Opinion | Trump May Start a Social Network. Here's My Advice. - The New York Times - 0 views
-
Trump May Start a Social Network. Here’s My Advice.
-
Recast your past failures as successes, engage in meaningless optics, and other tips from the Silicon Valley playbook.
- ...26 more annotations...
-
Tech is hard stuff, and new ventures should be attempted with extreme care, especially by those whose history of entrepreneurship is littered with the carcasses of, say, Trump Steaks.
-
Or Trump Water. Or Trump University. Or Trump magazine. Or Trump Casinos. Or Trump Mortgages. Or Trump Airlines. Or Trump Vodka. Or the Trump pandemic response. Or, of course, the 2020 Trump presidential campaign.
-
Even if “fail” and “don’t work” are the same thing, in tech these are seen as a badge of honor rather than as a sign that you are terrible at executing a business plan and engage in only meaningless optics.
-
uckily, this fits right in your wheelhouse — a talent that you have displayed in spades since the beginnings of your career.
-
“genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” I might rephrase that for your entry into tech by saying, genius is 1 percent instigation and 99 percent perfidy.
-
Instigation and perfidy, in fact, make the perfect formula for a modern-day social network, so you are already well on your way, given your skill set.
-
Self-aggrandizing though badly spelled streams that actually reveal a profound lack of self-esteem? Check.
-
Inciting violence over election fraud with both explicit and cryptic messages to your base, in order to get them to think they should attack the Capitol, like, for real? Checkmate
-
A social network requires a lot of it, including servers, apps and content moderation tools. You’ll need a whole army of geeks whom you’ll have to pay real money.
-
As for your future competitors … Twitter has seen its shares rise sharply since it tossed you off for life.
-
You still might get a reprieve over at Facebook, where an oversight board is contemplating your fate. We’ll see what the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, decides after the board makes a ruling.
-
Keep in mind, Mr. Zuckerberg really is the most powerful man in the world; that was even the case when you were in the Oval Office.
-
Avoid MeinSpace and InstaGraft, for obvious reasons. The narcissist in you might go for The_Donald, which you might now be able to use, since Reddit banned the 800,000-member forum with that name for violating its rules against harassment, hate speech, content manipulation and more.