Feed pollution.

Feed pollution.

Over the past few weeks I have noticed a disturbing trend on my Facebook news feed. There has all of a sudden been a massive increase in people telling me how they are going to vote and trying to convince me to do the same. While I have no problem with people voting or even telling others how they voted, this ongoing ocular onslaught of red green and blue posts bothers me a great deal – is it not enough that we must endure road signs, radio and television advertisements but also we must now suffer through these ongoing advertisements on our normal everyday Facebook walls?

Now I understand that for a long time politics has tried to infiltrate our every aspect of our lives and that these representatives of the people require us to vote for them so that they may be employed and govern as they see fit so that our country continues to continue. But when did we suddenly become America and become so very polarised as a nation? When did we start to attack our friends for what they believe or say? And why are we doing this?

These times have made people bitter and spiteful, people attacking others openly in the firm belief that their candidate and party are superior to all and are the be all and end all – that their party will cure all of the country’s ills and make this a better place for all to live.

My question is this – how many people do we need in power? And how are they monitored once they get there? Some of you may not remember due to a lack of age but in my years I have seen parliamentarians sleep during debates, advertise underwear prices from their desks and generally act like children.

Is this what we want from our members of parliament? I have heard many people say that they are undecided this election – they have grown tired of all the posturing and pomposity and say that this election is becoming the lesser of who cares. 

So it seems that we have two major sides – Those who don’t care about the election, as it seems to them that whomever we get, things will remain largely the same – and those who are so passionate about their given party that they feel the need to flood our feeds with campaign promises and political ads.

This second group of people, from comments I have heard, are annoying and are beginning to alienate their friends. And for what? I know of no one who has been persuaded one way or the other by this Facebook war, but there are many who have been defriended and many more offended by this flood. My hope is that come Saturday much of this will disappear. I know that the signs and also that the major advertisements will cease but I don’t think that the electoral commission has made any rules around Facebook. 

So what do we do? Do we limit what people can post about with regards to elections? Do we make a law regarding what an individual not directly affiliated with a political party can say?

I guess what I’m asking is, what is a friendship worth and how has this new world of digital communication changed how we relate to others? I don’t remember people being so forward in preaching their opinion before Facebook, and I think that friendships were stronger because of this. But if we are to go digital in our political field, then why not go all the way? Allow us to vote online and have debates online, allowing the voters to see what we want to see and respond accordingly. Or perhaps the answer is an app that simply blocks all political posts.

I don’t really think we will get the law change – and anyway the law moves too slowly for the modern world. But perhaps there is another way to do this entire thing. Perhaps we should rejig the entire system; perhaps we should change the way we elect the new government; perhaps we should have a popularity poll so that we could change the government based on an individual’s popularity, a system that would allow constant change to keep up with a constantly changing country. Perhaps then we could finally have an end to the flood that has overwhelmed us and our news feeds –instead just a constant low hum in the background, just a note, a line in the news feed – Joe Blogs voted for Fred Dagg of the farm party.