OK, two things I will point out first – 1. At this moment in time, I intend to vote for nobody. Not ‘not vote’, but I intend to spoil the ballot paper, and will encourage anybody who does not want to vote because all politians are wankers (as I do) to do the same. If you do not go to the polling station, then they won’t think about anything. If you go and spoil the paper, they will have that counted as a non-vote and it will get counted as a mark of protest. The problem I have is that nobody will read this (probably) so my spoilt ballot won’t count. Hey ho. 2. I didn’t watch the debate on ITV last night, nor did I listen to the radio broadcast on Radio 4. I did however hear about it and from all accounts, Nick Clegg (not to be confused with the other Nick) did quite well and, usually in elections I am a ‘Lib Demmer’ as I believe people who vote Lib Dem have never been called before. (I hope that is the case; I’d love to coin a phrase…)
I now bring you to today’s B3ta newsletter, and more importantly the ‘Stupid Fight‘ which takes messages from Twitter, so you can find out who’s fans are ‘more stupid’. It uses SCIENCE apparantly (their caps, not mine) but I don’t know the algorithms behind it, and quite frankly, I don’t need to know.
The B3ta issue suggested that they’ve been comparing @labour, @conservative and @libdem with each other.
Well, I’m using a more interesting method. The most intelligent Twitting celebrity I know is Stephen Fry, or @stephenfry to use his Twitter name. Surely then, his fans are among the most unstupid Twitterers there are. Therefore, by comparing Mr Fry’s fans (I could not call somebody with his intelligence by his first name) with those of Messers Brown, Cameron and Clegg (I could not call somebody with their stupidity with their first names) I should get a good guage of the intelligence of the voters in this country and perhaps an idea of how the election will go. A lower score is better.
@stephenfry -vs- @labour: ‘Oh dear. @labour’s fans are more stupid. Heaven forbid you use punctuation.’ – 274 for Mr Fry, 413 for Mr Brown.
@stephenfry -vs- @conservative: ‘The honest truth: @conservative’s fans are more stupid. Someone’s going to claim they were being ironic.’ – 274 for Mr Fry, 640 for Mr Cameron.
@stephenfry -vs- @libdem: ‘Our survey says: @stephenfry’s fans are more stupid. Fortunately, you can always block them.’ – 274 for Mr Fry, 125 for Mr Clegg.
Hmm. That would suggest that the @libdem fans are more intelligent than @stephenfry’s fans.
Just out of interest, let’s try the BNP, everybody’s favourite fascist current political party.
@stephenfry -vs- @bnp: Mr Fry’s 274 is met with only 377 for Mr Griffin. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that – the fans of @bnp are cleverer than those of both @conservative and @labour.
Finally, can I just say that I’ve never worked out why the Conservative Party haven’t used the fact that the word ‘Conserve’ can (sort of) be found in their name in any of their campaigns? I may of course be wrong here, but hey ho.