Why Donald Trump is so Successful

As more people progressively talk more and more about the election, it may come at a surprise to many of you that, especially after promising for more political articles, I haven't mentioned the star of this year's show -- Donald Trump. In fact, I don't think I've mentioned him a single time either in private or public conversations until this article. Well, now that I'm finally making this, I might as well mention the reason that I haven't brought him up until now: I don't support him.

Trump is a stupid genius. Though his policies and statements may sound dumb, he knows how people work. He knows how to manipulate groups as small as an individual campaign opponent and as large as international news media. You see, Trump doesn't need to convince people to vote for him -- well, maybe a little -- but for the most part, he already has a very large, very loud group of people playing as his marketing card for him. It's the people who criticize him.

Yes, I'm talking about YOU (well, unless you're a Trump supporter, but I guess I'd still be talking about you?). You who post day and night articles and shitty memes on Facebook and Twitter on how Trump is literally the next Hitler. You who can only seemingly talk about how bad Trump is as a starter discussion for anyone in any environment. You who's punchline to a shitty joke is simply the name "Donald Trump". You constantly seem to be looking for reasons why he tends to be so popular, but you've checked everywhere but one last place -- yourself.

Let me explain this via an example. Very recently, a ton of drama and controversy was drummed up over Kanye West via a series of tweeting rants that made him look dumbfoundedly delusional. Also and coincidentally very recently, Kanye West's new album, Life of Pablo, came out. Or, was it really a coincidence? I mean, what are the chances that Kanye's rants begin shortly before the release of TLOP and end shortly after the release of TLOP? I mean, it's sure convenient -- after all, those rants have gotta have a bunch of people seeing his name, only to find the album itself, then having a listen to it to find out what this guy is all about...

...In case you haven't realized it yet, Kanye's controversy was planned -- by Kanye himself. Now, I'm not saying he faked it; Kanye is a pretty genuine person, and would think of the type of crazy shit that was mentioned in those tweets. However, he could've asked Mark Zuckerberg for money any time he wanted (most preferably in person or perhaps as a PM on Facebook) but instead decided to say it live as apart of one of his rants, live to the world. And so, people thought it was stupid. And further so, people decided to talk about it. People decided to talk about it a lot. And because people decided to talk about it a lot, The Life of Pablo ended up being the most successful digital only album of all time, despite also being the most pirated.

What Kanye West used -- and what Donald Trump is using -- is a technique called Large Crowd Manipulation. LCM (not to be confused with Least Common Multiple) is when an already popular figure appeals to the act of controversy by stating particularly dumb ideas or goofs that the public will find stupid, thus strengthening their popularity for some time before people finally get over it. Of course, for Donald Trump, people haven't gotten over it -- and its because he pulls a particularly controversial stunt every few weeks or so. Could it be, perhaps, that this is a case of Trump using LCM to its maximum effectiveness? In reality, yeah -- probably. It's very likely that, when Trump does these stupid things, he himself understands the stupidity of it, and that's how he's able to get ahead so easily.

Now, here's the real kicker -- there's nothing we can do to stop him. Think about it, how do you stop someone from being so popular? You stop talking about them. But to get people to stop talking about Trump, given the massive amount of people who are talking about him, is just straight up impossible. Even if we were to reach this message out to every single individual who talks about Trump all the time, many will likely forget about this message and continue to talk about him a few days later regardless, thus kickstarting the trend once again. Trump in a lot of ways has America in the palm of his hand, and he knows this -- despite a large amount of America not. He won the Republican party nomination the day it started -- and he may very well go on to do it in the general election. A reasonable person would see Trump's claims and policies as absurd, but only a fool would refuse to recognize that his campaign is perhaps one of the most ingeniously designed campaigns ever run.

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