Did TikTok teens, K-Pop fans punk Trump’s comeback rally?

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

For more than a week before Donald Trump’s first campaign rally in Tulsa on Saturday night, se tech-savvy groups opposing president mobilized to reserve tickets for rally y had intention of attending. While it’s t likely that y were responsible for low turut , ir antics may have inflated campaign’s expectations for attendance numbers that lead to Saturday’s disappointing show.

“My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America’s teens,” tweeted veteran Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt on Saturday. tweet garnered more than 100,000 likes and many responses from ors whose kids or who mselves said y did same.

Reached by telephone Sunday, Schmidt called rally an “unmitigated disaster” - days after Trump campaign chairman Brad Parscale tweeted that more than a million people requested tickets for rally through Trump’s campaign website. Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said turut was a sign of weakening voter support. “Donald Trump has abdicated leadership and it is surprise that his supporters have responded by abandoning him,” he said.

In a statement, Trump campaign blamed “fake news media” for “warning people away from rally” due to COVID-19 and protests against racial injustice around country.

“Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking y somehow impacted rally attendance, don’t kw what y’re talking about or how our rallies work,” Parscale wrote.

“Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans without contacting campaign for comment behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to charade.”

On midday Sunday, it was possible to sign up for a livestream a Tulsa “Team Trump on Tour”event later in day through Trump’ website. It asked for a name, email address and a phone number. re was verification in signup process, though site required a pin to verify phone numbers. Inside 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa Saturday, when Trump thundered that “ silent majority is stronger than ever before,” numerous seats were empty. Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said city fire marshal’s office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in arena.

City officials had expected a crowd of 100,000 people or more in downtown Tulsa but that never materialized. That said rally, which was broadcast on cable, also targeted voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, rth Carolina and Florida. Social media users who’ve followed recent events might t be surprised by way young people (and some older folks) mobilized to troll president. y did it t just on TikTok but on Twitter, Instagram and even Facebook. K-pop fans — who have a massive, coordinated online community and a cutting sense of humor — have become an unexpected ally to American Black Lives Matter protesters.

In recent weeks, y’ve been re-purposing ir usual platforms and hashtags from boosting ir favorite stars to backing Black Lives Matter movement. y flooded right-wing hashtags such as “white lives matter”and police apps with short video clips and memes of ir K-pop stars. Many of early social media messs urging people to sign up for tickets brought up fact that rally had originally been scheduled for Friday, June 19. date is kwn as Juneteenth because it marks end of slavery in United States. Tulsa, location for rally, was scene in 1921 of one of most severe white-on-black attacks in American history.

Schmidt said he was t surprised. Today’s teens, after all, grew up with phones and have “absolutely” mastered m. y are also first generation to have remote Zoom classes and have a “subversive sense of humor,” having come of in a world of online trolls and memes. Most of all, “y are aware of what is happening around m,” he said.

“Like salmon in river y participate politically through methods and means of ir lives,” Schmidt added.

That said, original idea for mass ticket troll may have come t from a teen but an Iowa grandma. politics site Iowa Starting Line found that a TikTok video posted on June 11 by Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmor from Fort Dodge, Iowa, suggesting that people book free tickets “make sure re are empty seats.” Laupp’s video, which also tells viewers how to stop receiving texts from Trump campaign after y provide ir phone number (simply text “STOP”), has had more than 700,000 likes. It was also possible to sign up for rally using a fake or temporary phone number from Google Voice, for instance.

As Parscale himself pointed out in a June 14 tweet, though, ticket signups were t simply about getting bodies to rally. He called it “Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x” — meaning hundreds of thousands emails and phone numbers campaign w has in its possession to use for microtargeting advertisements and reach potential voters.

Sure, it’s possible that many of emails are fake and that ticket holders have intention of voting for Trump in vember. But while it’s possible that this “bad data” might prove useless — or even hurt Trump campaign in some way, experts say re is one clear beneficiary in end, and that is Facebook. That’s due to complex, murky ways in which Trump’s political advertising machine is tied up with social media giant. Facebook wants data on people, and wher that is “good” or “bad” it will be used to train its systems.

“ matter who signs up or if y go to a rally, Trump gets data to train retargeting on Facebook. FB’s system will use that data in ways that have thing to do with Trump,” tweeted Georgia Tech communications professor Ian Bogost. “Might se fake’ signups mess up Trump team’s targeting data? Maybe it could, to some extent. But entire system is so vast and incomprehensible, we’ll never really kw.”