The Epitome of Suspense: Election Day 2020
The year 2020 alone has been a year full of stress, frustration, and adaptation for everyone. For many young people, with the first half of the school year coming to an end after adapting to online classes, and now the tight election has many stressed and anxious like never before.
To ease up some of the anxiety on Election Day, I went live on Instagram so people could join and chat about how they’re holding up. I started around 6 p.m. and despite my technical difficulties, the live went on until 12 a.m.
As people joined I greeted them and asked how they were feeling, most said anxious, stressed, and nervous. Some people joined briefly and simply expressed in all caps “AAAAAAAHHH” before leaving. To make the live a bit more fun and take off some of the election stress from people's minds, I had my good friend Lulu Ochoa join me to add commentary as we watched the votes come in. We also played music as it was requested with “FDT” by YG being the anthem for the night.
To help stay sane, many such as Alondra Flores were trying to distract themselves with homework. Others got away for bit like Rebecca Rodriguez who took a break from watching the live and went to walk her dog. Some even found the live itself as a good place to be, Edgar Valdivia after being tuned in the live for a few hours said he forgot the election was happening until we commented on our hopes for certain states to flip. We also conversed about our concerns in general.
The overall consensus of people’s concerns from their personal experiences is the big divide across America. Javi Alvarez mentioned he thinks no matter who wins the election, the racists will continue to pick on people of color.
As what Javi said sank in, we all started sharing our uncomfortable experiences with racism either through microaggressions or straight up discrimination. Rebecca said when she was little, her parents didn't teach her learn Spanish because their babysitter at the time didn’t want to take care of kids who spoke Spanish and at the time that was all her parents could afford. Lulu shared how her father was racially profiled at an airport where they were held back for hours because they wanted to ensure she was his daughter.
After the numbers stayed steady for a while with Biden in the lead, I asked again if everyone felt better. Rebecca said she didn’t want to put her hopes up yet because she was afraid it would be like when she voted during the 2016 Presidential election.
Before we ended the live, we also went on twitter and shared what people were saying and also finding humor in the process. The next morning this Michigan and Wisconsin with Nicki Minaj’s “Moment 4 Life” playing was my favorite meme.
Overall, Lulu and I really enjoyed ourselves, and I had a good time learning about people's experiences, concerns, and overall thoughts. Many of the people who joined were mutuals from my high school, others who had just started following me. This made me excited to do another live soon. I even did a poll to see if people would be interested to watch, 100% said yes!
