(OPINION): The Federal Government is a Social Media “Influencer”

Author: Christine Clark

The Millennial generation has been defined by social media. Thanks to social media, every day people are actually becoming famous. Some people go so far as to start a YouTube channel, start their own line of clothing, give their Instagram a theme (which I am totally guilty of trying to do) ,and becoming “influencers.”

Influencers are essentially trendy entrepreneurs. They find the latest trends and they get paid by companies to represent these brands and promote the brands on their social media pages that have a large following. A pretty capitalistic model if you ask me. Yet, these influencers and the entirety of the Millennial generation are starting to swing so far left that “Liberal” is no longer indicative of their narrative.

That’s because fame is more accessible than ever. It’s available readily to anyone that can effectively use the tools provided to them on the internet. So, people spend time trying to make their Instagram stories the cutest, their Snapchats the most wild, and their Twitter the most funny – but secretly we all want that cute Insta to somehow go viral or have your Snapchat end up on Barstool or even have a tweet with thousands of retweets. I mean come on, how nice would it be to get that little blue checkmark next to your name on one of those platforms? Pretty nice right?

But if something as unattainable as fame can now be so accessible, then why can’t the federal government be easily accessible? Or, so seems to be the line of logic for these oh-so important 20-something-year-olds.

What’s lacking in politics now-a-days, is community and state-driven politics. Do you want to see change in your local school system? Stop lobbying the federal government and go to your local school board to get those changes. Want the city you live in to build more parking garages so you don’t pay a $25 ticket every time you park out of your driveway? I doubt the federal government has time to deal with that, try going to the local city council that can effect change directly in your area.

Millennials live in a globalized world, where spreading a message is not about spreading a message to your neighbor that needs your help across the street. That neighbor is just one “like” on social media. Why would you waste your time on that when you can spend all day on your phone and get thousands of followers from people you don’t even know?

I mean, why worry about reality when you can live in a digital world?

And that’s where Millennials are lost. They’re so caught up in “influencers” that they forget that the government is one as well. Influencers are selling you crap you don’t need. They recommend a few products to you that you absolutely love and then you take a few more recommendations and realize that the pants you bought were crappy quality. The influencer you follow is just spending the money they got from selling you those pants on boujee vacations to places you can’t pronounce. They aren’t even doing their job right.

The government is no different. They’re influencers. They recommend a few projects to the country that sound great like socialized medicine and then they realize that the medicine is crappy quality, they have to take your tax dollars to pay for projects you didn’t vote for, and all of the sudden a crappy pair of pants becomes a crappy doctor and you’re stuck waiting in a line for four months for a disease you think you might have but can’t pronounce. Turns out, the government doesn’t do their job right either.

But, as a Millennial, we watch from afar. We see only the influencers we like and think we trust. We buy a product or two of theirs that has phenomenal reviews and don’t purchase all the other crap they’re promoting. And that’s great right? The ability to choose what you do or don’t want to buy.

I must warn you though, the government is much more greedy than a social media influencer. They don’t just recommend on their dime or on a company's dime and give you free will to pick and choose what you want – they recommend and spend on your dime, whether you like it or not.

Overall I think it’s funny that such a capitalistic and entrepreneurial model has resonated so well on social media to Millennials, yet, it’s not representative at all in the way they vote.

I really don’t think it’s that Millennials are dumb or stupid, the real problem is the lack of understanding that the federal government is an influencer with a page that will not load. And it was built that way.

The pictures take too long to load and it’s really frustrating for the viewer – you want to click out and go look at someone else’s profile at this point – but that’s how the federal government was designed.

It was designed to load slowly, to take it’s time in making decisions. It’s an Instagram page that posts slowly but each post is so quality it’s worth it. After all, a good influencer should know that it’s not how many times you post pictures, it’s about the quality of the pictures themselves that get you to where you want to go.

Contributor: Christine Clark