On Friday night Donald Trump tweeted a really funny satirical video created by Twitter user @CarpeDonktum.
The video (see below) used the REM song “Everybody Hurts” mixed with Trump’s State of the Union speech audio to mock Democrats and Mitt Romney, with video clips of them in the audience at SOTU. The Trump tweet quickly gained almost 50,000 retweets and over 2,000,000 views.
Liberals were severely offended by the mockery, which no doubt triggered memories of Election Night 2016.
The humorless worker bees at Vox.com were “alarmed“:
Sure, this is funny — if, say, The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert does something like it.
But for the president to tweet it, it’s alarming. In the past, presidents have tried to keep at least a bit of an appearance that they respected and were willing to work with the other party. With his tweet, Trump is doing nothing of the sort; he’s just mocking his Democratic rivals.
Nicole Galluci at Mashable felt this was so unpresidential, and conveniently included tweets from other liberals who were hurt by the type of mockery they send toward the deplorables daily:
Donald Trump is back at it again with the extremely un-presidential tweets.On Friday afternoon, hours after he held a press conference outside the White House to announce he was declaring a national emergency (even though he didn’t need to) the president tweeted a parody State of the Union video in an effort to mock Democrats.
In my humble opinion, this was clearly “fair use” of the music. Universal Music and REM felt otherwise, and a demand was served on Twitter demanding that the video in Trump’s Tweet be disabled.
A lawyer for Universal Music Publishing Group had reached out to Twitter on Friday asking that the video, which was first posted by another user, be taken down from the platform, according to a source familiar with the situation, who asked to remain anonymous.The clip, which runs more than two minutes in length, plays audio from R.E.M.’s early-’90s hit single “Everybody Hurts” over excerpts from Trump’s Feb. 5 State of the Union address.But, as of the early hours Saturday ET, Twitter users could not play the video posted by Trump, and many saw a message that read, “This video has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder.” ….R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills took notice of the use of his band’s song in the video that Trump tweeted Friday.”Measures have been taken to stop it,” Mills tweeted, adding that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey needs “to get on this.”
The video in the Trump tweet was disabled by Twitter and later removed entirely, presumably by Trump (view it on Wayback Machine and archive.today:
The takedown has created a Streisand Effect:
The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased.
If the goal of REM and Universal Music was to censor the satire, it has failed.
@CarpeDonktum reposted the video (which as of this writing still is live):
The video also is being spread by other accounts on Twitter (here, for example, still live as of this writing)It’s also on YouTube in multiple accounts (live as of this writing):
And it’s still live on Facebook, where it’s been live since February 6:
The takedown has created a news cycle about the video, including the CNBC report above, and reports in Variety, and elsewhere, including here. I don’t think we would have written about it but for the takedown.
The lunatic fringe of #TheResistance is celebrating this victory over Orange Man Bad:
I don’t know if the reposts of the videos will survive. If not, hum the tune to “Everybody Hurts” in your head, and scroll through these screenshots. These are not everybody who hurts, but every one of them hurts:
The REM video is still removed, but Trump has now tweeted an alternative by the same @CarpeDonktum user of the video set to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Don’t think Lee will be upset.
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