Summary

Ahead of the 2024 election, Generation Z has sparked a trend on TikTok, “canceling out” family members’ votes by voting opposite their Trump-supporting relatives. Many young women post videos showing them voting for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, contrasting with family members supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Although Gen Z voters lean slightly toward Harris, a significant portion supports Trump. With over 47 million early votes cast, polls show a tight race, especially in key swing states.

  • tired_n_bored@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Fuck. Gen Z should not “lean slightly toward Harris”, Gen Z should be an overwhelming progressive and inclusive force.

    Fuck Twitter and TikTok that fried men’s brains with shit like Andrew Tate and similar things.

    • JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      I mean Harris and “progressive and inclusive” aren’t necessarily one and the same, from the sounds of it it’s Harris that should be pushing more progressive, but in the context of this election I agree they should be voting for Harris

    • nieminen@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I don’t think you can blame Twitter and TikTok for that. People who like Tate’s toxic masculinity incel garbage will find somewhere that feeds into their preferences.

      • tired_n_bored@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Well the following is my unscientific belief:

        Social media algorithms are studied to make you see always the same kind of beliefs and everything opposing them is discouraged. They incentive inflammatory, divisive and hateful content in order to obtain more engagement, especially on Twitter.

        If they used Mastodon or Lemmy, those people would be less tense.

        • angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com
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          24 hours ago

          If they used Mastodon or Lemmy, those people would be less tense.

          If they had more normies on it, maybe. But Lemmy seems to be composed primarily of the tensest people in the world to me.

          • socsa@piefed.social
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            23 hours ago

            Lemmy has some of the most obnoxious Dunning Kruger shit on any social media platform, especially when it comes to politics.

          • PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            23 hours ago

            Just so! Particularly with election news being the order of the day. Reminds me that I’m on the hook for something I realistically have very little control over.

            I’ll do my bit, but cannot guarantee results.

    • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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      1 day ago

      It’s probably more that gen z voters are notorious for not responding to survey requests, and ignoring texts and phone calls from unknown numbers

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Huh. I thought young people never voted, so we could ignore their concerns.

    Guess that was a fucking lie from people who just wanted to ignore young people’s concerns.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      The data doesn’t lie. People under 30 vote at embarrassingly lower rates than every other group.

      • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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        16 hours ago

        Because people under 30 never have anyone to represent them. And it’s not a “oh they don’t match my views 100% so I’m not gonna pick either” thing, for the average leftist we’re lucky to get a choice between someone who represents us 0%, or 0.2%.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        Do they vote for Democrats less than Republicans vote for Democrats? Because the party expends a fuckton of effort on trying to win over Republicans.

        • Frigid@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          To put it in a way Lemmy would understand: who is it easier to convince to try out your favorite distro, an Ubuntu user or someone who’s never used Linux?

      • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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        13 hours ago

        Can confirm. I am 30 and voted. My brother is 29 and claims to not vote.

    • macrocarpa@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Orrrr…hear me out here

      This is a news article about a set of social media posts and has absolutely no link or relevance to the voting register.

      you know the cool thing about people voting? You know who has voted and in what age group they are. Then you can look at the age group and say things like hmmm wow thats weird there are like 34 million people in the US between 18 and 24, but only 7 million of them voted, I wonder if the other 27 million would have swayed the margin on an election decided by hundreds of thousands of votes

      Young people aren’t participating yet they have the most skin in the game. It’s daft.

      Imo Implement compulsory voting, introduce third parties that can act as a protest vote, watch what the fuck happens. Suddenly the major parties have to be accountable outside their base.

    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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      21 hours ago

      It will take a while for us to get past the inertia of Boomers who have been gaslighting everyone for decades.

  • Zement@feddit.nl
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    21 hours ago

    Good to see, but in my country the trend is: Vote alt right because it’s edgy.

    • leadore@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/breaking-down-gender-gap-gen-z-politics-desk-rcna177155 about the poll results they’re referring to in the article. Gen Z has the biggest gender gap of all the age groups, with women for Harris by a 33 point margin, but the men about evenly split between Harris and Trump.

      If you think about the new voters coming of voting age for this election, it’s been 9 years since Trump rode down the escalator to kick off his campaign. So they were too young to hear about or pay attention to a lot the unsavory stuff about him back then, like the Access Hollywood tape. For some reason, many Gen Z men find him appealing, but not Gen Z women. For instance today I saw this video of two Gen Z young women hearing the Access Hollywood audio for the first time. You can see how horrified they are (as most normal people were back when it first came out).

  • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    And this is why Congress tried to ban TikTok. Making a meme to encourage voting? Evil, disgusting, how dare kids want to vote?!

    Only Facebook should encourage boomers to vote in hatred and bigotry, not TikTok encouraging someone to vote who was a victim of it!

    • Charlatan@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      No it’s not. It’s because it, like other Chinese companies, are at risk of being browbeaten by their government into providing whatever information they have on American users to use as they wish. One can easily argue what kind of risk that actually poses, but that’s why they’re trying to ban it. Unless you have some sort of proof…

      • nieminen@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Fair point, but if they were at all actually interested in American privacy, they’d not only target TikTok. Facebook, Twitter and Google have all been actually proven to have leaked or sold user information to anyone that’ll pay (including American adversaries).

        While I don’t disagree that the risk is there with TikTok, all they can bring to bear against it is speculation and what-ifs. They have concrete proof of other companies willingly doing what they’re afraid TikTok MIGHT do.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          23 hours ago

          Absolutely, they should target all of them.

          However, you’re ignoring the difference here; that TikTok is a Chinese company, and in that kind of system, you can’t really separate “private” companies and the CCP.

          It would be trivial for China to get data from TikTok.

          • nieminen@lemmy.world
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            22 hours ago

            Your comment lead me to this article (CNN), because I kept hearing stuff like bytedance is primarily owned by American or non-chinese companies, blah blah blah. So I appreciate you prompting me to look further into it. Seems pretty cut and dry that you’re correct. (Wasn’t just this article that pointed it out, but it was the most inclusive and concise one I found)

            All that said, what information can china get from the app that they don’t already have, or can already purchase from any of the other data collectors/sellers available? Is it just the fact they can do it for free?

            There’s also the option that perhaps the CCP will decide (or maybe has already) to influence what Americans see on the app. Perfectly feasible, but in my experience, it shows you what it knows you like to see. My feed is primarily related to human rights, recent politics, American history, science and tech, and cute dog/cat videos. My wife’s feed is primarily horse/animal, music, entertaining things. creepy old dudes complain all they see is half dressed teenagers dancing (we all know why they’re seeing that). If they’re interfering with the algorithm to influence American politics (like Russia did with Facebook), I think they’re doing so poorly.

      • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        It’s probably a mix of things, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the politicians most heavily advocating for banning it expect to get some big payout. The first I’ve heard of the TikTok ban was from Trump who was trying to coerce them to sell it to Microsoft (I expect he would’ve got some financial benefit from this). In terms of the data-collection, potentially harmful and biased algorithms, and data exfiltration by government agencies, it’s not like the U.S. companies are much better.

        • Charlatan@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          No argument on US companies not being much better. At least there’s some paperwork that gets in the way.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 hours ago

        If Congress cared about privacy, they’d abolish Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and the NSA, and enforce the 4th Amendment.

        Instead they try to stiffle the first amendment because it’s hosted in the enemy of the week’s borders.

      • joenforcer@midwest.social
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        1 day ago

        And guess what? If you’ve ever sold anything on TikTok, Bytedance (and the CCP) has your SSN, asking with a treasure trove of personal info! Byebye, identity!

        • Charlatan@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          Which is exactly why the US is looking at a sale / ban scenario. I doubt it’ll ever actually happen.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Good thing we have lots of kids, so I as usual cancel out my husband’s vote (if he even bothers this time, R but not enthusiastic about Trump) and all the kids align with me. It may not matter here, with the influx of racist northerners, but who knows?

    ETA I have at least one who was not going to vote when it was the two old guys but will vote for Harris.

  • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I can’t cancel my parents out because they’re dead. But they actually got more liberal as they got older and they would have canceled my sister’s Wisconsin trump vote.

  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    we all vote as a family and laugh about what our net vote is. been like this for decades. the olds only voted for trump once, which is a relief.

    • ReiRose@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…!

      Good for them for coming around.

      Unless the one time was this one, most recent, time

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    My parents would vote by absentee ballot. Dad would have them do it together at the table at the same time. If my mom wanted to vote differently, she’d never have been able to.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      23 hours ago

      I was raised with the very strong belief that my vote was private, and I never had to tell anyone. I think it probably came from my father’s own experiences as a hippie during the War in Vietnam, and voting differently than his conservative family…

      Unfortunately, he’s seemingly forgotten all of that in an angry pro-Trump haze, to the point where I’m convinced that he would do this to my mother now. If he had to. I think he’s already got her conditioned to not have a political mind of her own. So no need.

      Seems clear now that it was always just the typical boomer mantra of “me me me.” The only reason he had any concept of being ostracized by family for voting a certain way, is because it happened to him. Now it doesn’t matter because they all know he’s a fucking nutter, so no need to hide it I guess.

      In other words, if I were being raised by him right now, he’d be saying something completely different (and probably demanding to see my ballot). Just like every other value he instilled in me, then immediately ignored for the rest of his life.

    • BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      My father use to send me into the voting booth with my mother to make sure she “remembered” who to vote for…no election officials ever stopped me from going in there and I was too young to understand that I was a spy. My father’s not violent but I’m sure I wasn’t the only child spy being used by men who were.