Democratic Congressional candidate Krystal Ball  Back when I used to obsessively cover Supreme Court justice Senate confirmation hearings for Above the Law, I used to think the dry hearings would be a lot more fun if nominees like Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor had Facebook accounts to mine. This made me wonder what Senate hearings would be like decades from now when the prestigious nominees for government slots have social networking accounts that date back to their wild and crazy high school and college days.  There’s no need to wait decades, though. Krystal Ball, an ambitious candidate running for Congress in Virginia is 28, graduating from UVA in 2003. As a fellow 2003 college grad, I can attest to the rise in the use of digital cameras in those last couple years of college. Parties that involved alcohol and elaborate costumes were well-documented, with many of the photos being shared via digital photo sites like Flickr, Picasa, or, increasingly, on Facebook.  One of the photos that went viral  Photos from a Christmas party Ball attended almost a decade ago resurfaced this month. A conservative blog posted the photos, featuring Ball in a sexy Santa costume, dragging her boyfriend, Rudolph the Red-Dildoed Reindeer, by a leash. It’s unclear how the blog got its hands on the photos, whether through social-network-stalking Ball, or from a source. But they went viral — Gawker, of course, has a nice slideshow.  Ball herself was horrified at first, but realized she is on the leading edge of a generation that will have their photos and alcohol-fueled decisions stored and cataloged online. She recognizes that this is actually not solely a new-tech-based phenomenon — Bill Clinton didn’t need a Facebook account for his sex life to go viral — but she advises her fellow young folk, and especially women, to be strong in the face of digitally-documented indiscretions going viral:  Krystal Ball at a campaign event  The tactic of making female politicians into whores is nothing new. In fact, it happened to Meg Whitman, one of the world’s most accomplished business women, just last week. It’s part of this whole idea that female sexuality and serious work are incompatible. But I realized that photos like the ones of me, and ones much racier, would end up coming into the public sphere when women of my generation run for office. And I knew that there could be no other answer to the question than this: Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.  via Krystal Ball: The Next Glass Ceiling.  This is really not limited to females. Plenty of my male friends have very embarrassing photos on Facebook too (despite my advice to them to groom their profiles).  Ball is not accusing her detractors of violating her privacy, or apologizing for the photos. Instead she says that, moving forward, candidates and government nominees simply aren’t going to be as flat to the world as they have been in the past. Thanks to digital trails, everyone is going to have a far richer amount of data around them waiting to be explored.  A few months back, IBM Chief Scientist Jeff Jonas, who made a business of mining data (and recently sat down with Forbes Video for an interview), suggested (hopefully) on the law blog Concurring Opinions that this kind of exposure will lead to a greater societal acceptance of our eccentricities:  Unlike two decades ago, humans are now creating huge volumes of extraordinarily useful data as they self-annotate their relationships and yours, their photographs and yours, their thoughts and their thoughts about you … and more… How will mankind respond? Will people feel forced to modify their behavior towards normal only because they fear others may discover their intimate personal affairs? This is what Julie Cohen and Neil Richards have worried about – the “chilling effect.”  Or, more optimistically, will the world become more tolerant of diversity? Will we be willing to be ourselves in a more transparent society?  Personally, I shiver at the though of being on the hump … the hump of the bell curve. I hope for a highly tolerant society in the future. A place where it is widely known I am four or five standard deviations off center, and despite such deviance: my personal and professional relationships carry on, unaffected.  via Concurring Opinions » Using Transparency As A Mask.  We’ll see how Ball fares in November, and will find out whether voters are accepting of her eccentric college day partying and whether her political career can carry on unaffected. Though, even if she loses, I’m not sure we can deem that a rejection of a Gen Y candidate. It could just be the political make-up of her district.  What I am sure of is that society will embrace Ball’s digital trail in a few weeks — I’m willing to bet I’ll see the “Krystal Ball with raunchy reindeer” costume sported by a number of couples on New York’s streets this Halloween. And I’m sure there will be lots of photos taken to document the occasion.  Here’s Ball talking about the photos, via Dan Bigman:
Virginia Congressional candidate Krystal Ball's racy photos offer a glimpse into the future of politics for the Facebook generation.