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Teenage Korean pop fans who destroy a Donald Trump meeting? We will have to get used to it. New trolls are born.
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“You just got moved by teens on TikTok.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic MP who represents the new guard of the party, did not shy away from discovering the fiasco of the Donald Trump meeting. The latter was to officially launch his campaign after weeks of confinement by a meeting which promised to be historic in Tulsa. The American president and his team had announced more than a million people present, which was a record. Except that none of this happened. In place, images of a half-filled room and its deserted surroundings have been around the world. This resounding fiasco is due to teenagers who are fans of K-pop and active on the TikTok network. K-pop is a Korean musical style, extremely popular with American teens. As for TikTok, it is the star social network of adolescents that we are talking about more and more often because its impact is growing.
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The K-pop community has never been politicized in the past or associated with political currents. But recently the community of its fans (hundreds of millions around the world) mobilizes regularly. So far this had only been the case for charities. This action therefore marks a turning point. Cataloged as “teens dancing in front of their smartphones”, they managed to ruin one of the most anticipated political meetings of the year. As with other movements, the death of George Floyd was a determining factor. The star and iconic group of the K-pop movement, BTS, has publicly displayed its support for the Black Lives Matter movement and has thus “politicized” in a few seconds its millions of fans.
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After raising funds, the teenage community went after conservatives who tried to popularize the hashtag associated with white supremacists #whitelivesmatter. Then, it was a tweet from Donald Trump asking his supporters to register for free online for his meeting that set fire to the powder. Several accounts linked to the K-pop movement began to broadcast videos on TikTok on which they showed themselves to be registering, explaining that they would not go to the meeting. A dose of virality, a snowball effect and a community mobilized later, nearly one million tickets have been falsely ordered.
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It’s hard to believe that Donald Trump’s team didn’t see the thing coming. In any case not grasp the extent of the phenomenon while she was delighted to be able to use this million data to request funds for the campaign.
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We must remember from this story that the teens on TikTok do not just repeat choreographies all the time. As we explained with the advent of a new form of worship and community on this application recently, the mobilization power of the TikTok generation, who masters digital tools instinctively, is enormous. And we haven’t seen anything yet. The American elections are approaching and they will also be played on apps like TikTok.
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