The Iowa Caucus was February 1st. This year, the caucus saw a record breaking number of votes, but so did another poll that was out on Tuesday: the Kardashian-West album naming poll.
I don’t know which side you lean toward more. I’m not talking Republican or Democrat; I’m talking Kardashian-West or American Politics. I must admit, I am not the biggest politics follower, but being in the nation’s capital and GW student, I have been forced (sometimes by being surrounded by students talking about the current presidential race) to follow politics. At the same time, I am certainly not a bigger Kardashian clan follower.
The hard fact that Kim Kardashian’s twitter poll saw more votes, almost double the votes, than a presidential candidacy race election scares me a little bit.
Kim Kardashian’s poll on what to name her husband, Kanye West’s, album saw more than 400,000 votes, while, although record breaking, the Iowa caucus saw 185,000 votes.
I realize that Kim Kardashian’s poll was sent to a much broader audience over a much broader platform and the Iowa caucus poll was only for those in Iowa who felt the urge to vote. But that is the problem: Many people, and certainly people our age, feel a stronger urge to vote about pop culture topics than to vote or at least pay attention to the future of our politics and our culture.
Maybe it is because of social media and the 21st century, or maybe some of us are too busy to follow every presidential candidate’s speeches and whereabouts. But it is our job as the youngest generation of voters to stay up to date on the policies and changes these candidates want to make. It is our job to vote on life-impacting polls instead of polls to decide an album name (as much as we’d like to influence which album title we can use as a caption for our next Instagram post.) It is also our job to listen to the facts, from news outlets and from politicians’ mouths, and not from the celebrities we follow. Celebrities left and right endorse politicians. We shouldn’t let who we follow on Instagram and whose music we like to determine who we vote for to lead our country.
We all have a voice. And we all have a much bigger voice because of social media. We should use some of our free time to inform ourselves and help make a difference. Following news outlets on Twitter and Facebook will help. While you’re procrastinating starting that paper, scroll through your timeline and read some stories while also catching up on your friends’ latest pictures. Getting email updates like TheSkimm or The New York Times will also keep you updated without overwhelming you.
Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, but while you’re watching the latest Real Housewives episode, keep the CNN homepage open and multitask. Being able to talk about pop culture is always useful, but being able to talk about politics and current events will pay off in the long run (especially if you get stuck in a classroom-crossfire politics discussion!)