The Spinoff’s resident Gen Zer has only one request for the social media teams of our middle-aged politicians: please, make it stop.

Dear all Gen X political leaders and their social media teams in NZ,

My bad for having to lump you guys together like this, but I have something I need to get off my chest. I opened Instagram yesterday to find the prime minister had posted his latest “talking to you from the backseat of a car” video. I would have just kept scrolling as I normally do (sorry but I’m not trying to hear about the economy on my lunch break) had Luxon not opened the video by saying “Taylor and Travis” and “congratulations”.

As someone who might have shed a few tears that morning after realising my childhood dream of seeing Taylor Swift get married become near-reality thanks to her getting engaged, I can admit my interest was immediately piqued. But I fear I should’ve known better, I should’ve known this would be a desperate plea from the most powerful man in our country, begging the most powerful woman in the world (and her fiancé) to come visit our worm caves as a wedding destination “or even your honeymoon”. As an aside: typing out “@killatrav” should be a fireable offence for both the typer and the prime minister.

Looking past the fact that Swift doesn’t even want to get paid to be here, my immediate reaction was: leave her alone! That kind of behaviour is poor enough form, but to make matters worse, the National Party went ahead and reposted the video in the exact same format that pseudo online news outlet Oceanic Press uses, with the Mr Beast-esque caption “you have to see this”. And this is all after our two legacy parties already meme-ified the proposal to make some kind of political commentary about low interest rates and job cuts or whatever, and National backbencher Katie Nimon photoshopped herself into the aforementioned proposal.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? As someone who spent a combined 16 hours live-blogging my mission to try and get tickets to the Eras Tour, I understand it would be hypocritical for me to berate you for using Swift to further your own career. But there’s a big difference between you guys and me: I’m young and broke, whereas it’s just insanely cringe for you guys to be acting like this at your big age and big job.

Of course, I know it’s not just you, Christopher, and it’s not just Taylor Swift. Earlier this week, our deputy prime minister David Seymour tagged Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour on Instagram asking him to move to New Zealand. Couple that with Seymour posting a video of school kids performing and putting a Prodigy song over it, and Chris Hipkins bringing “all delulu and no solulu” into the House of Representatives – a place where people are expected to use the proper King’s English, like “cunt” – and I start to get quite nervous.

I’m not completely ignorant. I know there’s a younger, likely Zillennial staffer who is overworked and underpaid and hoping that encouraging the prime minister to make a funny video might bring them closer to maybe being a minister with a portfolio in 20 years. Those intentionally shitty Topham Guerin memes have done irreparable damage to our political landscape by showing us that intentionally shitty memes can work and win elections, and they’ve made fools of us all for falling for it.

But this is where true leadership must come through – had TikTok existed in the 1910s, do you think Winston Churchill would have stopped everything to make a video begging Charlie Chaplin to get married in smoggy London? Shit, maybe he would have.

I can’t buy butter without bankrupting myself or enjoy family dinner without my dad telling me my life would be better in Australia, and the prime minister is out here making videos from the backseat of a car, mispronouncing “Aoraki” and begging someone who’s never going to publicly address his video to come to our country? The image of Tree Paine stumbling across that video, having a little chuckle, then adding “Christopher Luxton (sp?)” to her blacklist next to “Nick Sautner” truly sickens me.

Honestly? Get back to work!

(In the process of writing this, it has been brought to my attention that Palmerston North City Council, Pure New Zealand, Air New Zealand, Kathmandu and even Christchurch NZ (“the official account” for Ōtautahi) have all joined in. Are we just a deeply unserious country on the whole? Is our society being ruled by social media trend reports? I fear so.)