When:

Where:    Married to the Game with @AiPolitics on BlogTalkRadio

Topics to be discussed:   Tonight will be a smorgasbord of philosophical nuggets such as:  Why you should consider making babies.  Why it might not be practical to perpetuate Twitter Beefs.  The pros and cons of using “shame” as a motivating factor.  And how the media uses our own litmus tests against us to make us look foolish.   We’ll also probably talk about Apple (aka the world’s most profitable company) and their stock losing value.

Where:    Married to the Game with @AiPolitics on BlogTalkRadio

Topics to be discussed:   The 2nd Amendment, Conservative Philosophy, and whether or not the same traits that make a man highly successful are the same traits that lead to him being a pig. (spoiler alert: they probably do)

When:  7pm on the West Coast / 10pm on the East Coast

Where: BlogTalkRadio.com

Where:  CDNews Radio internet stream

When:  10pm East Coast time / 7pm West Coast time

Who:    AiPolitics

What:  Politics without the echo chamber spin.

Why:   For America.  Why else?

There are some minor tech difficulties scattered throughout the show.  I appreciate everyone who stayed through and listened to the live show, and everyone who listens to the rebroadcast.  Oh, and there’s a Dora the Explorer reference too.  I’m not sure how, but that ended up in there, so… enjoy.

CLICK HERE
TO HEAR THE SHOW

Click HERE to HEAR the show.
10pm East Coast
 7pm West Coast
(even if you don’t catch it live, this link will take you to the recorded version of the podcast)

At the bottom of this post is a link to listen to a segment from last Saturday’s episode of Married to the Game.  This segment discusses thoughts on Klout and Twitter and old school “RT’s” versus the “new retweet”.

A curious change has been taking place on Twitter over the past six months.  It used to be that in Conservative circles on Twitter, when people wanted to stand out, they would try to make sound and logical arguments, and they would interact with as many people as they could to share them.  It was the very definition of grassroots, and that mentality is one reason that I believe Conservatives were able to so soundly defeat Progressives in the midterm elections.  For lack of a better term, Twitter was organic, and most of the discussions felt natural.  But as with most good things, it seems that that more natural order of Twitter is in danger of coming to an end.

And who do I blame?
FavStar and
Klout

I say FavStar, but that might not be fair.  It’s more like the “FavStar” mentality.  And what is FavStar, you might ask?  It’s a handy website that tells you which of your tweets have been favorited and/or retweeted.  It also has a counter to tell you how many times each tweet has received this treatment.  While FavStar is tremendously popular on Twitter as a whole, it’s very rare that you’ll see someone of the #TCOT persuasion actually invoke the name of this service.  While they don’t say “FavStar”, specifically, they do seem to put a lot of stock into the statistics that FavStar tracks, such as favorites and retweets.

While “FavStar” may not be in the average Conservative’s lexicon, Klout, most likely, is.  Klout is a service that tries to determine how influential of a personality on social media you are.  You sign into it with your various social media accounts, and it spits out a number that tells you how “important” you are.  It sounds like I’m being facetious, but if you listen to an excerpt from my radio show below, you’ll see that having a high Klout score can grant you special privileges like renting luxury cars for “free”.

So, why would Conservatives want you to pay attention to their Klout scores or how many times they’ve been retweeted?  To put it shortly, there are THOUSANDS, if not tens of thousands of Conservatives on Twitter vying to have their voices heard.  A few years ago, it was fairly easy to follow all of the really “good” Conservative tweeps and not be overwhelmed.  But today, you can follow nearly 2000 tweeters and still be missing out on solid voices.  It gets to a point where you simply cannot keep up with it all.  And a lot of influential tweeters know this.  So they tell you that they are the ones you should listen to, and their high Klout scores or the number of times they’ve been retweeted are proof of this.

The problem is that, while they are trying to find a way to distinguish themselves, they’re practically knocking the ladder down before other good tweeters can reach a similar point of prominence that they enjoy.  Now there is a small catch to this:  Prominent people who have been trying to knock the ladder down *do* help some smaller tweeters up the ladder.  The problem is that they are generally only willing to help someone up who basically parrots their views.  They do this for two reasons:
1.  Brown nosing has been the quickest path to the top since the dawn of time.
2.  They create more power for themselves in the process.  The person who parrots them knows where their meal ticket is, so they will continue to parrot the prominent tweeter’s views effectively “forever”.  And the more influence this smaller person gains, the more useful they are as a parrot.  In a lot of ways, this scenario resembles crony capitalism, or just general cronyism.

So, why should you care?  If you use social media sparingly and you have no ambition of ever becoming prominent yourself, then you have very little reason to care.  You still do have reason to care, but not as much as some other people would.  However, if you have a website to promote, or you want to feel like you’re effecting conversation, then it helps to develop some sort of prominence for yourself.  As recently as a year ago, you could do this fairly easily by just talking to people and making good points.  It was as simple as that.  Today, it seems that the only way to amass any amount of prominence is to have an already established person vouch for you.  This can be done in many ways, but when you boil it, it usually comes down to some variant of brown nosing.  This is not to say that you can’t develop prominence on your own, but if Twitter is a marketing tool to you, then it will really only be useful if you can get the bigger fish to help get your links clicked.  (or your thoughts heard)

The text in this post was written as a supplement to the audio in the link below.  While I don’t expect this message to be received with open arms by everyone, this is definitely something that has been discussed (privately) for a while.  Last week’s article, where TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington, espoused on why he now supports Klout was the real motivating factor for me expressing these views out loud.  As more and more people join social media and become politically involved, the scenario that I’ve outlined above and below will only become more of a problem.  As I said on the show, right now we’re witnessing a snowball that is rolling down a hill and soon to become a boulder.  I’m speaking out now, before that boulder has a chance to knock some really good tweeps out.

CLICK HERE TO HEAR WHY
I DON’T PUT MUCH STOCK IN KLOUT

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SHOW

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SHOW!

Where:  http://tobtr.com/s/3433829

What:  Political discussion on Saturday nights without the lockstep chains of any political party.  (but it is pretty conservative, yo)

Also, Twitter’s “Sean Hannity’s Hair” stops by to discuss the media malpractice and the media bias that led ABC to try and blame an innocent member of the Tea Party for this horrific crime.

And finally (but not least), Tom from Indiana calls in to discuss the merits of changing our gun laws in the wake of this tragic event.  (we also discuss the importance of responsible gun ownership)

This show is packed with terrific insight and lots of honest discussion, and it’s not one to be missed.

CLICK here TO HEAR IT NOW.

And, of course, our hearts go out to the victims of this despicable shooting, and the entire community of Aurora is in our prayers.

Also… stick around for a surprise phone call from President Obama.

And stick around even further for an argument over how much a small, modern sedan weighs.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

-The ridiculous bias at MSNBC

-Obama’s Gift Registry is the new “free lunch”.

-Questions we SHOULD be asking about Obamacare.

-Feel free to call in and tell us what’s been grinding your gears this week and/or who you think should win the “Veepstakes”.

!!!!!CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!!!!!

In this episode of the Married to the game, we discuss:

-Why Mitt Romney’s supporters should thank Newt.

-Why sex offenders should volunteer to remove themselves from society.  (self deportation)

-Where have the entrepreneurs gone?

-Can we make people “work” for their welfare?

-Why does Day Care cost SO MUCH???

-Have we reached a point where government regulation is killing our small businesses?

-What is America going to look like, if ONLY the irresponsible people continue to reproduce/have children?

-What if YouTube made you have to join an Actor’s Union to create and post videos?

-What did Michelle Ray do to risk Social Services being called on her?

CLICK HERE NOW to listen to the lengthy, yet fresh discussion.

The real meat of this week’s show, however, was spent talking with Twitter’s @ConservaToni.  She’s a nice girl and recent college graduate from Georgia, who stopped by to talk about some of the issues facing young, black Conservatives in America today.  You might recognize her from another radio show she was recently on, and she was gracious enough to discuss that experience with us.  Her family has been involved in Conservative politics for years, and she’s the kind of youngin that really gives you hope for America’s future.  It was a delight to have her on the show, and we’re sure you’ll enjoy her insight and perspective that she shared with us.

Listen here now.