Inside the Troll Army Waging Trump’s Online Campaign
www.nytimes.com
A team of meme-makers has been flooding social media with pro-Trump posts riddled with sexist and racist tropes. Donald Trump is cheering them on.

Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls.

Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.

  • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
    71·
    11 months ago

    All I need is for him to not be the presumptive Republican nominee, to not have influence on the Republican party, and to no longer have an army of stochastic terrorists just waiting for the right signal. Then I can finally in good conscience listen to the unending stream of myopic advice from people on the internet who think we should just ignore him.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 months ago

      I don’t think anyone should ignore Trump or the rise of fascism. I’m saying that you don’t feed the trolls with attention. We should get updates on the various court cases and pay attention to justice being done. But if he and his followers pitch a nutty on social media, that’s not news, and paying attention to it amplifies the message. Debating the crazy nonsense shifts the Overton window further away from reasonable discourse.

      It’s how he was elected in the first place. Covering Trump was good television. Lots of viewers tuned in to see what ridiculous fucking bullshit he was say or do next. Making a spectacle of it, building the circus tent around it, made it more powerful because it has no shame. It has no desire to speak truth or be virtuous. Trump and his troll army want you to get down into the mud and wrestle until you’re too tired to fight actual, serious people. Shining a light on it won’t kill the disease, it will encourage it to grow.

      Think of it like a child’s temper tantrum. You don’t get down on the floor of the department store and argue about why they can’t have ice cream before dinner. You deal with the tantrum, whether it’s taking them home or otherwise punishing bad behavior, but you don’t engage in the tantrum.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
        1·
        11 months ago

        I see your point, but if we don’t talk about it then we don’t know it’s happening. There’s no one here in this thread arguing with anyone about it, it’s just people learning one more thing to remember if (somehow) they are still on the fence about whether they would vote for him.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
        1·
        11 months ago

        You think the other potential nominees are any better?

        The comment was: You should ignore Trump

        That’s what I replied to.

        I’ll die of old age before there’s any chance a Republican in any election local on up gets a vote from me. I witnessed what conservatives enabled and supported in recent decades, and I saw how it all culminated in recent years. I see how many of them still say they would vote for Trump just because of R next to his name even if they claim they don’t support his policies or don’t like him. They can’t possibly reform themselves enough to get a vote from me within my remaining natural lifespan.

        You think the other potential nominees are any better?

        So no. But that’s not the topic.