Social Media Made Trump President. Whether Y’all Like it or Not …
Well, Twitter was fun while it lasted guys!
It’s no secret that Donald Trump loves Twitter more than a thirteen-year-old girl who just got her first iPhone; a bit alarming, but no secret. While we all love social media for its makeup tutorials, memes, and the occasional cat videos (don’t judge, y'all know you watch them too). We seem to forget the implications it can have on our lives, off the screen. It’s hard to believe the little device on which we can share pictures and tell our followers how much we wish Beyoncé would release her new album actually has an effect on our daily lives.
From book clubs to PTA meetings, having places to freely speak our minds helps us to meet people similar to us. Being around people like us who have the same views not only fulfills our ideas but also solidifies our beliefs. The problem is, there is no public place that supports the ideologies and morals Donald Trump and his followers so faithfully follow, other than maybe a KKK rally of course. By Twitter allowing Donald Trump to post his opinions and views freely, it allowed him to have the ability to build a sense of community and safe space among his followers to share in their mutual lack of brain cells. This led to their views and thoughts being normalized and suddenly Donald Trump running for president went from a joke to him being the official Republican candidate.
Of course, it takes much more than simply rallying a group of supporters to become the next president. That’s where social media played a vital role in Donald Trump’s campaign. With every crazy antic, it would make everyone bring up his name. Eventually, it got to the point where he was absolutely everywhere anytime you went online. In a nutshell, by having a platform as big as Twitter to share his outlandish opinions, Trump was able to garner worldwide headlines day after day by kicking it back to an old-school method of surfing the internet and gaining attention that my OG’s would refer to as “trolling”.
Creating a space for his dedicated followers wasn’t the end of Trump’s social media quest. He continued to grow a presence by outdoing himself day after day sharing his most crazy thoughts, or “trolling”. Some of his most popular opinions include his view on Mexicans when he said that they bring drugs, crime, and rapists when they come to America and also when he elaborated on global warming by saying “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”. Before you ask yourself, yes, those are actual Donald Trump tweets.
What can we say, we love entertainment and grown adults making themselves look like a dumbass on a public platform. Needless to say, with Trump’s growing follower count (now at 47.3 million, *sigh*), and his widespread crazy antics on Twitter, combined with the public rise in wanting to keep up with him, Donald was able to stir all major news outlets (national and worldwide) into featuring him on their platforms more often than a Proactiv ad on YTV past 8 pm. With this constant promotion, Trump created a market for people wanting to see what he did next. This obsession, created and fuelled by social media, eventually led him to become the 45th President of the United States.
However, just as social media was able to create a space for Trump minions, it can most definitely create a space for people like daytime television and meme queen, Oprah Winfrey. Although social medias’ essence of bringing people together has led to less-than-intelligent groups to form, it has also helped in bringing together many other groups and starting the conversation on many important issues to discuss and be dealt with. A great example would be the strides made by the LGBT community through social media. As a gay boy myself, seeing the representation and community on social media that I didn’t see in mainstream media helped me find myself and thousands of others in my community. I can only imagine the progress that can be made if a queen such as Oprah were to utilize her online presence in her *fingers crossed* run for President in 2020.
Social media and Trumps utilization of it, gave him the platform to edge out his competitors and become the President. Although we have to sit through two more years of a spray-tanned potato as the ruler of the free world (a very scary thought), Trump’s cyber rise to office is only an indication to how powerful social media is, and will hopefully now be taken seriously in campaigns to be used for positive changes and progress.
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