Maltby: Facebook statuses don’t win elections
With the election over, we can get back to the important things in life again. Remember Facebook?
There’s a reason I make Facebook my procrastination destination of choice. It’s not the constant opportunities for flirting (my info says, smugly, ‘in a relationship’), and it’s not the intellectual stimulation afforded by the message boards of political groups. It’s not even the pitiful sense of community and solidarity – the knowledge that even while I slave over a 15-page paper, locked away from the world, my insecurities can be salved by the reassurance that I have...
Interesting, but I think you miss a larger point. The youth vote in the US has been notoriously low throughout history. The point of the facebook status update was actually to make individual facebook users who added it feel like part of a larger community, thus making them more likely to vote as a sign of solidarity with said community.
Second, I think more worrisome the perceived apathy of relying on status updates to swing elections, is the problem of the passion behind Obama's campaign fizzling away. People need to realize that they can't return to political apathy now that a new party is in power. Everyone needs to remain engaged, otherwise the US could find itself in the same trouble as before. Accountability in government does not come about simply because we elect politicians who say they respect the principle, it comes about because the American people demand it, and we should demand it every day.