Voter apathy
I’ll admit it – I didn’t vote. I haven’t voted. I refuse to vote. Because it really doesn’t matter to me who wins. I’m interested, but not engaged. And I won’t buy the album, either.
I’m not talking about a political election – I’m talking about ‘American Idol.’
Yesterday was the final showdown between Bo and Carrie, which, in reality, matters less than it has in past seasons because coming in second is nearly as good (or better) than actually winning (note Clay Aiken’s commercial success vs. Ruben Studdard’s). But still, they both gave it their all to win. I have a slight partiality toward Carrie, and the Webmaster urged me to vote last night. He would vote for Bo, and I could vote for Carrie.
And the point would be…?
The problem with ‘American Idol’ that can’t be surmounted or solved is that you can vote multiple times for whoever you want, as many times as you can get through. Since the voting is all done by phone and text messaging, as long as you want to spend time punching numbers, you can stuff the “ballot box” for someone as lame as a Scott Savol (or Jasmine Trias from season 3, if you remember how she made it to the top three with her entire home state of Hawaii voting en masse with no wait, thanks to the time difference). And unless you live in King County, Washington state, in a political election, each legal voter gets to make one choice on who they want to be elected – another story for another day…
So, nothing is accomplished by voting in the ‘American Idol’ frenzy, and I have better things to do with my time than sit by the phone and plug in numbers. I’ll leave that to people who will buy the albums and care. Even though I have watched the whole thing from beginning to end this season, I frankly enjoy the human drama and train-wreck element in the auditions than the competition itself. I have griped about certain people continuing to progress from week to week, but even if Scott or Anthony had won, I still wouldn’t have cared, except that then their life stories would have been shoved in our faces for the next year or so while the ‘AI’ team promoted them and their albums. At least Bo and Carrie aren’t obnoxious people.
So, I am apathetic and a little bit of a hypocrite for blogging/complaining about something I refuse to get involved in. But you read the blog, and it was fun to write about while it lasted. I don’t scorn those who voted, either. More power to you. I just hope that you weren’t getting busy signals for the four hours that the lines were open. It will be interesting to see who wins. But I’m looking forward to seeing the new auditions in January, and all the delusional people who think that they can sing – I enjoy seeing Simon attempt to put them out of their misery.
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