By 10 AM on counting day, it was clear that the BJP had won Uttar Pradesh with a historic majority. It is around this time that I came across a strange tweet, posted by an employee of an organization that I have nicknamed “Bootlaundry.” He cautioned people that only a few rounds had been counted yet and that they must not jump to conclusions. He told them to wait until evening.
Just for a second, let us look at the math behind this. Yes, it is technically true that only a handful of rounds of counting had been completed. But that was already 1 crore votes counted! Could the trend really change after that? We all intuitively understand that the credibility of an opinion poll increases with sample size. So think of counting until 10 AM as an opinion poll with a sample size of 1 crore, spread across every seat in Uttar Pradesh.
What are the chances that an opinion poll like that could go wrong? Almost zero. And sure enough, it did not. At 10 AM, the Election Commission showed the BJP vote share at just above 42% and SP at 31%. By the end of the day, the BJP was at 41% and SP at 32%. The reversal could never have happened.
Now let us come back to the tweet from the Bootlaundry employee that I was referring to. Do not laugh it off as a frustrated liberal looking for straws of hope. Indeed, all through counting day, or at least till noon, you can find many tweets from liberal influencers claiming to have ground reports about SP doing much better than “Godi media” was showing. For some reason, they insisted that the BJP was paying channels to maintain the fiction of a BJP win for a few more hours.
What could the BJP possibly gain from doing something this stupid? It does not matter. Basic logic was out of consideration. Ordinary liberals were looking for straws, and their favourite online influencers were giving it to them. But why?
Because, money. As long as the influencers could keep up the fiction of SP winning, they could pick up tiny donations of Rs 50, Rs 100, or even Rs 10 from their followers by giving out teeny bits of hope. And those bits add up when you consider their subscriber bases running into hundreds of thousands. The so-called “Godi media” had nothing to gain by falsely showing a BJP lead while counting was in progress. The online influencers surely had something to gain by lying.
But why should you believe me, a BJP “bhakt,” with an alleged degree from Whatsapp University and now presumably employed by “IT cell” at the going rate of Rs 2 per tweet? But my dear liberal friends, I am writing this for you. I understand your passionate support for Akhilesh Yadav and his family, and your reverence for Rahul Gandhi and his entire dynasty. I am not asking you to give that up. I am only asking you to be smarter with your own money. I am trying to tell you not to waste your hard-earned money on online liberal scamsters who play with your emotions.
If you want to ignore me, go right ahead. I am not the target market of these liberal scamsters; you are. I saw these people scamming you and thought I would give a word of caution. It’s for you, not me.
I noticed this all through the Uttar Pradesh election. A number of people began scouring the countryside claiming, with a camera, talking to people, and claiming to show the “real picture.” Some of these people already had a large online following, especially on Youtube. Others developed a following along the way, which soon became cult-like.
You can go back and watch most of these videos even now. In retrospect, you realize that these were laughably one-sided. Some of these influencers have done hours of “ground reporting” without meeting a single person who had a good word to say about BJP. Almost literally…
“Mujhe dhoonde se bhi BJP ka voter nahin mila…“
This was a refrain from a highly established liberal influencer about Uttar Pradesh, a day after 2019 exit polls. The individual works for a high impact liberal portal, perhaps even the highest impact liberal portal of all. Now, why would she do that? To give hope and pick up scraps from people who were in deep despair about the exit polls.
This model has now been seized upon by many others. You probably know their names already, so I won’t take them. They stand on street corners, go to colleges, markets and more, with a camera in hand. The one common thing is that they can never find a single person who supports BJP. Their streams go viral, they raise lakhs in their fundraisers with promises of an Akhilesh Yadav wave.
During the UP election, I was quite amazed at how organized this fraud became. Some of them set up fake “news channels” like “XYZ PM news.” In the evenings, there would be well-known journalists going live on their streams, with backgrounds made to resemble the usual 9 pm news debates. The conclusion was always the same. Akhilesh is winning.
Consider their incentives. Why would these people make fools of themselves? The fact is they were not. They knew exactly what they had to say to make their streams go viral. If they said that BJP is winning, would they have got donations?
As I said, I noticed that this fraud had been completely systematized and professionalized. Leading the pack were old Congress loyalists who had been fired from big banner TV channels after 2014. They are all known faces and known names. Now they run shady websites and scam people.
To the liberals, I say this. Yes, some of the TV media favours the ruling party today, just as it always did. In fact, you have no idea how bad it used to be back in the days of Congress monopoly. But if that is a problem, these people are not the solution. Giving money to scamsters in return for false hope is not a solution. And no, you cannot compare these people to social media back in the days of 2010-2014. At that time, social media was amateurish, and almost everyone there was saying things out of conviction. Now people have figured out how to make money off social media, which has turned the medium just as fake as mainstream media.
Do you know what is funny? After the results were in, the folks at Bootlaundry held a stream to discuss the election. You should really go to Youtube and watch it. In it, the “ground reporters” can be seen admitting what people on the ground actually told them. People in UP knew just how badly the world had suffered from Covid. They were asking what UP could have done where America had failed. Why didn’t the ground reporters at Bootlaundry tell you this before? Because if they had told the truth, liberal simpletons would never have given them money.
So if you are a liberal, understand the incentives of those who are fooling you. You can venerate Akhilesh Yadav or Rahul Gandhi as much as you want. But stop giving money to scamsters on the internet. Who knows, if you get real feedback, you might be able to put together real opposition to the BJP. Ignore me at your own peril.
