Teenagers In Macedonia Launch Fake Pro-Trump Sites To Earn Money (buzzfeed.com) 142
"In Macedonia the economy is very weak and teenagers are not allowed to work, so we need to find creative ways to make some money," one 17-year-old told BuzzFeed News, which reports on a "strange hub" of over 140 political sites, all being run in the same small town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
These sites have American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the U.S...
The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don't care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives... The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of U.S. display advertising -- a declining market for American publishers -- goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook -- and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters... Most of the posts on these sites are aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the U.S...
Earlier this year they experimented with fake sites supporting Bernie Sanders, "but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content," according to the 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com. The largest Macedonian sites now have hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook, and sources close to one site say it earns $5,000 per month, and has even earned $3,000 in a single day.
Earlier this year they experimented with fake sites supporting Bernie Sanders, "but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content," according to the 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com. The largest Macedonian sites now have hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook, and sources close to one site say it earns $5,000 per month, and has even earned $3,000 in a single day.
Just stop (Score:2, Informative)
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So you're trying to tell me that Buzzfeed is lying and all of these websites are totally legit source for factual American political news?
365lifetimenews.co.uk, allforusa.com, americafans.com, angryamericanpatriots.com, berniemyhero.com, bigbluedimension.com, bigbluevision.com, bigbluevision.org, bluevisionnews.com, bvanews.com, christiantimesnewspaper.com, conservativestate.com, daily-politics.com, hardnfasttruth.com, globalnews4u.com, helping-mothers.com, magseriesusa.com, newscenterusa.com, openmedianews
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Well, and The Guardian, which broke the Snowden leak story.
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I think you just nailed their campaign slogan. Trump commits to ending all uncomfortable truths!
Nah, #spiritcooking started with /r/The_Donald (Score:4, Interesting)
Has anyone ever heard of these sites before? The real news is all on /r/wikileaks.
Sounds like they make clickbait sites they want people to share and make money off the ad revenue. There's no actual indication that people take these any more seriously than the other clickbait, so it doesn't surprise me that Buzzfeed doesn't like competition.
People used to be able to go to Reddit, but /r/politics now bans anyone who mentions their paid "Correct The Record" campaigns, so .... yeah.
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I wouldn't be surprised if most of the hits on these sites come from people who hate Trump. People tend to put a lot of interest in things they hate, sometimes obsessing over them, and likewise, most of what I hear about Trump comes from those who hate him -- I know many Trump supporters, but I rarely hear them talk about him. I tend to get the same thing from Fox News. I.e. I never hear anything about Fox News except from people who post on the internet about how much they hate Fox News (often in response
I could have told you that. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fastest way to make a buck if you don't care about anything in the way of integrity, is to tell people what they want to hear.
It's an almost guaranteed way to enrich yourself, and if there are no consequences, some people will do it.
And let's face it, the Pro-Trump crowd wants to hear what they've been told, and hear it more, and more, and nothing else.
That is how he got their votes. No surprise somebody else is skimming off the chum.
Re:I could have told you that. (Score:5, Informative)
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. The money’s rolling in and this is fun.” - CBS CEO Les Moonves
http://www.newsweek.com/blame-... [newsweek.com]
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That editorial says news orgs should shape up and focus on accuracy over profit by focusing on Trump's deeds rather than just his entertaining antics, but acknowledges the Internet is eating their lunch. They would shrink more, leaving the antics-oriented orgs and sites to take away their market share. They are stuck between a rock and a hard-place.
You can't ask an organization to kill itself for the sake of the greater good. It may be a nice thing to do, but not a realistic expectation.
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If the Republicans had been able to field a more moderate candidate they would have almost been guaranteed a win.
They got Hillary. She's a moderate republican... They needed Trump to scare people into voting for her and draw attention away from any alternatives. As long as power is shared exclusively between republicans and democrats, everybody's happy.
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The fastest way to get elected president of the USA if you don't care about anything in the way of integrity, is to tell people what they want to hear.[in your campain speeches]
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That's not power, that's simply slavery. At that point, you're the servant of those with the money.
Real power comes from being able to impose some degree of control even on those with money.
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While I get your point about having control over those with money, calling it slavery is a bit far fetched. It's just good ol' employment -- someone pays you, and you do what they say.
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The fastest way to get elected president of the USA if you don't care about anything in the way of integrity, is to tell people what they want to hear.[in your campain speeches]
Are you talking about Trump or Hillary — or both ?
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Oh please. Don't even try to make that false equivalency.
Hillary's lies are typical politician fudging of the truth. Trump's lies are so stratospheric that we've all become numb to it. He gets away with such a constant avalanche of falsehoods because everybody who cares about truth has given up keeping track.
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Oh please. Don't even try to make that false equivalency.
Hillary's lies are typical politician fudging of the truth. Trump's lies are so stratospheric that
I don't know a single person who would prefer to be lied to in a subtle way than in an obvious way. From a mathematical perspective, sure, a bigger lie is more false than a small lie. From a trustworthiness perspective, an obvious lie is not actually a lie at all. I do not know a single person who, when Trump fails to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, would say "you tricked me".
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Trump obviously. Hilary does as much as she can to not talk about the things people want to hear -- because most of what we want to hear about her is details of her numerous scandals.
Trump lies to your face. Hilary schemes behind your back. Hard to say which is worse. Great time for US politics.
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Nothing spreads as well as anger (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nothing spreads as well as anger (Score:5, Interesting)
This Video Will Make You Angry [youtube.com] - CGP Grey
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The dispute is over cultural appropriation of Alexander the Great; however given the phenomenon of pedigree collapse [wikipedia.org] nobody really has much of a claim to a culture that existed 2300 years ago unless they practiced very strict endogamy (e.g. the Jews) over all that time. It's a bit like the Italians going after Cincinnati for appropriating Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus [wikipedia.org].
Re:It's FYROM (Score:4, Interesting)
I would imagine that they are as genetically "Macedonian" as ancient Macedonians (who were viewed as a sort non-Greek fringe Hellenic group before they began gaining significant power under Alexander's ancestors). Language isn't bound by genetic barriers, as is evidenced by the fact that most of the English are still essentially "Celtic" in molecular terms, despite speaking a West Germanic language with heavy admixtures of Norman French.
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They probably are descended in part from the ancient Macedonians. As is practically everyone else in Europe.
It's silly to stake a genetic claim to the heritage of a people from 2300 years ago -- if you are European. Europe had a little thing called the Migration Age which shuffled the entire continent's genetic deck. That's why you see a haplotype that's believed to have originated around the Volga River in a broad swath from the Caucuses through Greece, Southern Italy and Spain, with pockets in all kind
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modern greek have nothing to do with the old greek - they are basically descendants of slavs and turks. they don't even speak proper greek nowadays.
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Do they have a department of redundancy department like the United Kingdom of the UK does?
Thank you. (Score:3)
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You gotta be joking. Since the first day of his campaign there has been a non-stop deluge of stories about all the ways its a con. This story wouldn't have made a difference no matter when it was published. That's the thing about cons - at some level the victims want to be conned. They simply ignore any contrary evidence no matter how strong, and focus on the any story that reinforces their beliefs no matter how far-fetched.
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DAMN that is a horrifying indictment of the Hillary campaign. She's been exposed repeatedly as a corrupt pol, her top aide Huma has turned against her to save her own skin from jail, and Wikileaks, hero of the Left, has been ceaselessly attacking her for well over a year. Who could possibly vote for her at this point?
Trump is like an emetic for the American republic. He's the best thing that could happen. Just think of all the positive effects. Under Hillary, the press will remain a government lapdog
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DAMN that is a horrifying indictment of the Hillary campaign. She's been exposed repeatedly as a corrupt pol, her top aide Huma has turned against her to save her own skin from jail, and Wikileaks,
Thanks for demonstrating my point. You so desperately want to believe that she's corrupt that you bought into the con [snopes.com] about Abedin "turning against her." You are literally the exact kind of sucker I was talking about. Furthermore because you are so desperate to find comfort in lies this reply will be like water off a duck's back to you. At least you will be a cautionary tale for some readers.
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DAMN that is a horrifying indictment of the Hillary campaign. She's been exposed repeatedly as a corrupt pol, her top aide Huma has turned against her to save her own skin from jail, and Wikileaks, hero of the Left, has been ceaselessly attacking her for well over a year. Who could possibly vote for her at this point?
Please provide evidence that Huma Abedin has, in any way, "turned" on Clinton. The latest news is that she was supporting Clinton at a private fundraiser in DC the other day. Doesn't sound like someone who has "turned" on her best friend. Sounds like another conspiracy theory.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hu... [cbsnews.com]
I would suspect that she would be assisting the FBI in the investigation of her husband. But there has been NO evidence or even leaks from the FBI that they have found anything new in their email in
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And threatening to lock up your opposition and appoint a "special prosecutor" isn't trampling all over the constitution and the separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches?
Yes, it is, but I think the argument put forth is that Clinton's trampling will be subtle efforts that will go unobserved and result in a death of a thousand cuts, while Trump's trampling will be grand, obviously wrong, attempts that both sides will come together to stop.
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you fail
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It's hard to decide what's the least informed tidbit in your comment. But if I had to chose, it would be the laughable contention that the corporate owned media would change its MO in the least under a Trump administration.
He already announced that he'd go after them by strengthening libel and defamation laws. So if anything they'd be streamlined even further.
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I would have gone for his strange claim that the constitution was 'drafted by whites.' It's true, the writers of the constitution were all white, but what significance does that fact have on the arguments presented?
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Pretty sad, isn't it?
If anything can make me uncomfortable in my (white) skin it's this insidious racism of these Trumpkins.
Re: Thank you. (Score:2)
Nice to see you quoting their material
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Trump is like an emetic for the American republic.
I think you 're confusing an emetic with what an emetic causes.
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Re: Thank you. (Score:1)
Well the Guardian story linked in the article is from August.
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AAAaannndd now he's president.
"Publish sensationalist and often false content" (Score:1)
Said Buzzfeed
What was that thing about pot and kettle?
Fake? They are not fake! (Score:1)
Teenagers in Macedonia Launch Fake Pro-Trump Sites
Why are they named fake? Do they pretend, maybe, being a website but, in reality, don't work? Much like a wooden fake toy airplane, maybe?
Those sites look like every common news outlet these days.
Better headline:
Pro-Trump sites generate income for their creators, worldwide.
There you are.
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Sensational clickbait bullshit aimed at trump trolls. Nothing of value, just entertainment for stupid people with nothing better to do.
Trump supporters less able to identify a fake site (Score:1)
If this worked best on Trump supporters, is it because they're the only group who is incapable deciphering a fake news site from a real one?
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Consider the audience. These are the people who scream that Snopes is "rigged," and whose primary source for news (Breitbart) is published by someone on their candidate's payroll, for fuck's sake. There's not too terribly much objectivity or critical thinking taking place in that world.
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I want to know how such a retarded fucking post such as yours gets modded informative? Is there someone out there dumber than you with mod points?
Your post is nothing but the same stupid ignorant shit spewed by fox news opinionists et al.
There is NO liberal media and NO "pro-Hillary mainstream media" you ignorant fucktard! There is a somewhat "mainstream" news media system that strives to be as informative as they can and still manage ratings, and then you have the real "fake" news propaganda outlets such
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You don't see the bias because you agree with it. It definitely exists. The entire MSM is on board with Hillary.
Maybe it's time for you to leave America? It seems you're really not a good fit with us. We want to rule ourselves, while you want us to be ruled by heartless oligarchs. I suggest France, that's always a popular destination. Or Venezeula, you can go and see what real leftism is like when it gets power and refuses to give up. Just bring a suitcase of antibiotics when you go, we wouldn't wa
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List of domains? (Score:2)
Re:List of domains? (Score:4, Informative)
365lifetimenews.co.uk, allforusa.com, americafans.com, angryamericanpatriots.com, berniemyhero.com, bigbluedimension.com, bigbluevision.com, bigbluevision.org, bluevisionnews.com, bvanews.com, christiantimesnewspaper.com, conservativestate.com, daily-politics.com, hardnfasttruth.com, globalnews4u.com, helping-mothers.com, magseriesusa.com, newscenterusa.com, openmedianews.com, press24.us, politicsbreaking.com, politicsintheusa.com, politicsinusa.com, spinzon.com, theamericanrevenant.com, usconservativetoday.com, usadailyinfo.com, usafreshnews.us, usalibertynews.com, usanewsflash.com, usanewslive365.com, usapoliticsnow.com, usapoliticstoday.com, usapowernews.com, usatodaypolitics.com, worldpoliticus.com
Google searching for at least these domains only brings up this post and a reddit post with the same 36 domains: https://www.reddit.com/r/polit... [reddit.com]
Buzzfeed said "Over the past year, the Macedonian town of Veles (population 45,000) has experienced a digital gold rush as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites" and "BuzzFeed News also identified another 40 US politics domains registered by people in Veles that are no longer active"
But the list seems nowhere to be found.
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"theamericanrevenant.com"
I saw a comment posted elsewhere just this morning linking to that site. I can't even remember what the article was about though, and the comment has been moderated-out. Something about the government paying black-supremacist militias.
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Well (Score:2)
If the Macedonians want Trump as their leader, they can have him.
I don't think he will be leading their army into battle like Alexander, in spite of his rhetoric.
Hardly surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The base of Trump support is poorly educated white men.
They believe lots of easily disproven lies.
It's hardly surprising that they would click on more false clickbait.
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Butt-hut Trump supporters with mod points here?
My posting was on-topic. I can find citations to show the proof about who Trump's support comes from.
I'll probably get modded down for this also, but it won't change the facts.
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of Trump supporters with mod points on Slashdot. I mean, a lot.
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Yep, which clearly invalidates the GP's trolling.
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Yes, it does, to the extent that a claim that the entire base is ill-educated white men is false. But, as has been countless times over the years, the Salem Hypothesis, with a bit of a proviso that it extends to other technical fields, shows how certain types of well educated people can support someone like Trump.
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What the hell is a butt-hut? I'm afraid of what it might be yet at the same time morbidly intrigued.
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Butt-hut Trump supporters with mod points here?
You'd assume Trump's rejection of science and renewable energy would discourage most of /.'s readership from fawning all over him. But the fear of becoming a laid-off IT worker is strong with this crowd (never mind Trump has used H-1B workers in his own businesses and has no problem stiffing contractors). Then you've got the basement-dwellers who want to watch the world burn, because their parents and suburban upbringing have sheltered them from any form of real strife. These are usually the people who s
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Yes, it's not as if Trump married someone who was not only an H1-B worker, but actually worked illegally before she had her H1-B.
Oh, wait, he did. Yeah, he is surely going to crack down on H1-Bs.
That, plus he is still stiffing contractors: did anyone see that he is stiffing a polling company now?
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Your statement was probably modded down for being misleading. I too can show where Trump's support comes from:
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol... [theatlantic.com]
voters who agreed with the statement “people like me don't have any say about what the government does” were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Trump. This feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, income, attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, or Hispanic identity.
Trump's support comes from people who feel they are disenfranchised. It should be no surprise that poorly educated white men feel disenfranchised; poor education has always reduced one's influence, and currently being white and male each mean you are openly discriminated against.
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Your reading comprehension level is not as good as you think it is and you did not check the source.
According to the article you cited, that "feeling of powerlessness" is what distinguishes his supporters from supporters of other Republican candidates.
From the original source: 'Among people likely to vote in the Republican primary, people are 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Donald Trump as the first-choice nominee relative to all the others if they "somewhat" or "strongly agree" that "people like me don
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According to the article you cited, that "feeling of powerlessness" is what distinguishes his supporters from supporters of other Republican candidates.
IE, that is the demographics of Trump supporters, rather than the votes in the general election many of which will be "hold your nose and vote Republican", and many of which voted against Trump.
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Yes, now that Trump won the primary, the core of his support is Republicans.
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Yep, you're pretty much spot on here, trump and the dolts that follow him.
I recall every election period the past few decades with that lunatic and his wacky trademark orange orangutan hair doo, off in deep right field stamping his feet and ranting like Yosemite Sam about the lost gold of lost city of Atlantis, alien abductions, bigfoot, and whatever other crazy shit he had going on in his head at the time, just to get him into any spotlight available.
Today, that worthless cocksucker may very well become em
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My posting was on-topic. I can find citations to show the proof about who Trump's support comes from.
I did not mod you up or down, and now I can't do either since I have posted...
I would have modded this comment up if it had actually contained the citations that you and the moderators are fighting about. Since you did not, I thought I would leave this little message for you so you could understand how non-partisan modding works for many people.
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Maybe your view from inside the fishbowl.
But from the outside... between the two the anti-trump people are way more stupid. and violent. and abusive. and will be the first to insult while claming victim status for social credit.
I hope he wins just to piss those people off. They seem to deserve it.
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Apparently there are a lot of poorly educated people all around, as Hillary's supporters can attest to believing a lot of easily disproven lies, too. I'm not sure where you get off generalizing "white men" in there, though.
Arent' they all fake? (Score:2, Informative)
Affer all, the guy they are faking to support is abig orange, pussygrabbing fake.
And why is it fake? (Score:3)
Most of the web works this way nowadays. Just have a look at sites like buzzfeed. 20 Facts about fake sites you didn't know, no. 13 is a fake itself!
There is no interest in the content, there is interest in users clicking ads. That's why the basically fuck with users, deploy malw^W anti-adblock scripts, spy on the user and so on instead of just providing good content.
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And why is a website fake, just because it uses "content generation" to attract people? You're mislead, if you think modern websites care about their users and that they get the best content. They care about their advertisers and that they get the best users. A social network isn't interested in getting you networked, it's interested in serving you ads. Some news sites declared in court, that news are their vehicle to get users to see ads.
There are very little idealist sites, which have a mission. Most just
Haters use the word FAKE (Score:1)
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Let me quote from the front page story of one of those sites:
"Flight logs revealed that, on at least 26 separate occasions, Bill Clinton accompanied sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on his Boeing 747, which Epstein had nicknamed the “Lolita Express.” He allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 for him and his fellow passengers on their way to “Orgy Island,” a 72-acre island called Little St. James.The plane “was reportedly outfitted with a bed where pas
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This only proves (Score:2)
Trump fans are gullible and stupid. Bernie supporters not so much.
Sad and pathetic
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Trump fans are gullible and stupid. Bernie supporters not so much.
Sad and pathetic
Note: Trolling for Bernie supporters also worked for them, just not as well as trolling for Trump supporters.
Economics. (Score:2)
Effect, meet cause.