Nimble America

About

Nimble America is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The organization has been widely denounced by Trump supporters on the /r/The_Donald subreddit, where many speculated that the organization is a scam and criticized its initiatives as "astroturfing."^[1]

History

On June 28th, 2016, the /r/nimbleamerica^[9] subreddit was launched for discussions about Nimble America's activities. On June 30th, the domain for the organization's official website was registered.^[19] In July the @NimbleAmerica^[17] Twitter feed was launched. On July 7th, a Facebook^[18] page for the organization was created.

Promotion on /r/The_Donald

On September 17th, 2016, moderator TehDonald of the /r/the_donald^[3] subreddit submitted a post promoting Nimble America, remarking that the community had "proven that shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real." Meanwhile, Redditor NimbleRichMan submitted a /r/the_donald^[8] post asking for help defeating Hillary Clinton by donating to Nimble America. In the comments section, Milo Yiannopoulos replied with an endorsement of /u/NimbleRichMan, claiming he knew him personally.

A majority of the subreddit's community denounced Nimble America, arguing that Trump supporters did not need the organization to support their candidate. While the posts were subsequently deleted, the originals have been archived on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine^[2] and Archive.is.^[7] That day, Redditor geragh submitted a post chronicling the backlash on /r/SubredditDrama.^[16] Meanwhile, /r/the_donald^[5] moderator Viking83 submitted a post titled "This Community is Not For Sale," which announced that moderators TehDonald and Lil-z had resigned from the community. On September 23rd, Redditor ahubbs submitted a post titled "Fuck you /u/tehdonald. Fuck Nimble America" to /r/the_donald,^[4] where it gained over 1,200 upvoted (96% upvoted) and 120 comments in four days.

Milo Yiannopoulos' Statement

September 17th, Yiannopoulos posted a response to a post about the incident on /r/the_donald,^[6] in which he apologized for the way he handled the announcement (shown below).

Conspiracy Theory

Also on September 17th, Redditor Chazzen submitted a post titled "Something strange I found on the NimbleAmerica FAQ section," which contained a link to an archived version of Nimble America's FAQ page linking the word "billboard" to a screenshot of an email thread between an unknown recipient and Reddit community manager Philippe Beaudette (shown below). Within one week, the post garnered upwards of 2,300 votes (97% upvoted) and 480 comments on /r/the_donald,^[20] where many speculating that Nimble America was created as a false flag conspiracy.

In a comment, Redditor purpletricycle revealed that Beaudette was contacted to prevent the community from being shutdown for legal reasons, seeking approval from Reddit lawyers prior to launching the non-profit.^[21]

Palmer Luckey Identified as /u/NimbleRichMan

On September 22nd, The Daily Beast^[10] reported that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey confirmed that he used the pseudonym NimbleRichMan to post on the /r/The_Donald subreddit. The article included a statement from Luckey, who expressed doubt that the organization was a scam:

"I'm not going to keep throwing money after something if I don't see any results. I think these guys are pretty legit. The sums of money are so small, I don’t think they’re out to scam anybody. If they disappear with the money, I wouldn’t throw any more money at them."

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about Luckey's involvement with the organization, including The Verge,^[11] Kotaku,^[12] Mashable^[13] and New York Magazine.^[15]

Search Interest

External References