Vote or Die (and die sexually unfulfilled)
The pandering to my generation has gotten completely out of control.
The biggest offender of the moment is the voting campaign of Sean “Freestyle like a Grandmother” Combs. His slogan? “Vote or die.” Vote or die? What the fuck is that? What marketing flack came up with that bullshit to appeal to me? Am I supposed to be impressed by its “edginess?” Is that going to inspire me to shuffle to my local elementary school on November 2nd? Because Puffy told me I’d die otherwise?
That’s a lot of questions. I’ll answer them all with a “no.”
Trailing behind “Vote or Die” in notoriety but certainly not in preposterousness is Votergasm, where citizens pledge to have sex or not have sex with those who vote or abstain, respectively. Now this shit is plain goofy. Certainly it shouldn’t be taken seriously, but that doesn’t keep it from being idiotic. See Exhibit A: a pictorial of model “Dawn” stimulating herself on the toilet after doing her civic duty to contact her Representative. Uhh, yeah.
Thankfully, a few media commentators have been able to recognize that this is utter crap. Most notably, Adam Hanft of Inc. Magazine spoke eloquently today on NPR’s “Marketplace” about just how pathetic it is to encourage voting via marketing (and he’s a marketing expert). His central point: If you need exhortation from Alicia Keys or P. Diddy to vote, your dumb ass shouldn’t be doing it anyway. The audio is available; skip to the 5:22 mark.
Well, let’s re-cap. If I don’t vote in three weeks, not only will I be jonesin’, I’ll be dead. Damn. I bes’ be gettin’ mah vote on, fo’ real tho.
October 13th, 2004 at 12:35 am
Well, we agree on something. Nothing wrong with a pro-voting campaign, but “vote or die”? I think “vote or don’t bitch” is a better slogan, but probably wouldn’t resonate with the youngsters.