ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship of Donald J. Trump to the culture of trolling by explaining the rhetoric, ideology, and ritualistic actions of trolling, the ideology of hypermasculinity and authority that shape the troll community and Trump’s role within it, and the possible influences of postmodern thought and anti-intellectualism on the rise of trolling. Hypermasculinity seems like both the driving force and the telos of Trump’s online trolls. The online manifestations of the irreverent bullies commonly takes on the label ‘troll,’ a nebulous group that has been studied and theorized. A chat bot, an automated entity programmed to respond to and redistribute posts on particular topics, accounts for many Twitter troll accounts. Fake accounts have been around long before Trump, but have surged into the socio-political spaces, lately. Bots programmed to perpetuate “the Trump effect” and multiply the rituals that have come to define troll logic ensure a strong buttressing of the Twitter’s troll-centric landscape.
