As part of his planned path to re-election that's thus far built atop outright racism and reckless COVID-19 denialism, Trump has enlisted the use of an app that—if its vague description is to be believed—allows followers of the bunker bastard to "fight with the army for Trump in 2020."
But thanks to Trump and other administration officials' recent teasing the possibility of a ban of sorts against TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, users of the wildly popular video platform have united behind a campaign of their own aiming to destroy the Trump app's public image—if it ever had a positive one to begin with—by review-bombing it en masse on the App Store.
And as you can see for yourself by forcing your fingers to type out the word "Trump" in the App Store without inducing violent vomiting, the effort is certainly having an effect:
One particularly compelling review sees an angry TikTok supporter crafting a novel-worthy tale of a nine-hour porch patience marathon that heartbreakingly includes a burned-down house, an exploded canine, a mysterious case of tongue loss, legs that morph into pieces of chicken, and a tiny orange that screams.
"If you're going to mess with us, we will mess with you," 19-year-old TikTok user Yori Blacc told Timeof the effort on Friday.
Previous acts of Trump-trashing hilarity spurred by TikTok include signing up for that massively ill-advised Tulsa rally, only to not show up. As you'll recall, the final attendance numbers for the middle-of-a-pandemic campaign event were certainly hard to protectively spoonfeed to Trump as positive.
Earlier this week, Republican Mike Pompeo—who currently serves as Secretary of State—was asked about the possibly of banning TikTok and other apps with a Chinese parent company over claims of mass surveillance concern.
"We're certainly looking at it," Pompeo said. "We've worked on this very issue for a long time. … With respect to Chinese apps on peoples' cell phones, the United States will get this one right too."
Trump later echoed this sentiment, saying a ban was "something we're looking at."
And while the review-bombing of the Trump campaign app is far more entertaining and worth one's attention, I suppose it's worth a mention that TMZ ran a story on Thursday about TikTok influencers who make tens of thousands of dollars per sponsored post being worried about a loss of income.
