Crock the Vote: To Cast a Ballot, You Must Leave the Basement

Well, ParkRidge47 has a name. For two weeks, watchers of this video on YouTube were left guessing the real name of the user who produced a spoof of a famous dystopian 1984 Apple Computers ad that ran during the Super Bowl. This version of the ad replaced the Big Brother figure with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and ended with the Apple trademark contorted into an "O" and a plug for Barack Obama's website. The spot has been viewed over 2 million times and garnered 4,700 comments. The Obama campaign denied any involvement.

In a column at Huffington Post today, the veil was lifted.

"Hi. I'm Phil. I did it. And I'm proud of it," declared the author, Phil de Vellis, an employee of Blue State Digital. At least, he used to work there. He got fired after making the admission.

"This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed," de Vellis concludes at the end of his short column. We've heard all of this before. The airwaves are overflowing with platitudes about how the Internet is becoming the central battleground for political discourse in the country. The candidates seem to believe it. These days, having a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, a MySpace profile--and even a cyberheadquarters in the ultimate dorkocracy, Second Life--is as essential as an exploratory committee in the pageantry of presidential ambitions.

Undoubtedly, people watch these videos, befriend these digi-candidates, and stalk their avatars on Second Life. The question remains: Do they vote?

Here at News Desk, we decided to put the numbers side by side and see how they match up. In the first column is the percent of an age group that reported having visited YouTube in a January 2007 Harris Interative poll. In the second is the percentage of that same age group that reported voting in the 2004 election, according to these census statistics. (Note: We had to do some simple math to recalculate the Census data to match the age groups in the Harris poll.)

The trend is pretty clear: A person's likelihood of watching a YouTube video is inversely proportional to his or her likelihood of voting.

The AP has a video report here.

--Chris Wilson

Etc.: The YouTube Wars, on USNews.com