PETALING JAYA, June 30 — Just 10 days after claiming to have fueled the lower-than-expected turnout at US President Donald Trump’s rally, TikTok users are now attempting to cripple his online merchandise stores.

TikTok users are allegedly now filling up their shopping carts with a tonne of merchandise, like “Baby Lives Matters” onesies and “Make America Great Again” sweaters, worth thousands of dollars, on Trump’s online store — and then abandoning their carts — leaving them unavailable for others.

A new series of videos and posts have begun circulating on social media platforms, like TikTok and Twitter, with users calling on as many people as they can to hop on the bandwagon in their latest attempt to derail Trump’s re-election campaign.

 

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Some users, such as @preveroni, even uploaded “tutorial videos,” explaining to other users how they could sabotage Trump’s online stores.

“Such a nice day. What a shame it would be if everybody realised that if they went to Donald Trump’s merchandise store and filled their cart up with as many things as it could, and then get distracted, and then just forgot to come back to check out. That would be a shame.” he said in the post.

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Tik Tok user @preveroni filled up on 1,000 pieces of each item. — Screenshot via TikTok/@preveroni
Tik Tok user @preveroni filled up on 1,000 pieces of each item. — Screenshot via TikTok/@preveroni

@prevoni’s post has received over 2.8 million views in just four days, with many users commenting on how they have done the same thing too, by employing this tactic in their attempts to ruin Trump’s presidential campaign.

This tactic or technique is known as a “denial of inventory attack” or “shopping cart abandonment,” where a potential customer starts the checkout process for an online order but drops out before completing the purchase.

 

According to Business Insider, it is estimated that online retailers lose US$4.6 trillion (RM19.73 trillion) worth of merchandise per year, as inventory patterns lead items to be labelled as “sold out” when in actual fact, there is still a wealth of availability for the product.

The Verge, however, reported that this effort may now be rendered ineffective asTrump’s campaign site works differently.

The report said that, until recently, customers could change the quantity of an item in their cart to any number, but the site has since removed the ability to add multiple items at a time, possibly due to the impact of TikTok users.

This creative and non-violent way of “fighting back” against Trump comes after TikTok users and K-pop fans took partial credit for inflating attendance expectations for Trump’s first presidential rally in months, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20.

The New York Times reported that social media users claimed to have registered thousands of tickets for the rally merely as a prank after Trump’s social media team posted a tweet asking his supporters to register for free tickets using their phones.

 

K-pop fan accounts then began sharing the information with their followers, persuading them to sign up for the rally, but not show up.

This news then spread its way to TikTok as many users, such as Mary Jo Laupp aka TikTok Grandma, uploaded posts and videos encouraging people to do the same.

However, it was also reported that many users were quick to delete their posts within the first 24 to 48 hours to avoid garnering too much attention in their attempts to conceal their plan and give president Trump a surprise.

 

Prior to the event, Trump’s campaign managers Brad Parscale tweeted that there have been more than one million requests to attend, but the Tulsa Fire Department tallied the underwhelming crowd at fewer than 6,200 people.