Poetry, prose, occasional analysis of #disinfo. New projects eventually.
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.
