One of my biggest "grinds my gears" is performative voting, or voting in a non-primary election for the purpose of "sending a message." I've been raving about it for years, but I think I finally have the words to describe exactly what I think about it. Buckle up. /1
Performative voting is kind of like masturbating while imagining someone in order to spite someone else. The person you're not imagining will never know about it, at most, the person you're thinking about might appreciate the votes in aggregate, but your particular vote is meaningless to them. /2
If you're doing it privately (and we hope you are), then no-one will ever find out about it at all. If you photograph the evidence then a lot of people are going to think you're kind of strange, and maybe need to set some clearer boundaries. /3
If you proceed to tell everyone what you're doing, then only those who share your fetish are going to appreciate it at all, but only as validation of their own should-have-been-private actions, and everyone else is reaching for the cleaning supplies and the hand sanitizer. /4
Also, they may be dialing 911 depending on the place and how loud you are.
So be good to the people around you. If you insist on performative voting, please restrict it to an audience of one, because that's the number of people it will matter to in the end. /fin
