True power of TikTok (Romanian Elections)

[Upsilon]

The most interesting thing happened this week in Romania. Even though most of you wouldn't care to read news about Romania, I think this thread can show how strong social media has become, and especially TikTok nowadays.

Romania has a two-round voting system -- meaning that people vote for their preferred candidate on the first voting day, and if nobody won by at least 50% then there will be another voting day between the top two candidates. This year's two candidates are a pro-West, liberal woman (with a self-proclaimed communist daughter lol) named Elena Lasconi, and some guy who lurked in the shadows, Calin Georgescu. This post is mostly about the latter.

This Calin Georgescu has been involved in politics one way or another for the past 20 years. But he was so small most people have NEVER heard of him. Case in point, neither me nor most of my friends -- all in our late 20s -- have ever heard of this Calin Georgescu. Yet all of a sudden, with most people having never heard of him up until 1 week!! before the elections, he won the first round of elections with 22.95% of the votes as an independent candidate, while the runner up had only 19.17% which means he blew that woman out of the water.

Now the way he did it is very interesting:

There was absolutely 0 media coverage of him. He didn't attend press conferences, he didn't attend the presidential debate, and he was so obscure that the media didn't even bother to throw dirt on him. What he did do, was get a big group of far-right students who volunteered to post his videos on TikTok. Then he got a small team of people to put together a few TikTok videos kinda like the ones you see with Andrew Tate, and so the volunteers got to work. Someone from their Telegram group posted screenshots of strategies they were using: from not posting the video itself but posting a screen recording of the video to have "unique" content, to frequency of posting and commenting and the hashtags the volunteers should use.

Now Romanians are between a rock and a hard place: on one side, we have this Lasconi woman who is brainwashed pro-Ukraine and gay people, and this guy who said that "Romania's only chance is Russian wisdom", he talks about leaving the EU and NATO, he made a "trailer" video of himself that he copied from Putin (no joke), he called the moon landing a hoax, and is generally very into any kind of conspiracy theory out there.

The struggle comes from the fact that we have the dumb dumb people who want to vote for this guy who talks a lot and doesn't say anything, and the rest of the people who absolutely hate having to vote for Lasconi but are forced to do so for a lack of a better candidate.

And all this because this guy got to be the favorite candidate through TikTok marketing/spam just a week before the elections.

P.S. I mentioned above something about Ukrainians and gay people. Nothing against either of them, so no hate speech here.

 

[secretagentdad]

Well that's an interesting strategy.
Doesn't matter if the better then you wing of the intel community keeps your ad rates down.
Twitter and Tik Tok have the attention of the population.

Makes me think advertising ROI might be easier to find by shifting my spend in their direction.

 

[Smith]

Impressive. We could all learn something from the resourcefulness. I wonder if China helps increase the distribution of posts supporting pro-Russian/Chinese candidates in countries with limited resources to combat campaigns like this?

Funnier still is the "courts" are ordering a recount to decide whether the election needs to be rerun or not. I mean... like the outcome or not, it sounds like he won by getting out the vote.

Democracy: government in which the supreme power is held by the people counting the votes and used by them directly or indirectly to keep themselves in power.

 

[secretagentdad]

well if the wrong people won clearly the election was hacked.

 

[Upsilon]

Impressive. We could all learn something from the resourcefulness. I wonder if China helps increase the distribution of posts supporting pro-Russian/Chinese candidates in countries with limited resources to combat campaigns like this?

Funnier still is the "courts" are ordering a recount to decide whether the election needs to be rerun or not. I mean... like the outcome or not, it sounds like he won by getting out the vote.

Democracy: government in which the supreme power is held by the people counting the votes and used by them directly or indirectly to keep themselves in power.

Good question. The European Parliament summoned the CEO of TikTok over this election so who knows, maybe they are onto something. As for the votes getting recount, I'm not sure how familiar you are with this matter so I'll try to give some context for you and/or anyone wondering:

As far as I know, most people are not denying Putin's fanboy's win. However, there was a very small difference between the 2nd and 3rd most voted candidate -- around 4600 votes.

The runner-up, Elena Lasconi, came out on TV banging her fist on the table, feverishly talking about Romania "having to support Ukraine win no matter what!!!!." That didn't really sit well with the population. And to be honest, it was absolutely dumb. She should learn some copywriting and sell the people solutions to internal affairs they actually care about, not external affairs lol.

Add to that the fact that she is very open about supporting gay people with her own daughter being lesbian, and we have a recipe for disaster. Why? Because Romanians are conservative. I personally know plenty of young people who are very against the gay community. Don't even get me started about the older generations.

Last but not least, there are lots of Romanians who don't want a woman to be their president.

All this to say: as things stand right now she has no chance; this Georgescu guy will certainly win the runoff. Therefore, the decision to recount the votes is, in my opinion, a last ditch effort to kick her out of the presidential race and bring someone else as a runner-up so that we can hopefully stay in NATO and the EU lol

 

[Smith]

Good question. The European Parliament summoned the CEO of TikTok over this election so who knows, maybe they are onto something. As for the votes getting recount, I'm not sure how familiar you are with this matter so I'll try to give some context for you and/or anyone wondering:

As far as I know, most people are not denying Putin's fanboy's win. However, there was a very small difference between the 2nd and 3rd most voted candidate -- around 4600 votes.

The runner-up, Elena Lasconi, came out on TV banging her fist on the table, feverishly talking about Romania "having to support Ukraine win no matter what!!!!." That didn't really sit well with the population. And to be honest, it was absolutely dumb. She should learn some copywriting and sell the people solutions to internal affairs they actually care about, not external affairs lol.

Add to that the fact that she is very open about supporting gay people with her own daughter being lesbian, and we have a recipe for disaster. Why? Because Romanians are conservative. I personally know plenty of young people who are very against the gay community. Don't even get me started about the older generations.

Last but not least, there are lots of Romanians who don't want a woman to be their president.

All this to say: as things stand right now she has no chance; this Georgescu guy will certainly win the runoff. Therefore, the decision to recount the votes is, in my opinion, a last ditch effort to kick her out of the presidential race and bring someone else as a runner-up so that we can hopefully stay in NATO and the EU lol

Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like Romania has a clear national identity that doesn't necessarily align with that of the rest of the EU. The same could be said for Hungary and Poland. I don't think that's bad... but leaving the EU would probably cause a lot of headaches for the younger generation and anyone who wants to do business abroad.

It will be interesting to see what happens if he does win... and probably more interesting to see what the EU/NATO do if Georgescu gets in and then tries to leave both institutions... frankly, I don't see it being something that the EU/NATO would be willing to accept.

But having just looked up the most recent results... it looks like Parliament will be a leftist pro-European coalition. So does that mean Romanian politics will be at a stalemate? President blocking Parliament and Parliament blocking the President left and right? Kind of like Rep. of Georgia but in the opposite direction?

 

[Jesse]

They're redoing the whole election.

The Constitutional Court ruled unanimously on Friday to annul the presidential elections, according to a statement issued by the CCR. G4Media first reported the news, citing official sources. The electoral process for the election of Romania's president will be resumed in its entirety, with the government setting a new date.

This means that the elections will be started from scratch, with candidates having to re-register and having to go through the validation process at the Central Electoral Bureau.

"Pursuant to Article 146 letter f of the Constitution, it nullifies the entire electoral process regarding the election of the President of Romania," the statement said. Article 146(f) states that the CCR "shall ensure that the procedure for the election of the President of Romania is respected and shall confirm the results of the vote."

The annulment of the elections comes amid the declassification of information from the secret services, which indicated Russian interference in the elections.

 

[CCarter]

Russian interference in the elections

I know people are stupid but... Do people really believe this one right out of the playbook? It seems over-used since 2016. Now everything is "Russian interference" - who believes that at this late date?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I know people are stupid but... Do people really believe this one right out of the playbook? It seems over-used since 2016. Now everything is "Russian interference" - who believes that at this late date?

It literally means "An outsider that is not under our control won because our policies don't resonate with the people. We will create and blame an enemy, and if any of our own cheating gets sniffed out we will blame it on that enemy, too, then associate the other side with that enemy" and so forth forever, stacking lie upon lie until the meta-reality is constructed and the schema is installed in the mind's of the retarded. You tell a big enough lie enough times and people will believe it. This is why trust in institutions are at an all time low. But it turns out even the most entrenched brainwashee starts to realize they've been lied to eventually.

 

[Jesse]

I know people are stupid but... Do people really believe this one right out of the playbook? It seems over-used since 2016. Now everything is "Russian interference" - who believes that at this late date?

The "somethingiswrong2024" subreddit would like to have a word lol

Jokes aside, I do enjoy how every lull in the news cycle gets filled with mah Russia.

 

[Upsilon]

I know people are stupid but... Do people really believe this one right out of the playbook? It seems over-used since 2016. Now everything is "Russian interference" - who believes that at this late date?

(since this thread was moved back to the Water cooler, I can afford to go off topic)

If you want to see just how dumb some people are in relation to "Russia bad hurr durr", just look up any pro-Ukrainian subreddit. Those guys are literally thinking Ukraine is winning as we speak. And man as soon as you give them any form of argument that is actually solid like:

"You're upset Russia invaded Ukraine. Fair. But what if Canada allied with China, Iran, and Russia, and all of a sudden was making plans on brining foreign missile systems and military bases on their soil -- what do you think US' response would have been?"

You'd get called Russian bot a few dozen times and get banned from the sub.