In this (attention) economy?
What we can learn from Mrs. Frazzled and Trump’s online outreach operation
Donald Trump is the attention economy president. He doesn’t care if you love him or hate him. He just wants you fixated solely on him. Politically, this has worked well for him. I don’t believe Trump is always playing 3D chess or manufacturing distraction after distraction, but he does seem to understand better than any other politician how to exploit the attention economy to his advantage.
The problem with the attention economy is that people get bored easily. Remaining the main character online requires constant effort, and, over time, your content generally has to become more shocking and/or extreme. Otherwise, you risk being tuned out entirely. Arguably, this happened in 2020 when Americans voted Trump out for Joe Biden, a candidate whose entire premise was boringness and a promise to return to normal. It didn’t stick, and Trump managed to find his way back, but I do try to remind myself that the man has lost our attention before, and likely will again.
Perhaps it’s already happening. Trump’s approval ratings and polling have tanked. And the MAGA coalition seems more interested in picking fights with him or trying to position themselves as his successor, than supporting his agenda. Replies to his posts on TruthSocial, literally a social network built specifically for Trump superfans, are increasingly negative, with MAGA fans upset about the war in Iran. Staunch Trump supporters are openly debating whether or not he might be the Antichrist.
Like Trump, the rest of MAGA lives and dies by the attention economy. They crave views, clicks, and money. These days, Trump’s best utility is that he’s easily exploited for that purpose. The so-called MAGA civil war is probably good business for MAGA influencers and creators, especially since legacy media loves to cover the infighting, further amplifying their content to a bigger audience.
Much as I’d like to declare Trump an irrelevant Lame Duck and move on, we can’t count him out, even as his influence is starting to wane. The Trump operation has the most sophisticated online outreach operation I’ve ever seen. The White House frequently works with MAGA creators, Trump has been a guest on multiple MAGA and MAGA-adjacent podcasts, and the right-wing online media machine is well-funded and resourced. Trump and his aides have invested in building up this media ecosystem for over a decade now, and even as I watch some of MAGA’s top influencers fight to come out on top, I’m not sure anyone else can keep this coalition together as the powerful force it’s been once Trump is gone… which makes it more difficult to abandon Trump entirely, even for those who want to.
There’s also no counterweight on the Left, for reasons that are both financial and cultural. I think we’re in a better place than we were in 2024, and I appreciate some of the efforts I’ve seen to resource and support lefty content creators. But what I hear consistently from people working in that space is that we don’t have the scale we need to really create and elevate an ecosystem. And as David Plouffe recently wrote for the New York Times, “[a] successful campaign in 2026 must operate like a full-time production studio,” something he doesn’t seem confident that Democratic campaigns are built to do right now.
We were reminded of the influence and potential power of lefty content creators this week when California Congressman Eric Swalwell was forced to suspend his gubernatorial campaign and resign from Congress due to credible sexual assault and harassment allegations against him. After receiving multiple tips, creators Mrs. Frazzled, AKA Arielle Fodor, and Cheyenne Jackson worked online and off with Swalwell’s victims to bring the story to light, using the attention economy as a tool to help elevate the women’s stories.
Fodor and Jackson initially experienced some backlash from the Left and were accused of doing the Republicans’ work for them. I’m interested to see how Swalwell will impact how campaigns and advocacy groups interact with them in the future. One of the cultural issues I worry about is that allies will now be more cautious about building relationships with creators, especially since this all began after Fodor spoke positively about an initial Zoom meeting with Swalwell organized by his campaign.
We don’t do imperfect allies all that well as a movement, something that holds us back and makes our funders overly cautious. Hopefully I’m wrong, and candidates who aren’t predators and advocacy groups will be even more enthusiastic about content creators like Mrs. Frazzled in a post-Swalwell world, rather than backing off.
The Left isn’t just competing with the MAGA Right, but also with commercial platforms and creators. One thing I love about What’s Resonating, a daily newsletter that monitors trending topics online, is that it presents left and right wing content alongside what politically neutral accounts are talking about online, and the places where political and non-political content do and don’t intersect. Meanwhile politics and entertainment continue to exist almost as one vertical, with TMZ launching a DC outpost just this week to cover politics with its brand of viral video gossip content.
You might find the attention economy exhausting (I certainly do!), but it’s not going away. If anything, I think it will get worse before it gets better, especially as the platforms continue to push short-form video content on users.
I don’t think we can ever replicate the ecosystem that Trump and MAGA created, but I also don’t believe we want to. The MAGA media is built around one personality, and even as it’s fracturing, Donald Trump remains at the center of that universe. That might be sustainable for a time, but it’s not how the left builds power and we don’t want to become our own cult of personality. However, we can adopt some of the practices that we know worked well for Trump, and candidates who want to win should absolutely find ways to compete in the attention economy, especially content creators, and build an ecosystem that works for us rather than against us.
ICYMI
Meta Cafeteria Workers Did What Execs Won’t: Took on ICE and Won (Wired) The best story you’ll read all week. I promise.
Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections (ProPublica) A comprehensive report. One for the bookmarks.
The Neo-Nazi Enforcer Who Helped Build Peter Thiel’s Online Influence Empire (Byline Times) I continue to be amazed at how much we’re learning about the so-called alt-right, AKA MAGA 1.0, via the Epstein files. This one’s a long but worthwhile read, and longtime readers will recognize many of the names mentioned here.
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Coda
I’m gonna give Mrs. Frazzled the final word this week. Her videos on gentle parenting various politicians are how I first discovered her content, and they crack me up every time. Enjoy this supercut of her doing her thing. I’ll talk to you again next Sunday!
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This issue is very important. A leader, imo, is needed to be the hub of the Democratic forces.