Simplified foreign celebrity endorsements can backfire on local political realities

Evidence

US actor Mark Ruffalo (who played Hulk in The Avengers franchise) made a video declaring his support for Marina Silva and uploaded it to the internet. He clearly thought the save-the-rainforest candidate was the progressive choice, and with the click of a button he told hundreds of millions of people to vote for her. But then, he was inundated with tweets from Brazilians telling him that Marina did not support LGBT rights, and that Dilma was the real progressive candidate. Ruffalo immediately apologized and withdrew his endorsement. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 542

Categorization

• CANDY: The Hulk accidentally wading into Brazilian electoral politics and getting corrected is a fun, shareable anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: Brazilian voters used vote-for-a-clown jokes to signal disgust with politics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 178; Prestige leaks across unrelated domains, making celebrity endorsement powerful — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 395