I'm just going to leave this here: politics without people.

Social media is playing an ever larger role in campaigns, but things aren't always what they seem. One measure commonly cited as an indication of a politician's popularity is the number of followers he or she has on Twitter and similar metrics. But many campaigns are now using techniques from the field of artificial intelligence to have some of these followers be computer programs rather than actual people, thus (greatly) distorting the statistics. These Twitterbots can also post their own tweets to give the (false) impression that there is an actual person there. Candidates are also using bots to post a steady stream of tweets, to keep their followers engaged. We are not far from a situation in which a large number of computer programs are sending out tweets that are being consumed by other computer programs, with no people at all in the loop. But if the media keep reporting on how many tweets were sent out and how many followers the tweeter has, the situation is only going to get worse. (V)

source, http://www.electoral-vote.com/ , 22 March 2016

The disconnect from reality is complete: politicians can now run on virtual support alone, maybe combined with some paid-for enthousiasm in the mold of Putin's online army.