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The Democrats Are Losing A Game They Don’t Seem To Know They’re Playing
The rise of influencer politics.
On Jan 7th, 2021, after a “day of love” at the Capitol, Facebook and Instagram banned Donald Trump from posting on their platforms. Twitter banned him the following day.
And while you might think Trump’s first move would be reflecting on his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution,” or maybe apologising to the families of Ashli Babbitt and the police officers who died fighting over his lies, what he actually did was launch a micro-blog called, From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump where he dropped 280 character nuggets for his followers to repost on Twitter.
And when viewership of the site dried up in less than a month, Trump got to work on a fully-fledged social media platform, Truth Social, that he still maintains today even though it’s running at a ~$327 million loss.
Because, like all good influencers, Trump understood that if he wanted to keep his audience loyal, he needed a direct channel to keep bombarding them with “alternative facts.”
Influencers aren’t powered by the truth or integrity or the need to contribute to society, they only exist if their followers are thinking about them.
