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Video screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET
I bring good news today for all my fellow geeks, nerds and lovers of Web-based procrastination. Drew Curtis, founder of one of the original online awesomeness aggregators, Fark.com, officially announced his entrance into the world of politics this week.
This is not a Farking joke, people — Curtis is actually running for governor in his home state of Kentucky.
Fark has been around since 1999, almost as long as another site called CNET. Fark is part news aggregation, part satire and part social media, and it’s known for the witty, punny or straight-up smartass headlines and category tags it gives to stories from across the Web. Curtis claims it’s the sixth largest driver of social-media traffic online behind Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Pinterest.
Curtis, a native and current resident of the Bluegrass state, is running as an independent “citizen candidate” alongside his wife Heather — who has a master’s degree in counseling psychology and works as the COO of Fark — as his running mate for lieutenant governor.
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Dedicated Crave readers will recall that a few months ago I floated the idea of forming a political party made up of geeks and nerds interested in building a better world. While it’s not a full-blown political party, Curtis’ candidacy isn’t far off from what I had in mind, and what we discussed on that month’s CraveCast.
“I’m running for governor because if I get elected, the vicious cycle of influence money in politics grinds to a halt,” Curtis wrote in a post announcing his candidacy on (where else?) Fark. “I don’t have ‘beliefs’ on issues of economics. I’m more or less agnostic on social issues. And I’m far more excited about retooling the executive branch to better interface with customers than anything else. The boring stuff is the most important stuff. It doesn’t grab headlines but it’s the part of being governor I really want to sink my teeth into.”
I love it: a nerdy non-politician running on a Seinfeldian non-issue platform about nothing and everything at once.
The election for governor in Kentucky is this fall, and Curtis officially filed his paperwork Friday and kicked off the campaign Monday. True to form, Fark’s response to the news was pretty hilarious. You can watch below and let me know in the comments if he would have your vote.
