Older people simply do not understand the culture of the current generation. One consequence of this is that when they do try to use our lingo or adopt our mannerisms, a certain pathetic hilarity ensues. Our parents’ generation has taken that mangling of youth to a new level: their ridiculous desire to be cool has infiltrated the Internet. It has been particularly amusing to see our presidential candidates attempt to “connect to the younger demographic” via YouTube and Facebook.
Facebook was optimized for college kids to share pictures of themselves doing untoward things. MySpace was created to help new bands get started. Both Obama and McCain – members of that older generation that just want to fit in – have been using them as nothing more than marketing venues.
They have missed the point. We want to be connected with – not pandered to.
Both John McCain and Barack Obama have Facebook pages, and for those keeping score, Obama has roughly three times as many Facebook supporters as McCain. Then again, Google Image Search returns more results for Sarah Palin. I digress. Both candidates have meticulously filled in their personal details: their employer, job history, favorite music and movies they like. They have videos of their campaign ads and plenty of young people writing on their Facebook message boards. Ooh, look, Barack just wrote a new Facebook note!
Of course, this must be what our presidential candidates do to procrastinate instead of reading legislation. Barack apparently has a MySpace site, YouTube account, Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr account. I have not yet been able to find his LiveJournal or his BitTorrent files on ThePirateBay, although after his entourage reads this article I expect that he will get those too. Just a tip, Barack: please seed your torrents.
McCain has no interest in forming a social network with me; he only wants to fill my Facebook page with his advertisements. I’m fairly certain he doesn’t read our comments on his message board, and if he does, he never responds. In a short, our candidates have infiltrated our social networking Web sites to market at us rather than to network. This is unfair. I am fairly certain that if we started using Obama’s Web site to push our own businesses interests, that would be quashed fairly quickly – so why don’t we demand that he add value to our online communities?
Our demographic may be young, but we are certainly wise to the way our candidates have been manipulating the Internet media. We know how easy it is to start a Facebook account and it is offensive that our candidates think they can win us over with a dazzling Web site. As both candidates are now running on a platform of change, perhaps they can start with something we have not seen in a while: a genuine interest in the values and interests of young people and an end to their relentless pandering.
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