Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The lights are all blinking red.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Everybody saw this coming.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

In after Baud. Damn.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

We still have time to mess this up!

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / TikTok and KPop

TikTok and KPop

by | 271 Comments

This post is in: 

Here’s a backgrounder in case you’re wondering what this is about:

From the article linked above, a sample of what these kids did — basically, they registered for two tickets and then danced the macarena with their registration confirmation in the background:

Reader Interactions

271Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    I’m still giggling over the tweet Aleta shared last night, where the proud father posted that his daughter and her friends went at it like it was a Girl Scout cookie competition.

    This is a really hopeful sign for the future. These young’uns will save this country.

  7. 7.

    Ohio Mom

    Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Saul Alinsky is beaming. This effort checked off many of his Rules for Radicals, including,

    “Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.”

    “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

    And especially,
    “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

  8. 8.

    Tim C.

    When the Trump campaign compared itself to the Death Star, I didn’t expect the K-Pop Tik-Tokers to have such a large contingent of X-wings.

    Seriously though, last night I did my duty and attended the graduation ceremony for the High School I teach at. It’s been a rough spring for obvious reasons. Likewise in my exurban, lily-white district we had a bunch of knuckleheads post some racist videos on Instagram. We did it drive-in style in the parking lot and handed out masks with the school logo, so hopefully no transmissions took place.

    What was wonderfully inspiring though was our Valedictorian speeches. The kids called out the hate. They called out the systemic racism. The challenged the school, the students, and the community to do better. It was powerful, and despite the change in venue and format, easily the best graduation ceremony I’ve been to in 20 years.

    The kids are all right.

  12. 12.

    SFAW

    [First, my recently-standard disclaimer: I ain’t been here much these days.]

    I haven’t seen Mnemosyne here recently, during those few times I’ve had a chance to “visit.” Is she OK? Just taking a sabbatical? Busy at work? Or am I just not observant enough?

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A little off topic but at least this is a political thread about the big fail last night so tangentially related:

    Chris Matthews interviews author Jeff Sharlet on hardcore Trump supporters (7:31):
    ‘Magically protected’: Why hardcore Trump supporters won’t wear masks at rally

    “In trump’s tweets, some wear t-shirts that say “trump’s tweets matter”, in trump’s tweets every typo, every misspelling and especially the strange capitalizations are actually messages and you have to study them like scripture to understand the real meaning beneath the veneer of the bumbling buffoon.”

  18. 18.

    ThresherK

    I am into some manga, anime and the music which goes with, plus some J-pop. I can see myself giving K-pop a shot.

  19. 19.

    oldster

    I am very tickled as well, and delighted that the shitgibbon’s latest attempt at a photo op blew up in his face again.

    However — I feel *slightly* nervous about AOC thanking foreign nationals for help with election interference. I mean, I know that many K-Pop fans are US citizens. But what about the others?

    Tell me how this is different from the shitgibbon asking Russia for help in 2016.  I mean, two big differences — K-Pop fans are presumably non-state actors, so AOC is not soliciting interference from a foreign *government*. And these kids are helping democracy rather than helping authoritarian autocracy — the difference in ends makes a difference.

    Still, on the whole I would like to leave American elections up to the American people. We have been wrong over the years to interfere in foreign elections (it’s a long list), and I don’t like foreign interference in our elections either.

     

    Sorry to seem humorless, so I will end by saying “yay for AOC! Yay for the kids! Down with the shitgibbon!”

  20. 20.

    Suzanne

    Trump is UNCOOL. The kind of brand for, uhhhh, how do I politely say, downwardly mobile middle-aged white people.

  21. 21.

    Starfish

    This morning was so funny with all the “no one showed up” content. I really enjoyed it when Brian Vander Ark, the singer of The Verve, who had that one hit “The Freshmen” exclaimed that more people bought their follow-up album.

  24. 24.

    Suzanne

    @oldster:

    Tell me how this is different from the shitgibbon asking Russia for help in 2016. 

    First of all, Spawn the Elder is a huuuuuge K-pop fan. Very much a citizen, and it is a very popular genre among Da Yoot. Especially white yoot.

    Secondly, is it “election interference”?

  25. 25.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I love this!

    Sometimes people ask me why I decided to write for young people, and I always fumbled around trying to answer before I realized I never decided that. Instead I decided to write about young people because they rock.

  29. 29.

    Emma from FL

    @oldster: They were NOT foreign nationals. Most of them were American kids. The K-pop contingent is international and hardass.

    My sister, who works at a university dorm, loves Korean culture, and is learning the language, has been tracking the phenomenon for (at least two) years. She laughed until she cried, because, she said, “it’s exactly the kind of prank they would pull.”

  30. 30.

    Karen S.

    This makes me laugh with so much satisfaction, especially given how much the Trump campaign was bragging last week about how many tickets had been snapped up to their Trump ego stroke/COVID superspreader event. They deserved having it blow up in their faces.

  31. 31.

    donnah

    The teen ticket trick helped elevate the predicted crowd size and made Parscale and the team believe that there would be overwhelming record attendance. So they had overflow space outdoors and lots of extra security ready to go. In that respect, the kids made a huge contribution to humiliating Trump.

    But there was not a limit on tickets. So Team Trump can’t claim that the teens “used up” the tickets for actual attendees. The beauty part is how few people showed up in person. The crowd size was down because people do believe in the danger of catching the virus and they stayed home. And I hope it also shows that Trump’s followers are losing faith a little bit. Just 6611 attendees in a 19,000 seat venue looks pretty terrible.

    So I hope Trump stayed up all night fuming and whining and throwing things. I’m sure his team is furious and frightened, too. It will be interesting to see what his next rally is like.

  32. 32.

    zhena gogolia

    @Suzanne:

    Secondly, is it “election interference”?

    No. SATSQ.

    Love the video. Strangely enough, it reminds me of Russia, because I was there when that song swept the country. It was on TV constantly, and I thought it was a Russian thang, but then I came back to the US and was hearing it everywhere here. That’s not how I remember the dance, though.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    @donnah:

    I also love that Trump’s guys think they are social media geniuses. Um, nope. You got beat by a bunch of kids, chumps!

  35. 35.

    Chyron HR

    @oldster:

    I too am deeply concerned that American citizens signing up for Trump rallies and not attending is the same as the Russian intelligence service carrying out cyber attacks against US citizens in exchange for political favors from the GOP.

  37. 37.

    Just Chuck

    Now I’m going to have that earworm stuck in my head for another decade.  Damn kids.

  41. 41.

    SFAW

    @debbie:

    You got beat by a bunch of kids, chumps!

    Named Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and Fred? And with the help of a large dog? Ruh-roh!!

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Sloane Ranger: Cannibalism came up in reference to DEMs in general. IIRC he spoke of asking the devotees who aren’t Qanon disciples what they thought of the “rumor”. Most answered that they “weren’t sure one way or the other, but they couldn’t discount the possibility.”

    If one has the time, watch the interview. This guy has spent a lot of time talking to these people they are seriously whack-a-doodle crazy.

  43. 43.

    MoCA Ace

    I take back all the shit I have ever said about K-pop music.  The kids are indeed alright!

  46. 46.

    wuzzat

    @oldster:

    If this were 50 years ago and she’d thanked Beatles fans for stepping up, would you have the same level of anxiety?  This is the same thing.

  47. 47.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @SiubhanDuinne: I think you have to work “sick” and “da bomb” into it somewhere. And then say “who let the dogs out, woof woof”.

  48. 48.

    dnfree

    @oldster: This isn’t “election interference”. It’s something the rally organizers should have tried to prevent. They could have set a limit on the number of tickets requested from the same device/browser, for instance. They wanted an eye-popping number of requests (hence bragging about getting a million), and they got what they wanted. But this is just a rally, not an election. No votes were influenced.

  50. 50.

    MattF

    @donnah: So, Trumpies were misled by the Kpop Kids into predicting a huge attendance. And, in fact, no one really wanted to go to the rally. All items are good news– dumb campaign, smart kids, unpopular rally.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @SFAW:  here is my quick summary of the latest Mnem update I have seen, from a jackal who was in touch with her:

    Mnem is doing well, she’s just busy, and will be returning to work this week, I think, and she will drop in to say hi soon-ish.

  58. 58.

    Eunicecycle

    I guess those people who waited in line since Wednesday feel pretty dumb. I saw reporting that the very first people in line were from Ohio (eye roll). We didn’t send our best.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @Frankensteinbeck: I think that is the most human I have ever seen Trump look.  Seriously.  This is what a real human would look like if a loved one died, or he just lost his job and his wife left him and took the dog.

    The way he looked around him as he was walking made me wonder if he was looking around and had the realization that it’s likely that he won’t win in November, and all this will be over.

  64. 64.

    RSA

    @donnah:

    But there was not a limit on tickets. So Team Trump can’t claim that the teens “used up” the tickets for actual attendees.

    Yes! Critical observation. The kids pranked the Trump campaign, but any the damage was done by the campaign itself, with overreach based on their own data collection.  In that sense, it’s not much different from Trump bragging about how many Twitter followers he has when a significant proportion of them are bots; a sensible person wouldn’t make important decisions based on data that’s so easily manipulated.

  66. 66.

    SFAW

    @RSA:

    a sensible person wouldn’t make important decisions based on data that’s so easily manipulated.

    But an easily-manipulated person would. In other words, the Traitor-in-Chief.

  67. 67.

    Cameron

    This delightful action by the Youngs reminds me of some of the things Srdja Popovic describes in Blueprint for Revolution.  A nonviolent uprising with a good sense of humor.

  68. 68.

    AnnaN

    Back in January, I became a fan of BTS – a band which is and isn’t the typical K-pop.  The video, singing and choreo are all from the genre, but the lyrics and the way the members of the band uhhh, comport themselves is so refreshing and thoughtful and heartening.  They write and produce most of their music.  As a LaineyGossip.com says – they are the perfect antidote to toxic masculinity.

    Spring Day speaks to topics of classism and the sinking of the Seowol Ferry Disaster  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEeFrLSkMm8

    Blood, Sweat, and Tears is about the price of fame and the pull of darkness.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmE9f-TEutc

    Daechwita is just fun headbanging rap from one of the members solo albums.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGjAWJ2zWW

    And the one which started it all for me:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwMa6gpoE9I

  71. 71.

    MattF

    @SFAW: Yes. Trump is gullible. Rational analysis isn’t part of his behavioral repertoire. No matter how many busses with spiked undercarriages are ordered up to fix his campaign problems, that can’t and won’t change.

  73. 73.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I think we need to keep hammering home that there was NO limit on tickets. So while the K-Pop crowd did God’s work in humiliating trump, his attendance was low because his popularity is at an all-time low and only the hardcore cultists were going to risk infection to bask in his swampy, orange glow.

  74. 74.

    Brendan in NC

    @ThresherK: Now there’s a blast from the past. As someone who lived just down the street from where the Rochester Lancers used to play; I actually remember seeing them play the Roughnecks. That doesn’t make me old, does it???

  75. 75.

    different-church-lady

    It occurs to me the thing that the most important skill Parscale lacks is telling the kinds of lies the press will go along with.

  78. 78.

    Belafon

    @oldster: if France offered to help after a hurricane, I would thank them as president.

    The big difference is that AOC didn’t offer to ally with South Korea if they would set up a campaign against Trump. She didn’t thank the country, but the people flooding the net.

  80. 80.

    opiejeanne

    @Suzanne:  You’re right about that.
    Both the Verve and the Verve Pipe were around at the same time, and their hits, The Freshman and Bittersweet Symphony were released within a year of each other. I get them mixed up.

  81. 81.

    Miss Bianca

    @AnnaN: Oh, thank you for the links! I have decided that out of sheer gratitude towards Da Yoot, if for no other reason, that I need to become acquainted with K-pop. Time to shake up my musical ‘verse!

  83. 83.

    Ken

    @donnah: @debbie: I’ve seen 6611 (don’t know the source), 6200 (fire department), and “around” 6000 (the ROK venue).  With that much uncertainty, who can say it wasn’t 19000?

  85. 85.

    Ken

    @Cameron: A nonviolent uprising with a good sense of humor.

    Oh sure, sounds fine, but when they drag you to Room 101 and it’s full of clowns…

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: I know! They were counting different parts of the crowd!

    6611 + 6200 + 6000 = 18,811

    See? they practically filled it!

  89. 89.

    Fair Economist

    To the Macarena! That’s just too funny. Even funnier because they can’t personally appreciate how funny it is (not having been here for the Macarena craze.)

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @MattF:

    Also, too:

    Has anyone explained why Trump is doing a rally in a state he won by almost 40 points, other than hoping to open wounds for people who remember on of the worst massacres of unarmed black Americans in our history?

    — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 21, 2020

    Even when the playing field is tilted at 45 degrees in his favor with his base, he still manages to be a huge loooser.

    He’s pathetic.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Ken

    By the way, is it still MAGA as in “Make”?  I thought they were going to switch to KAGA for “Keep”.  Maybe they had trouble getting the new caps from China. Or someone realized it sounds like “kegel”.

    If it’s still MAGA, the obvious question is “what have you been doing the last three and a half years?”

  92. 92.

    Peale

    Not to help my enemies by giving out to much info, but ARMY can turn on a dime and turn on each other. So uncle Joe, please do not fall for the gotcha question of “name your favorite Kpop group”. It’s a trap. There is no good answer that won’t lead to civil war amongst your supporters. You may think BTS is a safe answer because they are the most popular. You may think BigBang is the right answer because people are exited about their post military-service reunion. You may think Black Pink is harmless. Or EXO. These are land mines, I tell you.

  93. 93.

    opiejeanne

    @dnfree: I understood that there was a limit on how many tickets  any one person could get, 2 per phone number or some other identity.

  94. 94.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Someone on Twitter pointed something out that I think is important.  Why were the stands not filled last night?  Because the MAGAs don’t love Trump.  They love bigotry.  They love it with a frothing madness and will worship any champion.  Trump has been a pathetically unsuccessful champion of bigotry lately, so they’re losing enthusiasm.

  95. 95.

    Shakti

    @oldster:

    A bunch of children* fucking up the attendance numbers of a hateful dead rally is not the same as the nominated candidate of a major political party in a televised debate calling on a foreign party to release kompromat on his opponent, who he has also stated he would throw in jail if elected. Repeatedly!

    If anything, keeping the rally attendance numbers down probably mitigates violence and any potential spread of coronavirus.  GSLiC was thirsting for public affirmation and a chance to see people injured and killed. He loves mobs that injure innocent bystanders. That’s why he originally wanted the rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa.

     

    Those stans did a public service.

     

     

    *Yes, I know not all Kpop fans are children.

  97. 97.

    Wag

    The Death Star died by the Resistance’s hand, as well it should have.   People who take the wrong message from Star Wars movies should be humiliated.

  98. 98.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ken: Not sure. There’s a flagpole in our block flying a Trump “Keep America Great” flag right under the US flag. But I had heard that MAGA was making a comeback. Which raises the obvious question.

    Also, the Republican party decided that since they were going to have trouble getting a platform committee together with all the kerfuffle over convention location, they would just adopt the 2016 platform verbatim.

    Which has a lot of verbiage about the incompetence of “the current administration”.

  101. 101.

    different-church-lady

    @Another Scott:

    Has anyone explained why Trump is doing a rally in a state he won by almost 40 points,

    Safe spaces aren’t just for college kids, you know.

  107. 107.

    different-church-lady

    @Frankensteinbeck: Like I keep saying: he’s hawking something 80% of the country suddenly thinks sucks. He needs more rallies. Many more rallies. Once a day rallies.

  109. 109.

    Mai naem mobile

    @oldster: I am not sure if we should be worried about some kid KPOP back street boy type foreign actors when Orange Dbaf is asking the leader of China for help in winning the election.

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    @dnfree: The web page to request tickets said there was a limit of 2 tickets per cell phone number.

    That page, to me, read like it was specifically designed for data harvesting (all the tiny light grey text about signing up for updates from the campaign and their affiliates (and message and data rates may apply), etc., etc.).  Donnie’s campaign loves bots, so K-Pop kids signing up wasn’t a problem either (they don’t care about data quality, they want big numbers to put out on Tweets to bamboozle the press and their base).

    And the tickets were “first come first serve” which made it seem to me like they didn’t care how many they issued – who got in and how wasn’t their problem.  That was someone else’s problem than Parscale’s.

    tl;dr – the web page worked as designed, but they drank their own kool-ade.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @different-church-lady:

    Safe spaces aren’t just for college kids

    This.  The purpose of this rally was to make Trump feel powerful and adored and successful again.  Staging it at a time and place to give a middle finger to African-Americans was a minor bonus.  They picked the location mainly so Trump would be guaranteed a packed stadium of fans screaming their love of him and hatred of everyone he hates.

  114. 114.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Wag:

    People who take the wrong message from Star Wars movies should be humiliated.

    This x1000000000

  115. 115.

    Eural Joiner

    @Ken: 
    I saw a quote from the end of Pence’s speech earlier in the rally: “Make America great again, again.”
    Seriously, that’s what they’re going with?

  116. 116.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    Has anyone explained why Trump is doing a rally in a state he won by almost 40 points

    The rally was supposed to boost his spirits by surrounding him with adoring fans.  Any effect on voting was of secondary importance.

  117. 117.

    Mai naem mobile

    @Frankensteinbeck: it’s not just that

    I think OrangeDbag has been looking like a loser and politics to some people is like sports and they want to be on a winning team.

  119. 119.

    Cameron

    @MattF: It was my understanding he was trying to give them a lesson on humility, something our current leader wouldn’t understand at all.

  122. 122.

    NotMax

    @Wag

    Lest we forget.

    In 2012–13, a proposal on the White House’s website urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 30,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013: the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $850 quadrillion by the Lehigh University, or about 13,000 times the amount of mineable resources on Earth, while the International Business Times cited a Centives economics blog calculation that, at current rates of steel production, the Death Star would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The White House response also stated “the Administration does not support blowing up planets,” and questioned funding a weapon “with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship” as reasons for denying the petition. Source

    Did the Dolt 45ers settle on the name because Obama was against it?

    :)

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Frankensteinbeck: a packed stadium of fans screaming their love of him and hatred of everyone he hates.

    Well, yawning their love et cetera.  I think the problem is he peaked too early, when he got the standing ovation for drinking water. After that everything else was a letdown.

    BTW the West Point stories filled 18% of his time. Anyone want to guess the over/under for the next one?  Will he re-air the West Point grievances first, or just go directly to the “FAKE NEWS about the Tulsa rally”?

  126. 126.

    Peale

    God. I love the fact that they made it appear that demand was so high that trump’s campaign wasted money on that spillover space.

    For future events the campaign will probably try to set up some blocks and verification processes to get tickets. But they will be defeated. Lol. If there’s one thing these KPop fans know and understand it’s labrythine processes put in place to get tickets. They go through it all the time.

  127. 127.

    Sab

    @oldster: Well, they shouldn’t have been giving campaign event tickets out to kids in Korea.

    Also too, they shouldn’t have given out 800,000 tickets to a building that holds 20,000 people.

  128. 128.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I need to take the tweet posting lesson but here’s a good one from Jeff Tiedrich:

    imagine being trapped for three hours on Air Force One with President Sippy Cup as he throws a five-alarm shit-fit for the ages because his Tulsa #Coronapalooza was so fucking embarrassing that no one can possibly spin it as a success. hashtag sad

  131. 131.

    debbie

    @Roger Moore:

    I don’t think my stomach will be strong enough when an accounting is made of the cost to taxpayers of all these “cheering up Trump” events.

  132. 132.

    MattF

    In addition to all the inherent Schadenfreudian joys, it should be noted that this particular disaster was Trump’s own very special idea for rejuvenating his campaign. The Trump campaign organization eagerly went along with it, but at core, Trump himself was just plain dead wrong.

  136. 136.

    low-tech cyclist

    Re the slogans: it would be funny how Mr. “I Alone Can Fix It” is still blaming his poor coronavirus response on Obama (when he isn’t claiming success, that is), even though he’d been President for three years when it hit our shores.

    Whatever problems Obama allegedly left him, he hasn’t exactly been Mr. Fix-It.  Maybe even some his fans might be brought up a bit short when reminded of that.

  137. 137.

    Ken

    @Sab: Also too, they shouldn’t have given out 800,000 tickets to a building that holds 20,000 people

    In a city with a population of 400,000.

    There was a Bloom County long ago where Milo and Bill the Cat were applying for a permit for some sort of festival. The city clerk asked how many they were expecting, Milo said about 20,000. The clerk asked if they’d made restroom arrangements, and Milo said “Yeah, we’re getting one of those porta-johns”.

  138. 138.

    Peale

    @Sab: just to reiterate, those fans are kpop interfans, not Koreans. BTS is very popular in this country. Could give a week of performances in our largest stadiums and sell them out each night if they wanted to.

  140. 140.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Kudos to those teens and k-pop fans for making Trump and the campaign look like even bigger fools than they already are.

    With that said, TikTok is for the most part very cringey and is suspiciously close to the Chinese government for my liking

  142. 142.

    Roger Moore

    @debbie:

    The amount of taxpayer money spend on “cheer up Trump” events is probably less than what we’ve spend on subsidizing his golf courses.  It’s still a huge waste, and I hope the local governments that have been stiffed manage to collect, but it’s far from Trump’s worst offense.

  144. 144.

    Ken

    @Just Chuck: Yeah, but any halfway competent data harvesting application would have been sounding a red alert at what was streaming in. “Hmm, 300 straight registrations from the same IP address, each for 2 tickets using a gmail account that was set up less than 5 minutes before, and in the name of ‘F. U. Notsee’.”

  145. 145.

    Brendan in NC

    @Suzanne: Oh, FFS!!! And I worked in a music store when those songs came out, and had to explain this exact thing to customers…I’m blaming tRump ?!!!!

  146. 146.

    Jay Noble

    @Another Scott: This is a good demonstration of what could happen with electronic online voting.

    Nebraska learned its lesson a few years ago with a new license plate design contest. Pretty much the same thing as here – group found an event with no guard rails and went for it.

  147. 147.

    Just Chuck

    @NotMax: There was a hiliarous message that went around on, like UseNet or some other pre-web thingy, from the chief engineer of the Death Star.  Basically saying “You got a fucking planet-destroying metal moon of a battle station.  You know how much HEAT that generates?  I got it down to ONE exhaust vent, just ONE.  Recessed it to reduce angles of attack, surrounded it with every gun we had.  But no one ever put MAGICAL FUCKING SPACE WIZARDS on the engineering requirements list, so indeed we weren’t prepared for the contingency of stolen top-secret design plans falling into the hands of MAGICAL FUCKING SPACE WIZARDS.”

     

    Then there was the second Death Star.  Which would have been safe if the Empire’s mighty vaunted ground forces were able to withstand the overwhelming force brought by the concerted Attack Of The Teddy Bears.  And did no one think of the independent contractors who were still working on it when they blew it up?

  149. 149.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I am having such a good time this morning. I am beginning to allow myself the hope that I will feel this way again on the morning after Election Day. So much better than Election Day 2016, which was my 59th birthday.

    I know the two months after that, assuming they lose, will be filled with unprecedented spite and destruction and evil. But I hope to have a nice big November delivery of Schadenfreude to help me get through to January.

  152. 152.

    Just Chuck

    @Sab: It was originally going to be outdoors.  Even then they should have seen something askew with the numbers, but were too high on their own supply to see it.

  153. 153.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Roger Moore:

    Whatever happened to all the same people who complained about Obama golfing 6000 days a year? Didn’t some Republicans complain?Don’t tell me it was all bullshit from the start and that politics for them is 100% transactional. Say it ain’t so

  154. 154.

    Yutsano

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): TikTok is nearly impossible to manage (at least by any system I could figure out) and throws you irrelevant videos even when you have your preferences clearly sent. And either most of the videos are staged supposed “spontaneous” moments or people being cruel to each other for lulz. I downloaded for a friend then about a week after pulled right back out. That’s gonna stay a no touchie zone for me for a while.

  155. 155.

    WereBear

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Instead I decided to write about young people because they rock.

     
    Indeed, I think the age of the protagonist is what slots this for people, since YA covers a lot of genres and complex and important issues.

  157. 157.

    Aleta

    @Sure Lurkalot:   They’ll spin it though.

    I  can picture:  ‘Young hardened criminals paid by Biden’s kids hacked my fans to steal their tickets.’  ‘Bad governors and fake health scientists prevented ticket holders from traveling.’  ‘We were ordered to leave top seats empty because of crackpot air circulation rules we inherited from Obama’s EPA-CDC, which we must  completely  abolish.’ ‘There were confirmed threats … but they’re not reporting our tremendous  success keeping everyone safe.’

  159. 159.

    Kropacetic

    @Sab: Well, they shouldn’t have been giving campaign event tickets out to kids in Korea.

    Did they though? Fans of Korean artists != people from Korea

  160. 160.

    Aziz, light!

    All entertainment is international now. I’ve been enjoying kdrama (Korean TV shows) for a decade. The Korean industry turns out a huge amount of content with witty writing and a lot of depth, and their production values are state of the art.

    And yes, the kids are alright. But I do fret about whether they will turn out to vote.

  161. 161.

    Shana

    @Miss Bianca: Don’t know about K-Pop, but a friend recently turned us on to K-dramas and we’ve been enjoying the heck out of them.  So far we’ve watched Romance is a Bonus Book and are most of the way through Crash Landing On You – no spoilers please.

    Highly recommended.

  162. 162.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Yutsano:

    Some of the stuff on there seemed pretty good from just seeing random videos online and ads. Talented people use it to produce content. However, Vine had much funnier content on it (like the legendary “Just Do It” by Shia LaBeouf. He filmed it in front of a green screen so it could have any background you wanted).

    On top all that, TikTok apparently has a large teen girl user base, so that adds a level of skeeviness to the whole thing

    A lot of “I’m not like other girls. I’m so quirky.” crap on there too

  165. 165.

    Cameron

    @Aleta: “My loyal real-American followers were viciously attacked by the Boogaloo Biden Bois, while the socialist Tulsa police stood by and did nothing!”

  166. 166.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NeenerNeener: ha! The master of marketing and media manipulation really knows how to keep stories that make him look weak and stupid and volatile in the top of the headlines.

  167. 167.

    Another Scott

    A reminder about the “very fine people” that Donnie likes so much. France24:

    As France crumbled under the Nazi invasion in June 1940, the German army engaged in a series of massacres against African soldiers in the Lyon region, in the southeast of the country. After shining a light on these atrocities thanks to the discovery of new photos, historian Julien Fargettas discussed them with FRANCE 24.

    A photo shows the fear on the faces of the Senegalese riflemen fighting for the French army, as German soldiers lead them into a field. One of eight hitherto unpublished images depicting the Chasselay massacre, it shows some of a group of 40 soldiers who only had minutes to live, killed by machine-gun fire from Panzers positioned along a road.

    These photos are at the centre of Julien Fargettas’ new work Juin 1940, combats et massacres en Lyonnais (“June 1940, battles and massacres in the Lyon region”, not translated into English). They were discovered in an old album bought by a young private collector, Baptiste Garin. “What these pictures reveal is that the perpetrators really thought this mass execution through,” said Fargettas. “It’s really disturbing. And when we look at the attitude of the German soldiers, we see that they’re showing no emotion.”

    This was not the first time Nazis massacred African soldiers. “It started at the end of May 1940, in the Somme region,” Fargettas explained. “There was no order from high up saying that colonial prisoners of war should be killed or even ill-treated. It was impulsive, but the German military hierarchy did nothing to even try to stop it.”

    Too much of Black history has been erased for too long.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  169. 169.

    Fair Economist

    @Another Scott:

    Donnie’s campaign loves bots, so K-Pop kids signing up wasn’t a problem either (they don’t care about data quality, they want big numbers to put out on Tweets to bamboozle the press and their base).

    True, which makes the kpop campaign even more effective, because from now on out, anytime the Trump campaign tweets about online support, the chorus “but how many are kpop stans” will go up.

  170. 170.

    J R in WV

    Watched a little of the talking heads news last night at our typically late dinnertime. Was depressing how few people showed up for Trump’s adorama meet last night!! HaHa!!

    Glad the Tulsa FD kept track of the crowd, if a hundred thousand folks had actually showed up, they would have had to stop entry at 19,000 odd, but not an issue for them last night. Also glad Tbump wasted so much time talking about previous failures, like West Point, where the graduates obviously did not care for him.

    They spent 4 years learning about military honor, which some Ringknockers never learn, like Pompeo, first in his class, last in honor today working for the toad. But enough of them picked up on how honor works to know that Trump is absent all honor, couldn’t even score a win on a multiple choice define Honor question.

  171. 171.

    Shana

    @MattF: I also heard yesterday on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me that the community in Oregon that blew up the dead whale in the 1970s named a park after the event.

  172. 172.

    Aleta

    Some of the replies this morning to Parscal on May 7: “For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time.”

    https://twitter.com/drivenbyboredom/status/1274561991340961794

    https://twitter.com/Infantry0300/status/1274689064734724097

    https://twitter.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1258399920161259522

    https://twitter.com/ProbablyWayne/status/1274558502606909442

  173. 173.

    Baud

    I never put that much stock in crowd size or things like lawn signs.   But decent people are happy this morning, so I’m happy.

  175. 175.

    leeleeFL

    @OzarkHillbilly: Why is it that every charlatan gathers believers who insist there is a secret code only they can interpret.  I asked this question of the parental units decades ago when my departure from the catholic church was guaranteed.  A constant dissection of the preachings had made me such a skeptic, I couldn’t force myself to go anymore.  Pop never recovered

  176. 176.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Another Scott:

    It’s sometimes unfathomable that humans could be so caught up in something like that and do nothing and engage in atrocities.

    How would these men look themselves in the mirror afterwards? I have no illusions about the power of racism and compartmentalization.

    I read a little about Himmler’s daughter who only died a few years ago who remained a committed Nazi up until the end. Denazification didn’t work on her and she felt embittered by the experience. I wonder how many other people ended up like her and her mother? It’s very disturbing that she could continue to defend her father after everything he had done.

    I think what’s scary about fascism and totalitarianism in general is the overwhelming fear the regime wields over the population it rules over. “Good Germans” was and remains a popular insult, but would most of us do any differently when faced with a violent, lawless regime?

    I’d like to think I’d do the right thing when the time came. Looking back at Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy makes reminds one that all of us are influenced by our circumstances to be the people we are

  177. 177.

    tallred

    @Ken: As someone who runs an arena for a living, both numbers can be correct. 6200 is likely the number of attendees, and 6611 is likely the number of people inside the building, including performers, ticket takers, ushers, security, custodians, etc.

    For every event, we have to collect both numbers.

     

    @Ken:

  179. 179.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    I didn’t realize BJ After Dark had moved to Sunday morning. The ratings on the Garden Thread must be down.

    You always make me happy, regardless of you state of decency.

  185. 185.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jeffreyw: god almighty, after all this time I can still be surprised. That’s a long-ass 75 seconds of Sir Stories to talk about why he looked so frail and frightened.

    Once again, the Master of Messaging!

  186. 186.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    “911, what is your emergency?”

    “Schaden… <gasp>… Freude… <gasp>… too much… can’t… stop… laughing…”

  187. 187.

    Chris Johnson

    @donnah: I worked on staff for Bronycon, the largest My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic convention, for five years (or was it six?)

    All of the Bronycons that I worked at the Baltimore Convention Center had more attendance than Trump’s rally.

  189. 189.

    aliasofwestgate

    I’ve been a low key Kpop fan since about 2011 when Shinee caught my ear. They lost a member in 2017 when he committed suicide due to depression. They’re comforting sound wise and don’t abuse the autotune.

    I don’t consider myself a ‘stan’ since i’ve been listening to kpop onand off for years along with jpop. I’ve been aware of the BTS fans for quite a while and it amuses me greatly to know they completely trolled Trump’s Coronapalooza. XD

    The kpop formula is all familiar to me as i was one of the original NKOTB fangirls when i was the Zoomer’s age group. I will never be on the level of stan, mostly because i don’t have the energy to get into the full blown online wars they get into regarding which band is coolest, which member is hottest, etc.

    But as an audiophile and online DJ, knowing what’s going on is integral to things and kpop and jpop are here to stay. I love the music in general, but that’s me who’s been audio obsessed and language?  Translations abound online nowadays! XD

     

    This was one of the songs that got me hooked on Shinee:

    https://youtu.be/Dww9UjJ4Dt8  Lucifer. Usually love based stuff but OMG the beat, melodies, and the sheer driving fun of the song.

  191. 191.

    WereBear

    @TaMara (HFG): I think we need to keep hammering home that there was NO limit on tickets.

     
    I have been pointing this out, since it does matter. Any functioning operation would have caught onto the fact they might be gamed.

  193. 193.

    Barbara

    @oldster: As far as I can tell, by giving out so many tickets in excess of the raw number of seats they must have realized that most people getting tickets had no intention of going.  They wanted to get people’s information.  They were upfront about that.  Basically, they had no idea how many people were planning to show up and they were just making up stuff out of their ass.  If they wanted to ensure attendance at the rally they would have taken an entirely different approach.  Why they crowed so much in advance of the event about the attendance I have no idea because anyone with actual planning responsibility must have known what was going on with the distribution of tickets.

    Which means, as well, that if there had been organic enthusiasm among thousands of people in Tulsa or other parts of Oklahoma, those people could still have attended — they were in no way “crowded out” by K-Pop or TikTok schemes.

    Also, asking people to sign a release regarding COVID-19 — my husband was shocked.  He figured that it probably inhibited attendance way more than they anticipated.  Not that anyone would have sued, but it was like a stark reminder that people were being asked to put their health at risk.

  194. 194.

    Baud

    @jeffreyw:

    Heh.

    I wonder if McNaughton will paint “Trump Descending the Ramp” in the style of “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”

  195. 195.

    Mallard Filmore

    @donnah:

     

    But there was not a limit on tickets. So Team Trump can’t claim that the teens “used up” the tickets for actual attendees.

    Not much different from driving up click counts, or internet vote stuffing, or foreign bots pushing a hashtag.

  196. 196.

    RepubAnon

    @oldster: How many K-Pop fans are US citizens?

    I expect Bill Barr will get on this at some point.  However, given that Mr. Trump himself welcomes such antics (if they help his campaign), it’ll be hard to do so in a way that isn’t nakedly partisan.  Not that Trump would care – but Barr may look at the polling numbers and start looking to retire in countries lacking an extradition treaty with the US.

    I expect tickets to future events by both parties will either be handled by the local party offices, or through donations of $1 or more to the campaign.  (Thus making it easier to spot trolls.)

  201. 201.

    Baud

    @MattF:

    Get the brain bleach.

    Why? I don’t have COVID.

     

    ETA:

    Nude Descending A Staircase

    How did you know the name of my self-portrait?

  203. 203.

    rollSound

    @oldster: It isn’t different, but I’m tired of bringing a knife to a gun fight.  For now, I’ll take us and Korea against them and Russia and maybe China.

  204. 204.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I must respectfully disagree with AOC on this on.

     

    The kids PWNED Donald and Parscale.

  205. 205.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mark Knoller @markknoller ·55m
    Pres Trump has arrived at his golf club in Sterling, VA. By my count it’s his 79th time there, second only to his 83 visits to his golf club in West Palm Beach, FL.

    My dad taught me to play golf. Or at least he tried to. I was never any good– truth is, he wasn’t that great, but I have a lot of memories of being on the golf course with my dad, my brother and my sister (who was better than any of us).

    Happy Fathers Day to the dad in the house.

  206. 206.

    aliasofwestgate

    @Villago Delenda Est: Pwned them so hard, i’ve been cackling all morning about it and enjoying listening to my Shinee stuff again and checking out BTS for the first time. Mostly because the audiophile in me HAS to know what these kids love so hard.

  207. 207.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @oldster: However — I feel *slightly* nervous about AOC thanking foreign nationals for help with election interference. I mean, I know that many K-Pop fans are US citizens. But what about the others?

    Almost everyone I know over seas is contributing to a Democratic candidate. Turns out “America” as a concept is something whole world cherishes.

  209. 209.

    Mike in NC

    Rumor has it that Fat Bastard will now want the biggest and bestest July 4th parade ever to try to raise his crushed spirits. I want it to include the Baby Trump balloon.

  210. 210.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rollSound: as an old man who considers everything after Darkness to be “newer Springsteen”, I’m still not clear on what Kpop is, but this is the first indication I’ve seen that it’s an intelligence operation by the South Korean government.

    I am also so old an old man that I remember the TV movie starring KISS where a mad government scientist hatched a plan to SPOILER ALERT! drug  or hypnotize the boys and use them to turn the KISS Army into a secret weapon against… well, I forget against whom, but the song “Rip And Destroy” caused a dangerous riot of white kids at an amusement park

  211. 211.

    aliasofwestgate

    Oh also, the US based Kpop fandom has been selling out stadiums regularly since 2011 and hasn’t let the hell up since. It’s actually grown in popularity. Kpop booths are a mainstay at most anime conventions (i frequent anime cons myself), so the fandom is very much huge and crazy.  So there may be a bit of help from the international fandom, but the US fandom is not small at all. Not by any measurement.

  212. 212.

    Emma from FL

    Has anyone seen the Lincoln Project ad on Chyna? (yes, they spelled it like that). They even use chinese insults about Trump “begging” the chinese for election help “like a dog.” If I had money I would put this one out on wide distribution. It is merciless.

  218. 218.

    Another Scott

    @MattF: Hehe.  Of course.

    But the important question is, Is it RICO?  Please let it be RICO!!?

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  219. 219.

    cain

    @oldster: Sorry to seem humorless, so I will end by saying “yay for AOC! Yay for the kids! Down with the shitgibbon!”

    The difference is that it’s like thanking Queensryche fans. Also she;s thanking them after the fact so she isn’t encouraging them. Kpop is just a genre of music.

    (yes, I specifically picked Queensryche ;)

  221. 221.

    johncarter1966

    It’s really a great thing. AND a really nice thank you, in a great, (even  if unintentional) youthful way,  for America’s participation in helping South Korea stay independent of and not a parcel of N.K.

    That’s not to say we are owed anything. It’s just nice for some of South Korea’s “future” to do something that may help us some way.

    My uncles who served there from 51 to 53 would be as proud as my dad who served in WWII of the anti nazi  crowd.

    Thanx guys and keep it up. Maybe one day we can all dance to freedom!l

  223. 223.

    patroclus

    All I can say is that Tik Tok users and K-Pop fans not only won the internet this week but that they just pulled off one of the greatest senior pranks ever!

  224. 224.

    cain

    @RSA:

    Brad Parscale must have also added some more embellishments too to the shitgibbon. The man must have been through the moon with all the registrations and then decided to do more stuff like that outdoor theater and talk.

    Then with people waiting in line, it must have driven up his anticipation. In the end though, you got a under expectation, bored crowd. Not what he expected at all.

    It must have been devestated him. He’s gonna be an ass for a few days to his staff and Brad is going to get fucked.

  225. 225.

    debbie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    One of my brothers returned from a trip to Europe which included a trip to Auschwitz and was dumbfounded at the Germans who knew and did nothing. “How could they have let that happen?” He was appalled.

    This same brother voted for Trump. Should I ever speak to him again, I will for sure be rubbing his nose in this. “Do you now know how that could have happened?”

  226. 226.

    Feathers

    @RepubAnon: Considering the Trump team didn’t bother to put on the legally required “I am over 18” checkbox, Barr probably doesn’t want to go looking too closely into who actually signed up for those tickets.

    Also, is there any requirement to be a US citizen to request free tickets to a campaign event?

  233. 233.

    cain

    @Yutsano:

    There  was some other video app that I downloaded that was kind of like tiktok.. it was filled with teen girls and..ugh. I felt like a creeper, and promptly uninstalled it. It was just not relevant to me and secondly I was just not the demographic for that app unless you happen to be a creeper. [shudder]

  234. 234.

    cain

    @Aziz, light!:

    Yeah, the Korean movies have been outstanding. (thanks Netflix!) It’s one of the reasons why I prefer netflix over just about anything – they’ve really help drive the love of foreign movies and shows across the world and in fact also produce shows as well. (plus my people show up more often than the primarily white in the other streaming services)

    Also great seeing you here.. you don’t post that often.

  237. 237.

    Redshift

    @Barbara:

    Why they crowed so much in advance of the event about the attendance I have no idea because anyone with actual planning responsibility must have known what was going on with the distribution of tickets. 

    In a normal campaign where the top goal is winning, that would be true. But in the Trump campaign, the most important thing for keeping your job is to make Trump feel good. That’s why they were having a rally in Oklahoma in the first place. It wouldn’t surprise me if Parscale convinced himself that sure, some of the requests were fake, but most of them were real Trump fans giving him their data and an overcapacity crowd would surely show up.

  239. 239.

    Bill Arnold

    @WaterGirl:

    I think that is the most human I have ever seen Trump look.

    Human? :-)
    Watch the hands, particularly the left hand. :-) (full link)

    The walk of shame. pic.twitter.com/u0GRFnnKeY— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 21, 2020

    The hands are not happy, and they do not fully get along. :-) The left hand was a bit confused there, looking for something in the [jacket?] that wasn’t present.

    (Sorry, I collect these DJT oddities. :-)

  240. 240.

    Ken

    @Feathers: Also, is there any requirement to be a US citizen to request free tickets to a campaign event?

    I’m sure the website would have mentioned that, if it were the case.

    (mutter offstage)

    I’m being informed that the website did not in fact include all (mutter) sorry, did not include any of the legally-required checks and notifications.

  241. 241.

    cain

    @cain: It must have been devestated him. He’s gonna be an ass for a few days to his staff and Brad is going to get fucked.

    Whoops, looks like he did get fucked. Oh well. :)

  242. 242.

    Redshift

    @Feathers:

    Also, is there any requirement to be a US citizen to request free tickets to a campaign event? 

    Nope. You have to be a citizen to register people to vote or gather qualifying signatures, but not much else in a campaign.

  243. 243.

    Ken

    @Bill Arnold: The walk of shame. pic.twitter.com/u0GRFnnKeY— The Lincoln Project

    He’s incapable of shame. That’s the walk of defeat, at least until he figures out a way to convince himself that everything went exactly like he wanted.

    (Sorry, I collect these DJT oddities. :-)

    That explains why you’re on the list of top 10 consumers of storage devices.

  244. 244.

    JPL

    @debbie: At least trump only removed children from their parents and put them in cages.   They then transferred them to other locations but didn’t keep track of them, so mothers who did nothing but want a better life for their children, lost them permanently.   They were here to apply for legal asylum.    Back in the day were turned away boats of refugees that had to go back and the passengers faced certain death.

  245. 245.

    cain

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    @cain: Queensryche is not a genre of music.  Thank dog.

    Having lived in the 80s, Queensryche fans definitely thought they were _the_ genre of music :D

    But it was always fun watching them and Rush fans attack each other.

  246. 246.

    Miss Bianca

    @Bill Arnold: Wow, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen him look like an actual human man his age. That Tulsa thing musta actually shook him

    ETA: In other words, defeat becomes him.

  247. 247.

    L85NJGT

    For the olds looking for a point of entry, give Hyori’s Bed & Breakfast a try.

    It’s a reality show featuring some Korean musicians and their house-guests. Very down tempo, and character driven rather than faux-conflict.

  249. 249.

    Chetan Murthy

    @oldster: I’m gonna grasp the nettle.  Our country was *attacked* by our declared foreign adversaries.  *Attacked*.  They managed to install a regime that is systematically destroying our government, as well as our alliances with our closest allies and friends.

    We.  Were.  Attacked.

    At this point, if the EU, if Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, if they (the -governments-, the -states-) want to mount an effort to rescue us, I AM ALL FOR IT.  Why would we not be?

     

    What?  Do only the bad guys get to fight unfettered?  Fuck that.  Our Republic is on the line: we need all our allies.  And they well know that if we go down, the cause of liberal democracy worldwide is in grave danger

    ETA: Is it only heroic and moral when -we- go overseas to aid our allies?  And is it perfidy when our allies come here to aid us?

  250. 250.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: that’s how I felt about Fredo in this clip

    (and am I imagining things cause I hate him, or does it sound like Fredo works at keeping his voice in a deeper register than is natural?)

  252. 252.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Nazis had powerful tool—domas we say, don’t resist at all or we’ll torture and kill your child while we force you to watc.

    IIRC Trump thought we should round up and hold families of captured terrorists!

  258. 258.

    jackmac

    The late Dick Tuck would have been proud of these kids.

    (Who’s Dick Tuck?  Look it up).

  260. 260.

    SFAW

    @jackmac:

    Who’s Dick Tuck?

    A genius. [No need to look him up.] I would have loved to see what he could do to the Traitor-in-Chief’s campaign

  262. 262.

    SFAW

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    (and am I imagining things cause I hate him, or does it sound like Fredo works at keeping his voice in a deeper register than is natural?)

    He probably thought Star Lord was super-cool when he dropped his voice a register to mock Thor. [Infinity War reference, sorry.]

  264. 264.

    Shakti

    Justin M. Boudreau (original tweets) has a different take on what the K-Pop and TikTok stans did:

    Ok let me break this down for you.

    The k-pop kids didn’t cause the rally to be poorly attended. Having an indoor rally in the middle of a pandemic did that.

    What the kids did do, was absolutely wreck the Trump campaigns voter tracking and id system. Let me explain

    X/1

    At their most basic level campaigns are about 2 things.

    1) figuring out who’s going to vote for you and
    2) getting them out to vote.

    There’s some persuasion in there but for this purpose we will shelve it.

    /2

    Campaigns will score voters on their likelihood of support and their intention to vote.

    A person who attends rallies, gives money and votes in every election would be an A1 voter.

    A person who votes only in presidential years but still signs up for an email list is a B3. /3

    High support high voting people are gold, identifing them is vital to a winning campaign.

    Here’s is why the TikToc army did was so bad for the campaigns so called Death Star.

    They claimed 1 mllion signups. That’s 1 million highly engaged potential voters.

    /4

    1 million people willing to go to a rally is the motherload of campaign data. You can milk that list for fundraising, future events, even a 1% return rate on a direct mail would be huge.

    The down ballot campaigns will give you whatever you want for that list.

    /5

    But for the Trump campaign that data is clearly garbage. It’s sugar in the gas tank. There’s no way to parse the trash data out from the real stuff.

    Going after those cardboard cutout supporters is a massive waste of campaign resources.

    The entire data op is shot. /6

    The only thing Brad and the boys can do is cut their losses and throw the entire last 10 days off data collection in the trash. Roll the clocks back and start over.

    This assumes they have backups.

    This is the kind of data SNAFU that gets managers fired. /Fin.

  265. 265.

    Spiegel60609

    If they really believed there were going to be hundreds of thousands of attendees in a city of 400,000 – which would imply that there would be an influx of out-of-towners –  would it have been so difficult to do a spot check on hotels.com and see if there were rooms available for that night?

  266. 266.

    Martin

    As a parent of two zoomers who went through the whole boy scout, girl scout, marching band, social interaction, the zoomers are awesome, best as I can tell, all of them.

    They are vastly more inclusive than any other generation I’ve interacted with, empathetic, and have a general ‘no more fucks to give’ since most of them are convinced they’ll not survive to retirement given climate change and all the bullshit the olds have laid at their feet. At my son’s (online) commencement, the speaker did a solid and started by apologizing for all the problems prior generations are leaving them, offering only a little bit of advice – the most important of which was that they know what the priorities ought to be and to fight for them as fiercely as they can.

    Worth noting that zoomers despise millennials as much as they despise boomers. That’s probably inevitable, but they see millennials as having passively dealt with so many of the problems the nation and world faces. Yeah, they helped elect Obama, who the zoomers adore, but their idea of revolutionary change was Instacart, not tearing down confederate statues. That’s why they like Bernie. It’s not that they want to burn things down for the sake of doing it. It’s that their future is a dystopian one, and a lot of institutions are in need of burning down to save them from that.

    And they don’t fucking care if we like it or not. This is generational self-preservation. And this is why I’m optimistic. These are not young people that won’t vote. Zoomers see themselves as fighters.

  267. 267.

    Sebastian

    Fellow jackals, I have a favor to ask of you regarding something I saw on Twitter thank la to Betty Cracker:

    It looks like there is a movement starting where teenagers are asked to block Fox on their parent’s TVs.

    I honestly believe this is the moment we’ve been waiting for and we should amplify it as much as we can.

    If you are on Twitter or Facebook spread it to the groups you know are aligned with us. The Beyhive, BTSARMY, the Swifties, and all others you can think of.

  268. 268.

    Bill Arnold

    @WaterGirl:

    Which is the arm that seems to have a mind of its own? Maybe the reach for the jacket move was to cover up something like that?

    Left arm. Right cerebral hemisphere. Or vv, depending on which hemisphere has control.
    (I might or might not be serious. :-)

  269. 269.

    The Lodger

    @Spiegel60609: This may be one of those operations where the first person to fact check the party line gets fired. I was expecting more cynicism from the Trump campaign myself.

  271. 271.

    cain

    @Martin:

    I’m glad they don’t hate us Gen Xers.. I’m glad that we at least spawned a better more awesome kind of Americans.

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