Brazil's president-elect Lula beat Flávio Bolsonaro in Sunday's runoff, 51.79 to 48.21, for a fourth term, and the campaign that did it ran through 600-plus artist fan accounts, per Variety.
The historic footnote: a first-round underdog winning Brazil's second round is a first. The actual story is the machine. The day after Lula finished second, the fan accounts of Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Selena Gomez, Katy Perry, Demi Lovato and Katseye flipped to his side. By election day, more than 600 Brazilian fan groups had signed on and a WhatsApp channel called "Lula's Army" had hit ten million members.
That is the whole strategy: parasocial loyalty, repointed. Those groups already had the infrastructure: the organizing machinery built to defend a set of discography stats from the worst corner of the internet. They did not have to show up to a rally, put up a yard sign, or make a phone call. They aimed an existing fandom army at a ballot, and it worked, which means the PR world now has to start pricing that asset.
The rest of the week's coverage is the cleanup. At RioFest, Variety had spent the week reporting that Brazilian cinema was "at risk" under a Bolsonaro win. The risk is off the table; the film money is safe. Brazil's election court gave Meta 24 hours to prove it was not favoring one candidate, which is the closest a platform gets to a subpoena from a fandom.
The most organized fanbase on the planet just won an election. It cost them nothing but retweets.
YOUR TURN: At what point does a fan account become a campaign finance disclosure?
PAPER TRAIL
- The fandom breakdown: Variety
- The result: The Guardian
- The RioFest "at risk" report: Variety
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