Thread by @AidanCTweets

Once people get into conspiratorial modes of thinking like this, even the act of trying to explain that this is a very silly thing to think is seen as hostile, and ultimately a part of the conspiracy against them.

Still, I'm going to try. 1/

This particular conspiracy theory has been going since 2019, and started with this tweet. It was seen as @jk_rowling "coming out" as gender critical (even though most trans people already knew she was GC.)

As such, it is VERY important to the gender critical movement. 2/

How important? At the recent LGB Alliance conference, they were selling it printed on merchanise. *That* important. After a few months, some GC people noticed that when it appeared in their timeline again it looked like they hadn't liked and retweeted, when they knew they had. 3/

If you are not in a conspiratorial mode of thinking, you will know that whether a particular tweet has 250k likes or 275k likes makes not one damn bit of difference in this world. Do GC people think trans people will disappear if JKR's tweet makes it to 300k likes? 4/

"To what end?" is always a great question to ask yourself if you are afraid you have bought into a conspiracy. To what end would a corporation whose business model is driven by likes and retweets delete a small % of likes and retweets on one tweet for ideological reasons? 5/

Here's a screenshot I took today of a tweet I know that I liked and retweeted back in 2020, and yet, if you see the heart and retweet, it doesn't look like I liked and retweeted it. Do I suspect that Twitter has deliberately set out to stop this tweet reaching a million likes? 6/

Of course not. I'm not gender critical, and I haven't spent years buying into various conspiracy theories about trans rights, and how businesses have been "ideologically captured" by it.

Why would Twitter waste time and money trolling people like this?

To what end? 7/

Clearly, this is not some ideological ruse to mildly annoy people who check on old tweets, it is something to do with the way that Twitter displays older tweets, probably to save time and money in some way, because TWITTER IS A BUSINESS.

But on gender critical Twitter....8/

...after this anomaly was noticed, it was spun as "Twitter out to get gender critical people, yet again." When it was pointed out that a business like Twitter was unlikely to do this, it was said that they employed a lot of trans people, who were doing it surreptitiously. 9/

There is, of course, no evidence that that is true, but that doesn't matter when you're selling a conspiracy theory. At the time, GC people started tweeting en masse about checking on JKR's tweet every day and having to go back and re-like, and re-retweet it. 10/

They even set up accounts to check on the numbers of likes and retweets on the JKR tweet. If the likes went down, it was evidence of the conspiracy. If they went up, they would tell people to go and like and retweet this tweet immediately because the likes were "sticking." 11/

In 2021, prominent people like @RosieDuffield1 are still buying into the idea that Twitter are deleting records of liking JK Rowling's 2019 tweet.

(It's obviously worrying to see elected officials displaying long-term conspiratorial modes of thinking like this.) 12/

And you can see how she talks about "the haters," which is another way to dismiss people like me, who try to patiently explain that they have bought into an obvious conspiracy theory. 13/

This brings me back to the original tweet I was talking about. The conspiracy has moved on.

It's not just a conspiracy against JK Rowling now, it's a conspiracy against the co-founder of LGB Alliance Ireland...but, to what end? Twitter are spending money to mildly annoy her? 14/

I find it ironic, that the movement who says that people criticise them "for the likes and retweets," are so incredibly obsessed with their own likes and retweets, and think those likes and retweets matter so much to others that Twitter is removing them out of spite. 15/

What matters outside the bubble is the general rise in anti-trans conspiratorial thinking like this. At this level, it is comical, but it is part of an overall conspiracy theory about trans people which is anything but comical, and is actually quite dangerous. 16/

If a movement has made you believe such nonsense, what other nonsense have they made you believe?

You think a worldwide cabal of surgeons, who could be doing lucrative, less controversial, plastic surgery are instead psychopathically trying to "trans" gay kids for profit? 17/

You believe a bunch of Jewish billionaires are donating vast amounts of money so they can pump gay kids full of puberty blockers and hormones, but, they also can't figure out how to reduce the years-long waiting lists to get those kids into their diabolical system? 18/

You think "men" are transitioning just to coerce lesbians into sex by making lesbians so afraid of being called transphobic that they will sleep with trans people they don't want to sleep with in order to avoid the accusation? Seriously? 19/

You believe that most of the trans women in the world are actually "porn-addled men" who have been hypnotised into being trans by watching too much "sissy porn"? 20/

You think Stonewall, the long established and premier UK gay rights organisation, are joining forces with TikTok in order to promote "gay conversion therapy" to the youth of the world? 21/

You think a bunch of UK-based, hasbeen writers, actors, athletes, musicians and comedians are better informed about trans ppl than trans ppl are about themselves?

Do you have trans friends who agree with you?

Are they the same few trans "friends" that all GC people have? 22/

This movement is part of a general rise in conspiratorial thinking, driven by social media, and platformed in the mainstream media by journalists, who have either bought into the conspiracy theories, or who are too ignorant to know a conspiracy theorist when they see one. 23/

The general critical movement is no different from Qanon or the anti-vax movement (indeed, there are large overlaps in these movements). It's an overall conspiracy theory about how "wrong" it is to be trans, begetting other anti-trans conspiracy theories along the way. 24/

It would be great if, in 2022, mainstream journalists could start to write about this movement, and the things they actually believe and say, so that the general public could be aware that these people are nothing but conspiracy theory cranks, and dismiss them accordingly. 25/

Articles like this, in the @Independent_ie, which give space to people like Ceri (femmeloves) to try to rationalise their beliefs for public consumption hit a little differently if the public are also aware that she thinks Twitter are deleting her likes to annoy her. 26/26

P.S. here is a typical gender critical reply from a gender critical account called @JohnQJesus.

As I was saying, an attempt to explain is met with hostility, with absolutely no attempt to refute what has been said.

One account that was set up to remind people to like JK Rowling's "coming out" tweet, in case their like is "removed," is @RelikeReminder.

Here are some people who follow it:

@BluskyeAllison
@WomenReadWomen
@Gillian_Philip
@artymortyarty
@lizzieroper
@kristofferphilp
@selfdfens

Writers, actors, barristers: it doesn't matter how successful we are in other areas of our lives, when it comes to some issues we are all prone to conspiratorial modes of thinking.

P.P.S. another example of what I was saying.

Attempts to explain are met with hostility, and are taken as confirmation of the conspiracy.

https://twitter.com/JeanneDeauxSays/status/1476210141720629249?t=z7fbczRzwGGUc4csByBAGA&s=19

P.P.P.S

Katy Montgomerie has a good video on this and you should definitely subscribe to her YouTube channel.