Mark Twain (wordsmith and admitted coward: thus a solid hero of mine) once said that "in religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are, in almost every case, gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others." (He also once said “all generalisations are false, including this one,” but it’s my blog and I’ll ignore what I like.)
Parliament is back in session, Gordon Brown is long gone, and David Cameron and Nick Clegg (referred to ever after by me as ‘Dave and Cleggo’) are sat up on the Conservative front bench. It seems that, for the time being at least, we have a workable parliament. Whether the coalition will last is something I am painfully under-qualified to comment on, and so we’ll nip any political comment in the bud early on, and move on to the funny lists and things in a moment.
I voted in the general election, and I watched as much of the coverage as I could before I really needed to go to sleep (shout out to my man Dimbleby, the guy’s a machine). I’m not going to comment on my voting preferences, although I hardly kept them a secret from people. This is the first general election where people of my age seemed to have real opinions, and certainly the first one where they appeared to vote en mass. I heard all about it through the most suitable medium for discussing political awareness: Facebook!
Go on, even if you didn’t put who you voted for as your status, even if you ignored Facebook’s belligerent demands to know if you voted or not, even if you went to the pub after work and forgot to vote (or live in Manchester), you were still a little tempted to plaster your opinion on the ultimate social networking forum.
It’s so easy to display your opinion on the internet that you might be forgiven for forgetting that you don’t actually have one! It’s the work of moments to hawk your badly-informed political venom into a public forum, and it’s a lot easier to be vehement in your statements when you’re arguing predominantly with people you don’t know, people you went to school with and will never see again, and friends of your friends’ friends.
With an unstable coalition government the chances of another general election in the near future are high. To help you make the most of this opportunity, here are some tips on how best to show your political allegiance next time around:
Joshua’ Guide to the General Election... on Facebook!
1: It’s probably best if you vote. Some idiot might point out that it’s a little hypocritical to criticise someone else’s voting decision when you can’t commit to your own. If you want to make a big deal out of NOT voting, make sure you let everyone know in advance that you won’t be going to, then remind everyone halfway through that the day that you STILL aren’t going to, and then round it off with a big message at the end, where you can lord it over the sheep that did make it to the polls. Remember, you don’t need to suggest an alternative, or even a cogent reason why!
2: If you meant to vote and forgot, you can always lie. It’s not like people can check. If you weren’t going to vote anyway but you forgot all the preamble mentioned above, just tell everyone you spoiled your ballot! That’ll make you look super active and politically aware, without having to really go into detail or think about things too hard. Win!
3: Make sure you post your opinion on the nearest internet you can get your hands on. To make sure your status doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, why not make sure it contains as much inflammatory rhetoric as you can manage? Why not something like:
[Your name here] thinks that if u voted Labour today the country is DOOOOOOMED!!!
Look at those extra exclamation marks! Check out those unnecessary O’s! Yup, no one’s missing that little beauty off their minifeed.
4: The internet can be a fast moving place. Once you’ve got your super insightful political statement up there, how do you know it won’t get pushed down the list by someone’s party photos or people telling you what they had for tea? Simply keep posting! Now, you can’t have the same status over and over again, because then you’ll look like an over-zealous political nutjob (and we’ll reserve that description for anyone who disagrees with you). Luckily the live coverage on election night provides you with the perfect solution. (Slightly) new things are happening all the time! The results are (slowly) coming in! Now you can repost your status to your heart’s content, only slightly varying the wording to match the latest (minor) development!
5: The following have no place in any arguments you might have over the internet: compassion, good taste, tact, empathy. Replace them instead with: statistics you took from the BBC website, wholesale copy’n’paste jobs from political blogs and of course FULL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS!!!! Try and chuck a general air of smugness in there as well.
6: Remember, Facebook allows you to think your answers through before you write them down. Don’t actually DO that, for pity’s sake, you’ll be completely missing the point.
7: Everyone knows that the only real way to win an argument is to get the last word. Unfortunately you can keep going back to Facebook after you’ve thought up a new pithy quip. There’s only one way round this: you’ll have to stay up later than they can. The problem with election night is that a lot of people have planned to stay up late anyway. Why not consider taking the next day off work, so you can power through into the early afternoon?
8: If you didn’t get the result you wanted, be sure to post the most doom-laden report you can manage. If the Tories get back in next time and you’re a Labour voter, try suggesting that the entire country is going to be strip-mined to support the super-cities where only the top 200 wealthiest people will be allowed to live. If you’re a Conservative, what about envisioning a scenario in which the Greater London area sinks into the sea under the weight of all the illegal immigrants? Remember, the bigger the black cloud now, the more you can say ‘I told you so' later (unless it doesn’t happen, in which case you can breathe a secret sigh of relief).
9: If your astute political appraisal turns out to be incorrect (and it will), then rest safe in the knowledge that, as long as you update your profile enough, no one will be able to find it, come next week.
I hope this guide was helpful. Please do use it, if only to indicate to me who I need to delete from my ‘top friends.’
Updated only when you aren't looking.
