Trump Media figured out how to monetize the refresh button. Kevin McGurn stood in front of cameras and defended charging people money to read Trump's posts three seconds faster than the poors. He said more customers signed up. He said this like it was good news.
The product exists. People paid for it. Those are facts we have to accept about the world we live in.
Imagine explaining your monthly subscriptions to your accountant. Netflix. Spotify. Premium access to Truth Social posts. Your accountant asks what you get for that last one. You tell him you see Trump's thoughts before everyone else does. He asks how much sooner. You say maybe five seconds. He closes your file and suggests a different CPA.
McGurn called this "faster access" like he was selling Bloomberg terminals to hedge funds. He was not selling Bloomberg terminals to hedge funds. He was selling a skip-the-line pass to a social media account. The line was not real. Nobody was standing in it. They invented the line so they could charge you to skip it.
The technical analysis here is straightforward. Draw a trend line from selling steaks at Sharper Image through Trump University to charging a subscription fee for early access to free posts. The pattern holds. Someone will pay for anything if you frame it as exclusive.
McGurn said more people signed up. He did not say how many more. He did not say how many total. He said the word "more" and expected that to count as disclosure. It worked because nobody writing about this asked for the number.
Retail traders saw this headline and bought the stock anyway because they think monetization equals revenue and revenue equals profit and profit equals their Robinhood account going up. They will learn these things are not the same. They will learn this lesson expensively.
The CEO defended his product. The product sold. The customers exist. F*ck every single one of them.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment