BAD TREND: Truth Social shuts down temporarily after prank on Trump
The three friends behind the satirical “Birds Aren’t Real” movement — Ari Cagan, Adam Faze, and Peter McIndoe — had the brilliant idea to ruffle Donald Trump’s feathers with a Truth Social hashtag campaign promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis for President in 2024.
It worked.
“We wanted to make something trend that would really piss off Trump,” Cagan said according to Vice News – and the hashtag #DeSantis2024 was the perfect way to do it.
We wanted to make something trend that would really piss off Trump.
We noticed that he was “truthing” a lot about DeSantis…
If DeSantis started trending on his own platform, it would annoy him to no end.
2/5 pic.twitter.com/cEY2WwPDD9— Ari Cagan (@AriCagan) March 21, 2023
After just a few hours, the hashtag entered the list – several hours later it would overshadow the pro-Trump hashtag #Trump2024 thanks to a clever plan to recruit social media users via a TikTok video shot at Trump Tower.
Then Truth Social went down without explanation.
Some users who participated in the gag claim their accounts were banned.
“Yesterday I saw a post about people going on truth social and saying #DeSantis2024 to get it trending,” @HamiltonBrbr tweeted. “I obviously thought it was very funny.
According to the user, the hashtag was the “very first and only,” time they’d posted on the app.
anyway that’s the story of how i got banned on truth social this morning pic.twitter.com/jkkVXNjGcP
— Hamilton (@HamiltonBrbr) March 22, 2023
One of the prank’s instigators, McIndoe, posted a video on his TikTok account alleging he is now being suppressed on Truth Social.
He urged his nearly 900,000 followers to use the #ResearchBirdSurveillance hashtag – but a search yielded no results.
“We are actively being banned by the same platform that talks about freedom of speech,” McIndoe told Vice News. “Why? Maybe because we are right.”
Cagan, Faze, and McIndoe reached viral fame after their “Birds Aren’t Real” movement gained a cult following.
The prank alleged that the United States government swapped millions of birds with drones used to spy on the American people.
While it started as a joke, GenZ flocked to the movement, staging protests around the country as billboards with the moniker popped up, and videos spread like wildfire online.
Satirical or not, the conspiracy sparked something in the often-overlooked group.
“I think that a lot of GenZ feels…madness,” McIndoe said in an interview.
Despite bans, censorship, and an unexpected outage on Truth Social – #DeSantis2024 continued to trend the day after the hashtag campaign began.
Original reporting by David Gilbert at Vice News.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
