Teens, K-Pop Stans Claim Trump Rally Tickets: NYT

Teenagers and K-pop fans claim they signed up for a million ticket requests to attend US President Donald Trump’s first post-pandemic rally. The Trump campaign planned for overflow crowds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city with rising numbers of Covid-19 cases, but the stadium was about two-thirds empty. “TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank,” reports the New York Times. “Many users deleted their posts after 24 to 48 hours in order to conceal their plan and keep it from spreading into the mainstream internet.” TikTok, a social media app that originated in China in 2016, allows users to create 15-second videos with music clips. Fans of K-pop – which began in South Korea with popularity spreading worldwide – have also lent support to the sustained protests of the Black Lives Matter Movement over police brutality after the death of George Floyd while in handcuffs and police custody. Political campaigns gather data from those signing up for such rallies, but must now expect a new form of interference. The US presidential election draws intense global interest, and non-citizens and those too young to vote use the internet to register their opinions. – YaleGlobal