Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 15 November 2008

A fortnightly column on technology and the web

issue 15 November 2008

The most powerful storyline of the US election, which the fawning media did nothing to challenge, was the idea that Barack Obama was an underdog who had miraculously triumphed against a hostile establishment to make a presidential bid. In this he was rather helped by the simplistic American belief that race somehow trumps all other claims to adversity. To me this seems, well, slightly racist. If asked to choose between a) being a black editor of the Harvard Law Review or b) spending five years of my life in a small bamboo cage being tortured by some really angry North Vietnamese, I wouldn’t think long before ticking box a).

But being seen as an outsider has always been electorally useful, and more so now than ever. For if you want to tap the remarkable potential of online communities, it helps to convince people that you can’t succeed without them.

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