The image of a man who understands “regular people”
More on Trump N Twitter:
Aides said they often compiled positive feedback for Mr. Trump. He revels in the stream of praise from his most loyal followers, on paper or as he scrolls through his phone early in the morning and late at night.
That’s so pathetic. No, I don’t feel sorry for him, I just find it pathetic. Contemptible, and pathetic. Random fools on Twitter think he’s awwwwwwsome, and that gives him the cuddly feelz.
The Times presents a graph showing that tweets that get lots of love on Twitter are repellent to the sane adult public. It’s kind of as if Trump spent all his time courting gamers or zombie fans.
The president is keenly aware of his number of followers and reluctant to acknowledge that any of them are not real. Mr. Trump has accused Twitter of political bias for its periodic purges of bot accounts across the platform, which have cost him — and other prominent users — hundreds of thousands of followers. When he met with the company’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, in April, Mr. Trump reportedly pressed him at length about the lost followers.
It’s so cruel to take his loyal bots away.
According to data from YouGov, which polls about most of the president’s tweets, some of the topics on which Mr. Trump got the most likes and retweets — jabs at the N.F.L., posts about the special counsel’s investigation, unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud — poll poorly with the general public.
But people close to Mr. Trump said there was no dissuading him that the “likes” a tweet got were evidence that a decision or policy proposal was well received.
Last December, after Mr. Trump announced plans to withdraw some troops from Syria, lawmakers came to the White House to argue against it. According to Politico, Mr. Trump responded by calling in Mr. Scavino.
“Tell them how popular my policy is,” Mr. Trump asked Mr. Scavino, who described for the lawmakers social media postings that had praised Mr. Trump’s decision. Aides said that for Mr. Trump, his Twitter “likes” were proof that he had made the right call.
Ok, I take back the “nothing we didn’t know” claim. I didn’t know that. Dear god – he makes his policy on Syria according to what’s popular on Twitter.
He and his flunkies are hoping Twitter will win him a second term.
While some campaign aides say Mr. Trump’s tweets can be a distraction, they also view Twitter as an essential tool to present him as someone strong, willing to stand up to so-called political elites and what the president recently called the “unholy alliance of corrupt Democrat politicians, deep-state bureaucrats and the fake-news media.”
The aides seek to cultivate the image of a man who understands “regular people.” Mr. Trump’s team believes that his unvarnished writing, poor punctuation and increasing profanity on Twitter signal authenticity — a contrast to the polished, vetted, often anodyne social media style of most candidates.
Absolutely. Who needs health insurance and affordable housing and decent wages when there’s an ignorant sexist racist loudmouth being “authentic” on Twitter?
Democractic candidate for president: “I think we should provide health care for everyone.”
Savvy Pundit: “Well, once again the Democrats are blowing it. They need to understand that such policies may play well to the activist online base, but Twitter is not representative of the voting public.”
Donald J. Trump: “So I told the generals, who cares about your ‘casualty estimates’ or whatever. My proposal to ‘blow shit up and take the oil’ got lots of retweets, so we’re going to go with that.”
Savvy Pundit: “This man is a political genius and Democrats must learn from him.”
I have learned to hate the word “authentic”. I learned from Garrison Keeler that I am a fake. Why? Because I go to art films and foreign films and live theatre, and no one goes to those unless they are trying to be seen (by whom? No one in my neck of the woods goes to those to see who is going, because attendance sucks. If I wanted to be “seen”, I would go where the politicos go – the state fair, the Nascar track, the bowling alley. Of those the only one I could tolerate would be the bowling alley, and I can’t bowl anymore because of four shoulder surgeries.
Authentic? Authentic is doing what you like to do, not what your uneducated brother-in-law with the monster truck and the beer belly like to do. Authentic is whatever you are, no matter what. I would not be authentic if I did the things most politicians do to court voters, and I suspect most of them aren’t being authentic either, unless they really love eating fried Twinkies and meat on a stick for several months every four years.
And if that is authentic, I’d rather be fake.
And I always thought the measure of the effectiveness of a course of action was whether or not it advanced policy goals and achieved intended aims in some objectively verifiable fashion. What this tells us is that <iTTrump has no policy goals beyond Twitter "likes." I can imagine a lot of people “liking” it if Trump would walk off a cliff, and if I thought it had any chance of encouraging him to to so, I would join Twitter in a flash and launch my own army of bots.
I find it alarming that part of me is drawn to the idea of this…
It’s a funny thing ‘likes’. One of the online comments I’ve felt most proud of for both clarity and cohesion of thought and just (to me) rightness, was massively down voted. Thing is, because the down votes were, by the tone of reply comments also 99% from misogynist racist arsehats, I didn’t care. By contrast, my comment with the most likes ever was telling a well known media commentator in NZ that they were behaving like an ignorant jerk. It was just a virtual polite flip of the finger. Likes are only worth what the audience that gives them is worth.
“He and his flunkies are hoping Twitter will win him a second term.”
Don’t be so sure it won’t.