Thread by @gauravsabnis

Today's pre dawn walk 🧵 is about this phenomenon I've experienced in recent years that maybe you've experienced too. I call it Ideological Catfishing! Fell for it a couple of times and I know a few others have too.
Not actual catfishing tho that happens too, without success.

Catfishing is when someone pretends to be romantically interested in you or sexually attracted to you online using a fake persona. It's been happening for ages.
I've gotten those attempts for years. But those are useless against me cos I'm just not catfishable! Happily married!

Since Rupal & I got together, I've really truly genuinely not been interested in another woman (or man) at all! So when I get random flirty messages, genuine or not, I just do well left. Most are obviously catfishing attempts to metoo me or something. I'm not that attractive 🤭.

But what I call Ideological Catfishing, that is newer and that I am susceptible to. And am now extra careful about.

And if you're a vocal popular non sanghi account, I'm sure you'll recognize the pattern too.

People supposedly anti sangh, but when you did deeper, not really.

Catfishing says "hey I find you attractive, wanna date?"

Ideological Catfishing says "hey I agree with your threads on BJP, modi, caste etc and I think the same way and let's become friends and help each other out."

That could actually be genuine. Why it's hard to tell apart.

I've bonded with many people, genuine people, great people, over shared ideologies. Most of my Twitter mutuals are like that. Fellow progressives horrified with what's happening in India and see parallels to nazis in that.

Not a popular position in savarna India these days.

An Ideological catfish will say all the right things. Almost like from a script. On Twitter, they will like all the right stuff, retweet all the right stuff, make frequent anti BJP or anti modi tweets to build cred. So if you go to their profile, you'll be reassured.

But soon cracks begin to develop. They are less interested in calling out sanghis and more interested in starting or participating in intra-progressive squabbles. When they do call out sanghis, it is with QTs, despite being told, that just helps sanghis. Doesn't matter to them.

They will have some sophistic justification like "I want to expose these fuckers". And I'm like, you don't really need to "expose" sh3fvaidya or fugnihotri anymore and sure as hell don't need to QT them. They say true true. Then next day, same thing.

Many of these Ideological catfish accounts will usually be each other's mutuals and will effusively recommend you to each other, often in public. That is obviously disarming and makes one lower your guard. Reply to DMs. Start following back even. And why not, right?

If someone truly is a progressive feeling lonely and despondent about India, why not connect with such a person and vent stuff with them etc.

But the Ideological Catfish starts digging for more info. Unnecessary info. Starting random tangents. And random fights even!

Often it's a gaslighting attempt. I have to remind myself that I don't actually know this person or their real name even (cos I respect genuine anonymity) and what's being asked of me seems a bit much. They are saying one thing in my mentions and another in someone else's.

More often that not, it's someone who's taken money from this one guy behere who seems to want to give money to everyone on Desi Twitter lol. Almost offended if you don't take his money. As long as you're loyal to him and make his enemies your enemies. But it's not just him.

There are many such ideological catfishing attempts that seem to come from the sanghi IT cell. Very little of their life is verifiable outside the Twitter persona. They will have real looking pics, many of them. Usually AI generated, deep fake style.

They aren't here to steal your data or hack your computers. They are here to gaslight, obfuscate, and keep non sanghi Twitter busy in
- purity tests
- Muslim v Dalit battles
- Muslim v atheist secularist battles
- Dalit v Socialist battles
- any such internal squabbles

Exactly. Why it's so hard to tell apart. And why it's such a dangerous tactic one needs to keep in mind. Trust but verify.

https://twitter.com/ThePapaShark_/status/1509100739997552640?t=dwRAxXxMdjjxgsklCShfwg&s=19

A decent indicator though is if said Ideological catfish "slides into your DMs". Again, they don't do it in a flirty or sexual way. And of course, mutuals DM each other all the time.

But the Ideological Catfish slide will be internally divisive. Trying to sic you on someone.

Like hey can you believe in so and so non sanghi account said this or did this? So wrong, na? Please amplify and let's call him or her out. And a swarm forms without people exactly knowing why we are marching with pitchforks. But someone non sanghi needs to be chastized.

Please see what's happening on Desi Twitter with increasing frequency in the last couple of years. Recognize the patterns.

I'm not saying treat everyone with default suspicion. I don't. It's an exhausting way to live, with constant paranoia. Bad for mental health.

But being watchful, cautious, looking out for red flags doesn't mean being paranoid. So keep Ideological Catfishing in the back of your mind when you find yourself being recruited into some internal Twitter fight full of purity tests.

Focus your barrage on sanghis.

I don't care for behere and I don't care for brumby and I don't care for whoever else is leading internal pitched battles instead of making sanghis hopping mad.

Like I often say, I'm not here to debate sanghis. I'm here to waste their time & raise their blood pressure.

It's not about who is doing this. Don't focus on "exposing" anyone. Because it'll kinda defeat the purpose to open another internal pitched battle among accounts ostensibly non sanghi. And more purity tests.

Forget others. Forget even me. Think about how you spend your time.

If you are ostensibly a non sanghi account horrified with what's happening, look at the time you spend on Twitter and see how much of it is spent against actual known sanghis and their fascism. And how much on "exposing" someone non sanghi or swarming their mentions.

Try to spend your time amplifying people giving information instead of getting you upset at someone else. That's how Asha Jadeja's social media team took her from someone vaguely known in IT circles to a big influential account. By just getting progressives upset at her.

It's not easy to do this all the time. To maintain the disciplines. It is easy, tempting, sometimes even irresistible to participate in the "calling out" or "exposing" so and so. There's psychological research on it too. It's a compulsion we all have.

Even if you participate in that phenomenon, like when some of these Ideological catfish did by taking a random 400 follower bay area uncle tweet about that air force officer with a tilak and making it viral, do it on your own terms. Only if you have something to add.

Like I said I'm not here to call anyone out. My beef with behere and brumby and asthana and chandorkar etc are well known. Nothing new here about them or others like them.

I'm here to say, watch out for this general phenomenon. Of people making us eat our own.

This.

I get so annoyed sometimes observing these very clear patterns and trends. And then wondering if I'm the insane one seeing these very clear patterns!

It is almost clinically targeted at women who are Muslim or Bahujan first and foremost.

https://twitter.com/ks_NotANiceGirl/status/1509185661005303811?t=2GiPZvbUqqFoQxZzX8BYBw&s=19

You can just look at that particular cohort of JNU student leaders unfortunate enough to be in charge when sanghi media decided to make JNU student leaders into national villains.

Umar got it worst. Shehla second worst. And so on.

You can map outcomes to identity! 😳😳

Reminder from someone who actually remembers pre-2014 India

1. JNU student leaders were always doing left leaning activism in India without even being remotely considered threats

2. #BhimaKoregaon was celebrated quietly for LITERALLY a 100 years.

Until sanghis made it ugly.

There India you and I know and/or grew up in, had JNU students doing activism and BK activists celebrating literally every single year we were alive. And India was unaffected.

Until sanghis decided to turn them into WhatsApp villains.