
COVFEFE Act - vivaamerica1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Over_Various_Feeds_Electronically_for_Engagement_Act
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bberrry
You know he must've been giggling as he came up with this.

In addition to the uncharacteristic legislative humor, it's also a good idea.

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jdoliner
Acronyms for bills are like the one place where the legislature does inject
some humor. Despite my distaste for our government, I gotta hand it to them,
they're pretty darn good at coming up with funny acronyms.

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exikyut
What are some good examples of other places this humor can be found?

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Clubber
PATRIOT act, because taking away hard fought freedoms is patriotic, just like
our forefathers wanted.

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danellis
You mean USA PATRIOT Act.

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Clubber
Yes, I forgot about the Uniting and Strengthening of America's freedoms part.
;)

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cbellew
Just to put my mind at rest..."Despite the constant negative press
covfefe."...we all agree Trump meant 'coverage' right?

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MereInterest
I am in agreement that it was intending to be "coverage", but that the follow-
up response is what makes it worth discussing. If he had admitted to making a
typo, then it would have been a complete non-issue. It was Trump's failed
attempts at putting a deeper meaning behind a typo, in order to avoid
admitting to the slightest mistake, that made it noteworthy.

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emsy
Or you know, he was making fun of his typo, which would be the charitable
interpretation. But we can't possibly be charitable to a monster like Trump!

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Houshalter
>Off camera, at a press briefing later the same day, Sean Spicer responded to
questions about the tweet that "the president and a small group of people know
exactly what he meant." No further explanation was given during the briefing.
Some reporters, observing that Spicer did not appear to be joking, were
concerned by the implications.

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timonoko
This is a real issue. It is very depressing to find out that only thing I have
ever done is two pieces of paper in 1970s. National Archives (of Finland) do
not recognize any other form of publications than those on paper. In this case
very shitty paper "printed" about 10 times with a Xerox-machine.

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espitia
Fuuny story behind covfefe:

I tried purchasing minutes after the tweet to find out someone had already
purchased it. I reached out to the guy (midnight) to buy it but he didn't want
to sell it. I offered my ideas on what he could to capitalize on the
opportunity and so I ended up building up a store front with shirts/, coffee
mugs, sweaters and other merch. I basically didn't sleep that night. I built
the site, responded to purchase emails, etc.

It took some time to get the storefront ready because of issues with the
forwarding (GoDaddy) but when we got it set up, we started seeing traffic. Not
before long, sales. This thing started blowing up and as memes would start
trending, I would immediately create new merchandise based on the memes and
within minutes that same merchandise I had just created would sell. It was
surreal.

We were up to ~$2k in profits with who knows how much revenue. Many emails
started arriving and the owner would just forward them to me as (I think) he
was not as savvy with business/negotiation/etc or just plain intimidated. It
got so crazy that at one point Bloomberg and Inc.com reached out via phone to
him and he told them about what we had done.

I kept pushing for him to put up the domain for sale on flippa.com and even
got the director of the domains department to contact him directly. I also
reached out to local newspaper outlets who were more than ready to write the
story but since we weren't "partners", it wasn't "as" interesting. He promised
to give me a stake in everything but I guess things and people got to his
head.

As time went on, he starting drifting from the idea of selling because he
thought he had hit something enormous. Which he did, just not the way he
thought. He pitched me the idea to build an ecommerce store where he would
basically sell anything (Amazon). I told him the only exit here is selling but
if he wanted to go that route, he could (try) to build a brand (???). I
insisted that the risk of continuing with anything other than selling the
domain at peak hype was too great. That is, anything past hype days (1-4 days
after the tweet) would drive the "value" to zero.

The days past and the opportunity quickly came to a close. He was offered
(past hype time) $15k which he said he wouldn't take as anything below $X00k
was dumb. Regardless, I kept pushing for him to sell the damn thing just so I
could tell the story at the very least. He then told me he had partnered up
with his brother (a lawyer), another marketing guy and he wanted me to take
part in the team. He had me speak to his lawyer about equity for a whole 30
minutes which, again, I thought was ridiculous as I told him that this would
soon die, if it hadn't already. We spoke over Facetime but soon enough, he
kicked me off the storefront admin, stopped answering and now he still has the
same domain forwarding to his merch store.

I think if he had acted quicker, he could have sold for at least $20k-$50k at
the peak of the hype. Even if he sold at the solid $15k offer, he could have
earned himself a great story.

covfefe.com

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t0mbstone
I think you may be underestimating the value of the domain name.

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espitia
I understand there might be a crazy upside somewhere in the future (for
example, the COVFEFE ACT). This can be done only in hindsight. The risk, imo,
was way too high to do anything but cash out at the moment.

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t0mbstone
My point is that with the proper sort of marketing, you should be able to sell
a LOT of merchandise to Trump haters out there.

Imagine being in year 3 of Trump's presidency and still making money off this
signature blunder. We aren't even through year 1!

Imagine 20 years from now, when people are able to pin-point "COVFEFE" as a
signature moment in Trump's campaign (just like Bill Clinton and Monica
Lewinsky).

Imagine the search traffic for the term over the years. Imagine all of the ad
revenue!

Imagine how much you would be kicking yourself for selling it for so cheaply
back then...

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espitia
The flip side of that coin is that no one remembers that moment. Only time can
tell. I think it's a matter of placing your bets where you think it is most
probable that you will win the most. I personally don't believe that the
statements yoh made will be true. The owner thinks otherwise.

