Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label campaign tactics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label campaign tactics. Show all posts

Monday, August 10, 2020

Stop Doom-Scrolling

...and do something useful.

Everything is terrible. And much of it can be directly tied back to Trump. Though he didn’t devise environmental degradation, create COVID-19, or invent racism, he has inarguably advanced all these disasters, and as you read the endless bits of bad news on your social feeds, it’s hard not to feel hopeless. Sometimes it feels like doomscrolling is all you can do — whether it’s a mortifying addiction to pain and disappointment, or a restless search for something hopeful.

But I have a great alternative: hateclicking.

Early this year, the Pew Research Center released a study suggesting that executives in the tech sector had a fairly dire diagnosis for the pattern of what the study called “digital disruption.” In fact, a full 49% of the respondents felt that the “use of technology will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation in the next decade.”

But in June, TikTok users and K-pop fans had a different idea about the virtues of digital disruption. Famously, they joined forces to throw off the official count for Trump’s rally in Tulsa. It was beautiful, it was brilliant, and it was all done from the confines of their respective quarantine.

It’s in this spirit that I offer hateclicking as a practical way to cost the Trump reelection campaign money, and to distort the data they’re capturing for further advertising investment.


What follows was written by a friend of mine who is running for public office in the 2020 election cycle. Not wanting to piss off his campaign manager, he can’t publish it under his own name. I told him I’m more than happy to.

What hateclicking is, and how to do it.

The Trump campaign is unprecedented in how aggressively it runs paid online advertisements. These ads nominally push out messaging and solicit the opinions of voters, but in actuality they are about generating fundraising dollars and merchandise sales, collecting data, and building a giant house file of email addresses and phone numbers to use for further fundraising and merch sales.

Advertisers pay social media companies and publishers like Google in a variety of ways, but generally each time an ad is clicked it costs the advertiser money, usually from a few pennies to a few dollars.

Here is where you come in. Every day (and up to a couple times a day) Google “Trump” or “Trump Store” or “MAGA Hat” or something similar and then click on the ad links. Look for the ones that say “Ad” next to them, those are the ones they are paying for.

What follows was written by a friend of mine who is running for public office in the 2020 election cycle. Not wanting to piss off his campaign manager, he can’t publish it under his own name. I told him I’m more than happy to.

If thousands of us do this a few times a day it will increase the campaign’s online ad spend while producing nothing of value for them. It is probably not helpful to refresh and click again more than a handful of times per day because online advertising platforms often filter out repetitive frequent clicks from the same computers and don’t bill for them.

Here are some things you can do for bonus points:
  • Let the page load fully before closing it so that trackers have time to register the click
  • If you happen to click through to a Trump merchandise page, add a few items to your cart before you close the window — this can tie up inventory and make some items appear unavailable to legitimate MAGA shoppers
  • Right Click on links to open multiple links in new tabs
  • Use your browser’s “incognito” mode to search and click multiple times
  • Use a VPN to click on ads from virtual locations multiple times.
  • If you can stomach it, follow some prominent GOP pages on Facebook so that you start getting Trump Facebook Ads and then click and comment on those to also use up their Facebook ad budget.
Happy hating, everybody.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Today's Tweet

The entire event promoting his hotel ― carried in it's entirety by all three cable news channels ― lasted more than 30 minutes. Trump proceeded to spend approximately 30 seconds blaming Hillary Clinton for inspiring his quest to find Obama’s birth certificate.
So Trump did the usual politician thing - at least, the usual Trump thing, by inviting the inference that Hillary caused the problem, so he had to fix it.  It's classic - the arsonist taking credit for pulling the fire alarm.

It really was just a free ad for Trump's hotel in DC.  The thing went on for 30 minutes and there was nothing but a tour of the hotel and some pander-fawning of Medal Recipients, ending with Trump spending 30 seconds "renouncing" his birtherism bullshit. 




Finally - FINALLY - the Press Poodles are starting to get a little hip to the simple fact that they actually are the suckers Trump is playing them for, and that some of us have been trying to tell 'em about for years.

And yet, The Trump Scampaign® marches on.

Fun Facts: 
The cheapest room at the Trump DC hotel is almost $400 a night
The Penthouse is rumored to go for $100,000 per night, with a 5-night minimum
Of course, if you have to ask how much it costs, then you can't afford it anyway - so fuck off, loser.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Piling On

Donald Trump spent a little time in front of a TelePrompter yesterday, and suddenly - to hear some of the Press Poodles tell it, the last 14 months disappeared; gone; pfffft; never happened.

The Squint Squad seemed to struggle with it a little too, tho' I'll say they did come up with a better level of appropriate skepticism than usual.

Media Matters:



Donny Deutsch nailed it with "I will always tell you the truth..." as the perfect lead-in to a very good set of ads that show Trump lying about everything.

And Katty Kay pulled it all back to normal by pointing out that Trump still has to own everything he's said, plus she hits on what I think should be the main theme here, which is a little something I'm calling - Trump's Artificial Authenticity.

So who's The Real Trump? Screaming Asshole Guy; the one we've all seen for several years, or Mister Swell Guy who can be schmoozey and charming, but who's only been seen by his buddies?  Y'know what?  Fuck 'em both.



The lies Trump told this week: from opposing the Iraq war to San Bernardino
Trump shares more false memories from the Iraq war and Middle Eastern politics and welcomes Nato’s ‘new’ terrorism division – which has existed since 2004

Friday, January 15, 2016

Some Tweets







It's kinda hard to take Trump at his word for anything, but with that caveat, if you've said something that makes Donald Trump feel insulted...?  Whoa.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

I Done A Bad Bad Thing

I retweeted a Mock Paper Scissors thing, and I put a tag on it inviting the inference that there was something way more to the story than what it actually is, and that was a very shitty and Breitbart-ey thing for me to have done, and I apologize; and yes I'm really really really not sincere about that at all.  Fuck 'em.  Fuck 'em both.  Dig up Andrew Breitbart's dead moldy crumbling corpse, pack it in rancid lard and make Donald Trump wear it like a ski mask.



No red states and no blue states - just the United States of Fuck That Guy.

Friday, December 04, 2015

He Tries So Hard


I'm not wondering where Trump gets his ideas.  It seems obvious these "position statements" are the products of Policy Formulation By Lynch Mob.  You do a quick little poll or (more likely) a focus group of "regular people", and you get ideas that reflect the shallowest thinking, fueled by the darkest fears of the biggest paranoiac in the room at the time.  Whoever imagines the worst of all possible worsts holds sway, and drives the discussion.

I'm only wondering why it seems like Lil Donny of the Mega-Brain just runs with it every time.  In this latest instance, I have great difficulty believing he truly thinks Killing Your Way To Lasting Peace And Security is the way to go.  Maybe, but no - prob'ly not.

So I am not moved off of my position that he's looking for his exit.  If he can find that one thing that's just too fuckin' much - say the thing that makes enough of us turn away - then he can claim we don't deserve him and blah blah blah, and he can go back to being just another leech on the national nutsack.

In light of the San Bernardino Blood Fest, I can't help but wonder if the Trumpkins will hook anything up between that and the crap Trump always throws into the pile about "beautiful Kate - murdered by an immigrant."  It'll be interesting to watch; to see if they fold that into the mix, or if they Etch-A-Sketch it away.

Monday, August 27, 2012

The Dog Whistle

We hear a lot about the various dog whistle language that (particularly - tho' not exclusively) the GOP guys use to speak in public about the Southern Strategy items that can no longer be discussed openly.  It must be a constant struggle to come up with new ways to say "lazy scary uppity nigger" without actually saying the words themselves.

That's how we get to this latest one - Romney's "joke" about nobody asking for his birth certificate.  Which, BTW, was really just another of the standard plays intended to make a Democrat seem foreign and exotic and non-American blah blah blah.

Well, I've been wondering about all this and there's another one making the rounds.  And maybe it's just too subtle (these things do escape me with an annoying frequency), but it suddenly occurred to me that it's exactly the same kind of crap.

And here it is:












This junk goes right along with the big fluff the wingnuts have been putting up about "Obama's Victory Lap" and congratulating himself on the raid that got bin Laden etc.

And it's almost brilliant.  It downplays the facts:
  • In spite of Dick Cheney's warnings, we didn't "get hit again" even tho' we elected a Democrat.
  • As a political asset, Junior Bush decided Osama bin Laden was worth more alive than dead, so he stopped even looking for him - which left it up to Obama to get him, which of course he did, which now means that the "Repubs are better on Nat'l Security" thing is exposed as being total bullshit.
...but the main thing is this:  "conservatives" are pretending Obama is some kind of  braggart because they're trying to invite us to make a base-level inference - they want us to picture "the swaggering buck, struttin' his stuff, and showin' off his prowess".  

The bin Laden issue is the "My Dick's Bigger Than Your Dick" debate, and suddenly it's too painfully obvious that the GOP dick is a lot smaller than they've been telling us it is, and - holy fuck - the Democrat's a black guy.  This is gonna be real bad.

As Freudian and repressed as most of these bozos appear to be, I just don't have any real doubts about this.

Buncha sick fucks.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Differentiatin'

I've been watching politics for a while now, and one of things that's been hard to miss in the last 25 years or so is that Repubs and Dems are a lot more sharply divided.  (Brilliant observation, Mikey - please tell us more)  Right.  No news there, but the way it's evolved into the current depiction of GOP=Man, and Dem=Woman is pretty interesting.

It was there back in the 90s when the narrative was "Dad's the hard-working Republican who puts food on the table and protects the family, while Mommy is the Democrat who spends all the money."  We've heard that repeated in one iteration or another for what's getting to be a long time.  Hell, Ahnode Schvartzenbooger said it straight out when he called the California Legislature a bunch of girlie men.  It could be that the Dems now have a chance at turning it back on the Repubs.

So here's what we should all push the Repubs to ask of their candidates:  I'd like to see Gingrich shoot a few baskets, and I wanna see Romney throw a football.  Seriously, take a look at how these guys carry themselves some time and then try to convince yourself you're not thinkin' about the kid in grade school who always got picked last when you were choosing up sides for kickball - even if you do feel a little guilty when you're thinking it.

The point is that the rubes are so macho-centric, I'm thinkin' it won't take more than 30 or 40 seconds of Newt and Mitt playin' a little catch on YouTube to make sure nobody ever hears from either one of those buttheads ever again.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Distracted

We definitely need to be arguing about this instead of all the real shit that's goin' on.  For one thing - because, well, you know, it worked so well against Obama last time he ran for president (which is when this pic was taken).

But really, why does it seem like somebody somewhere wants us to concentrate on this shit?  It's almost as if they don't want us to talk about real issues.  Hmmm.