Made out of people

Sometimes you have to date someone who is butt-ugly

The panel is called "Democracy and Dating: Social Computing on Purpose." While the main conversation was pretty much entirely about social action (except Pam Meyer, who gave us some amazing--but unwritten--statistics on how men and women view dating services), the back channel was fascinated by the idea of mixing the two. We've already seen ActForLove , 'the cause-oriented personals service that lets you "take action" while "getting action."'

The the question was asked in reverse. What do we learn from dating services about politics?

Michael Cornfield had the answer immediately: "Sometimes you have to date someone who is butt-ugly." It's necessary to seduce the ugly: building a coalition of voters takes a lot of people, including people who you don't agree with. In fact, Cornfield thinks this is what killed Dean: his people were enthusiasic, good at recruiting each other, but bad at building coalition and seducing people who really didn't agree with each other. If someone loved the war, were Dean volunteers ready to bring them in?

"Seducing the ugly." I'll have to keep this phrase around for a while, I think.

(Yes, I am wondering what Google hits I'm going to get on this).

Danyel