Image filters, increasingly common in social media, are digital prosopopoeia. In this paper, I examine the act of voluntarily displaying the “I will vote Oct 19” image filter prosopopoeia on profile pictures during the 2015 Canadian federal election. Adopting the categorical voice of a voter through the image filter encourages like-minded family and friends to vote, the ostensible aim. But it also disciplines the image filter user into becoming a stronger advocate for voting through commitment and consistency, as well as social validation pressures; prosopopoeia both enhances and reinforces identification. By putting on the prosopopoeia mask, the social media rhetor becomes a representative of the commonwealth of 59 Canadian federal voters, and, as Kenneth Burke tells us, when we put on a role, the role puts on us. In “wearing” the filter on their profile picture, the individual has not simply done something, but has become something—the individual has become an electoral advocate through the process of identification, observed through recurrent political online statements, voting selfies, and the inclusion of political hashtags, embedding the “I will vote Oct 19” image filter user within the online collective of 160,000 similar voting peers on Facebook and/or Twitter during the 2015 Canadian federal election.

Keywords: prosopopoeia, social media, identification, voting image filter, voting selfie, hashtags, politics, activism, 2015 Canadian federal election, political rhetoric, Twitter, #votenation, rhetorical figures