Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Trump was punk'd by teenagers.


In case you missed it Trump held a campaign kick-off rally in Tulsa Saturday night.  Only 6,200 people showed up.  The upper levels of the stadium were empty and his people took down the outside overflow area since only about two dozen people were present there. (Russonello, 2020)

Only days earlier his campaign had been bragging about having over a million requests for tickets.  (Singman, 2020)

How did they get it so wrong?  Thank the Zoomers.  Yes.  That's right Gen Z has rechristened itself as Zoomers.  Interesting.  I wonder if it will stick.  As a Boomer who remembers the 60's, I am anti-war, pro-equality, care about the environment and am concerned about police violence and gun laws in this country.  All the things Gen Z cares about too.  So it makes sense to me.

But let's talk about what they did.  K-pop stans used their amazing organizing skills to order lots of tickets to the rally.  Connecting through Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram and Snapchat they posted not only encouragement for others to register for the event, but also advice for those who did about how to hide their identities and mess up the campaign's data mining efforts by creating fake phone numbers and social media accounts for their dogs. (Lorenz, Browning & Frenkel, 2020)

Trump's team was so embarrassed by the incident that they denied it happened and cast about for different excuses for the poor turnout.  They even claimed that they knew about the plot but stopped it and got all that good data.  Who knew they wanted to text dogs?

But the fact that on Monday Trump's team had to shut down the online sign-up for his Tuesday rally in Arizona due to fake applications, confirms the validity of the original story.  And apparently Pence's rally in Wisconsin has caught the attention of the teens as well. (Boswell, 2020)

Of late, K-pop stans have been getting increasingly politically active.  In May, they spammed the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag.  In early June they crashed the app the Dallas police were using to track protestors. And on June 8th they sent Trump some very special birthday messages.  They also matched a donation from BTS, the K-pop band with the biggest following and raised $1 million for Black Lives Matter in 24 hours. (Coscarelli, 2020)

According to current estimates, there are 89 million K-pop stans and they can be found in 113 countries. And,  K-pop is the most tweeted about musical genre - with 6.1 billion tweets in 2019.  

Those that ordered tickets for Trump's rally are likely Americans.  And many will be voting in the fall.  They have made it clear that until then they will continue to make themselves heard.  

132 days to go.
I can't wait to see what they do next.


Russonello, G. (2020, June 22)  Trump’s Tulsa Rally Attendance: 6,200, Fire Dept. Says.  nytimes.com.  Retrieved June 23, 2020, from  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/us/politics/trump-rally-coronavirus.html
Singman, B. (2020, June 15) Trump campaign touts 1 million ticket requests for Tulsa rally.  foxnews.com.  Retrieved June 23, 2020, from  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-touts-1-million-ticket-requests-for-first-rally-since-outbreak-of-coronavirus
Lorenz, T., Browning, K. & Frenkel, S. (2020, June 22) TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally.  nytimes.com.  Retrieved June 23, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Boswell, J. (2020, June 22)  EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump's Campaign ABANDONS online signups for his next rally and asks supporters to just turn up as Tik Tok teens vow to keep trolling his events after Tulsa debacle.  dailymail.co.uk.  Retrieved June 23, 2020, from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8448781/Donald-Trumps-campaign-ABANDONS-online-sign-ups-rally-TikTok-teens-vow-trolling.html

Coscarelli, J. (2020, June 22)  Why Obsessive K-Pop Fans Are Turning Toward Political Activism  nytimes.com.  Retrieved June 23, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/arts/music/k-pop-fans-trump-politics.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Style

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