Writer. Published in fiction and poetry. Now writing on culture and #disinfo.
Nov 10 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
Hey we've all had a minute to process, right? All done? Good.
Let's talk about some guidelines for continued use of this platform and other social media systems. This one will probably be the worst, but the same forces are coming for all of them. A quick thread. 🧵🧵🧵
1) Don't talk to bots. Don't talk to trolls.
Period. Don't give them any air. And honestly there's no point in distinguishing these - they're either a computer program designed to make you mad or a sad person that enjoys hurting others. Mute or block every time. No quote tweets.
May 9, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
So I've been trying to write a bit about online #disinformation.
And in light of recent events, I'd like to talk about what I think is the most important concept in online disinfo. That's "flooding the zone." This'll be a quick thread 🧵
Flooding the zone is an age-old tactic recently popularized by alt-right strategist Steve Bannon. This approach uses a flood of misinformation to pollute online ecosystems and make truth unknowable.
I've done a bit of serious writing on disinfo in the last years. This started with my own interest in refuting online hate and has gradually become a larger exploration of the tactics of the Internet Hate Machine.
Here's a small collection of these threads. 🧵
A thread on anomie and the appeal of fascism.
I've been watching a thing happen for a while and trying to find a name for it. There is a tactic in which certain figures - particularly women - are picked to represent entire movements and then are targeted by years-long smear campaigns to discredit said movements.
A thread🧵
This tactic uses misogyny and personal attacks to slowly build an instinctive hatred of a particular person, and thus attempts to discredit the much more complex issue that they've been picked to "represent."
Call it focalization? Or... Thunberging maybe?
Mar 30, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Small moment of real talk but... there's a growing trend in right-wing media to identify anyone teaching anything related to gender as a "groomer."
This is an absolutely insane association and a terrifying precedent. 🧵
This is almost *exactly* the same rhetoric that led to a pizza place getting shot up in DC in 2016.
This is also the same kind of rhetoric popularized by QAnon.
