Did teens, TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music troll the president of the United States?

For more than a week before Donald TrumpB次元官网网址檚 first campaign rally in three months on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, these tech-savvy groups opposing the president mobilized to reserve tickets for an event they had no intention of attending. While itB次元官网网址檚 unlikely they were responsible for the low turnout, their antics may have inflated the campaignB次元官网网址檚 expectations for attendance numbers that led to SaturdayB次元官网网址檚 disappointing show.

B次元官网网址淢y 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by AmericaB次元官网网址檚 teens,B次元官网网址� veteran Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt tweeted on Saturday. The tweet garnered more than 100,000 likes and many responses from people who say they or their kids did the same.

Reached by telephone Sunday, Schmidt called the rally an B次元官网网址渦nmitigated disasterB次元官网网址� B次元官网网址� days after Trump campaign chairman Brad Parscale tweeted that more than a million people requested tickets for the rally through TrumpB次元官网网址檚 campaign website.

Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for TrumpB次元官网网址檚 Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, said the turnout was a sign of weakening voter support. B次元官网网址淒onald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is no surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him,B次元官网网址� he said.

In a statement, the Trump campaign blamed the B次元官网网址渇ake news mediaB次元官网网址� for B次元官网网址渨arning people away from the rallyB次元官网网址� over COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice around the country.

B次元官网网址淟eftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, donB次元官网网址檛 know what theyB次元官网网址檙e talking about or how our rallies work,B次元官网网址� Parscale wrote. B次元官网网址淩eporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans B次元官网网址� without contacting the campaign for comment B次元官网网址� behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.B次元官网网址�

READ MORE:

On midday Sunday, it was possible to sign up to stream a recap of the Tulsa event later in the day through TrumpB次元官网网址檚 website. It requested a name, email address and phone number. There was no age verification in the signup process, though the site required a PIN to verify phone numbers.

Inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa, where Trump thundered that B次元官网网址渢he silent majority is stronger than ever before,B次元官网网址� numerous seats were empty. Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said the city fire marshalB次元官网网址檚 office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the arena.

City officials had expected a crowd of 100,000 people or more in downtown Tulsa, but that never materialized. That said, the rally, which was broadcast on cable, also targeted voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida.

Social media users who have followed recent events might not be surprised by the way young people (and some older folks) mobilized to troll the president. They did it not just on TikTok but also on Twitter, Instagram and even Facebook. K-Pop fans B次元官网网址� who have a massive, co-ordinated online community and a cutting sense of humour B次元官网网址� have become an unexpected ally to American Black Lives Matter protesters.

In recent weeks, theyB次元官网网址檝e been repurposing their usual platforms and hashtags from boosting their favourite stars to backing the Black Lives Matter movement. They flooded right-wing hashtags such as B次元官网网址渨hite lives matterB次元官网网址� and police apps with short video clips and memes of their K-pop stars. Many of the early social media messages urging people to sign up for tickets brought up the fact that the rally had originally been scheduled for Friday, June 19, which is Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Tulsa, the location for the rally, was the scene in 1921 of one of the most severe white-on-Black attacks in American history.

Schmidt said he was not surprised. TodayB次元官网网址檚 teens, after all, grew up with phones and have B次元官网网址渁bsolutelyB次元官网网址� mastered them, he said. They are also the first generation to have remote Zoom classes and have a B次元官网网址渟ubversive sense of humour,B次元官网网址� having come of age in a world of online trolls and memes, Schmidt said. Most of all, he said, B次元官网网址渢hey are aware of what is happening around them.B次元官网网址�

B次元官网网址淟ike salmon in the river, they participate politically through the methods and means of their lives,B次元官网网址� Schmidt added.

That said, the original idea for the mass ticket troll may have come not from a teen but from an Iowa woman. The politics site Iowa Starting Line found that a TikTok video posted on June 11 by Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother from Fort Dodge, Iowa, suggesting that people book free tickets to B次元官网网址渕ake sure there are empty seats.B次元官网网址� LauppB次元官网网址檚 video, which also tells viewers how to stop receiving texts from the Trump campaign after they provide their phone number (simply text B次元官网网址淪TOPB次元官网网址�), has had more than 700,000 likes. It was also possible to sign up for the rally using a fake or temporary phone number from Google Voice, for instance.

As Parscale himself pointed out in a June 14 tweet, though, the ticket signups were not simply about getting bodies to the rally. He called it the B次元官网网址淏iggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10xB次元官网网址� B次元官网网址� meaning the hundreds of thousands of emails and phone numbers the campaign now has in its possession to use for microtargeting advertisements and to reach potential voters.

Sure, itB次元官网网址檚 possible that many of the emails are fake and that the ticket holders have no intention of voting for Trump in November. But while itB次元官网网址檚 possible that this B次元官网网址渂ad dataB次元官网网址� might prove useless B次元官网网址� or even hurt the Trump campaign in some way B次元官网网址� experts say there is one clear beneficiary in the end, and that is Facebook. ThatB次元官网网址檚 due to the complex, murky ways in which TrumpB次元官网网址檚 political advertising machine is tied up with the social media giant. Facebook wants data on people, and whether that is B次元官网网址済oodB次元官网网址� or B次元官网网址渂ad,B次元官网网址� it will be used to train its systems.

B次元官网网址淣o matter who signs up or if they go to a rally, Trump gets data to train retargeting on Facebook. FBB次元官网网址檚 system will use that data in ways that have nothing to do with Trump,B次元官网网址� tweeted Georgia Tech communications professor Ian Bogost. B次元官网网址淢ight these `fakeB次元官网网址� signups mess up the Trump teamB次元官网网址檚 targeting data? Maybe it could, to some extent. But the entire system is so vast and incomprehensible, weB次元官网网址檒l never really know.B次元官网网址�

B次元官网网址斺赌斺赌�

Barbara Ortutay, Associated Press

Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this story from Seattle.

Like us on and follow us on .

Want to support local journalism during the pandemic? Make a donation