Cool New Trend: Flipping Off Trump Buildings On Instagram
Search Trump's buildings and you'll find hundreds of one-finger protests
If you’re curious how people feel about real estate mogul Donald Trump’s greatest architectural achievements, just search the Instagram geotag for any of the U.S. skyscrapers that bear his name. You’ll see a lot of what Trump refers to as the “bad finger.”
An Instagram search for posts geotagged to the Trump Tower New York includes photos of many protests and also serves as a dumping ground for bizarre and offensive anti-Trump memes, but one of the most common themes is a single finger extended to the heavens.
Instagram also shows a few flipped birds in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, but no Trump building in America gets as much Insta-hate as Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. Within the last month nearly 60 people have posted photos of themselves giving the fuck-you gesture to the fourth-tallest building in the United States.
Trump Tower in Chicago has been despised in the community even before Trump had to cancel a Chicago rally last week amidst security concerns from protestors. Many Chicagoans were upset about the building’s construction in 2008 for fear would block scenic high-rise views and cause traffic congestion, but criticism turned to disgust in May 2014 when Trump erected 20-foot-tall steel letters displayed 200-feet off the ground on his Windy City citadel. Blair Karmin of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the sign “is the equivalent of a boorish intruder at a black-tie ball: It never shuts up and never ceases to call attention to itself.”
After the sign went up, Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed a restriction on the size of building signs, and after Trump started insulting Mexicans and Muslims, many Chicagoans called for the sign to be torn down. Locals haven’t been successful in any efforts to remove giant letters that illuminate their skyline every night—but that hasn’t stopped them from holding one-finger protests every day.