As President Donald Trump’s return to the White House hogged the world’s attention this week, a photo of a half-empty auditorium in Davos, Switzerland, circulated online, leading critics to declare the annual gathering of global political and business leaders “dead.”
The image, posted by reporter Holger Zschäpitz on X, showed outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday addressing a sparse audience and rows of empty seats. By Wednesday morning, Zschäpitz’s post had garnered 1.2 million views.
Some conspiracy-laden replies, many of them from Trump supporters, self-described nationalists, and cryptocurrency evangelists, cheered the perceived lack of excitement about the exclusive conference in the Swiss Alps, known officially as the World Economic Forum.
“Davos rooms are empty. A few failed globalists are talking largely to each other,” wrote one crypto advocate on X. “New World Order is cancelled. The world is slowly waking up from a nightmare.”
“The once-mighty World Economic Forum is crumbling,” said the British nationalist commentator and former Brexit Party candidate Jim Ferguson. “As their lunatic fringe agendas face mounting scrutiny, it seems the world is finally waking up to their destructive plans.”
“Nobody relevant to the future is in Davos,” wrote the conservative venture capital investor Keith Rabois before Scholz’s lightly attended talk had even begun.
No credible news outlets have reported an actual decline in attendance at the conference. Organizers said more than 3,000 people, including 50 heads of state and government, will convene this week — roughly the same number as last year.
But Davos didn’t have Trump and his growing posse of friendly tech executives to compete with for airtime in 2024.
“In terms of gatherings of powerful corporate executives, Davos was kind of the B-Tier this weekend,” noted Bloomberg reporter Joe Wiesenthal.
Among the strangest pieces of evidence of Davos’ supposed decline was an unsourced report of shrinking demand for luxury escorts in the Swiss resort town.
“Davos is absolutely dead this year. No one gives a f**k. Supposedly luxury callgirl biz volume down -60% on last year,” one anonymous account wrote in a post that has now been viewed 1 million times on X.
It’s unclear how they arrived at these calculations, but Davos has reportedly been a hotspot for lucrative sex work in recent years.
“Vibes at Davos this year are very low,” another user posted. “The normal retinue of prostitutes and sex workers is much smaller (nobody is in the mood)”
The vibes may be set to change on Thursday, though, with President Trump scheduled to address the conference virtually in one of the week’s most anticipated discussions.
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The post ‘New World Order is cancelled’: Elite Davos summit mocked for ‘low vibes’ in wake of Trump inaguration appeared first on The Daily Dot.
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