Today is midterm election day. It’s a day I should be celebrating the electoral process and our fundamental freedom to vote for your national and local leaders. It’s a day I should be pinned to the TV, eagerly waiting the results to see if my preferred candidates win the day.
Not this year. Instead, I’ll be hiding from the world and especially my phone. Oh For Fuck’s Sake, can we please stop the election spam?!
Can there be a more annoying abuse of our personal space? Three, four, even half-a-dozen times a day, the notification bell goes off. I’d ignore them, but then there’s the risk of missing something important from family and friends — which is the only reason I keep me phone with me around the clock.
One has to wonder whether this type of advertising works at all. Everyone I talk to says they block or ignore. They’ve done their research and made their decisions. Some text isn’t going to change their mind. Further, if the “medium is the message,” the medium is kinda pointless. Even a 15-second negative TV spot spouts more information, albeit useless, than a text can.
Even more galling is the trend to berate the voting public with “threatening” texts. One I received just yesterday was typical, asking me why, in an insulting way, I couldn’t “step up” when Elon Musk is spending millions. Now, normally, I’d just report the text as spam and block (knowing full well that doesn’t help anything), but I have taken to responding to these belittling missives with my own “fuck off” messages. To this one I said, “Elon Musk is no friend of mine … Is it any wonder I went independent?” I know it won’t matter in the long run, but it’s a bit like waving your middle finger at the driver that cut you off. It makes you feel better for about two minutes.
And, by the way, do they really think we’re stupid enough to click a link in a text?
The whole process has become a bit ridiculous. While I’d like to think saner minds will prevail in the future and takes us back to a place where candidates actually debate the issues, respond to voter inquiries with something more than a sound bite, and treat each other (and us) with respect, the realist in me knows it won’t happen. Politics has become a useless, pointless game where the real losers are the voters.
©Judy and Greg Romano – All rights reserved.
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