The Perfect Candidate and Other Lies Social Media has Been Feeding You

Talia Cutler ’27

Executive Opinion Editor

“I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

David Sedaris wrote this metaphor in the 2008 New Yorker article titled “Undecided” less than a month before the presidential election. He criticized thoughtless political involvement and the expectation of flawless options. Sixteen years later, it still rings true. Notably, Gen Z’s chronic online-ness has caused them to fall into this trap. 

Despite the politically active nature of this generation, 32% of those aged 18-24 identified as “Undecided” in 2024. Political journalist John Holbein has found that “Although young people are the biggest group of citizens who are eligible to vote, they turn out at significantly lower rates than older Americans.” 

Young people have cited a myriad of reasons as to why they teetered faithlessly between the two candidates. They essentially boil down to “both candidates are terrible,” a gross oversimplification. Every pair of candidates in recent history have been laden with war crimes, systemic oppression, etc. Noam Chomsky famously said that “if the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” So why would it suddenly matter now? What godsend candidate would make our generation vote? 

I saw a plethora of videos online leading up to the election (each with tens/hundreds of thousands of likes) engaging in Instagram activism — spreading biased rhetoric with very little fact or critical thinking attached. The videos (mostly on Tiktok) encouraged people not to vote, speaking on the fact that both candidates have flaws, so thus choosing one way or another in the 2024 election is some act of betrayal to the American people. 

I resent this quest for a “perfect” candidate. Call it pessimism, call it realism or brashness or privilege, call it whatever buzzword you choose. The honest-to-God reality of this country is that we aren’t getting a perfect candidate. Wail, cry, stamp your feet. No politician who is qualified enough to run for president has an unblemished career. The problem arises when we begin to compare a prosecutor to a rapist and claim there is no lesser of two evils. 

It also alarms me how politically uneducated Gen Z truly is. It is okay to not understand policy. The harm lies in claiming that you do when your education is social media and your teachers are equally clueless influencers. Let me be clear: this is no dystopian fanfiction. When the stewardess offers the chicken and the shit, there is no uprising from the passengers demanding a better menu — that simply isn’t how this works. A vote against the Democratic party is a vote for the Republican Party, and vice versa. So do not think for a second that if you abstained from voting that you did not make a decision. You did. 

I am all for following your morals. However, I fear that Instagram and TikTok activism is reinforcing unrealistic political expectations. At the end of the day, it is not the candidate you blindly adore, but the one that will do less harm. Is this disappointing? Of course. But there is no alternative. To suggest otherwise is impractically idealistic and harmful to the mechanics of our political system.