With three weeks left in this campaign, the race in Slovenian parliamentary election is tightening. And this being Muddy Hollows and whatnot, of course (some) parties chose the stupidest of hills to die on.
The hill in question being the digital presence of influencer Aleksandar Repić. Like, fucking everything is in play and yet the right wing picked a influencer-pimp as their cause célèbre. You literally cannot make this shit up.
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Insta-dram-a, part deux
Both readers will recall the Instadrama pengovsky wrote about in the last post. The one where an attention-whoring influencer picked on GS Instagram account and the Bird Brood got their knickers in a twist. Well, shortly after Aleksandar Repić (the attention-whoring influencer in question) got picked up by the police on an unrelated criminal charge, Meta deleted his IG accounts.
Repić didn’t share the official explanation for removal, which suggests he was banned for violating Meta ToS. Whether that has anything to with the fact that he also runs (ran?) an OnlyFans farm, or the fact that he apparently shared private correspondence he had with son of president Nataša Pirc Musar, or something else, we will (probably) never know.
But if pengovsky were a guessing man, he’d guess that it was the OnlyFans thing. Payment processor companies are notoriously allergic to anything within the adult content industry. But even if you subscribe to the notion that sex work is work (which pengovsky definitely does), pimping is not sex work, it’s exploitation. And so presumably once Meta got wind of his off-platform (cross-platform?) entrepreneurial activities, the music stopped instantly.
Sylvester Stallone would like a word…
Or maybe it is all a hoax and the dude pulled the plug himself, switching over to Twitter, where the Slovenian right wing commentariat simply adores him right now. Because in some ways they are even more gullible than the ‘Gram-dwellers.
The one thing that almost certainly didn’t happen was GS and PM Golob going full Sylvester Stallone in Oscar on the influencer wannabe.
Regardless, Repić came up with a half-baked conspiracy theory and – boom! – the Twitterati were eating out of his hand. Nevermind the pimping, the manslaughter or the stabbing attack that landed him in jail. All of this he freely admits and did time for some of it. This dude is now the right-wing’s poster boy for freedom of speech.
In fact, such is the right-eous fervour, that even NSi chief Jernej Vrtovec got in on the action and tweeted that kicking Repić off IG is the largest abuse of repressive apparatus for campaign purposes in, like, ever. Which is a bold thing to say, given that Vrtovec is neck-deep in shit himself on charges of abuse of office.
But then again, this is the name of the game. When polls start going the wrong way, you gotta make some noise and say stupid shit. And the latest poll was no bueno for NSi. Sure, it is not critical (yet), especially since with single-digit results things can quickly change course. But coming in at just below 5% three weeks before the election, when they aim to go north of 7% they got the last time around, that is what moving the wrong direction looks like.
Prebilič puts on wailing hat
But Vrtovec, NSi and their merry band of tag-alongs are still in a better shape than Vladimir Prebilič. Leader of Prerod put his whining hat on today and complained at being disinvited from tomorrow’s campaign debate on POP TV.
Namely, before they launched their election coverage, POP TV said that debate invites will be extended only to the top eight parties in the average of the last tree Mediana polls. And since the pollster ran a new poll this week, the oldest (and most favourable to Prebilič) is no longer used in calculations. Which means that Prebilić and Prerod will sit this (and probably the next) debate out. Their replacement is the Pirate Party. Pengovsky is not holding his breath.
Admittedly, this is a huge blow to the man who once saw himself as the next PM. No POP TV debate means no exposure and that in turn means even less votes in an campaign where Prebilič already struggles in. Luckily for him, there are still election debates on TV Slovenia where he gets the spot automatically, by virtues of being an MEP. Even though he ran as a Vesna candidate back then and is now a Prerod guy.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, according to the poll, the campaign field is still pretty much evenly split between the left and right blocs. But who’s counting, right?
