Last week, America’s red-sweatered, undecided sweetheart Ken Bone was doxxed. After he used his own Reddit username during an Ask Me Anything, years of comments he made under the pseudonym were laid bare for the internet to feed on.
And within a single day, the country’s embrace of the earnest undecided voter who gained notoriety following the second U.S. Presidential debate turned to disgust. The New York Post called him “kind of an awful guy” and Paper mag called his scribblings “icky.”
But there’s a larger problem, and it’s not that Ken Bone is a monster for failing to agree with 100% of I nternet likability litmus tests—it’s that he is the best possible model of an undecided voter.
America’s immensely powerful undecided electorate has far worse personality failings. The average undecided voter is shockingly disengaged from his community; gets an alarming amount of their information from Facebook, where oversimplified share graphics rule; and, studies suggest, they are fairly likely to base their vote on the performance of the locals sports team the previous week. They are not exactly a group of people you want to entrust with the future of the country.
After a thorough invasion of privacy that would mortify most of us, we’ve found that Ken Bone is a pretty decent guy. He tries to comfort sexual assault victims on Reddit, likes banal pregnancy porn, forged some insurance papers one time, has conflicted views on race but still supports president Obama, and he cares enough about the world around him to answer political polls and attend a debate.
If the average undecided voter were this engaged, mild mannered, and self aware, the country would be much better off.
Wally Nowinski is the director of e-commerce at custom photo printing company, Collage.com.