NowThis, a trendy news outlet similar to BuzzFeed that is popular with millennials, tweeted a PSA video which has quickly become the rallying cry for young voters for the midterm elections.
Its aim is to persuade young people to vote. It uses reverse psychology to do so. But it does so by portraying older, baby boom voters, who do vote reliably, as motivated purely by selfishness. In the video, older voters say things like, "Tax cuts for the rich? Hell yes, I'm rich as [bleep]."
The most distasteful part of this video is when a woman mocks the activism following the Parkland shooting. One "boomer" says, “Sure, school shootings are sad,” as another chimes in, “But I haven’t been in a school for 50 years.”
The video vilifies older voters, caricatures serious political issues, and plays to the notion that only younger voters are affected by these tragedies such as school shootings, as if victims did not have any baby boomers in their family.
This video is a hyper-partisan effort at pitting generations against each other. This PSA took a dark turn when it relied too heavily on identity politics and demonizing people who hold conservative political views.