Grok The Vote: Voting With Your Dollars/Eyeballs/Ass Cheeks
Grok The Vote: Voting With Your Dollars/Eyeballs/Ass Cheeks
Nov 03That’s always the popular nerd refrain, isn’t it?
“Vote with your dollars.”
Can’t stand the direction of the modern-day DCU? Vote with your dollars. Sick of mediocre genre TV shows on the major networks? Vote with your eyeballs. Hate George Lucas? Vote with your ass cheeks.
(And by that, yes, I actually DO mean take a steaming dump on his front doorstep.)
Naw, y’all, but seriously. The idea of “voting with my dollars” has always mildly fascinated me, because it makes perfect sense, and yet it ALMOST NEVER WORKS.
Seriously. Can you think of one single occasion where not purchasing something, or watching something, or buying a ticket to sit in a movie theater seat for something, has had any impact on that said something whatsoever?
Here’s a few brief examples of me voting with MY dollars.
1992. The brilliant Giffen/DeMatteis team on Justice League retires after the “Breakdowns” storyline. On deck to replace them is Dan Jurgens. Although I inexplicably did enjoy some of the Jurgens run (see my article in Grok issue 2, “I Was a Teenage Letterhack”), eventually I come to my senses and stop buying the title.
The Result: This incarnation of the League’s adventures limps along until issue 113, well past Jurgens’ departure. Bloodwynd is Martian Manhunter. (oh shit SPOILER y’all)
1995. Curious about a third Star Trek series hitting the airwaves, I check out the premiere episode of Voyager. It slightly piques my interest. I stay with the show for maybe a couple episodes before walking away in disappointment.
The Result: The rotting corpse of the Star Trek zombie is bled dry by Rick Berman and finally gives up the ghost with the end of Enterprise, TEN FUCKING YEARS LATER. J.J. Abrams is brought in to resuscitate the dead with a “reboot.” I think it has something to do with Swan Station.
2002. I am disgusted by Episode I. I remain hopeful. Episode II does not wow me, but I enter a delusional state of Star Wars fandom in which I find it appropriate to spend hundreds of dollars on Star Wars toys when I have no full-time job or regular income to speak of. I go broke.
The Result: Star Wars films, television series, video games, toys, and sexual aids continue to be produced. George Lucas makes enough money off me to put his daughter Tygar through kickboxing school. At age 32, I’m still watching this shit.
So am I using separate but unequal dollars with which to vote? I don’t think so, although there was that period in the late nineties when I experimented with counterfeiting using my dot matrix printer.
I think it’s just that “voting with your dollars” has nothing to do with making your opinions known to anyone but yourself and the tiny sect of fellow weirdos you run with online and IRL (LOL). It’s not so much that you’re voting as that you’re…um…deciding. Yeah. That’s it. You’re the DECIDER.
You keep on DECIDIN’ there, nerds, and I will too! Let’s just not pretend it means much of anything…you know, like a ballot cast in Florida in 2000.
I think the problem here is that it takes a lot of people voting with a lot of dollars/eyeballs/asscheeks and the silent majority in mass media consumption — the people who aren’t actually very discriminating in the choices they make; the people who may have hated the Star Wars prequels but went to see them anyway — are pretty damn hard to move.
That said. . .it happens. Look at what’s becoming of Heroes this season: a steady and dramatic decline in viewership that the suits ultimately couldn’t ignore, that got some high profile creators shown to the door. (I try to muster a single perfect tear for Jeph Loeb; then I remember Ultimates 3 and say ‘never mind.’)
But public opinion shifts aren’t usually going to be so sudden, dramatic, or unarguable. In the realm of things that are basically popularity contests, inertia tends to rule the day — people keep watching the shows they started watching; they go to movies that are highly advertised, even if they think they’ll suck, because at least they’re basically known quantities. And, oh yes, incumbents win elections; parties in power stay in power.
But sometimes. . .well, I’ll save that analysis for later in the week. Don’t want to start counting unhatched chickens.
I’m trying to