Thursday, January 06, 2022

Quebec influencers gonna influence

You've probably seen it, the embarrassing video of a bunch of young maskless Quebeckers drinking, vaping and dancing in the aisles of a Sunwing chartered flight to Mexico.

Regardless of the fact that they were breaking pretty much every rule in the book, both as regards COVID and flying in general, they just looked so STUPID, so adolescent.

Well, after attracting comments from the country's Prime Minister to add to a tsumami of (negative) social media attention - bizarrely, Trudeau called them "des Ostrogoths en vacances" - the perpetrators are now largely stranded in Mexico. Sunwing has refused to transport them back, as has Air Canada and Air Transat. 

A few have already managed to make their way back to Montreal somehow, tails between their overdressed legs, but they probably face legal consequences (at least one passenger was seen being escorted in handcuffs, and there is talk of $100,000 fines and possible prison sentences).

It's not that we're all prudish and puritannical. I think we're mainly shocked at how loutish and clownish they looked. It just seemed so un-Canadian somehow. Because these things tend to go viral, and they affect how others think of us, as Canadians.

And what was it they were supposed to be influencing? I already bristle at the word "influencer"; it just seems to reflect the seamy side of social media, and advertising in general, and the idea that it is someone's job to make us think something against our will, against out better judgement, as likely as not through a campaign of misinformation. Well, they certainly nailed it ths time! If nothing else, vodka sales might go up.

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