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'Trump’s deranged outrage style' is history as Truth Social becomes a 'slow-cooking financial disaster'

"He’s become a carnival geek biting the heads off of snakes, which can be a fabulous show the first couple of times you see it, but after that, meh."https://t.co/qPlCIAisGl

— Raw Story (@RawStory) September 10, 2022

Once upon a time, Trump fed his 89 million Twitter followers a several-times-a-day mash of insult, provocation and bombast. But he has attracted only an estimated 3.9 million to his Truth Social account, making him one of the biggest social media flops of the decade. Where did the magic go? Why have Trump’s followers forsaken him? Is Truth Social doomed? 

I honestly think the only thing keeping it alive is Twitter users tweeting Trump's Truth Social posts.  In the end even that isn’t enough.

Even so, why didn’t the tens of millions of the 89 million who followed him on Twitter or the 74 million who voted for him in 2020 make more of an effort to visit his new address? Blame it on the network effect. If you already have a Twitter account, it takes just a millisecond to click and add another person’s feed to your account. But downloading a new app just to follow a single somebody takes mental energy, especially if there aren’t many other accounts on the app you wish to follow. Trump out of office proved to be as boring as Trump in office was disruptive. Everything we’re learning about Trump’s inability to convene a large-scale audience on Truth Social we learned in miniature from the failure of his mid-2021 blog, which he killed after 29 days. Like most media figures, Trump needs the boost of the network effect provided by Twitter (or CNN or Fox News Channel) to build a mass audience. All by his lonesome, he’s just a political carny on a lightly trafficked midway shouting invitations to his freak show.

And yet Trump is still considered a kingmaker and the GOP leader.  Odd, innit?

Nothing about Truth Social’s disastrous beginnings should surprise us. Donald Trump has proved himself again and again to be a wreck of an entrepreneur. Steaks, his university, water, an airline, casinos, the USFL, a mortgage company, vodka — the list reads like a guide on how not to succeed in business. Associating Trump with a new venture has become a business death wish.

What I was saying about Trump and lawyers.  I guess PT Barnum was right; there is a sucker born every minute.

Trump is still the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and could well wind up in the White House (assuming he’s not behind bars). [Which is true but not an explanation!  What, no correlation between social media presence and political influence? None?  At all?] But there’s also evidence that Trump has simply exhausted the Trump meme he invented. Trump’s deranged outrage style once contained real entertainment value — which explains why moderates and liberals followed him on Twitter even if they wouldn’t vote for him. But in his post-presidency and especially in the weeks following the Mar-a-Lago search and investigation, the show has gone stale. Vainly, he has sought to top himself by sharing QAnon-related material on Truth Social, denouncing the FBI like a madman trapped in a bunker, and calling for his reinstatement as the “rightful winner“ of the 2020 election. He’s become a carnival geek biting the heads off of snakes, which can be a fabulous show the first couple of times you see it, but after that, meh. Could today’s Trump devise enough fresh outrage to produce even a brief TikTok?

Basically why I expect the political narrative to change in November, and Trump to be the guy on the outside banging on the windows, rather than the guy on the inside who still somehow has a death grip on the microphone.