K-pop Stans Empty Tulsa

2020

Date: 20 June 2020 · Place: BOK Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma · TikTok · K-pop fandom Twitter · Figures: Mary Jo Laupp, TikTok-using 51-year-old who issued the initial call · Brad Parscale, Trump campaign manager · K-pop fan armies (BTS ARMY etc.) · Tags: Coordination, TikTok, Sabotage 01. Reserve and Don't Show On 12 June 2020 Mary Jo Laupp, a grandmother in Iowa, posts a TikTok urging viewers to reserve free tickets to Trump's upcoming Tulsa rally and then not attend, to give the campaign a falsified sense of demand. The video catches K-pop stan Twitter, which industrializes the call across BTS, EXO, and BLACKPINK fan armies. Hundreds of thousands of free reservations come in over the next eight days. Brad Parscale boasts publicly on 15 June of over a million ticket requests. The campaign sets up overflow stages outside the BOK Center anticipating a crush. 02. Six Thousand Seats Filled On 20 June Trump arrives in Tulsa to a BOK Center with vast empty sections. Fire-marshal attendance count is approximately 6,200 in a 19,000-seat arena. The overflow stages are dismantled before he speaks. Parscale is removed as campaign manager three weeks later. The episode is the first major proof-of-concept that the same coordinated-fandom labor that flooded streaming counts for Korean comeback releases could be redirected at American electoral logistics in real time. It is the highest-profile example of K-pop stans entering American politics as a coordinated force. Sources • Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning, Sheera Frenkel, 'TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally,' New York Times, 21 June 2020 • Brian Stelter, 'Inside the Failed Tulsa Rally,' CNN Reliable Sources, 21 June 2020 • Mary Jo Laupp, original TikTok video, 12 June 2020