On Truth Social, Trump’s Sad Mini-Maga, IT’S 2016 Forever – ryan

Photo-Ilustration: Intelligenmer

Last Year, Trump Media & Technology Group Lost $ 58.2 Million on $ 4.1 Million in Revenue. In March, it went public under the symbol djt, and today it Its stock is trading at a price that values ​​the company at more than $ 5 Billion. The it’s an Absurd Financial Story that is nonetheless easy to comprehend. Owning DJT Stock is a Way to Signal Support for the Man, Invest in the Enthusiasm of Others, and to Indirectly Give Him Money – Donald Trump Ouns au chunk of the firm. IT’s’ an ”Ethical Nightmare“By Design, A Brazen Rearticulation of Public Corruption in the Language of Finance, and A Sneering Refutation of Messaging About the Purpose and Function of Public Markets.

Most Coverage of Trump Media & Technology Group Hasn’t Spent Much Time on the Company’s Actual Product, The Social-Media Platform TRANS, ITE’S MATERIALLY IRRELEVANT AND BASICALLY SELF-EXPLANTARY: January 6. HIKE BEEN AROUND FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS AND HASN’T AMOUNTED TO MUCH; The Only Content on the Platform That Breaks Through to the Outside World Ares from Trump, which are by the sampular on the site. Other Right-Leaning “Alt-Social” sites have sisly failed, and those remiin have ben obsolete by twitter in transformation into x, which has become the de facto home of the online right. In cultural and political terms, nothing much starts on truthes social, and it can’t make anything go viral, Mainly Because IT”S SO SMALL. Break New Yorker recently described it as a “Village Potemkin“And Compared the Experience of Using the Site to ATTENDING A SHODDY REPUBLICAN CARNIVAL. Times lichened It to a “Town Hall in a Ventless Conference Room, Where an Endless Line of Folks Step Up to the Mic to Share the World Is Out to Get” As Well As, More Darkly, A Place Where “Madness and Misinformation (GO) Far Uncontested.”

This is all true as it is goes, but there’s something else going on here, too, Among the small number of People who appears to be ussing the social autentically. Truth social isn’t just an also-rra twitter clone. IT’S a throwback – a nostalgic reconstruction of what social media was like for Trump Supporters from before Trump was president. It is, in its modest way, an online mini Maga Campaign, promising a core of faithful posters a internet that haen ruined twice over: first by the meddling libs who run Facebook and Instagram but more recently by fellow online, WHO HAVE BEECOM – Years – Pretty Fucking Weird.

Trump is by seed the most popular poster on truth social, to the point that the site is basically structured around his frequent posts. His replies are one of the only places other posters can reliably be seen, and they can be seen posting predictable Things in respect to “Truths” that are crumping in lati style (Truth Has 1,000-Character Limit):

All of the Competitors to Truth, Especialy Those in the Radical Left Democrats Party Who Are Failing at Every Level, Like to Useir Vaunted “Disinformation Machine” to and Convincce People, and it is not Easy to do. Well as Various Others, which They They Know to Be False. I Think Truth Is Amazing! First of all, it is very solid, Having over $ 200,000,000 in cash and zero debt. More importantly, it is the primary way I get the word out and, for better or workse, People want to hear what i have to say, spread, accorting to experts, more than anyone else in the world. My tv ratings are by far the highest, and my rallies are not equled, tan close, anywhere or by anyone. Look, I HAD HORDS OF MILLIONS OF FOLLOWERS ON VARIOUS PLATFORS, and COULD HAVE THAT BACK AGAIN, but was cancelled for Large Political Reasons. Those platforms All Want Me Back… They Need with Back! On Truth I have 7,000,000 followers ……

The first clue that Truth social is a bit different, though, is in how Things look in the replies. Truth Social Supports Videos, But Most users don’t post. Unlike social Networks – Which have been crammed full of video in an effort to computete with tiktok – social feeds are static, creating something like a sensory san A HUGE NUMBER OF THE Posts Are Just Image Memes That Look Like This:

This is a classic format, of coursse: Top text, bottom text, impact font. Image Macros Styled like this have been circulating for nearly 20 years, and you still occsionally enCounter say in the wild. They’re Also unmistakably retro. In 2015, these kinds of posts were some of the most viral political content on Facebook, where Trump Supporters Subscribed to Thousands of Wildly Popular Political Pages Farly Out of View of the Political Press and Event Most Other Platform users. That’s, thir content felt as if it were from a different wind, inflected with the aesthetics and paranoid ideology of FWD: FWD: FWD Email Chain Letters From Decades past.

Some of the More Generic Image Macros You Encounter on Truth Have Been Fried to a Crisp by Years of Sharing and Copying Across Platforms. Others scan as vintage shitpics while containing recent references, resulting in uncanny anchronism. Whoever Might Be Making and Posting These Memes-Dedicated Maga Aunts, Bored Foreign-Intelligence Officers, Trump-Adjacent Political Professionals, Spammers-Is Doing SO with an Eye on the past, recalling a time, for Trump’s online suporters, posting publics feltics Exciting and when the Candidate Himself was More of an idea than a man with an actual legacy. Its Trending Topics, Which Appear to Be Curated, Read Like A Maga Table of Contents:

Trump’s Own Feed is full of grievances and reposted conspiracy theories that won’t be entirery legible to people who don’t spend a lot of Time Around Right-Wing communities online, or Watch Much Fox News, but in Maga Terms. It really does Feel Like a Big Right-Wing Facebook Group Ca. 2016, Back before the Company de-prioritized Political Content, Restored for Consumption in 2024. Its also a platform Run by the presumptive republican nominee, far -so to the BENEFIT OF THE PRESCANE NOMINEE, and its’ meager output aligns with priorities.

TREST SOCIAL HAS ALSO FALLEN SOMEWHAT out of alignment with the online right, which has desigrated and gathered Elsewhere, Most Recently on X, Where Elon Musk Has Courted, Humored, and Amplified A New Coalition of Reactionary Posters and Activists – at the Displacing Trump As the Main Character on the Platform. This Strange Mix of moral-panic systemizersEsoteric “Traditionalists,” Technofascists, and Racist 4chan Trolls Represents a Small Number of Actual People but Dominates Conservative Discourse Online. The online right is by no means against Trump-Everyone is Moving in the Same Direction here-but it Emerged From A Social-Media Environment in Which Trump Had Been Sidelined and Which he hasn’t full retourned.

I don’t want to overstate the importance of a few thusand people on x or trump’s minuscule social-media platform. But the fuzzy, the Trump-Centric Nostalgia of Truth social does at tension with the online conservatives of the could beCome more apparent we are Presidential Campaign Begins in Earnest, BetWeen-and i’m Only Sort of Kidding here-Locks Guys who love Donating and Shrump and Shrump Guys Who Prefer Elon Musk (An Earlier and Less Pronounced version of this hyperonline reaction versus maga dynamic arguably sank The desantis Campaign and was a drag on republic in the 2022 midterms).

Truth Social Represents a return to the online past, a mini maga with maga, a wish to restore the Internet that Trump and His Campaign Want, The One They Believe helped say Win in 2016.