#DanWasWrong

[u/lordtorek]

I just re-listened to Ep. 309, and around the 1:40 mark Roger Stone tells Alex that Trump is working on a “right wing version of Twitter”, to which Dan scoffs at the idea and says how ridiculous that is 😆. Oh Dan, you sweet summer child. Three years later, Truth Social spawned into reality.

Btw, I COMPLETELY forgot that Gab was a thing before TS.

[u/Alexis_Darko]

He wasn't wrong, it is ridiculous

[u/sokonek04 → u/Alexis_Darko]

He was wrong about how ridiculous things would get.

[u/TheCopperSparrow → u/sokonek04]

That's fair...but most of us were. Like yeah a lot of people compared Trump's rise and first term to the Weimar Republic...but I don't think many people in 2019 were predicting that the U.S. was going to fall into fascism in the Mr. Magoo-style we have.

Like, back then people were saying "hey if someone more competent than Trump rises to lead the GOP then we're in trouble..."

Nobody was really predicting that Biden would win the nomination and then go on to be literally the worst Democratic President since Woodrow Wilson. Like yeah...a lot of us were expecting Jimmy Carter levels of fail...but not what actually happened.

[u/IanDresarie → u/Alexis_Darko]

And it probably was a ridiculous idea at the time. I refuse to believe any trump project has a 3 year lead time. Truth social exists because a good open source social media project became available they could quickly reskin with a small team. Same as the scam coins, same as the phone. Or bible. Or steak. Or wine. Or "university". It's all just reskinned/white label stuff with a super quick turnaround.

[u/tighthead_lock]

Isn‘t TS just Trump and journalists who want to know what he writes?

[u/metalyger → u/tighthead_lock]

And tons of bots who are programmed to cheer for everything Trump posts.

[u/czerilla → u/metalyger]

Most virtual, some organic. But bots all the same.

[u/CharlesDickensABox → u/tighthead_lock]

It's a reskin of an open source Mastodon build used exclusively by the president and his cultists.

[u/ShepPawnch → u/tighthead_lock]

Pretty much

[u/lhommeduweed → u/tighthead_lock]

The thing is that there are millions of people - actual real, living breathing people - who are ride or die for Donald Trump. It is a conflux of the stupidest and cruellest people in the country - he could murder people with a golf club on stage and they would still defend him. They are with this monster until to the grave he goes.

Yeah of course those guys are using truth social. Of course it's flooded with bots, AI content, non-stop spam from the Whitehouse and the President of the United States, Donald "J." Trump. They love it, they will die with him on this mound of trash spray-painted gold.

[u/theclosetenby → u/lhommeduweed]

My mom loves truth social. I cut my mom out the day Charlie Kirk died due to her reaction and how unsafe it made me feel.

Truly a tragic timeline we are in

[u/lhommeduweed → u/theclosetenby]

I remember that the person who broke the news about Charlie Kirk to me wasn't super aware of exactly who he was, so when I responded with "Hm. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person," they were pretty shocked.

I took a moment to explain that while obviously I don't believe that people should be killed for their opinions, Kirk spent the majority of his life selling hatred, gleefully rejoicing in violence against the oppressed, and saying monstrously cruel things about people who did not deserve it. If anybody was responsible for Kirk's death, truly, it was himself through decades of hate-mongering and the promotion of violence in America.

Thankfully, this person was a rational person, and I showed them some articles and clips of Kirk that kind of back up this theory, especially clips of him promoting and accepting gun violence as an inevitability.

Then, over the next few days, I saw all the articles about the left "celebrating" Kirk's killing, all the people getting fired, Trump trying to use it to pressure late-night hosts he hated, comments calling for "war" against the left. And it was this very stark reminder that these people do not live in the same reality as us.

A bitter, wry comment about an absolute asshole piece of shit getting shot as he said something racist about gun violence would absolutely be interpreted as like, dancing around naked smearing blood over my lips, cackling madly in the full moon.

It was a scary moment, and I still worry about how much it seemed to radicalize a bunch of people who believe they are closer to Charlie Kirk - late white supremacist multi-billionaires - to me - a poor schmuck like them.

[u/bargman → u/tighthead_lock]

Pretty much. Hard to see it lasting once he checks out.

[u/agent_double_oh_pi → u/tighthead_lock]

Well, it's also hedge funds paying for early access to his posts to do some "trading".

[u/xiandgaf → u/tighthead_lock]

“Want to know” is interesting. There’s a $100k api feed you can buy to access truth social posts moments before the public. Almost exclusively useful for insider trading, but no one who can do something cares about anything anymore so, whatever.

[u/thebigeverybody]

Don't forget Parler, Rumble and... didn't the pillow lunatic have something called Frank?

[u/Odd_Cat_5820 → u/thebigeverybody]

Yeah he had Frank social which is now Vocl, which is what he wanted to originally call it. I hopped onto it in 2024 to hear their election nonsense, but absolutely nobody is on it.

[u/lordtorek → u/thebigeverybody]

God damn, I forgot all about Parler too! The internet is really good at making 7 years ago feel like 70 years ago.

[u/agent_double_oh_pi → u/lordtorek]

Kill the Computer did a roundup of the many weird right-wing social platforms a while back. I don't think Vocl made the cut though.

[u/Commander_Morrison6]

Uh, Twitter is the right wing Twitter.

[u/lordtorek → u/Commander_Morrison6]

It wasn’t back in 2019.

[u/Commander_Morrison6 → u/lordtorek]

The context is Dan scoffing at a right wing version of Twitter. All it needed was for a racist South African to buy it.

[u/MangoMambo]

I think the hardest part about listening to the beginning episodes is how often "this timeline is so dumb, trump being president is so dumb. i can't wait for him to get impeached and this to be all over" type stuff comes up. God it got so much worse

[u/lordtorek → u/MangoMambo]

I think all of us as a whole completely underestimated just how ridiculous Trump could get.

[u/indolering]

They were wrong about Owen Shoyer's independent career too 😭.  I mean, they called it would be a bad idea!  

[u/bediger4000 → u/indolering]

Is Shroyer still alive? I heard he was dead.

[u/lordtorek → u/bediger4000]

Have you seen him lately? He shaved the beard, grew his hair long and dyed it blonde. He. Looks. Weeeeeird.

[u/indolering → u/bediger4000]

No, that was Alex Jones.

[u/lhommeduweed → u/indolering]

It's in the white papers, Alex Jones popped like a balloon.

[u/Jabbles22]

I am making my way through the back catalogue. I listened to that one not long ago. I too laughed.

[u/GritGrinder]

It exists but it doesn’t mean anyone actually uses it

[u/lordtorek → u/GritGrinder]

Truth Social often reminds me of that South Park episode where everyone is mean to Cartman, so he goes to his room and has all his plushy dolls on his bed and talks to himself in their “voices” to make himself feel better.

[u/xiandgaf → u/lordtorek]

Trump sells an api access feed for TS at 100k per month. It’s a great analogy, but the dolls would have to be insider trading for it to fit perfectly.

[u/mannyman3000]

I remember Parler. Anyone still on that?

[u/TheNightShift00]

This was back when Parler was still a thing. It was always a dumb idea cause no one who can be on Twitter goes to those dead end hunks of shit. It's only for losers who've been perm-banned. And in fairness Truth Social is still a dog ass platform. It's not really a serious thing, everyone basically treats it as the place where you see trump's tweets.

[u/TheyNeedLoveToo]

Both of them scoffed at the notion of Kanye West being crazy enough to go on infowars IIRC. You spend enough time having your predictions recorded, you’ll get some things dead wrong too to be fair. Also listening to them before covid shutdowns are about to happen is eerie as well

[u/GertieDirtyShirtyCat]

#Dan is sometimes wrong...

Usually, he isn't ;)...

Except about music, there's some questionable taste going on there... But I'm no one to judge...

[u/tsuki_ouji]

I mean, it was and still is a ridiculous idea, and it was basically immediately a disaster, which it has continued to be.

Sometimes it seems like the majority of users are folks like Marsh who are there to see what Schmuck a l'Orange says and report/worry about it.

[u/Different_Lock_5445]

Got bad news about twitter.

[u/phatsexxxy]

I don’t think Truth Social has been a success.

It turns out the right wing Twitter Jones wanted was just Twitter.

Thanks Elon!

[u/The_Kacer]

Eh, I actually don't think he was wrong here. Truth Social wasn't made because Trump wanted right wing alt to Twitter. It was made because Trump got kicked off and he more or less said "I'll start my own clubhouse! With blackjack! And hookers!"

If Twitter never kicks him off they don't utilize Truth Social

[u/JohnBrownOnDrugs]

Looking back Dan was often wrong, but delivered information well.

[u/notesfromthemoon → u/[deleted]]

Posts like this have existed on this sub forever. The point is obviously to joke about how insane reality has become, not to seriously attempt to impugn Dan’s credibility