After attending both NetRoots Nation and Blogher last week, it appears that I am making waves toward becoming a “social media starlet.”

As I become known for the fanatical use of my Blackberry, the ability to Tweet and Flickr from anywhere, in addition to jet-setting at web 2.0 conferences - I begin to wonder: is this really the best use of my time, and intellect? What is the greater cause at hand? Am I really helping anyone beyond myself in these ventures? At this point, well, no, not really. While I can use my skillz for work at New Media Strategies, sometimes it all feels like one big vanity project. But then I think - maybe at 23 that shouldn’t be a concern? And maybe it takes a little self promotion to actually get yourself to the point of being able to make a difference in the first place.

The Vanity Validator: using Google's PageRank technology, you can scan trusted sites to measure your Internet fame on a scale of 1 (unknown) to 100 (ubiquitous).

These introspective thoughts stemmed from reading the Wired cover story featuring one of the most self-aggrandizing social media starlet’s: Julia Allison. The piece basically described how she was able to make herself go from nobody to somebody by using social media promotion and exploitation of her life for content. Ms. Allison realized that she could conquer the nerd universe as a sexy-brunette, merely by showing up and using the medium at hand. While many will criticize her methods, it is ultimately working in her favor to earn her some cash, some fame and catapult her business career.

And while I’d like to critique her seemingly shallow methods to gain notoriety, it also seems that Ms. Allison has subscribed to my theory about women using every asset they have - physical and mental - to break through the male paradigm.

For Ms. Allison, her method to madness comes down to a smart business strategy. At the end of the day, she did what she wanted to do: she earned press about her newest internet portal, www.nonsociety.com, in a major magazine within the tech community. This will ultimately be a lucrative venture and create greater exposure about her endeavors.

But will it get her any closer to her dream - of being a published book author?

Apparently, yes. Or at least that is the plan.

Morra Aarons-Mele wrote a great post on Blogher today, praising Ms. Allison’s ability to wear her ambition on her sleeve. Unlike men, this is something that many women shy away from. While Morra also sees the Catch-22 of Allison’s seemingly shallow and opportunistic online ventures, she points out a very interesting caveat:

Turns out, Allison is the Paris Hilton of the Internet. Through Twitter and constant blogging of her sexy twentysomething life, she’s famous. I was half jealous and half disgusted. When I was a moderately sexy twentysomething, it never would have occurred to me to make hay from my exploits. Who would take you seriously? And how could your ambition be that naked? Then I read the follow up email Julia sent to Wired editor Chris Anderson. Explaining her path to celebrity, Allison writes,

“The true goal was never “fame” at all. I wanted two things: 1) editors to publish my work, 2) people to read my work. I wanted to be like Nora Ephron - able to exist creatively with an audience and relative financial freedom…”

Ah-ha: classic female tactic. Allison claims her ambition is driven by a larger purpose and to fulfill a larger more socially acceptable role. She doesn’t want to be famous for nothing- she wants to be a writer. But still, I have to give the girl credit for creativity. It’s really hard to break through to that editorial page (84% of op-eds are written by men). If Julia Allison can get her body of work quickly noticed by using the virtues of other body parts, well, then I have to consider that. It’s not often you hear a woman so baldly cop to wanting to get ahead.

So, in the end, I do appreciate Allison’s objective to blaze a path in a world that is ultimately not always in her favor. In promoting herself and her femininity, she has ultimately created a new throne in an overwhelmingly patriarchal society.

My question now is once you earn the power, the fame and the money - what will you decide what to do with it? Will Ms. Allison ultimately do good for others, or just herself? To me, that will be the ultimate judge of her character, in addition to the industry that made her a social media starlet in the first place.

One of the clients I am working with, EMBARQ’s Floppy-Armed Muttonhead, is celebrating the first JABFEST 2008 on Facebook and MySpace. Basically, it’s a day where you can insult people and get away with it by using the Muttonhead Jabs provided on www.muttonheadsays.com. The Muttonhead dude is pretty goofy and watching him throw his arms around and then call you a “snotty, chested, zucchini, mama” goes down as pretty darn hilarious in my book.

After four days of conferences, Muttonheadspeak is about all I can conjure up right now. Feel free to post your best Jab of the Day in the comments section or on the Facebook/MySpace pages and celebrate this fun method of promoting EMBARQ’s cable TV bundled package.

Sorry to all my readers for the pause in blogging these past two days. There has been a lot going on since we got to Austin, TX on Thursday:

• Heard Paul Krugman, Rick Perlstein, Joe Trippi and other politicos spout off at NetRoots Nation
• Sat in the C-SPAN bus and garnered my own personal pocket Constitution
• Over-indulged in Hendricks Gin Martini’s at the Huffington Post-GQ BBQ and Booze Party in downtown Austin, TX
• Woke up at 4 AM to get to the airport on Saturday morning and fly to San Francisco for BLOGHER 2008
• Arrived in SFO, got picked up from airport by doting parents, got dropped off at Westin St. Francis and started conferencing all over again
• Picked up BlogHer 08 bag schwag, which was filled with $20 T-Mobile Wi-Fi card, chocolates, Magic Eight Ball and other fun geek chic items
• Sat in on rogue DNC Prep Meeting with other female bloggers including my WIPT ladies - Myrna the Minx, Jill Miller Zimon, Morra Aarons-Mele, Shireen Mitchell
• Listened to a fabulous “Naked Blogging” panel where an amazing group of women - mommy bloggers, live-journalists, readers, lurkers, writers of all kinds - shared stories about breast milk, fugly troll commenters, the mysogyny of the blogosphere, and how to decide when blogging about your personal life gets to the point of shame, fame and no return.
• Trotted over to an open bar put on by Lisa Witter of Fenton Communications to promote her femme-fabulous book, “The She Spot” - which I am still reading and can’t wait to report back about when I’m done.
• Splashed through the Macy’s Blogher Reception and sipped on champagne while drooling over the new Marc Jacob’s handbag selection
• (Lost my only pair of flat shoes at the bar - left to strappy heels and stillettos for the remainder of the trip. Ow, my feet already hurt, but I look goood!)
• Cabbed back to my parent’s house in the Haight-Ashbury with my partner in crime, Ms. Bradshaw, and other renegade 2.0 ladies: Laurin Manning, Sara Porter and fellow NMS colleague, Kristin Montalbano.
• Hitched-hiked a ride (no cabs in sight, freezing 50 degree SF weather, we were desperate) with new friend Kenny on the corner of Baker and Oak and headed toward Orson, a new bar in San Francisco’s SOMA district
• Sipped on Cuban Mojitos at Orson and then found a real cab home; crashed in my own bed, it was glorious.

Phew. It has been a crazy couple of days full of interaction with wise-cracking politics, Momocrats, famous femme bloghers, tech savvy bloghims and even some time with my parents and old friends. Today, we woke up to delicious vol-au-vent breakfast prepared by Momma Nedeau and then ran back downtown to do some shopping and then attend today’s Blogher 2008 Unconference where I am currently typing out these absurd adventures in my venture toward becoming a social media starlet.

Note: This was written after a very long day of conferencing, travel and celebration. Please forgive me for nonsensical narrative or strange tid bits of information.

We landed in Austin, TX last night around 11 PM. This was just in time to catch up with my old college friend, get some sleep and wake up for Netroot’s Nation bright eyed and jet-lagged on Thursday morning.

While I was ultimately confused by the one-hour time change (somehow worse than a three or five-hour time change) @leslieann44 and I awoke from our slumber on time and dressed ourselves in suitable outfits. Leslie wore a yellow sun dress with wedge sandals. I wore a tan pleated skirt, purple sweater and paten leather flats. We left the well, air-conditioned apartment and walked out into the 80 degree Texas heat, with big, black sunglasses and everything we thought we needed for the day of punditry, politics and partying.

The day kicked off with a bang and a broadcast. My attendance at the first morning session about “Political Punditry” somehow earned me a spot on Sirius Radio. This was mostly due to the fact that I left the session early and Indy Radio was looking for someone to pontificate on the concept of blogging that can lead into fame and shame on cable news, print media and YouTube. The experience on the show was amusing to say the least, and allowed me to plug this here blog on air, as well as my company and other political affiliations.

Phew. I must say that it was nice to get the obligatory press efforts out of the way by 11 AM Central Time.

The rest of the day consisted of various celebrity sightings, intriguing conversation, and visual stimulation:

1. We saw Wes Clark and Howard Dean, all before 2 PM.

2. I took part in a Feminist Blogging Caucus. My ideas about Sex (and the City) & Politics were about as well received as a shorts in a snow storm. Women are either for it, or totally against it. Sigh - no mass appeal (yet).

3. I watched several short films that were truly moving in content and creation by Media That Matters. You can watch the films on various social justice subjects: http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org.

The rest of the day-evening consisted of several Long Island Iced Teas (eek, don’t have too many of those before the sun goes down); a great dinner at an Italian restaurant with my BFF and some much needed lounging time at a swanky bar that had a lovely outdoor patio seating.

The rest of the journey here in Texas will continue tomorrow. Until then - Goodnight, and Good luck.

Three cities. Five days. That’s my absurd agenda as I head to two major Web 2.0 conferences this week: Netroots Nation in Austin, TX & Blogher in San Francisco, CA.

After receiving the kick-off email for Netroots 2008 titled, “F#@% it, we’ll do it live!” - I have to admit that I am just a tad bit excited for what the next few days will bring. Not only will I be surrounded by some of my favorite online political operatives, members of Women in Technology and Politics, and friends from New Leaders Council - I will also be accompanied by the lovely Leslie Bradshaw, a colleague of mine at New Media Strategies and fellow social media starlet. Together, Leslie and I will traverse over 6,000 miles in five days and all the while be blogging, tweeting, uttering and strutting our stuff, probably while wearing cute stilettos.

Additional fan favorites attending the conferences this week will be: Not Larry Sabato, Jill Zimon, Tracy Russo,  Myrna the Minx, Pundit Mom, Morra Aarons-Mele and many other fabulous ladies and gents of the political arena slash femme fatal blogosphere.

I will try to blog and share my impressions of the speeches, panels and parties on a daily basis, but in case you need immediate 411 on the trip, you can follow my twitterstream via @HumanFolly.

That is the question I started asking myself last week when I read about Playboy’s “Hottest Blogger” contest. That, in addition to a July 8th post on URLesq titled “Twenty Bloggers We Want To See In Bikinis,” made me wonder - where has the romanticized image of a renegade blogger sitting in his/her basement dressed in pajamas gone to? Well, apparently, to the beach.

As if we needed yet another arena where women could be trivialized and treated as nothing more than sex symbols, the powers that be at Playboy have discovered the blogosphere. Next thing you know, bloggers will be showing up on the Red Carpet and being featured in US Weekly for their rampant addictions to Red Bull, keyboards and Digg requests.

Sigh.

For those politically minded young people out there who like to put their ideas into words and action, I hope you are aware of The Roosevelt Institution - a non-profit, non-partisan national network of campus-based student think tanks. Before I started writing about absurdities, I used to take things more seriously and I helped launch the Roosevelt Institution at my alma mater, The George Washington University. I also was part of a stealth-like effort to distribute the first Roosevelt Review to the members of Congress by evading their postal delivery rules…..but, yeah - more on that later.

Today, I am making my re-entrance to the organization by moderating a panel at the 2008 Roosevelt Expo titled, “Enter the Blogosphere.” The panel will focus on the role of blogs in the public policy process, both in terms of formulation and advocacy. The panel I am moderating, will include blogging policy pros:

Jane Hamsher, Founder, FireDogLake.com
Matt Stoller, Founding Partner, OpenLeft.com
M. Marie Maxwell, Founder, InShaw.org

Netroots Nation, which will be occurring next week in Austin, Texas, has secured Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Key Note Address on Saturday. My partner in crime, Leslie Bradshaw, and I will be attending as a diva duo at Netroots on Thursday and Friday and then flying off to Blogher in San Francisco for the rest of the weekend. We will unfortunately miss the address by my hometown politica powerhouse, but was asked by executive director of Netroots Nation, Gina Cooper, to at least submit a question that could be posed to the Speaker. I, of course, had to follow up on my high heeled political theories and ask: Can female leaders be elected to office without completely subscribing to male paradigms?

Make sure to vote for my question if you’d like to see it asked to the Speaker next Saturday at NetRoots Nation. If you are going to NetRoots or Blogher and would like to meet up with Leslie or myself, please let me know!

The Ibogaine Effect. That was perhaps the most entertaining piece of information I found out about Hunter S. Thompson’s political coverage last night when I watched Alex Gibney’s latest documentary, “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.”

I have always been a fan of Hunter S. Thompson as a writer, but until I saw the documentary, I failed to realize what a phenomenal mockery of a journalist he turned out to be. His talent, madness and complete lunacy were immeasurable successes in their own right. His truthiness is something that any Colbert fan would be proud of. And the peculiar reverence given to him by many a politician - Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern - is down right enviable. Especially for the amount of bullshit he professed, published and got away with. In the documentary, they spoke of his strange and wayward reporting methods as some of the truest political coverage, that was hardly factual.

In addition to running for Sheriff of Aspen, owning at least 22 guns (that were fully loaded at all times) and missing writing deadlines due to alcoholic or drug related benders, Thompson also did one of the most remarkable and hilarious hack reporting jobs ever: he accused Presidential Democratic nominee Senator Edmund Muskie with a supposed addiction to the West African drug Ibogaine.

This, of course, was completely false. But because of Thompson’s cult following, interpretation of reality and relationship with illegal substances - few questioned him. Additionally, no one knew what the hell Ibogaine was. When the truth was finally revealed that the “Ibogaine Effect” was nothing more than an extended metaphor for Muskie’s seemingly delusional political stances, Thompson explained himself with the following paraphrased statement - “Well, it was a rumor I heard in Milwaukee; a rumor I probably started, but nonetheless.”

(Photo: Ralph Steadman)

I could go on and on about Thompson, but if one thing is for sure - this is great documentary that I hope every Gonzo fan will see. I shall strangely admire his mad wisdom he brought to this world living like an inebriated raccoon shot from the barrel of a gun and dragged through a river of whiskey and cocaine. His addiction to chaos resonates not only with my personal experiences of losing my mind and finding my heart, but also many other prolific wanderers who I seem to feel a kindred spirit with.

Additionally, after seeing this film, I have decided to make it a personal mission to accuse at least one person of being under the influence of Ibogaine - at least for a good laugh.

Friends, and foes - you have been warned. A Gonzo blogger is on the loose.

Instead of showing off his seventysomething self, John McCain is glittering the screens of YouTube with images of his twentysomething self. While running political advertisements with photos of him in uniform to accentuate his service record and gain recognition for being a POW makes sense, it also appears a bit superficial. Is he just trying to show off his physical glory days when he was in shape, young and had a bit of pigmentation in his hair color? I think yes. Unfortunately, to me, it appears that this effort actually further accentuates his present condition - that he is…um, well, just plain old.

The ad also sets up the paradigm of change as it existed in the 1960s. And the more that McCain correlates this election with Kennedy’s time period, the more I am going to equate him with Nixon - as the old guy running against the young buck who knows how to use a teleprompter.