In the Austin office, there’s a small office with eight people crammed in, hunched over computers. This is called the New Media room.

I watch Eric, a slightly grumpy and disheveled volunteer. He’s pasting an embedded code into the comments box on people’s MySpace profiles. This involves clicking on profiles, then on the “post comment” button, and hitting the “paste” command — over and over and over again. It’s not a very glamorous job, and Eric seems a little embarrassed by it.

Next to him, a campaign worker named Zack does more or less the same thing on MiGente, a social networking site for Latinos; he’s also posted comments on BlackPlanet.net.

“This is really more fun than it looks,” says Zach.

I think he’s joking, but I’m not sure.

– Hillel Aron