“My vote doesn’t even matter” say 21 million non-voters

Expressing their belief that ballot-driven democracy is hopelessly flawed and that their one vote wouldn’t change a single thing, 21 million non-voters individually said today that “at the end of the day, voting doesn’t even matter.”

The 20 685 435 voters – who make up the 26% of citizens who choose not to exercise their democratic and hard-won right to choose their president and country’s government – explained how their one vote wouldn’t even be missed.

“The system is broken,” said 25-year-old Noah Voating, one of the nearly one-third of the entire voting populace who has chosen to abstain on voting. “It’s all corrupt and gone to hell. There’s no way my one single vote would even affect the outcome of the elections.”

Voating – and many, many others – defended their choice.

Voats is just one of millions of people who
prove that elections for a representative
democracy is a totally flawed system. 

“All throughout history, there have been courageous, inspiring men and women – such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr - who have fought tirelessly for the rights of citizens to cast their vote and have a say in their country’s future,” said Voating. “But they also fought for the right for citizens to spit in the face of that legacy and just opt out like a teenager in a particularly ugly family argument.”

He elaborated on his political apathy.

“Voting for a man and a party that has thousands of workers, volunteers and committed people behind it is not a way to fix all the problems in our country,” he said. “We all know that there’s only one way to fix these massive problems: by complaining about it endlessly on the internet.”

Voating has since started a petition to change the electoral system in South Africa.

“ Casting your ballot changes nothing,” reads the document. “That’s why we have this petition to do away with it. All you have to do is show up at the special petition show-of-support booths we’re going to set up in town halls across the country.”

And putting your name behind the petition could not be simpler, he says.

“All you need to do is register to give your support for the petition. Then you go down and just sign your name on a piece of paper and put it in the boxes we’ve set up. We count the number of people who want this petition, and if enough people support it, it will be used to change everything and do away with impractical, retrogressive voting.”

But getting numbers could still be tricky.

“I dunno,” said one citizen. “It sounds like I’d have to read the petition, make an informed decision and then walk all the way down there – and for what, just to change our country for the better? Nah, sounds like too much effort.”

“I actually had nothing to do with that,” says God

Speaking on the unending slew of Facebook statuses, tweets and internet posts thanking Him for His Divine assistance in their exam results, job and university applications, and a wide range of other unexpected successes, God, our Heavenly Father and Creator of all living things, today revealed that He actually played “little to no role” in most of it.

“I know that it might look like I played a vital, incredibly crucial role in securing your place for study at university next year, or that, without me, you would have no doubt utterly bombed out on your final exams,” said the more-than-6000-year-old Lord Our Father reading the incessant flood of tributes on social media to Him. “But actually I didn’t even get involved in any of that.”

His admission was extensive and frank.

“That scholarship to study overseas? Well, didn’t Jessica study late into the night all Me-damned year to get good enough grades for it? Honestly, I’d say that the tireless efforts of her passionate and committed teachers – especially Mrs Archibald, the grade-twelve English teacher who gave her extra lessons and wrote her a beaming reference letter – played a larger role.”

“And honestly, I think we all know who really got Eric Shafer that new luxury BMW sedan,” God confessed. “After all, I’m not the one he has to give fixed monthly payments with 17.3% compounded interest for the next three years.”

In fact, said the Unknowable and Divine Alpha and Omega, the list of blessed souls in the recent past has been much shorter than his Facebook feed claims.

“I mean, I haven’t been totally inactive. There were all those people I helped last year with their university exams. And I DID help that one woman out: old Judy McGinnon,” He said. “Her son, Little Timmy, had a slightly high temperature and an irksome cough, so I gave her a little bit of a helping hand.”

“I thought, ‘it’s the least I can do to help out someone in their desperate time of need’,” He explained. “Well, it was either her or that Fazila chick in the United Arab Emirates who was in that whole ‘about-to-be-beheaded-for-apostasy’ thing. But I think we both know I made the right decision.”

God, our Father in Heaven, said that while almost daily stepping-in on the affairs of mortals was something He used to do several times a month, in more recently times it is no longer considered His Divine Will and Policy.

“I used to help out all the time, you know,” He said. “You know, this person wants to win the Lottery, that person doesn’t want to miss their flight after bad traffic on the M-21, yada yada, but I kinda stopped all that after Irealised how it was seriously cutting in the time I wanted to spend focusing on the little things, like famines, epidemics, wars, murders, crimes, and terminal illnesses in young children.“

“Besides, last time I helped out someone it was that little Ahmed Farouk kid in Baghdad with his inoperable leukemia,’ he said. “I stepped in, made it disappear in a modern-day miracle, and what does the ungrateful little shit go and do? Thanked Allah for it. Bastard.”

Man in solidarity with French victims apologises for "selfish tweets, statuses"

Citing criticisms that he “doesn’t give a crap about anyone outside of Paris” following his obligatory “#PrayForParis” tweet and Facebook status yesterday, an area man has deeply apologised for his inconsiderate, selfish words of support and solidarity.

The man, 27-year-old accountant Jake Hendersen, approached the media this morning to confirm that he has since started a campaign to be more “equitable and considerate with his supportive tweets”.

“I’ve been reading some of the comments and criticisms of my messages on Facebook and twitter yesterday, and people are right,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about ‘being an ignorant fuck who conveniently doesn’t care about the senseless deaths of people until it’s white people dying’ or my being a ‘completely retarded insensitive Eurocentric moron’ – Obviously, I can’t care about senseless tragedies without displaying equal outrage for all death and tragedy everywhere else.”

"Without hundreds of clarifying tweets, my messages of solidarity and love are totally meaningless and myopic.”

The initial message, which read simply “my heart is with all of France #PrayForFrance”, attracted the ire of thousands of online commenters.

“Jake is an idiot,” said one person who appeared able to communicate only in all-caps. “My hashtag is #FuckFrance because of its heritage of evil and colonialism. Obviously the deaths of innocent people – people who could have been my sister or brother or mother or girlfriend – mean total jack shit to me. Why should I care about them or their grieving families when their government is so evil and twisted, even if those who died might not have voted for the majority political party, or even if they were, say, absolutely opposed to France’s involvement in international warfare or were outspokenly critical of their governments’ hurtful diplomacy with certain nations? Nah, fuck ‘em.”

In light of the controversy, Hendersen has promised to post an exhaustive and comprehensive collection of messages of support and solidarity with every country, city and nation in the world.

“It’ll take a bit of time to Photoshop my Facebook profile photo to have all the flags of the world, and to compose and post the hundreds of thousands of tweets and facebook statuses, but I think it’s totally necessary,” he said. “After all, how can anyone know that awful tragedies like these sadden me and that I care about the lives of those affected by terrorism, murder and war without having the relevant social media posts to prove it?”

It’s an issue not without difficulty.

“Oh, I’ve had some troubles,” he explained. “For example how can I rank all these atrocities and a bombings and killings? Should I listen to my detractors, and consider them all equally bad, even if this opens me up to attacks from the anti-#AllLivesMatter crowd?”

“And if all lives matter and I should care about all deaths equally, then must I make an ISIS flag Facebook profile picture mourning their deaths at the hands of a brutal, war-hungry coalition of Western nations? I’m still mulling these little quandaries over.”

Sources close to Hendersen now say that he is well on the way to proving to his some-600 Facebook friends and thousands of strangers on Twitter that he is against all tragedy.

“Given the sheer number cities, villages, hamlets and small townships in the world, he’ll probably have to post another 250 000 or more tweets to properly show he's in solidarity with all people who are suffering any kind of tragedy or horror,” said an unnamed friend. “But at least he’s halfway through posting the 196 individual transparent-flag-Facebook-profile pictures that show he cares about their struggles, so it’s a great start.”

Just some of the 196 transparent-flag-Profile-pics
that prove Jake really does care about people
dying in other countries.

And with the controversy boiling over, online commenters say it may be time for another support movement to start.

“Jake is being attacked, just as hundreds of #PrayForParis supporters are,” said one commenter. “We need to stand with these people in their time of need – which is why I propose we all Tweet messages of solidarity to those standing in solidarity with the French. #PrayForPeopleWhoPrayForParis.”

Want to know more about this developing story? Well, just log onto Facebook.com and see literally any of your friends’ goddamn statuses and comments.

Rhodes University posters cinch award for terrible design

The International Association for Worst Design Ever has this morning awarded Rhodes University a completely uncontested award for the worst poster design... ever. In a statement released this morning, the IAWDE said that, in light of the sheer volume of entries and the calibre thereof, the posters and campaigns at RU are, in general, far, far worse than even the lowest comparable standards, such as those set by the fantastic Olympic logo.

One you've seen it, you can't unsee it. Source: Celebitchy.com

The logo in a nutshell. Source: Celebitchy.com

"We first started considering the University for this award after seeing a few of their HIV-awareness campaign pictures being put online. These tactful, tasteful, subtle and informative adverts were not at all creepy in any way and succeeded in raising awareness for HIV and safe-sex practices," said the IAWDE spokesperson Ohgohd Mai-Eyes. "We don't consider the blind or insane for these awards, but once we learnt that the brilliant minds behind these posters were sane and possessed great visual acuity, we immediately jumped to the screening selection," he said.

One of the first posters to receive a nomination.

This is actually not a satirical, bullshit thing. Seriously. WTF.

The campaigns have been met by huge praise by many Rhodes students.
"When I saw those adverts, I felt relieved," said one female student. "At first I thought that my boyfriend's professions that he wanted to be close to me were just a way to get into my pants, but now I know, thanks to Ryan and Rhodes, that he cares. Now I knew that Rhodes men know to buy the hugest, massivest box of condoms out there to show a girl true, deep love. You know, the kind that has no boundaries," she said.

However, according to Mai-Eyes, at this point of the process there were still some other candidates in the field who were neck-in-neck with Rhodes for that winning spot, including the Ryugyong building in Pyongyang, North Korea:

Voted by Esquire Magazine as "the worst building ever"

and the guy who drew this tattoo:

The resemblence is uncanny.

However, Rhodes University's contestation for the award took on new, unforeseen levels of intensity after the SRC elections started. The real problems for the selection committee started here, after they saw the new and sheer volume of posters vying for the top - or rather bottom - spot.

"After the election process started, that building started looking like the Taj Mahal, and I honestly mistook that tattoo for the Mona Lisa," said Mai-Eyes, shaking his head in wonder.
"We realised that this new level of bad was so utterly and atrociously horrible that not even MTV would fill its screens with that kind of face-palmingly horrendous, "WTF is wrong with the world" general eye-hurting visual material. When we saw that there were posters out there that made Jersey Shore look more classy and dignified than a Toastmasters Society meeting, we knew we had a tough decision on our hands."

This sudden development was spurred on even further by a failure for the election process to reach quorum.
"Before, some of the campaign posters weren't actually that bad, and at least some of the students would pretend that they gave a shit about office by randomly throwing words like 'accountability', 'transparency', 'responsibility' and 'transformation' into their posters. However, new evidence shows that less than 10% of the new posters on display have even one of those Key Words in view, and that candidates now give as much as 84% less of a shit", said IADWE research assistant Ian Notpaidenuf, whose job it was to study each and every poster in-depth for the final appraisal.

He went on to show us some of the nominated posters. "One reads like the most obscure personal advertisement ever, showing nothing but the candidate in the usual  vote-winning, voter-reassuring combination of tie-suit-jacket and a bunch of twitter and  facebook links. And one of those BBM barcode thingies. You can't forget that."

Vote for me: I can does interwebz

"Some," he said, gesturing at the pile on his desk, "just show their dedication  to winning this award in their utter disregard for any coherent structure, design flow, grammar or punctuation, whilst others just leave you completely agog," he said, before taking out a gun and blowing his brains out.

The content in competition, as you can see, has been jaw-dropping.

This, apparently, is NOT a joke.

Eventually, Mai-Eyes said, they decided not to hand out an award to one defining poster, but to just generally class them all as the overall winner.
"They all generally inspire a feeling of desolation and emptiness when you look at them, and so we decided we can't single just one out," he said. "I mean, here, we have a guy running for SRC Academic Counciller and he misspelt the office for which he was running. Another one claimed that the candidate was 'APPAOCHABLE' - in capital letters too, just in case you didn't quite understand how approachable she was."

He should run for SRC Irony Counciler (sic).
Positive attributes: advanced flame-war skills

APPRAOCHABLE! YOU HEAR ME? APPRAOCABLE!
At least she spelt "councillor" corre...
Oh wait. She didn't.

The President of the IAWDE, Verra Bleind has added her voice to the proceeding, saying that these have been the most remarkable examples of bad campaign advertising since Mike Gravel's genius video in his 2008 campaign for the 2008 American Presidency. "Seriously," she said. "Not even the part where he throws that rock could compete with these posters. I mean, these posters really do go out of their way to show you as little as possible about who the candidates really are deep inside, and why it wouldn't be a mistake to vote for them."

Some candidates didn't even change their pictures.
"They were obviously perfect the first time," said Bleine, "and these perfect originals played an integral part in getting students to vote. We figured that there must be some other, unknowable reason that people didn't vote."

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dontkare Bout-Lomnin, has promised to ship in several hundred teams of highly-trained mental trauma psychologists and counselors to deal with the devastating leaflets.
"As soon as I saw that one with Ryan Gosling, I knew we had to react quickly. We immediately removed all our specialists from Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Burma, Saudi Arabia and North Korea to deal with this new, iniquitous South African threat," he said.



*- what follows are a collection of other campaign posters. Browse at your peril.

Cudos on the voter Key Words and the Highlander reference.

Because fashion.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that translate to "I don't want to win"?

Because, as with many other candidates, reasons are irrelevant.

Because Suits. THAT'S WHY.

Because verbs are irrelevant.