9 million citizens, plus all those people who keep citing it as the premier example of either a) the functioning welfare state, b) socialism, or c) both just can’t hit 70,000 followers.

Joe Biden: The Vice President of the United States’ official twitter account has about a tenth of Mr. Gemma’s followers. Keep in mind, this is Joe Biden. Famously, The Onion has run a series of hilarious stories detailing his life as VP. He’s “gaffe” prone (such as his famous “this is a big fuckin’ deal”). But the incredibly viral VP and his opposition to the White House’s Afghanistan policy isn’t more popular than a former CEO of an advertising company whose business plan is “annoyingly run a bunch of billboards around on flatbed trucks.”

Mad Men: The hit AMC show, which features smoking, drinking, and screwing (not necessarily in that order) with some vague references to advertising squeezed in between has a meager 100,000 followers. I guess nostalgia, universal critical praise, and strong writing for the purposes of entertainment just doesn’t do as well as whatever Mr. Gemma’s strategy is.

Bob Dylan: Star of a Martin Scorcese documentary, a biopic about his life featured an ensemble cast and an ensemble soundtrack; oh, and did I mention? He’s Bob Dylan! The Elder Statesman of Rock, “voice of his generation”, conscientious folksinger, living catalog of American music. But Bob’s crap at this social media thing, he can’t pull in more than 121,686 followers. Maybe 140 characters can’t contain his brilliance.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Star of the hit indie film Brick, the thinking-man’s summer blockbuster Inception, the romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer; Tommy from Third Rock from the Sun. People want to be him or be with him. Founder of the “open-collaborative production company” hitRECord, where you get to help create anything you want. But poor ol’ Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn’t much more than 500,000.

Jesus Christ: The Son of Man, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior, the Messiah. No fewer than 1.5 billion people believe this man is their personal savior. He’s conducted literal miracles. There are multiple genres of music almost entirely committed to praising his works. He died to save our souls. But his most popular Twitter account (and he has many) can’t pull in but a bit more than half a million followers. C’mon, Mr. Gemma, show Jesus a little love, send a few followers his way. But I guess you can always pull a John Lennon and be absolutely truthful when you say you’re more popular than Jesus. PolitFact has conclusive proof for a “true” rating.

Interestingly, Mr. Gemma only follows Mad Men and Joseph Gordon-Levitt out of these.

Tag: Fakes

7 People Gemma Is More Popular Than On Twitter

7 People/Things Anthony Gemma Is More Popular Than on Twitter