Thread by @TheLaurenChen

Here’s a thread about my experience at the #MindsIRL conference this weekend.

I didn’t get a chance to tweet much on the day itself, but I’m home now, so I want to give you guys the details.

I’m going to start with the negative so we can end on a positive note 👌

First off, dirty smear merchant Talia Levin (who works for the larger organization of dirty smear merchants Media Matters) was admitted to the event as a sign of good faith by the organizers, despite being a proven liar.

One of the first things she did was tweet out the event’s venue.

She obviously wanted to encourage protestors to show up, which considering how the event was previously the subject of violent threats, is, how shall I say, an a**hole move.

Next, as she was mingling with speakers in the green room (which aside from her presence actually had a wonderfully upbeat and friendly atmosphere), she took it upon herself to take @Timcast out of context and smear @MrAndyNgo on her Twitter.

She also (horrifyingly) took it upon herself to misrepresent attendees.

Many weren’t aware of her history, and spoke with her outside. She not only misrepresented people and took them out of context in order to make them look racist, but she did so while posting their pictures.

As people were made aware of her tweets and began to realize what she was doing, she (naturally) was confronted about it.

She left at that, and although everyone was peaceful, she thought it would be more interesting to say she was “chased” out of the casino by “racists.”

@TPostMillennial has a great article covering this.

And before she left, she also misrepresented the panels that she witnessed, but those will be released soon in their entirety, and we’ll all get to see how laughable her lies were.

thepostmillennial.com/activist-journ…

Next, at the after party, protestors showed up to cry about all the speakers and attendees being literal Nazis 🙄

Overall they were low energy and didn’t end up staying the whole night.

They didn’t try anything since there were tons of cops for security, but @TheLiamDonovan @MikeyTheHarlow @AJWSean and I arrived a bit later than everyone, and they began booing as we walked past.

One said “You even LOOK like a Nazi!” But I don’t know which of us she meant 🤨

The bigger group of them also started chanting some BS about fascist, racist, KKK etc., but I thought it was pretty funny they were only chanting sporadically when we passed them.

Protesting imaginary racists takes a lot of work, so best to pace yourself 😂

Also worth noting I think that all the protestors (or at least the ones I saw) were white, and waaaay less racially diverse than the people they were calling Nazis 🤷🏻‍♀️

But, on the bright side, the positive aspects of the event were LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE!

ALL of the speakers & attendees I met were amazingly friendly & welcoming.

There were people with all types of different nationalities, racial backgrounds, political beliefs, religions, & sexual orientations, but what we had in common was the desire to have a great time together

Like I said you’ll all get to see the pane footage soon, but some of the overarching themes I noticed was that we often had more in common between the left and right than we thought, and that many were DESPERATE to put a stop to the extreme divisiveness going on.

Liam and I really enjoyed meeting people who watched our videos, since I sometimes forget that view counts represent real life people out there! 😂

It was also cool to hear that some people who watched our videos didn’t always agree with them, but wanted the perspective anyway.

Also, I got to fangirl over meeting awesome big shot commentators, and meet some Internet friends again or for the first time in person!

(Side note, almost no one I know from online is ever the height I expect them to be 😂)

Overall, the event ran smoothly, the venue was awesome, security was tight, the content was interesting, and @MythinformedMKE @onSubverse and @minds really outdid themselves!

I’m literally already looking forward to the next event 😄 Wherever it is, you can count me in.

Thank you to everyone who made the event possible & to everyone who attended 😄

And to anyone who tried to stop this event from happening, I actually wish you could have been inside with us (not Talia lol she’s awful) to see & hear all the actually amazing people that were there