Local man creates political waves with anti-Hillary hashtag
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- A 19-year old college student in Raleigh made major political waves over the weekend by helping to steal some of the spotlight from Hillary Clinton.
Markeece Young is studying political science at Wake Tech. He showed off some raw talent for it this weekend when his #WhyImNotVotingForHillary hashtag set Twitter on fire.
Hillary Clinton's You Tube Video announcing her candidacy was a blockbuster in social media terms. It had 1 million views and 90,000 retweets in the first few hours.
Back in Raleigh, Young was busy on Twitter creating what turned into a large-scale Clinton backlash.
"I came up with it because it was just simple and easy for people to do," Young said.
Young, who describes himself on Twitter as a former Democrat turned conservative and goes by the Twitter handle @YoungBLKRepub, invented #WhyImNotVotingForHillary.
"It was the number one hashtag for probably a couple hours and I'm proud of that because it was a grassroots effort," Young said.
For several hours Sunday, #WhyImNotVotingForHillary was the most talked about subject on Twitter in the country. It became an outlet for like-minded conservatives to criticize Clinton on everything from her response to the Benghazi attack to the recent controversy over her use of a personal email account during her time at the State Department.
"There's a lot of distrust in Hillary Clinton. So we just made our own community for people who have the same values as myself," Young said.
Creating the number one hashtag in the country, even for a just a couple hours, is no easy feat. The big name candidates all tried. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and the national Republican Party all created some version of an anti-Hillary social media campaign. None of them caught on like Markeece's did.
"I'm pretty proud that it all started with me and a couple friends just saying let's get this trending," Young said.
