Donald Trump, President of the United States of Trolls
This past election is considered to be the worst thing to ever happen to America by most Democrats. All of the polls and stats that were available showed Clinton winning by a landslide, but somehow Trump won. I believe that the winning factor in Trumps victory were trolls. This isn’t the first time trolls have influenced an election, the first being Obama’s election in 2008 and 2012. “As early as the 2008 presidential election, … , trolls began photoshopping the phrase “Why so socialist?” onto images of Obama, and sometime after that, “socialism” became the caption of choice” (Philips, 100). They used socialism and racism to attempt to make Obama lose the election. The trolls took a different approach this time and began working against the democrats during the primaries with Clinton and Bernie. They began sowing discord among the party by creating fake accounts and websites posing as extremists for their candidate. These fake accounts and websites had two major impacts within the Democrats party. The first impact it had was on those who did not realize the sources they were reading from was fake; by seeing these extreme party views they were swayed to vote for either the other democratic candidate or leave and vote for the republican candidate. The other major impact was on those who saw through the lies; these voters became suspicious and awry of all content and media due to its possiblity of it being fake. Resnick talks about how Trump supporters realized that just basic tactics were not swaying voters but that they needed to “troll Bernie and Hillary supporters systematically.” These tactics ultimately resulted in Burnie losing the primaries and a Democratic party that is divided on almost every front. http://a.co/3ppMZ66
After the Burnie supporters lost, the Trump Trolls then came in for the final blow to finally sway their votes towards Trump. A hashtag began trending after Burnie’s defeat, this hashtag was #feelingtheburnnow? which was in response to Burnie Supporters original hashtag of #feeltheburn. This was only one of the many ways that trolls attacked Burnie supporters for supporting a candidate who lost. These trolls also preyed on the ideals of Burnie supporters saying that Trump disagreed with less ideas than Clinton and Burnie did. As Trumps trolls ravenged the remaining Burnie supporters many had to make a decision on whether they were going to support Trump, Hillary or just drop out entirely. As we can see today a majority chose Trump looking at it as a lesser of two evils. These voters were ultimately forced to vote outside of their party and against their beliefs resulting in a Democrat in the white house. It is very possible that in retaliation, many of the controversies that currently surround Trump were created by democrats who are angry over their candidates loss. All that can be said for sure is that trolling has officially become a part of American politics and will be a deciding factor in many future elections.