Ahh election time, what a wonderful time of leap year.
There are a multitude of instances that aid in the pursuit of narrowing down the amount of “friends” you have on social media, and election season is up there with times of natural disasters and high profile court cases in making this decision easier. It is such a shame that this ability to purge followers and friends only comes around only once every four years.
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When Obama was elected President of the United States in November of 2008, we had to grin and bare a few of our Facebook pals from college, but now social media is an entirely new drug with the addition of Twitter and Instagram, making the math a lot simpler: More social media + more people using it + elections = a complete shit show.
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Whether you are refreshing your Twitter feed obsessively, trolling on Facebook, or helping Justin Timberlake out on the MySpace side of things (hey, we won’t judge) you will always cross paths with the same 5 annoying types of people. From the obsessive tweeter to the newsfeed filler with conspiracy theories, check out the list of 5 people you will find on social media during election season.
The Conspiracy Theorist
This person seemed like the normal outgoing type when you crossed paths through a mutual friend, but 3 drinks in he hunches over and whispers, “everything we know is a lie.” Later comes a friend request you obligatorily accept and you’re instantly plummeted with a bevy of memes, links to videos about the Illuminati, and statuses about how foolish Americans are for thinking a President would ever do anything to aid them. Count on this guy to tell you all the things you don’t want to know, but your curiosity keeps you from ever deleting them.
The Buddy You Didn’t Know You Had Who Is Now A Political “Maven”
Hold up, who the hell is John Brown? Somehow even with your compulsive checking of feeds, you have never seen this name while scrolling down your timeline, until election season. You have no real photo to identify them by since every single one of their images is politically charged and their posts are the same, but somehow they slipped through the cracks. He appears strong with sound political arguments, insightful statuses void of spelling errors and you wonder shortly if maybe you’ve taken a political science course with John once upon a time, then forget him as he fades into post-election obscurity.
The Minute-by-Minute Updater
This person updates everything: Real news, fake news, the good, the bad and the ugly. They comment on every political status, help inform the public about photos at the poll and supplies your meme addiction, then goes back to posting food images and tagging people at locations as soon as the polls close.
The Person Who Needs To Let Everyone Know They Don’t Care
“Who cares.” “I didn’t vote.” “Voting sucks.” “Shut up with all the political statues.” This person borders on being a web troll. They’re so bah humbug about this whole election thing and they need the entire world to know and care about how much they don’t care.
This person doesn’t care so much that post elections they will want to tear apart everyone’s theory for voting while complaining about everyone posting about voting. Post election they’ll revert to “FML” status updates like a classy cynic.
The Devil’s Advocate
The Devil’s Advocate is the one who stands by his, “I didn’t vote for Obama but I want to know why you voted for him,” while poorly disguised as a curious onlooker. The Advocate, who is never well versed in the election, is sure that they can trump anyone’s belief in a candidate. They will attack social updates seeking holes and provide faulty rebuttals to sound arguments. They never really last on the “Who You’re Following List.”
In addition to the 5 pointed out here, there are obviously the salty losers and proud winners, but this spectrum lies in between. Take a look at your social media, we are sure you’ll find these five hiding somewhere!
