Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago?
Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago?
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.
if there is, they are congregating on different sites than I frequent and I thank them for that,
18It's Nextdoor and Facebook, going by the interactions I am forced to have because Craigslist is dying.
9
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.
73With 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!
1Religion is poison that turns good people into pieces of shit
8Somehow 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...
22Agreed, 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.
24I 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.
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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.
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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.
43Three 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
13"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.
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I would not judge it based on the vocal minority that dominates the web.
16For 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.
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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.
🤷♂️
11I 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.
3MAGA 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.
4Isn'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.
1Isn’t it potentially a bit self defeating for them to close themselves off in a closed forum?
At this point everyone that's drinking their koolaid is all the people that might be willing to.
It's so polarized after years of this stuff that 95% of people are either very anti-trump, very for-trump, or very very tired. I think the echo chamber from their closed forum further radicalizing people is probably worth more to them than the very very few people still being willing to be converted.
Consider: all 600,000 of those people are the most rabid fanbase Trump has. If he loses the upcoming election, all he really needs to do is post 'Jan 6 2: electric boogaloo' on Truth Social and suddenly there's a hundred thousand people that base 50% of their identity on Trump and 50% of their identity on their right to bear arms outside the capitol building, or the white house, or whatever the hell else he picks.
That's my guess, anyways: it just sort of reached a critical mass where that sort of 'getting out there' isn't as beneficial anymore. At least in most online circles.
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If you really want to know, I have maintained a presence on both left and right wing sites since the schism ~2016, as a life long liberal who felt they could no longer support the insanity over the past decade, but is still apprehensive of hardcore conservatism.
To be blunt, the energy among the right is extremely high right now. The Puff Daddy case has them celebrating like crazy, because despite what people here like to say about them, ending the institutionalized sex trafficking is actually the most important issue for many of them. Along with that, they're extremely happy that the democrats have such a weak candidate, as they see this election to be the largest potential obstacle to actually being capable of addressing said institutionalized sex trafficking. They are also quite hopeful that a Trump victory will provide the tools necessary to deal with administrative bloat within the government, specifically addressing the FIAT currency system which makes everyone poorer year after year, which has been another significant sticking point for them. There is also, apparently, a fair bit of action being taken to combat fraud as it happens in this election, which has everyone in high spirits.
-2So as I understand it, overarching priorities of Trump supporters are:
- ending sex trafficking
- stop making the poor poorer and
- fighting election fraud
So they're excited about a guy who:
- By his own admission/bragging, had a 15 year long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
- Passed the largest corporate tax cut in history, and plans to eliminate income tax which is paid at a higher rate by high income individuals, replacing it with tariffs that fall disproportionately on the poor.
- Made numerous fraudulent claims and tried to submit a fraudulent slate of electors after the last election in an attempt to subvert the will of the voters.
19I won't shoot the messenger, but I need to know: what is the "institutionalized sex trafficking" you are referring to and how does it fit with being an important issue when you look at Trump vs Harris?
Only one of them is in pictures with Epstein for a start. So how do they flip that around? Or are we talking Q stuff like pizzagate?
Also important to know: why would Harris be the largest potential obstacle to be capable of addressing it?
14This video may help to shed some light on the issue for you. Basically, it's been going on for much longer than most people realize.
Edit: Regarding Harris, they don't really take her seriously, personally. Rather, the concern is the entrenched powers in the civil service and media will collaborate to use her as a puppet, to defend the people they believe to be protecting the bad actors involved in human trafficking, such as Epstein, Diddy and John of God.
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There are points of political thought that don't lie on the conservative <-> liberal line. Which is a shockingly short line to begin with, once you see it from the outside.
3The parts that concern me the most are areas where the political parties tend to walk in lock step, such as mass surveillance and monetary policy. The fact that Trump has had a rocky relationship with the GoP ever since he announced his candidacy for the 2016 election helps his image with others who are concerned about the "uniparty".
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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.
-3The internet and social media has made it much easier for everyone to wall themselves off into groups containing people with only their viewpoint.
It's not people who share your viewpoints, unless you buy into the artificial left/right dichotomy and are willing to simply accept whatever popular talking points permeate your silo. Conversely, if you wanted to share a space online with only people who are actually from your own country, or even just western society broadly, such a thing doesn't exist at all. While the issues of political division within America are significant, what flies completely under the radar is how trivial it is for bad actors from places like Russia and China to participate freely in political debates, often without anyone actually being aware of it.
5I 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.
5I 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.
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