'Little Known Facts About Sarah Palin' Is New Twitter Fad

Posted by Mitch Wagner on September 2, 2008 12:39 AM

Twitter users are having fun with the fact that GOP VP pick Sarah Palin was nearly unknown on the national stage before last week. Twitterers are sharing "little-known facts" about Palin, most of which are ... shall we say? ... of dubious origin.

Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin kilt her a bahr when she wuz only three.

Little Known Fact: Palin is actually the X-man "Storm" and is single handedly holding back Gustav. (Why else would she be in Mississippi?)

Little known fact: This photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini, with a rifle, is probably fake: http://snurl.com/3luzq

Some of the tweets are serious:

little known fact: sarah palin actually supported the bridge to nowhere http://tinyurl.com/5zt82w

Little Known Fact: Palin likes Obama's energy plan: http://tinyurl.com/64jcc9

Little Known Fact: McCain's campaign has apparently done little to no vetting of Palin.

CNET credits blogger Michael Turk with inventing the meme.

The Palin fad is reminiscent of the older Chuck Norris Facts Internet gag.

More seriously, the New York Times writes about how the Wikipedia entry on Palin began to get meatier and more positive immediately prior to the McCain campaign announcing that she was the VP pick. The author of most of the changes signed himself "YoungTrigg," a play on the name of Palin's infant son:

The coincidence of the user's name, and the sudden spurt of activity just before news broke of Mr. McCain's choice, has raised suspicions that YoungTrigg was a campaign operative tasked to make sure that her Wikipedia article was ready for prime time, much as handlers have been assigned to do the same for the candidate.

While ethically suspect, the idea that a politician would try to shape her Wikipedia article shouldn't come as a surprise. In modern politics, where the struggle is to "define" yourself before your opponent "defines" you, Wikipedia has become an important part of political strategy. When news breaks, and people plug a name into a search engine to find out more, invariably Wikipedia is the first result they click through to; it is where first impressions are made.