51 yr old Iowa grandmother on TikTok, former Buttigieg volunteer, behind the ticket troll [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Tweet from NYT's Evan Hill tonight, linking to a CNN story published a few days ago, before anyone knew how successful it would be:

Link to tweet

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/politics/tiktok-trump-tulsa-rally-trnd/index.html

Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother living in Fort Dodge, Iowa, appears to have helped led the charge on TikTok late last week when she posted a video encouraging people to go to Trump's website, register to attend the event -- and then not show up.
"All of those of us that want to see this 19,000 seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty go reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage," Laupp told her then-1,000 or so followers on TikTok, normally thought of a platform for dancing teenagers and not, necessarily, political action.

Laupp, who said she worked on Pete Buttigieg's campaign in Iowa last fall, told CNN she made the initial appeal upset that the rally was originally set to take place on Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

-snip-

Her idea prompted multiple other TikTok users to post similar videos calling on their followers to do the same -- visit the website, register for the event, fail to show up.
One video, with more than a quarter of a million views, called on fans of South Korean pop music in particular to join the trolling campaign. Fans of the music, which is known as K-pop, are a force on social media -- they posted over six billion tweets last year alone. And they have a history of taking action for social justice causes.