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Politicians, Just Stop Using Pop-Culture In Your Ads And Agendas, You’re Ruining It For Us

It's especially bad when the politicians (and their social media managers) clearly have no clue what they're referencing.

Let’s face it, we all slip in pop-culture references into a conversation whenever possible. It provides a common talking point with other people, it’s a good icebreaker with strangers, and it’s just fun seeing everyone join in on the banter whenever a Game of Thrones quote or an Ariana Grande lyric is dropped.

However, we’ve hit a crucial juncture in this whole pop-culture referencing thing because politicians are starting to do it and hoo boy has it become a big problem, especially in the last few weeks.

Look, we get that you’re trying to give off the impression that you’re “hip” and “cool” because you’re all over what the youngins are into these days, but the result is just sad and to put it frankly, politicians, you’re ruining everything for us. Let’s just look at some egregious examples that have come up recently, starting with the Liberal party’s latest effort.

In case you haven’t heard, the last season of Game of Thrones is currently airing and the Liberals decided to roast Labor and Bill Shorten while fluffing themselves up by using a reference to the hit show. Unfortunately, their social media team clearly hasn’t watched the show at all because they decided to go with the Lannister house words, “A Lannister always pays his debts.”

Never mind that the ad was just bad, but the Liberals clearly didn’t realise that they’re essentially calling themselves the baddies while also suggesting that the whole party is really into incest. That would explain a lot, actually.

It’s not just the Liberal party who deserves a roasting for using pop-culture references incorrectly or in a tasteless manner.

When it was announced that Christopher Pyne would be retiring from politics, the WA division of Labor decided to commemorate this by releasing a parody music video of Pyne’s head superimposed over a clip of Freddie Mercury singing “Another One Bites The Dust.” Just to really rub it in, they also superimposed Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton’s head over the other Queen members.

Someone in the Labor party clearly got some inspiration after watching Bohemian Rhapsody but this is enough to make even the most devoted Queen fan renounce the band. And that’s not even mentioning that the video didn’t go down well with a heap of people since the casually homophobic clip was posted on the same day as Sydney’s Mardi Gras, forcing WA Labor to sheepishly delete it from their social media. Except for their FB page, which we assume someone on the team forgot to do.

Morrison is no innocent party in this irritating exploitation of pop-culture references either. There was his awful “Back In Black” budget campaign ad, which was as cringey as it was unoriginal since it directly ripped off former New Zealand PM John  Key’s ad from about five years ago.

And of course, there was Morrison dropping that awful Borat impression on the floor of parliament in an attempt to roast Labor’s carbon credit trading scheme. Never mind Morrison’s piss-poor effort at channelling Borat, but dropping an outdated Borat reference in 2019 is like going into an Apple store and asking where the gramophone section is – you’re going to get weird looks from everyone.

And of course, how can we forget Donald Trump‘s recent dabbles with Game of Thrones references?

Despite the absolute fustercluck that’s erupted over the last couple of weeks after the dropping of several investigative bombshells into basically every illegal thing he’s done, Combover Caligula thinks he still has the upper hand and decided to take an undeserved victory lap by tweeting out a Game of Thrones inspired “Game Over” photo.

Needless to say that this copped a crapload of ridicule, which isn’t new for Trump these days. HBO wasn’t too happy about this either and sent out a sternly-worded tweet telling Trump to stop referencing GoT in his tweets.

You’re better off taking away Trump’s sippy cup and sending him to the time out corner if you want him to stop tweeting Thrones stuff, HBO.

All those aforementioned examples of pop-culture referencing from politicians happened all within the last month alone, which doesn’t bode well for the months to come when the federal election and the end of Game of Thrones arrives.

So let’s nip this in the bud before it becomes more of a problem than it already is. Politicians, please stop using pop-culture references in your ads, agendas, and basically everything you do. You are all horribly bad at that sort of thing, it’s incredibly annoying, and you’re ruining everything for us. We already have to put up with you all every day so please leave the one good thing we have to look forward to at the end of each day alone.