- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Rattled by a horde of MAGA trolls, here’s what I learned about today’s social media miasma.
Last Friday I made a post on Bluesky and X, concerning U.S. President Donald Trump’s description of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor.” It occurred to me that, numb as we are to Trump’s stream of blather, the importance of that remark was being overlooked. It was an overt declaration by the president of the United States that he does not recognize Canadian sovereignty. That’s scary.
So, my post: “For a US president to refer to the Prime Minister of Canada as ‘Governor’ isn’t just rude. It’s a hostile act.”
The post got little attention on Bluesky. On X, for whatever reason, it went berserk. Over the weekend it racked up close to 3,000 reposts, over 29,000 “likes” and more than 5,000 replies. Those replies came almost entirely from Trump-loving trolls, piling scorn and abuse on my concerns. “Yeah but it’s Canada so who gives a fuck?” said one.
Do the responses represent a genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion on Trump’s bully-boy act?
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Get off of twitter accept that its a lost cause. stop wasting your time arguing with people who think it’d be funny to kill you.
@breakfastmtn You have to remember that a lot of the accounts on X aren’t real people, they’re bots.
Its bad on TikTok too. I’ve seen lots of news clips on TikTok of Trump and the 51st sate comment. Most comment replies to these videos have been from Maga supporters. Along the lines of “Canada should be honored to become part of the greatest country on earth”.
It’s very disturbing and very serious. An outright sign of war. It’s a tarrif war for now but I worry about what it will be in future.
genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion
yes… of a vocal subset of the maga cult. magas generally have some similar views but it’s the extremist trolls that you encounter most online… because they’re so fucking persistent and they’re everywhere specifically looking for opportunities to hurt others and spread the gospel of a leaky diaper.
the maga nuts are about one-third of the country. another third is furious and pissed-off, and the last third has no fucking clue how bad it really is and how much worse it’s headed for.
I like how The Thee has replaced their X link with Mastodon and Bluesky. More sites need to do this.
Post to X
Get trolled
Many such cases
The media needs to catch up with the notion that they can’t rely on Twitter to be an accurate pulse on the world sentiment. It’s not the same people at X. It’s not people at X in a lot of cases with the bots.
It likely went “berserk” because X’s algorithm and the bots are tuned to whip up keywords like “governor” and “Canada” used together.
They forget. We burned down the white house once, and we’ll fucking do it again.
Don’t just stop at the White House. A Tsar Bomba dropping on DC would be more worthwhile.
Maybe, but sometimes you just have to bloody the bullies nose and they’ll leave you alone.
Which is what I suspect we all want, eh?
The purpose of troll farms is to overwhelm people with a wave of opinion, making it seem like it’s the opinion of the majority even if it’s only a minority, to make readers doubt their own opinions as they see to much support which really is only 1 person for every 1000 comments if that.
Anyone with any sense doesn’t use Twitter anymore. This is like throwing bait into a shark tank and being surprised by the reaction.
You know those are just bots, right?
This title is pure drama
Wah! I refuse to leave the leopard cage and don’t understand why there are leopards in it!
I know right, what did they expect would happen in the platform owned by a literal Nazi?
Canadians will need to do the right thing and hurt America in the spot they like most: their pocketbook.
This will hurt us too, no doubt. Monetarily, probably more. But I don’t think the average American are prepared for what kind of hurt we can put them through.
I agree with you but you need to be careful about the details. You’d like to think Americans care about their pocketbook, but so many people voted for Trump with the clear expectation that he would raise the cost of living.
Or maybe they believed his lies, and now we’ve seen that egg prices are higher than ever and gas isn’t going down, but still there’s no public outcry, right? We have millions of Americans who will vote against their own best financial interests.
I think it’s still kind of early for many Americans who voted for Trump to “bring down the price of eggs” to realize that they were lied to.
There has to be some level of cope that they’ll have to overcome first. Like they’ll see Trump and Elon dismantling the gov and think that they’re just making it less wasteful to save money, which they’ll use to save the economy. Or that as more and more “criminal” immigrants are deported prices will start to come down somehow. Something along those lines.
I like to imagine that the farther we go into Trump’s presidency the more that those economic voters will start to realize that they were sold a bad bill of goods. It’s only been about a month since he was inaugurated after all. He’s still in that “honeymoon” phase of his presidency.
What do you expect when you engage in the platform ran by a wannabe-Nazi?
@breakfastmtn “is this how americans really feel?” – a lot of them, yes. 100%, there are plenty of americans who feel that way. certainly not all of them, but definitely a lot
It’s probably a vanishingly small population that actually believes the US should absorb Canada. The problem is there’s a substantial population that will just support anything Trump says without critical thought, and Trump will repeat anything Putin tells him to without critical thought.
Maybe 30% at most. The rest of us certainly don’t. The problem is that another 40% can’t be bothered to vote.
People who decide not to vote are in fact making a positive statement, they’re saying “we agree with whatever the people who do vote decide.” I don’t give America a pass due to apathy.
deleted by creator
Look at every war America has been involved in. In nearly all of them, the USA was in the wrong but there was still massive support.
WTF are you talking about. You wanted the Nazis To win WWII? Why don’t you ask the South Koreans if they think US involvement in their war was “in the wrong”?
Massive support? People were marching in the streets here over Vietnam.
As a general rule, nothing curated by an algorithm is genuine.
Iterate that for an algorithm controlled by an American corporation.
Then iterate it again for Musk.
Combine that with everyone having left Twitter who isn’t maga.
No, your experience on Twitter is not representative of the average American.
Lemmy also has algorithms mind you.
They all do.
Ok so nothing is genuine? That’s your take?
Sounds like a reasonable conclusion.
That’s the opposite or “reasonable” lol
I don’t see what’s unreasonable about saying that you shouldn’t take the things you read on algorithmic social media sites as representative of any population at large. That it’s not a “genuine” representation of any population.
Every social media is “algorithmic”. So, yes, it’s unreasonable to say you should take nothing you read anywhere as representative.
