Cast your vote? Flaunt it online

If it is on your mind, it is surely online. After having cast their votes, youngsters painted the cyberspace with their election fervour. From status messages, Facebook updates, excited twitters to blogs, vote is the biggest buzzword. It’s almost as if all the youngsters prowling the virtual world have unanimously decided to flaunt their sense of achievement ever since they cast their vote.

Facebook fever
From “Cast my vote. Didn’t vote for my caste!”, “I voted, Did you?” to “Vote for India,” there is no status message on Facebook, which doesn’t have the word ‘vote’ in it. This is one place where youngsters who exercised their franchise, made a point to show off their “I did vote” stance to the rest of the world. Anaitha S., a graphic designer, whose status update reads — My first vote made me happier than my first kiss — says, “I felt a sense of pride. By announcing it on Facebook, I hope to shame everyone else who is reading it, into voting at least next time.”

Of course, a few cynics couldn’t resist airing their views. One message read — If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

Tweet it out
Some excited voters couldn’t wait to “tweet their experiences”. Twitter was flooded with tweets from users who urged everyone to vote.

While Ritika73 announced — I cast my vote. I’m an adult now. Yippee.”, Dragonfire9’s tweet reads — I’ve never felt so important. What’s more, the tweets bounced back and forth between users and some like CoolJain was inspired enough by the twitter momentum to go cast his vote. “Oh man, all you guys have voted. I feel ashamed. Let me head to my booth,” reads his tweet.

Blog broadcasts
Unable to contain their excitement, avid bloggers posted their vote experiences on the blogosphere. Madhur K.’s blog Inane Ramblings has a long post describing the day from the minute he woke up to his “journey to the booth” and then “destination vote”. Jhanvi Agarwal in her blog Kitschy Me wrote about how cool it has become to “flaunt the black ink spot on your finger”. With vote being the pet cause of the online generation, there is no crusade that has the power to reach out to youngsters like the ones on blogs do. Madhu Gopalan in her blog Aadab Hyderabad summed up the day’s mood with her post which read — I voted. Did you?

My vote will make a difference

* I work in Bangalore now but I came down to Hyder-abad just to vote as my name is on the rolls here. Nothing is worth skipping your chance to vote. It is our fundamental right. If we don’t exercise this right, we don’t have a say in anything. Right now, there’s nothing that I’d like to flaunt more than my ink spot.
Pavneet Singh, entrepreneur

* I was very excited to vote for the first time. Everything went smooth for me. I was glad to see the rigorous verification at the booths that eliminated all possibilities of anyone casting a fraud vote. The whole experience was amazing. I feel so proud to have contributed to the democratic process. At least my conscience is clear because every time I complained about some issue, something inside me would ask — What did I do for the country? For the first time, I can say, I did.
Deeba Khan, software engineer,

* In order to demand any kind of change, it is important that as the younger generation, we take action. For the first time, I felt I contributed in some way to the country’s fate.
My vote will make a difference. But things were not so easy. In my area’s polling booth, everything was so unorganised. i couldn’t find my name on the list. I browsed through all the papers for more than an hour, before I found it. Finally I got to vote, and that’s what matters.
Prasad R. student