Voting Unboxed

Sophie Passmann unboxed her absentee ballot like it was some limited-edition skincare collaboration. Every Instagram personality with three hundred followers was desperately waiting for L’Oréal or ALDI or whoever to send them something to film. Sophie got the one thing nobody would ever sponsor: her voting materials.

She treated the envelope with complete reverence, pulled out the forms like they were a luxury product. #unboxing #sponsored #ad. If you want to be a successful influencer, she’s saying, just grab your ballot from the pile in your apartment and start filming. Or, you know, actually go vote.

It’s a direct hit on influencer culture at its most absurd. These people wait around for brands to send them things so they can make a video of themselves opening a box. Desperation packaged as content. She showed how laughably empty the whole genre is by applying its machinery to the least glamorous thing possible: civic participation.

What gets me is the confidence. She knew exactly what she was doing, knew it would land. There’s something almost generous about that kind of mockery—spending real effort on a joke at the expense of people who think this is their actual job. In September 2017, when she posted it, the unboxing thing still felt aspirational to a certain type of person online. She destroyed it with one video.

The tweet went out and people got it. Not everyone, maybe. Some people probably watched it confused, thinking she was serious. But that’s the risk of deadpan. You let people be stupid for a moment, and then you don’t explain the punchline.