The birth and explosion of r/The_Donald’s community provides insight into the self-described high-energy base of Trump’s 2020 ground game. While Hillary had data-specified messaging, Trump had Michigan and a growing vanguard of teenagers, “redpilled” to rip the establishment through memes on Reddit and sometimes problematic 4chan boards. Once the party of the young, the Democratic party is now miles behind in terms of messaging — not because the official GOP has a much better slogan than “I mean, have you seen the other guys?” but because it is able to leave the messaging to teenage masters of the language of the Web.

In its pathetic threat to dox and destroy an individual redditor because the president happened to glean his dumb GIF, CNN woke a dangerous dragon. The hashtag “#CNNBlackmail” trended on Twitter for nearly all of Wednesday. The top of Reddit’s homepage featured a meme with a frowning Reddit mascot head superimposed on the body of Otto Warmbier being dragged by North Korean guards, faces replaced by the CNN logo. The subreddit from which it came? The newly popular CNN Memes.