Donald Glover Fans Have Taken Over a Pro-Trump “thedonald” Subreddit to Establish the One True Donald
There can be only one.
As Donald Trump has thrived on Twitter and the chaos and flurry of media coverage he can cause with a single, poorly written tweet—whether it’s actually written by him or the staffers reportedly copying his style (and I use that term loosely)—his fans have also flourished in online communities. Generally, those communities have been some of the worst corners of the internet, fostering exactly the kind of terrible sentiments you’d expect from supporters of a man like Donald Trump, but one of them has taken an unexpectedly wholesome turn thanks to some new visitors giving it a makeover.
Subreddit r/thedonald—not to be confused with the much more popular Trump mega-hub/wretched hive of scum and villainy r/the_donald—has found itself in the midst of some verifiable Donald-loving interlopers, but not the Donald they had in mind. Fans of writer/actor/rapper/everything Donald Glover have taken over the place with love for their very own Donald, which runs pretty well counter to everything that Trump fans imagine the mantle of The Donald to embody, honestly.
Instead of the xenophobia, intolerance, and dog whistle-y (or outright air-horn-y) racism you’d normally expect to see in a pro-Trump group, the subreddit is now filled with images of Glover in some of his fan-favorite appearances, including Community, his “This Is America” music video, and of course, as Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Some of the posts are pretty humorous and tend to troll the original intent of the subreddit by repurposing typical pro-Trump language to talk about Glover, expressing their surprise at suddenly being a fan of The Donald against all odds, or just outright comparing the two:
“Not a racist ✅ Not a rapist ✅ Can read ✅ Was never bankrupt ✅ Likes Mexicans ✅ Talented ✅ Pays his taxes ✅ Handsome ✅ Loves immigrants ✅ Not a puppet for Russia ✅ Doesn’t want to fuck his daughter ✅ Must be the real one true Donald ✅”
There’s also some other Donald content thrown in for good measure (Donald Duck, Donald Sutherland), but Glover is clearly in the lead in the One True Donald race.
If you scroll back far enough through the sub’s posts, you can see when the takeover happened, as well as why it was so easy. Most of the pro-Donald content before the switch was a bit dry and not very popular, likely owing to the_donald’s more official status and vastly larger subscriber count. Those in charge of thedonald have seemingly given in to the glory of their new leader, with the internet wayback machine showing the forum’s tagline as, “The place where we discuss in an unbiased manner Donald Trumps great contributions to modern society,” as recently as May 17, but it’s now been replaced with, “Do Whatever you want I don’t care.”
The movement may not be powerful enough to overtake any actually meaningful Trump supporter hotbeds, but it’s certainly a good laugh for the rest of us, and the irritated Trump supporters trying to detract from our enjoyment, by posting there to note that no one really cared about the subreddit to begin with, are really only enhancing it by missing the point.
And hey, every movement starts somewhere. First thedonald, then … who knows? I just have one question: Can we decide the One True Donald thing Highlander-style? I think that would really help settle things.
(image: Disney/Lucasfilm)
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