Donald Trump’s Truth Social—the plucky startup that aims to disrupt the social media space in the same way Trump Steaks transformed how Americans befouled their colons—is soaring on gossamer wings straight into a comically large bug zapper.
It’s difficult to fathom how anyone trusts Trump in any arena these days, much less in business. He’s arguably a worse businessman than he was a president, and he was a worse president than a human being. And as we well know, as human beings go, he’s marginally serviceable shark chum.
The latest effluence from the coal-black abyss of Satan’s yawning asshole, Trump Social is not exactly setting the world on fire, even as much of the planet remains precariously unraked. In fact, as Politico reports, the buzz surrounding the app, even in dedicated MAGA circles, is nearly nonexistent. The outlet notes that there was “hardly any” buzz about Truth Social at the recent CPAC conference in Florida, apart from a few perfunctory mentions from Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
After Twitter permanently suspended Trump, the self-proclaimed “Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters” vowed to turn the social media world upside down with a platform of his own. But well more than a year later, his platform has failed to prove it’s ready to cause the kind of disruption he imagined.
Worse, there’s not much public enthusiasm around the current venture. Top figures in Trumpworld are barely using the app — some give the verbal equivalent of a shrug when asked about it — and Trump himself has only posted one “Truth.”
The Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters? Okay, sure. I await with bated breath the wildly anticipated release of his 11-page presidential memoir The Old Man and the Pee Tape.
It’s a lackluster rollout that threatens a long-held dream for some on the right: that an app bolstered by the former president’s star power could jumpstart a social media ecosystem with the same power to amplify conservative voices as AM talk radio or Fox News. And it illustrates one of the great hurdles that conservatives have failed to overcome when trying to launch social media empires of their own: Their followers are eager to argue with the opposition, not necessarily to mingle among the like-minded.
In other words, it’s impossible to own the libs when the libs avoid your social media space like the plague. Frankly, I wouldn’t join Truth Social if you paid me. And waterboarded me. And forced me to watch 24 straight hours of hardcore Mayor McCheese porn, instead of the usual six.
One Republican digital strategist who spoke to Politico anonymously asked, “Other than [Trump], what makes a platform compelling enough to come back over and over again? How is it different than Twitter and Parler?”
Good question! Well, for one thing, Truth Social has Trump, and he’s already posted to the platform a grand total of one time! But even if he were posting more regularly, it seems unlikely that people would flock to Truth Social just to bask in his technicolor brain farts. Plus, there’s no shortage of conservatives following Trump’s barmy lead these days. If you want a Trump-like speaker, you could just shave Randy Quaid, stuff him stem to stern with Keystone Light, and convince him there’s a bag of Ruffles in it for him at some point in the very near future.
Meanwhile, Trump already seems bored with his big tech venture/grifty-grift. He manages to blast his thickheaded thoughts into the ether through statements he emails to the press, and so putting in the effort to blatantly rip off Twitter may hardly seem worth it.
“I think him doing the press releases—it hasn’t been that bad of an outlet for him,” said one former Trump adviser who spoke with Politico. “If he wants to write out a three paragraph scribe where he can go on about any topic, it’s a good outlet for him. They cover it just like they would a tweet.”
Psst, media! Maybe stop covering Trump’s “statements” without consistently noting that he’s a lying scoundrel who literally tried to end America.
So judging by Trump’s lack of interest in his own social media platform, the multiple legal hurdles it faces, the fact that no one in his family is really using it, the lack of buzz among Trump’s own followers, and the paltry sign-up numbers so far (just 313,000 people follow Trump on Truth Social, compared to the 85 million who hung on his every Twitter proclamation), it’s clear this is well on its way to an Atlantic City-sized meltdown.
And that only makes sense given that Google, which has enormous resources and some vague idea what it’s doing, was never able to make a splash with Google+, despite making a more than half-billion-dollar investment in the venture. Hmm. Maybe Trump Social should have given premium access to Russian bots from the get-go.
Meanwhile, there’s little sign that Truth Social and other conservative “free speech” platforms (in Truth Social’s case, “free speech” means you can say anything you want so long as it glorifies Dear Leader) are actually “taking on” Big Tech.
In fact, notes Matt Navara, a social media strategist who spoke with Politico, Big Tech may actually be happy to be rid of their bad rubbish. “If all that content and all those troublemakers go there, then that’s something someone else has to deal with,” said Navarra.
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