Apollo Magazine

Making a massive hashtag of it – from Brexit backers to Trump

Political tweets have hit the big time – on massive billboards in the UK and in ‘The Presidential Twitter Library’

Twitter/@ByDonkeys

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One of the less conventional campaigns to grace the billboards of British cities in recent months has come courtesy of Led by Donkeys, an anti-Brexit pressure group. The posters feature inflated screen grabs of tweets, and other statements photo-shopped into the Twitter format, by pro-Brexit politicians and public figures – drawing attention to the reverse-ferreting that has been a staple of recent years.

‘You won’t be surprised to hear that we haven’t necessarily asked permission to put them up’, a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian back in January. ‘[…] We don’t have money to do a national advertising campaign. We have spare time, a ladder and maybe a little smidgen of wit.’ The group has since crowd-funded rather a lot of cash – with one massive billboard even greeting Theresa May as she arrived in Brussels last month.

Yet this is small fry compared to a pop-up exhibition, most recently staged in Austin, and created the The Daily Show and Comedy Central. The promisingly titled ‘The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library’ is a curatorial showcase for the 45th President’s social media presence, featuring exhibits including gold-framed tweets, a mock up of the Oval Office (incorporating a golden toilet) and a map of all the “s***hole” countries Trump has offended via the platform.

The ‘library’ bills it as an ‘interactive, hands-on experience for hands of all sizes’. As Trump himself might put it: yuge.

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