

Watch Mitt Romney's Facebook Likes Decrease in Real Time - ptrwtts
http://disappearingromney.com/

======
LeafStorm
A friend of mind posted this article on Facebook earlier:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/liberal_schadenfreude_obama_s_win_brings_out_too_mean_gloating_on_social.html)

The summary is that in the aftermath of this election, Democrats and their
allies are not just celebrating the fact that their preferred Presidential
candidate won, but taking mean-spirited glee in the disappointment of
Republicans - largely enabled by the preeminence of social media (for example,
the "White People Mourning Romney" Tumblr).

The linked site is a pretty serious example of this phenomenon. The message
behind it is essentially, "Ha ha, look how all the Republicans are
dissociating themselves from Romney since he didn't win! What losers!"

~~~
beedogs
I honestly haven't seen any of the gloating behavior this article's
complaining about, on any of my social media feeds. I've seen a lot of
_relieved_ people, not a lot of 'poor winners'. This article seems like a lot
of hot air.

What I _have_ seen, though, is a lot of pathetic doom-and-gloom and sky-is-
falling idiocy from the right wing -- people crying about how "my country is
done for" and other such stupidity.

~~~
incision
>What I have seen, though, is a lot of pathetic doom-and-gloom and sky-is-
falling idiocy from the right wing -- people crying about how "my country is
done for" and other such stupidity.

This has been my experience.

What's really nasty is that it's seemingly unavoidable.

I don't subscribe to political feeds, but folks like this lovely lady [1] will
find ways to spread their vitriol to anything, even an exoplanet discovery
[2].

1: <https://plus.google.com/110015856734255535904>

2: <https://plus.google.com/+SETIInstitute/posts/QRYq51e5cPu>

------
kevinalexbrown
While this is not intrinsically fascinating to me (or, I imagine, most people,
regardless of their feelings toward Mr Romney), I find it an extremely good
example of the new types of data historians will get to use in the future.

I keep imagining Ken Burns ominously reciting Facebook Like figures, or
trending Twitter hashtags, in addition to statistics on how many bombs were
dropped in Iraq: "As Romney exited the political arena, public awareness of
how close he came to the presidency seemed to erode, at a rate of over 550
likes-per-hour, he soon faded into the sunset of the American political
landscape ...".

Obviously this is an exceedingly simple example, akin to the first steps in
distributed computing like a Wikipedia wordcount, but I would love to see more
sophisticated historical analyses in the near future.

~~~
bdcravens
Romney already declared he was done running for public office if he lost, even
before the election's end. I'm sure that has more to do with his fading into
the sunset.

~~~
notatoad
Im not sure 'fading into the sunset' is the right term. this is people logging
in to Facebook and actively seeking out his facebook page to rescind their
like. Just because he lost. People aren't forgetting Romney, they are trying
to erase their history of supporting him.

~~~
SkyMarshal
>they are trying to erase their history of supporting him.

That's not necessarily the case. More likely they just don't want updates
anymore.

I don't think any of his supporters are particularly ashamed of supporting
him.

~~~
notatoad
Ah, it's been a few years since I logged into Facebook. If a like is analogous
to a twitter follow, then this is a lot less interesting than how I was
interpreting it.

~~~
Narretz
They could just unsubscribe from his updates, no need to unlike.

~~~
corin_
But it's also possible that people no longer consider him important enough to
be a part of their profile, without actually changing their view of him.
People manage to clog up their profiles in a short period of time already,
imagine what your FB account might look like in ten years if you never un-like
that politician you supported, that band that you loved for a few months, that
special edition chocolate bar you couldn't stop buying...

~~~
jacalata
the only real way to make this graph informative is to show it right alongside
an obama likes graph.

------
krishnakv
I am not convinced this is important.

Look at the scale, against a base number of 12M+ facebook likes, losing
hundreds is a rounding error. The OP seems to be getting the slant on his
graph by manipulating it in rather grotesque ways.

P.S. Yes, people seem to be dissociating themselves from the Romney loss (and
the man himself) in alarming numbers, none more so than within his party. But
this does not seem to be a valid measure.

------
bdcravens
Romney never stood on his own. He was the anti-Obama for Republicans. Like a
girl's looking for a guy to cheat with to get back at her boyfriend, the
Republican party said, "Meh. You'll do." He never had any strong qualities,
such as extreme faith views, or TEA Party ideologies. He's said he's done
seeking public office. As a result, there's no reason for anyone to continue
to "Like" him, as he serves no purpose for them.

------
nhangen
Why do articles that paint Romney in a bad light keep making it to the front
page of HN? Is it hacker bias?

The election is over, enough with the gloating.

~~~
MartinCron
I hate gloating as much as the next guy, but I see this as a legitimately
interesting phenomenon. New media is a big deal for a lot of people here.
Getting a deeper understanding of how things really happen? Bring it.

------
Lagged2Death
I think it's astonishingly cowardly, sheeplike, and maybe even un-American to
curate your "likes" this way, just to disassociate yourself with a loser. If
your convictions mean anything -- that is to say, if you _have_ any -- then
why would you change the public picture of them like this?

~~~
hemancuso
This is a ridiculous arguement. You must have a lot of old bumperstickers on
you car.

~~~
beedogs
Or, like most people with any taste, none at all.

~~~
Zenst
I don't even have a car, guess I'm tasteless :(.

~~~
beedogs
me either, actually. living in Melbourne sort of obviates the need for a car
about 95% of the time.

~~~
Zenst
True, if somebody called Levi, Wrangler or even Nike stood for election they
would do better in such area's I suspect with this bumper sticker logic.

Now if only he was called Nike Romney and had a logo like the Nike sign, he
may of done exactly the same.

------
chops
Is this code available on github?

Alternatively, you have the attention and the publicity, you _could_ turn this
into an a revenue producing product, sticking an ad somewhere on the page, and
then providing it like a YTMND kind of "fill in the blank" system. At the very
least, you could use the Romney thing as a springboard for a viral entry.

At the bottom, stick a "Make a graph for any project" link and commence.

At the very least, this could net you a decent handful of cash for minimal
work, and, presumably, you already have the attention. Now take advantage of
it before the spotlight moves off you.

Disclaimer: I say all this, not as a marketing type, but just as a geek who's
run his own stuff for years, and I see a possibility to make a couple extra
bucks with this well done implementation. Maybe it'd turn out to be a waste of
time, maybe it'd score you some pizza and beer money every week, or maybe it'd
serve as your entry as a "Social analytics" company or whatever. Either way, I
think it's worth exploring.

~~~
ptrwtts
it's just a bit of fun. seeing the tweets roll in is payment enough

------
dexter313
Romney is losing ~566 likes per hour. It will take him 886 days to lose them
all.

Also here: <http://private.woutervdb.com/romney/>

and obama: <http://private.woutervdb.com/obama/>

~~~
pygy_
<http://xkcd.com/605/>

The decay looks linear at a glance, but I'd expect it to be exponential on a
larger time scale. Time will tell :)

Edit: wanna bet?

~~~
moinnadeem
It is exponential, I've been getting data for a day or so. Graph on
<http://moinnadeem.com/romneylikes>

------
jaxn
This would have been really neat during the debates if it included both
candidates.

------
fruchtose
This is an awesome idea. I thought the fading Romney in the bottom right hand
corner made the site, until I realized he wasn't fading with the number of
likes. Here's how I would improve the site:

Take the number of likes Romney started with as the election was called.
[Number may not be available, estimate if not possible to recall exact.] Then,
fade the Romney image out by setting image opacity as a percentage,
currentLikes/peakLikes to give the image a "Back to the Future"-esque fade
effect.

------
don_draper
This stuff doesn't matter. I'll bet a lot of these are fake users that
spammers want to keep under the radar and since they are no longer useful for
this particular campaign, they are removing them. It's amazing the amount of
developers out there that are not aware of how prevalent spam or fake likes
are.

------
Zenst
I don't do facebook but I did add him on google+ as well as Obama to keep
abreat on things.

I say this as I was going to remove him the other day and thought I'd leave it
a month or two and see if this social media embrasment was mearly a way to get
into peoples pants, no I mean votes. So I left him, he gave a good acceptance
of the results speech and with that be intersting on what he does now out of
curiosity and my weird humour angle if nothing else.

------
platz
Why does this have over 150 points?

------
malkia
A lot of Obama supporters would join Romney, by giving likes to be able to
comment on the page (the opposite is true too). It's possible that a lot of
these folks left, but who knows for sure...

------
nostromo
Maybe Nate Silver can incorporate this into his model in four years.

~~~
alex_c
Given how easy "Likes", "Follows" etc. are to manipulate, I very much doubt
it.

~~~
Cogito
_Bad data_ is not the same as _no data_.

For example, the fact that somebody is willing to manipulate a statistic is
information in itself, and could be correlated (positively or negatively) to
an outcome.

Part of working with big data is analysing all your signals coming in, and
being able to determine which are useful and which aren't.

Social media may be a noisy, biased signal, but I doubt it is so noisy, or so
biased, that no useful information can be obtained from it.

~~~
anonymfus
But if there are other sources which are known to be less noisy and biased
then result can not worth creating model which can successfully incorporate
this biased and noisy signal.

------
davidkatz
Careful, there's 'lying with statistics' here. A graph which looks like
Romney's likes are in fast decline is actually showing a - shocker - 0.1%
decrease in likes.

------
nestlequ1k
Ever hear the term "gracious winner"? This is being the opposite of that.

It's a political contest, someone has to lose. Let's move on.

------
garyrichardson
Hmm. Saw a couple of likes in there.

------
lazugod
And this wouldn't need a complicated graph if Facebook offered native
"dislikes".

------
EREFUNDO
I heard the secret service ditched him almost immediately after he lost.....

------
moinnadeem
Created a page to track this about a day ago:

moinnadeem.com/romneylikes

~~~
moinnadeem
linked version:

<http://www.moinnadeem.com/romneylikes>

------
bashzor
That's interesting. I believe I submitted the same thing just yesterday (made
by a friend). Tss.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4768214>

------
smartspock
omg, there are so much better things to spend time on, this is ridiculous.
Think about what all the well paid programmers are going to have to pay in
additional taxes - if you can't image this you aren't a well paid programmer.

~~~
charonn0
Vague warnings about higher taxes do not constitute a complete thought or a
compelling argument.

