Kitsch Magazine: Fall 2015

THE NEW NEST OF
CAMPAIGN DONATIONS
twitter forces its way into the political funding game
by Sarah Chekfa
This past September, Twitter took a decisive step
towards politicizing its platform, introducing a function that
allows users to directly donate money to candidates’ political
campaigns with a solitary tweet. Before I begin criticizing
Twitter for its subliminal destruction of the rationalistic
foundations of our political donation system, surely you’re
wondering—how does this new-fangled technological
Twitterian trippiness operate?
Well, it’s pretty simple, as far as politics go. A campaign
signs up for a Square Cash account and is assigned a distinct
“cashtag,” which can then be shared on Twitter. A donate button
will appear on the campaign’s Twitter account and, through
that, users will be able to donate with a debit card, preserving
their information forever in the digital cosmos to allow for
future simple (near-mindless!) one-click donations.
Cringingly capitalistic connotations of the phrase
“cashtag” aside, at first glance, this modernization seems like
an acutely obvious move for a platform like Twitter. Twitter
has succeeded Facebook as ruler of the realm of existential
status updates, providing us with notifications ranging from
irrelevant blurbs about that avocado turkey panini your ex
had for lunch, to headstrong pronouncements of resounding
political statements that you don’t necessarily agree with. So
this update comes to us as nearly endearing, an almost cute
way to meld two seemingly opposite spheres of operation—
technology and politics—into one unified product of Teamwork.
It’s beautifully intended to further democratize our already
very democratic political system by “making it easier for Twitter
users to actively support candidates and causes.”
While its intention was clearly well-meaning, this
move by Twitter has been subjected to the inevitable law of
unintended consequences. Twitter likely never meant to spark
a conversation about the arguably deteriorating nature of our
political support when it released this revamp, but it has. And
we must take this opportunity for what it has become: a wakeup
call on the nature of our political personas.
This summer, Calvin Harris asked us all how deep our
love was. Perhaps we can revise his noteworthy query for the
fall season: how strong is our support? Let’s be dangerously
real here—it is unbelievably easy to open up a new tab, head to
a candidate’s website, and donate to them directly from there.
Yes, it might not necessarily be as convenient as sending a tweet,
and it might take away five more precious minutes of your time
on Earth, but it’s worth it. Right? Because this is a candidate
you care about, genuinely—someone you desperately want to
see emerge victorious in the Game of Thrones-esque battle
that is the American political campaign. Surely you could spare
them these five minutes, in addition to your monetary support.
The internet has already made the act of political
donation accessible to the civic newbie: we can donate with
the literal click of a button. In this sense, the added step of
accessing the candidate’s website directly is like a test of
loyalty, signaling a determined commitment to the cause. It
could even be perceived as an obstacle between us and unwise
political spending. In seemingly direct opposition to this idea,
a Twitter representative actually went so far as to say that
this modernization is the perfect tool “to allow people who
are feeling passionate at [an] exact moment in time to donate
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