I remember when Trump first won, the American-centered part of the web I would occasionally stop by seemed completely infiltrated with MAGA trolls. You had this feeling people thought it was edgy and fun - the worst kind of cultural moment seemed to be happening.
This time around I’m not so much on mainstream social media. And when I do check them out, it seems hard to understand what the vibe is as most content is AI or from professional content creators.
The closest thing I see to Trump supporters these days seems to be the enablers who endlessly repeat how they won’t vote for Harris for some dumb reason or another - they simply cannot vote for a black woman president because it’s not progressive enough, and all that jazz. But I don’t ever see Trump supporters.
Of course they exist still. I have just chose social media platforms strategically to avoid toxic people.
So I’m wondering if the same enthusiasm for Trump that seemed to be boiling online in 2016 is still there today, and if this election only feels different because I’m self-selected into saner platforms. Or if it is really different this time around.
I get that it’s an incredibly difficult question to answer, but I would love perspectives from people who have kept up an active use of mainstream social media, or otherwise have some insights I lack.
I don’t think that’s the question I try to ask, though I probably struggle to formulate myself well. It’s not really about comparing to Harris.
It seemed that Trump engaged a lot of people who would not usually bother with politics in 2016. He ran a campaign that completely dominated the Internet. People seemed to have nothing better to do than to create right wing memes in half serious, half joking support of him.
I don’t see that any more. What I see is a more normal campaign ran by a guy frequently making fascist talking points. He could still win, and maybe it’s still a successful campaign, but it feels very different to me from the 2016 one.
But then again, I have changed my Internet habits so that I wouldn’t see it anyway. Maybe there’s still hordes of 20-something incels posting frog memes for the masses to be offended by, it’s just off my radar.