Earlier this month, President Donald Trump held what was supposed to be his comeback rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a months long pandemic-induced hiatus.
Despite boasts from campaign officials that supporters submitted a record number of reservations, the rally was sparsely attended, with only a little over six thousand gathering in the 19 thousand seat arena.
The rally was widely seen as a humiliation for the Trump campaign and the incongruence between reservations made and actual attendance was attributed to an unlikely group: teenagers and fans of the musical genre K-Pop on the popular video app TikTok.
Numerous TikTok influencers urged their followers to reserve tickets for the rally and not to show. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale—despite previously bragging about the volume of reservations—insisted that their efforts had no impact on rally attendance.
Nevertheless, the teens of TikTok remain undeterred, and they're launching a new initiative, stocking online shopping carts with official Trump campaign merchandise, but not actually purchasing anything.
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— Matt hopes 🍎 🧢 (@hopes_matt) June 28, 2020
The tactic is known as shopping cart abandonment, and it disrupts the data accuracy of online retailers, most notoriously resulting in merchandise being labeled as "sold out" despite a wealth of actual availability. A Business Insider report estimated that it cost online retailers a total of about $4.6 trillion worth of merchandise per year.
The initiative is quickly gaining steam.
People are commending their efforts.
Younger generations are often accused of apathy when it comes to politics, but now people are boosting the growing popularity of TikTok trolling, wanting to know more.
Time will tell if this latest initiative proves effective.
