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prorevenge · 6 years ago

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You want to play dirty to win an election, We can play dirty too.

warning: very long story.

English is my second language so I ask for your forgiveness in advance for any grammatical errors. I'll state right off the bat that I don't think I was on the right side of this one, morally speaking, although I think we pulled it off quite well. It was satisfactory revenge at least. This happened several years ago, when Facebook was still a new fad populated with young people :)

For a little context, I live in a small community with a permanent residential population of about 2000 people. Of these, about a half are of legal voting age. However, in the same jurisdiction, there is a university. The university was built about two years before the election in this story. By the time the election came around, the uni had a population of about 6000 students, all of voting age.

More background: I've lived in this tiny community all my life. My parents built a house here and when they passed on, they left it to myself, my sister, and brother. The latter two moved on but I stayed, letting out the extra rooms for some additional income. Point is, I love this place, and I don't like to see it changing. For the past twenty years, the same lady, Mary (who also happens to be my godmother), has been our elected representative and she has kept our community safe, well serviced, and well planned - in fact, better than the majority of other representatives in our country.

Now, the beef started when the university was built. More people meant more services were needed and thus more people moved into the community. Over time, as the population increased, two groups of people could be seen. There was the old guard - people with property and money, older, and less tolerant of change - and their followers. Then there was the transient group of people. They moved in when the uni was in session, ran their businesses, and left when the school closed over the summer. This group included the students themselves. This group wanted more. Specifically, more say in how the community was run. Now, like I said, we of the old guard didn't like change, and we didn't want people who would leave in a couple of years changing how we permanent residents lived in our community.

That was the bone of contention, and the only way they saw to solve it was to elect one of their own. A youngster who would see things their way. Even before the university, the old guard, of which I was a part, had a slight majority which we had used in the past to keep control of the representative seat. We didn't count the students since they weren't present during elections. The university had put out a press release saying that they would give the staff and students a two-week break to go back home, vote, and come back. It was par for the course with all other universities.

So the election season rolled around. Most eyes were focused on electing the president and other high-profile positions. But in our quiet little corner, we were setting up for a titanic battle.

I am in no way qualified to run a campaign. However, being one of the youngest of the old guard, I was given two tasks. One was to get in touch with my fellow youths and bring them over to our side. The other was to handle the social media aspect of the elections. Social media was still a new concept in our country, but it seemed like a viable avenue of communication.

Now, the candidate who had emerged to compete with Mary was Brian. And he was a douche. His campaign was equal parts balling, bribing, lying and violence. Mary had ran against him before and won. When campaigns kicked off, both sides had a sit down to nail down the do's and don'ts. Using the students as a voting bloc was out. Even Brian agreed (but we came to realize later that he was lying through his teeth).

Anyway, Brian came at us hard and dirty. During the three month campaign period, that guy travelled all over the community in a fleet of fancy cars: Land Cruisers, Range Rovers, Benzes and such: Balling.

His campaign rallies were often just stops for him to dish out money to the financially disadvantaged: Bribing.

When we decided to hold rallies of our own, his thugs would come in to disrupt them: Violence.

We hated that guy but he was winning people over. Not many, but enough to gain a majority.

You know those signs that say "No Posters Allowed" or "Bill Posters will be prosecuted"? Brian printed a bunch of our posters and pasted them all over these areas. So on top of running a losing campaign, we had to deal with calls from irate citizens demanding we remove our posters or they would sue us. He trash talked Mary from the window to the wall. He rolled up with political heavy hitters in tow, all campaigning for him. I really did think he would win this one.

But then Brian made a mistake. If I were a proper campaign manager, I probably would have seen it sooner, but there we were. Hindsight, huh. Anyways, I noticed that Brian held a lot of his rallies in the university. And the Dean was often seen at his campaign rallies. In fact, what got me onto this trail was when the uni put out a second press release that students and staff would only have a two day break instead of two weeks. Now, the original two weeks gave students enough time to party and to vote, right? But now with only two days, they could do only one of those things, and with the apathy that many of them have towards politics, you can guess what they chose. Right in one, reader! They chose to stay.

That seemed hella suspicious to me. So I reached out to a few friends who had been volunteers during the voter registration drives and asked her how many people he thought registered. They confirmed my suspicions. A lot more people had registered that year than before. How many? at least 5,000. That meant that about four thousand students were eligible to vote in our community and normally, that number is usually less than 200. and since we didn't have anything to do with it, it was fair to assume that it was Brian's doing. He wanted a landslide and he had roped in the students to get it. He had planned this thing even before we had started thinking of campaigns, seeing as the registration process was carried out about eight months prior to the commencement of the campaigns. Now that was foresight.

Now, that may sound like a death knell, and it was, but not for us. See, the construction of the university and the increase in their finances from the government attracted significant levels of corruption, all kept under wraps, of course. Similarly, the existing student population was suffering the school's growing pains - not having enough available rooms, not enough seats to handle the student population, more expensive meals, disappearing grades when systems are overwhelmed, and other such shit.

I knew our response had to target the school somehow and get it closed, and so I dusted off my old trolling accounts on Facebook (everyone has those, right?). We basically pulled a Russia on Brian and his campaign and it was beautiful. Like, Oh, my God, you have no idea of the power of memes. We spread stories in the various university student groups on Facebook. We called into doubt where the school's funds were being spent. I didn't give a runny shit what was true or not. The dean's brother is developing real-estate? Did the dean finance it with the school's money? Student's grades are disappearing? Are ethnic minorities being targeted and held back in school so they can pay more? Brian posts a photo of a beautiful woman? Is the dean offering Brian female students for sex orgies? (I shit you not, I embraced the filthy side of politics like a long-lost lover). Students living outside the school get robbed? Is Brian behind the systemic intimidation of students who won't vote for him? Will Brian and his thugs run our community with an iron fist if he is elected? A new club opening near the school? Is the dean funding Brian's businesses using money for the school? We did everything possible to connect Brian and the Dean to corruption and violence and bribery online. Our messages reached the intended readers; the students, and through our Facebook posts, they got to see all this "news". And it riled them up something fierce.

Outside the university, we needed to reclaim the majority that we had lost. We didn't just take a leaf out of Brian's book, we took the whole goddamn book and wrote a sequel. First of all the Poster Wars intensified. The entire neighborhood was covered in posters. We even stopped putting up our own posters since we knew Brian would do that for us.

Secondly, and this was my brainchild, we would have cars fitted with loud speakers driving around the community at two in the morning shouting out Brian's campaign slogans at full blast. Annoying as hell, but when the cops were called, all we had to do was park on the side of the road, turn off the car and duck down. After a week, people were entirely pissed off. Brian, in his characteristic fashion retaliated with even more cars shouting out our message, but who would believe that the sweet lady Mary would do that? Brian is just mad because his campaign tactic didn't work and he's trying to pass off the blame (Said our Facebook posts).

We were not done with the University. The school absolutely had to shut down. So we reached out to the defeated aspirants of the university's student body. This part was Mary's idea and I think it was the tipping point. I was present at the meeting and the basic agreement was that if they helped us with the push to drag Brian through the mud along with the dean and the existing student body representatives, we would in turn help them get the current reps kicked out and support them in the university's next student body elections.

We did not tell them what to do (wink wink), but they went ahead and did it anyway. Building all that tension from outside the school through Facebook and inside the school through the loser contestants came to a boiling point. Six days before the election, the students marched to protest the "corruption" our team had "exposed". The protest quickly turned into a riot. windows were broken, small fires were started, riot police were called in. The following day, the university was shut down indefinitely. All staff and students were sent back home. And of course, we were there to ask; Did Brian and the Dean instigate a riot to stifle the votes of ethnic minorities? Did Brian's thugs burn down the school? Did the Dean instigate the riot to burn incriminating evidence?

The riot was not as large as many that have occured in other institutions, but to us, it was the final nail in Brian's coffin. Brian got less that one hundred votes since he made no effort to ingratiate himself with the permanent residents. He counted on the students (4000 votes against our 1000) and he lost. Needless to say, Mary was voted in as our representative, and again and again until she retired. Brian never tried again, and we have maintained control of our community ever since.

Clarify an issue. I wasn't the best teenager. I was a bit of a troll. Also, Having seen our community change in the past several years - despite our efforts - I concluded that I was in the wrong for trying to hold back change. But I still maintain that Brian's kind of change wouldn't have been good for our community.

(source) (story by JimmyChinosKnowsNose)

#prorevenge #by JimmyChinosKnowsNose #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story

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