I remember when Trump first won, the American-centered part of the web I would occasionally stop by seemed completely infiltrated with MAGA trolls. You had this feeling people thought it was edgy and fun - the worst kind of cultural moment seemed to be happening.
This time around I’m not so much on mainstream social media. And when I do check them out, it seems hard to understand what the vibe is as most content is AI or from professional content creators.
The closest thing I see to Trump supporters these days seems to be the enablers who endlessly repeat how they won’t vote for Harris for some dumb reason or another - they simply cannot vote for a black woman president because it’s not progressive enough, and all that jazz. But I don’t ever see Trump supporters.
Of course they exist still. I have just chose social media platforms strategically to avoid toxic people.
So I’m wondering if the same enthusiasm for Trump that seemed to be boiling online in 2016 is still there today, and if this election only feels different because I’m self-selected into saner platforms. Or if it is really different this time around.
I get that it’s an incredibly difficult question to answer, but I would love perspectives from people who have kept up an active use of mainstream social media, or otherwise have some insights I lack.
Here in a red state, when I venture into the real world, I still see Trump flags everywhere. Much more so than I recall in 2016. They definitely have upped their merchandise game. On the other hand I see many more Harris/Walz signs than I ever saw in support of Clinton. When I talk to people I get much more passion about Harris than I ever heard about Clinton or Biden. It is more akin to Obama’s first term, if not even more intense. This time around Trump is vehemently disliked. During Trump’s first campaign he was a disruptor and there was a lot of curiosity about what that meant. That has been replaced with fear and hatred. My few remaining social media friends who support Trump seem to do so from a religious point of view. Somehow they see him as more godly.
Agreed, I think the diehards have gotten much louder and the people who saw him as a catalyst for change have gotten a whole lot quieter.
I admit that I very much didnt think it was a good thing when he got elected but I did think “Maybe he will piss off a few people who need pissing off, upset some apple carts and generally upset the status quo and MAYBE be a catalyst for change some of which for the good.” Yeah… it wasnt.
I remember a guy much further down that “catalyst” line of thinking telling me that things have to get worse before they can get better: a phrase that’s easy to bust out as a grand conclusion to huge sweeping societal problems, but is based on absolutely nothing.
Somehow they see him as more godly.
Well yeah. Jesus loves to “grab em by the pussy”, apparently.
I’ll admit I haven’t quite found that Bible verse…
This is your periodic reminder that “White Jesus” was modeled on Caesar Borgia, Michaelangelo’s “very close friend” as historians like to put it.
Also xmas trees are giant cocks. Yep. Huge phallic symbols.
Happy Saturnalia.
Also xmas trees are giant cocks. Yep. Huge phallic symbols.
Today I learned!
I’m going to enjoy Christmas trees even more with this knowledge. Thank you.
Though, when looking for a source for others to enjoy, it also turns out it’s complicated.
Edit: Caesar Borgia. Unsubstantiated…except by pretty much anyone who, you know, has a quick look at the various portraits of him.
Xmas trees are originally a northern European solstice or Yule tradition. Because there was very little green in the winter.
Probably it was to celebrate the end of the days getting shorter, and a sort of marking of a new year, and to be reminded of the greener more pleasant seasons.I have no idea where you have the idea from, that it should be a Phallus symbol?
I’ve been hearing a lot about this “everything that’s manmade, tall, and narrow is a phallus” theory the last few years, online and even in some college courses. Frankly, I don’t really buy it. Disclosure, this is totally out of my field, so feel free to set my take on fire if I’m wrong. I don’t doubt that the phallus explanation is true in a few cases, but for most towers, spires, steeples, and other pointy monuments, there’s a couple of other possible inspirations that seem more likely to me. The first would be the upright and narrow stance of humans as opposed to animals standing on four legs close to the ground, like a monument to human exceptionalism. Another theory that I would buy is that tall things just look cool to us on an instinctual level. Trees, mountains, and cliffs are beautiful and are more easily personified than other natural features (relating back to the first point). They have this dignity and magesty about them, it makes sense that our architecture and art would attempt to convey that.
I don’t know, I guess I’m just projecting when I say this, but I just can’t imagine designing a building with cool spikes and thinking “these represent my dick”.
IMO 99% of Phallus claims are infantile amateur psychology. To call something that grows naturally, and isn’t even man made a Phallus symbol is particularly weird.
Religion is poison that turns good people into pieces of shit
That’s super interesting, thanks!
I find the last point particularly fascinating - that memes might have been replaced by God somehow. I feel like this resonates with an impression I already had, but that I haven’t thought consciously about before now. Tucker Carlsen’s demon attack story seems symptomatic.
With turnout being the decider in our elections, I think it’s of critical importance if a candidate scares the shit out of the other side. Hilary Clinton for whatever reason definitely pushed conservative buttons and got them to the polls. The Trump phenomenon was happening at the same time, but we can’t discount the anti-Hilary energy.
While the right certainly doesn’t like Kamala, their hatred is nothing close to what the left feels for Trump. Between that and Roe, if we can’t activate voters and take this election, then we really have lost the country, and Trump’s second term will only dig that hole deeper.
No pressure, America!
I don’t see the original source (probably some dense campaign finance disclosures), but there’s some numbers going around on bluesky the last day or two:
Trump’s “small dollar” donations are only like 1/4 of what they were four years ago. Three different billionaires have each spent more than all the normal people combined.
The grassroots support sure seems like it has cratered, and he’s being puppeted into a virtual tie by a very small number of people.
Three different billionaires have each spent more than all the normal people combined.
To make it easier to see who out there is most invested in a Trump presidency:
https://news.yahoo.com/news/most-important-billionaires-backing-trumps-104802063.html
“I share the concern of most Americans that our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. For these reasons, I am planning to vote for change and support Donald Trump for President,” Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman said in a statement to Axios.
This is an absolute lie for his reasons. During University protests, He and other Zionist hedge fund titans switched to Trump due to “rising anti semitism” as explicit reasons. He can’t say that out loud any more, but this is what powers Trump’s campaign. Netanyahu’s favorite. Biden failing to Kent State university protests is what makes them angry.
if there is, they are congregating on different sites than I frequent and I thank them for that,
It’s Nextdoor and Facebook, going by the interactions I am forced to have because Craigslist is dying.
I would not judge it based on the vocal minority that dominates the web.
For sure.
In terms of rallies Trump seems to attract comparable crowd sizes, but at much fewer rallies. The number of rallies can probably be explained by age and energy.
How energized the crowd is compared to 2016 I have no idea.
I dont know I think the crowds have been mostly siloed away from each other.
Try going on truth social, if you dare.
But who knows how much of that is bot traffic and LLMs.
🤷♂️
I can’t even enter Truth Social from Europe. I see Wikipedia estimates 600 000 monthly active users, which is of course a lot. But I struggle to wrap my head around how important it can be. Isn’t it potentially a bit self defeating for them to close themselves off in a closed forum?
The Trump subreddit in 2016 seemed to have a cultural impact. Truth Social seems to be more of a footnote?
In a way Twitter is bad enough, but my impression there before deleting my account was that most of the Trump spam was Musk posts that appeared on my profile for no good reason.
MAGA is a cult, so they all congregate in the same places. They all complain about the same things and can’t handle opposition much. Only the super crazy people follow him blindly. The semi-intelligent have realized he has done nothing for them.
Isn’t it potentially a bit self defeating for them to close themselves off in a closed forum?
Not when that closed forum acts like a circlejerking echo chamber where their cult leader can spew whatever he wants without consequences.
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I find this to be incredibly interesting. It’s like 2016 saw online polarization, but it happened on the same platforms. Today, there’s a polarizations of platforms - we exist in different realities online.
I wonder if this split would have happened anyway, or if it was motivated by American politics. And I wonder what the consequences are.
It seems like a pretty fundamental development in how our information channels work, and I haven’t seen it been discussed much by commentators.
Maybe my question cannot be answered because ‘online’ today just means something completely different than it did in 2016.
I am not taking sides with this comment, but you could literally swap names of everything you just posted with (the opposite candidate) and there is someone saying this exact same thing somewhere on the internet. They are most likely sitting there posting about where all the Harris people went and how they moved to a saner platform to avoid toxic people… Everyone needs to remember that there is someone out there with a polar opposite viewpoint as you and it’s just as strong as yours. The internet and social media has made it much easier for everyone to wall themselves off into groups containing people with only their viewpoint. And now all of that has been fed to LLMs. This is going to be an interesting future we are walking into.
I think that’s why op’s asking in the first place, right?
If you were republican and asked whether the democrats are as enthusiastic this time as the last time, it would be a perfectly legitimate question. The fact is, people tend to shade themselves from the online madness (good for them), but then they can’t be sure whether the madness continues with full force or not.
Asking about it seems logical. But neither you nor I are able to answer.
Yup. I probably shouldn’t ramble as much, but my point was that I am sure all of the “opposite viewpoint than you” people are off in their walled garden asking the same questions. Where that is located, well, you have got me. I wasn’t questioning the legitimacy of his question.
Yeah, this is a solid insight maybe we’re all just locked off into our walled gardens now. But the Fediverse crowd is a bit of an extreme case - surely there must be some sort of vibe going on on the more popular platforms? Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, I don’t even know any more.
I don’t think that’s the question I try to ask, though I probably struggle to formulate myself well. It’s not really about comparing to Harris.
It seemed that Trump engaged a lot of people who would not usually bother with politics in 2016. He ran a campaign that completely dominated the Internet. People seemed to have nothing better to do than to create right wing memes in half serious, half joking support of him.
I don’t see that any more. What I see is a more normal campaign ran by a guy frequently making fascist talking points. He could still win, and maybe it’s still a successful campaign, but it feels very different to me from the 2016 one.
But then again, I have changed my Internet habits so that I wouldn’t see it anyway. Maybe there’s still hordes of 20-something incels posting frog memes for the masses to be offended by, it’s just off my radar.
