Photo by: Riley Mallory
Rock The Vote recently released a series of violent attack ads against both left- and right-winged frontrunner presidential candidates, targeting everything from their moral platforms, personal relations, and habit of wearing socks with flip-flops around the house. The campaign, according to Rock the Vote officials, is aimed at encouraging the young voter population to become capable agents for change in the democratic process.
The ads included footage of candidates in compromising situations, and were first aired last Friday between 2 and 3 a.m. on MTV. Featured footage contained shots of Ben Carson smiling while administering a vaccine to a small, crying child, Bernie Sanders shaking hands with a Wall Street banker, and Marco Rubio saying “thank you” to a queer Iranian Obamacare recipient after buying a coffee from them.
Executive producer of the recent attack ads, Irving Gwinnett, explained that their new strategy to increase voter turnout centered around “getting back to the basics and reminding people of the core principles our founding fathers established; mudslinging and personal attacks.”
Many editors involved in the project claimed that it called for a large amount of collaboration and research. However, according to one editor, Natasha Witherspoon, despite having to work long hours closely monitoring candidates, she still considered the campaign to be worthwhile. “I’m most proud of our work on Clinton.” Witherspoon exclaimed, “It took a lot of digging, but we finally found solid evidence that her husband had an affair during his presidency!”
Witherspoon believes the riveting Clinton sex scandal will arouse voters, and cause them to second guess their candidate choices after realizing Clinton was able to be so easily blindsided by her own husband, eventually leading to a more politically informed general public. She continued, “This discovery reveals just how universal the lust for scandal and personal conflict is among Americans, and shows the implementation of old-fashioned publicity techniques and campaign strategy into the fast-paced modern age. As I speak, we are in the process of restoring the film on a VHS tape that supposedly contains footage of the affair.”
“History shows us that revealing candidates’ flaws and vulnerabilities helps to humanize them in the eyes of the public, and that is just the impact we have seen following this ad campaign,” Gwinnett explained. Numerous reports of protests and feverous emails in response to the ads have popped up across the country, as a diverse array of college students and other voters have come together to demonstrate that politeness to outsiders and tacky fashion choices are not acceptable for possible leaders of the nation.
After seeing such positive responses from the initial ads, Rock The Vote has already begin working on a second string of videos, projected to include compilations of the candidates tripping in public places, and smoking with various children behind their elementary schools. Editors hope that these videos will make them seem like relatable, flawed candidates, and encourage people to make the effort to vote for the one they find least repulsive.
Gwinnett furthered, “When democracy was young, the individuals involved in it were just as full of passion and opinions as people today. However, now it seems the younger age demographic has lost their spark to take action. We are hoping to relight that much needed spark by giving them what they will truly respond to and become impassioned by, like a slightly grainy picture of Jeb Bush accidentally trying to put his pants on backwards.”
Hannah Rosenblatt is an MQ alum. She was the 2017-18 Editor-in-Chief.
