Some Donald Glover Fans Just Hijacked a Pro-Trump Reddit Page
As foretold by the legend of the Highlander, there can be only one. A legion of Donald Glover fans have taken over a popular pro-Donald Trump subreddit to declare the Solo star “The One True Donald.” Setting aside the obvious appeal (I mean, is this even a contest?), Glover’s fans have put forth a strong argument. And while we’re firmly on Team Glover in this internet battle for supremacy, Trump’s fans aren’t very amused — as you can probably imagine.
On Monday, fans of the star and creator of Atlanta flocked to “/r/thedonald” subreddit to post memes featuring the artist occasionally known as Childish Gambino. A popular post that heralded Glover as “The One True Donald” has received over 45,000 upvotes and counting as of this writing. The star’s fans have co-opted the pro-Trump subreddit, transforming it into a pro-Glover presidential campaign, and based on the caption included in one photo, I gotta say, dude’s running on a strong platform:
Not a racist. Not a rapist. Can read. Was never bankrupt. Likes Mexicans. Talented. Pays his taxes. Handsome. Loves immigrants. Not a puppet for Russia. Doesn’t want to [redacted] his daughter. Must be the real one true Donald.
The facts speak for themselves, friends.
Needless to say, /r/thedonald’s 17,000 subscribers were pretty confused about the abrupt transition from conspiracy theories and casual racist content to memes featuring the MVP of Solo: A Star Wars Story. “What the f— happened in the last day,” asked one user, seemingly oblivious to increasing hopelessness and creeping socio-political terror of the past year.
In the scheme of things, /r/thedonald is a fairly small subreddit — a rip-off of the much larger and quasi-official /r/The_Donald subreddit, which hosts 600,000 pro-Trump subscribers and has been the source of numerous controversies. As The Atlantic reports, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was forced to intervene in November 2016 following /r/The_Donald’s exponential growth. Rather than remove the subreddit, which was promoting various conspiracy theories, fake news (like, actual fake news) and racist propaganda, Huffman and the Reddit team singled out particular users, who were suspended or banned for their posts.
Users of /r/The_Donald responded by calling the site administrators “Nazis” and rallying their supporters to upvote a post that featured several swastikas — making it the second-most popular post on the entire website. /r/thedonald is currently operating without a moderator, making the recent Glover fan takeover fairly effortless. Is it too much to hope that this was a practice run for a takeover of /r/The_Donald?
A girl can dream.