Only five weeks into the federal election campaign, all three major political parties have had to pull candidates for social media slipups.
The first to fall to the social media axe was Morgan Wheeldon, an NDP candidate out of Nova Scotia for making controversial comments regarding Israel that he claimed were taken out of context.
Next was Calgary Liberal candidate Ala Buzreba whose tweets during her teenage years included telling someone to “blow their brains out”.
The most recent candidate to step into the proverbial social media excrement was Montreal Tory candidate Wiliam Moughrabi whose Facebook posts included misogynistic and violent comments including links to YouTube videos ranking women on how “hot or crazy” they are.
“Younger candidates are at a significant disadvantage compared to the typical old geezer on the ballot.” Social media expert Jaime Steinburg said, “These kids have lived their lives in the public domain and are proud of what older society deems shocking or crass. Older candidates don’t have this history following them around – a history that they themselves put out there. They usually had to wait for some call girl to come forward with pictures.”
The speed with which all parties have had to face scrutiny regarding their candidate’s social media outbursts, has led the parties to establish their own respective farms in which they plan to breed and raise candidates that will not be tainted by past social media faux pas‘. Any social media sharing will be made carefully by party leadership with the end goal of having these candidates in the spot-light once they reach maturity.
“It really is the only way to ensure that tweets you made when you’re 14 about wanting to have Harry Styles’s baby do not come back to bite you when you’re debating your opponent about abortion rights.” Steinburg stated.
“There really is no excuse for a post or tweet being taken out of context”, Steinburg said, “it’s social media. That’s the context.”