Just when you think the Fine Gael site is a safe place to visit, they scare you even more. Welcome to ‘Fine Gael Twolicy’.
Now, the idea of collecting Fine Gael Twitter presences in one place is interesting, logical and downright useful for those of us in the political nerd herd. It makes sense.
Onto the cringey stuff.
“Twolicy”
I’m not sure even the run-of-the-mill Life Guru-Expressive Social Media Coach could keep a straight face saying this. Yes, really.
e-Canvasser
What is really objectionable about the Twolicy page though, is the e-Canvasser form.
Clicking on that banner on the page, brings up the pop-under form below:
The call to action for visitors is to effectively astroturf on social media properties. I’m kind of wondering just who this page is aimed at. Party members wouldn’t need encouragement to do this and well, floating voters – are they really going to a) enter their details into a Fine Gael site again this election cycle and/or b) spam all of their friends with “I heart Fine Gael”. Is there anything more likely to cause unfriend in social media networks than streams of political rhetoric? That old chestnut that ‘I don’t use Twitter because I don’t want to read what you had for breakfast’. Magnify that by a thousand and you have the annoyance factor of consistent electioneering noises on a network of friends.
Looking at the design and tenor of Fine Gael’s e-Canvasser page, I think it’s the kind of page that a committee of consultants would produce. Don’t you think that there are touches of Obama? We’re not an politicially-charged community of phone pools in neighbours’ houses. And I don’t think we will ever be. If anything, encouraging people to spam their friends with pro-Fine Gael messages could backfire on Lower Twount Street HQ. Hello Protest Voters.
Instead of taking risks in content and spending less, look at the power of Coveney’s Audioboos outside a McD’s on a late-night ride home, we get Fine Gael encouraging people to fill their social presences with spam. The best that Fine Gael can hope for is that this twolicy is an expensive but unmitigated disaster in user takeup. That would, at least, save them the indignity of spending money to annoy would-be voters.
