Social media is wired to profit off irresponsible voices and sharing their posts only makes them more powerful and boosts influence.

Retweeting to make fun of them helps them. If you need to share for informational purposes/debunking, capture the image to starve impressions.
We just lived through the Trump years. Learn from them. We have to be smarter and more responsible in how we use these platforms because they’re wired to create chaos, instability, and spread conspiracy theories.

Engaging only gives these people power and influence.
The rise of Trump was in part made possible because he was so conducive to 1. Social media engagement 2. Media profits and 3. How his cruelty provoked people to share his garbage and express their opposing opinions.

These Right Wing trolls learned this lesson incredibly well.
When a certain dangerous congresswoman posts to provoke outrage, she’s doing it to build impressions and simultaneously make herself an opponent and build her stature off that position.

Do. Not. Feed. This.

Don’t give the impressions or the influence.
If you want to debunk something one of these Right Wing trolls posts, set the record straight, or analyze their tactics, screen capture the post.

Quote tweeting or replying to make fun of them doesn’t do anything but help them. Learn from the recent past. We have to do better.
Same goes for articles that outrage you. Media doesn’t care if you’re retweeting or sharing because you love or hate their pieces. It only incentivizes and ensures they’ll run more of them and go further to provoke.

Recognize the systems at play. You affect them.

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More from @JYSexton

24 May
The Big Lie that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen isn’t just about that election.

It’s about the GOP weaponizing conspiracy theories to disenfranchise voters, refusing to accept future electoral defeats, and systematically dismantling democracy.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-intentio…
We are watching, right now, a completely unfounded conspiracy theory legitimize efforts by the Right to combat their historic unpopularity by undoing elections and threatening violence.

The cord of shared society is coming unraveled, and it’s all by design.
The mythology of the Big Lie of a stolen election is predicated on white supremacy and oppression of people of color. This is an American tradition, and we’re seeing neo-Confederate principles emerge with every passing day.
Read 6 tweets
23 May
Always love these articles on population shrinking that do literally everything in their power to talk around the fact that artificial austerity and intentional economic inequality keeps people from affording families or even basic standards of living.
Like, corporations and the disgustingly wealthy have so completely captured the economy and political structures, and pushed such drastic exploitation, that the basic functions of life have become unattainable.

That’s...kind of a massive story.
And this is one of the biggest stories of them all: the political and economic project of the 20th century, this American led hypercapitalism/hegemonic project, has failed in totality, wasted god knows how much money, and killed god knows how many.

A total failure.
Read 4 tweets
22 May
Stop trying to understand Republicans through any coherent, logical frame.

They are inherently and intentionally incoherent, a body that exists purely to protect and promote white supremacy and the wealthy’s pursuit of profit at any cost and through any means.
White supremacy and hypercapitalism are illogical and self-destructive ideals that only survive through the intentional eradication of coherence and the violent enforcement of “revelatory” knowledge and faith over empirical logic.

The Right has to be incoherent to defend them.
The only way white supremacy and hypercapitalism survive or continue to thrive is by muddying reality and distorting information to the point that understanding is impossible and only infighting and conspiracy theories remain.

This is who the GOP is and what they are doing.
Read 4 tweets
22 May
There’s a lot of talk about how Trump is slipping into larger cultural irrelevance without social media, but those conversations are missing a larger point that media profiting off his destruction, dysfunction, and hatred helped create a massive crisis.
That Trump is withering without Twitter or Facebook only shows that it wasn’t any talent on his part, but that his ugliness and venality made him a perfect antagonist the sites could use to gain attention, drive content and engagement, and push numbers.
Having a villain on social media allowed people to react and “fight” against him, all while giving users a chance to openly demonstrate their own identities and values. It was a marketing campaign that put an incompetent, hateful criminal in the White House.
Read 7 tweets
20 May
"The Big Lie" that the 2020 Election was stolen was never about Donald Trump or the election.

It was about establishing a weaponized reality to help an increasingly despised and isolated GOP destroy democracy and protect white supremacy.

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-intentio…
What we are seeing, already, with the "Stop The Steal" conspiracy theory is that the Right and white voters are now challenging every single election they lose, claiming there is a giant criminal conspiracy

This is about delusion and legitimizing the destruction of democracy

2/
Trump's desperate need to save his reputation, lie about the results of the election, and guide the Right deeper into dangerous delusions and conspiracy theories, has given the GOP a weapon to legitimize antidemocratic actions while their popularity craters.

3/
Read 24 tweets
19 May
Despite promises of colonizing Mars, ushering in paradise through VR, and piloting "Wellness" programs, the wealthy aren't ACTUALLY interested in dealing with humanity's problems.

They're focused on getting *beyond* humanity to increase profits.

1/

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/no-cruelty-t…
To really understand our bizarre moment and crisis, we have to take a look at both the history of capitalism and the current cults of personality that have developed around disgustingly wealthy men like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who have become savior-like to their followers.

2/
The worship of men like Musk and Bezos is centered around a loss of faith in our political and societal structures and a need to find messiahs who might act singularly, outside those systems, to create a solution to problems like climate catastrophe and political schisms.

3/
Read 18 tweets

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