Government: Sure. Here you go. We work with our corporate partners to commercialise research to create win-wins, so know that if you take the grant, our partners get dibs on bringing your research to market. Or, you can approach them directly if you’d prefer.

AI Researchers: I’m definitely more comfortable with the government and University grant. Okay, I guess. But, promise you’ll only use it for good?

Government: Sure. We’ll regulate them, we promise.

AI Researchers: Good. Where do I sign?

VC/Government Consultant (interest undeclared): Hey, John and Peter. You know how I own shares in all your companies and have 2 board seats? Well, it’s time for you to embrace the future!

John, CEO: Do I have a choice?

VC: HAHA of course not. We don’t pay you to make decisions, mate. You know that.

CEO: Yes, Sir. AI! Cool! So what’s the value proposition on this new tech?

Founder: artificial intelligence.

CEO: Wow! How does it work?

Founder: you wouldn’t understand, bro. but, do you remember how you missed the boat on web 2.0? do you want to do that again?

CEO: I guess not.

Peter, CFO: What’s the value proposition?

Founder: money is a social construct. it’s just like, air, man.

CFO: As in, you need air to breathe, or? No, really, what is the value proposition? What ROI can I expect? Also, why are you writing in lowercase? It’s annoying.

VC: Shut up. John’s getting a little too consciency lately. Do you want the job when we oust him or not?

CFO: Sorry Sir. Yes, Sir. Founder, this seems like an exciting opportunity, but can you help me understand why this technology is so brilliant?

Founder: remember how you needed to be all woke and stuff? well, you don’t need that anymore. you can just do your thing, be out and proud like it’s pride month, but, rather than do actual pride month, you can just blame ai. offshoring? layoffs due to ai. denying claims? ai. too many women or blacks applying? ai screens them out. employees won’t tell you about their lives? ai. want to put prices or rents up? dynamic pricing using ai that calculates how much they are stashing away. customer service? use ai so customers stop being annoying and give up. accused of discrimination? blame ai. want to steal ip? ai. you can pretty much do whatever you want, and ai is to blame. you can also scare employees into thinking they’ll be replaced so they work harder and stop complaining. also, if they do, the ai will find a way to fire them and you can blame the ai.

CFO: <whispers> I wish this guy would innovate some paragraphs and punctati…

Oh, yes, very impressive work, you make very compelling points. So, we can effectively do anything we want, even if it is against the law, and our stock price goes up? And we don’t even have to spend any money on Rainbow Flags or that stupid ESG shit? That’ll get Musk off our back at least. And, bonus, we won’t even need to compete on price anymore, because we can acquire anyone who doesn’t join us?

Founder: correct. number go up no matter what.

Everyone: AI is brilliant. It can do everything! It’ll replace everyone!

Workers: err, I don’t know about this. I got bills to pay, man.

VC, Founder and CEO: money is like air, man.

Workers: what, like you need it to breathe? Isn’t it wrong to hoard the air when others are gasping? That metaphor makes no sense.

Founder: what’s a metaphor?

VC: Hey, Worker. You just don’t want it enough, I guess. Learn to Code.

Workers: But you said AI would replace coders too.

Uber and Amazon workers: Welcome to our dystopia, everyone. The water’s warm. Do you have a spare jar?

Tech people over 40: AI? Oh yeah, it’s cool. Yeah, it’s pretty impressive, has potential, and it’s exciting what developments lie ahead. But it’s nothing we haven’t known since the 70s, and I’m not too sure this is why I got into tech. These guys seem… kinda… evil? Don’t Be Evil was why I got into tech. They said what about money and air? Maybe if your shares vested, but my rent is insane and I work 16 hours a day and never see my kids. Fuck. I went all in on this shit. What do I do now?

LinkedIn Guru GAICD Cert III in Real Estate, LION, Author, Ask Me How to Succeed on LinkedIn (also an expert in Content Strategy, Tech Policy, SEO, AI, Wealth Management, Life Coach, Nutritional Medicine, Alternative Therapies and Essential Oils): AI is brilliant. It instantly gives you deep knowledge across a wide range of fields! It learns like a human does.

Psychologists: I’m sorry, what? Haha no it doesn’t. I know you’re not bright, but no, it doesn’t.

Guru: What do you mean? I wrote 5 books with it and they’re best sellers! You haven’t even written one!

Writers: Fuck off. Also, you’re not an author.

AI engineer: Hey guys, I actually agree with the Psychologists. No, it really doesn’t work like that. It’s not “learning” as such. It spots patterns and you can use basic reinforcement, but even if you accept the premise, there still isn’t enough comput…

LinkedIn Guru: YES IT DOES. I ASKED IT ABOUT ALL MY FIELDS AND IT GOT EVERYTHING RIGHT! I CHECKED IT! I AM A CERTIFIED LIFE COACH AND UNDERSTAND PSYCHOLOGY BETTER THAN ANY COMPUTER NERD.

AI hype skeptic/normal person: LLMs are cool. I use them and know how they work. I can see some value in some areas, I guess? Maybe Law? But still, rather than buy into hype, we should probably consider the externalities, do a proper cost-benefit analysis, SWOT and all the other things that are routine for transformation projects.

Also, I think the way they launched it was selfish, reckless, unethical and probably illegal, and I think we should proceed with more caution. If these guys are willing to cause this much destruction without self-correcting, we probably shouldn’t trust them.

UX: Also, if we’re talking human-centred design, I’m not sure that sycophancy is a good idea, especially for vulnerable users.

Product Managers and Growth Engineers: STFU Old Man, why are you still here? We understand users better than you. We’ve got all their data. Look at our dashboard…

UX: Fuck off. You put the hack in growth hacking, that’s for sure.

Psychologists: I agree with UX. This thing has real potential to feed dangerous delusions and you need more safeguards.

AI Safety: Sure. So you’re saying we need to make sure it doesn’t say rude words?

Psychologist: Well, not exac–

AI Safety: We got this. No rude words. US Generals from the 1700s will be black.

Product Manager: Got it.

Psychologist: No, you’re misunderstanding me. We’ve seen what’s happening with social media, and… government?

UX: I agree. Government?

Product Manager: STFU Old Man, why are you still here? Look at the dashboard.

Government: ooooh what a shiny dashboard. Did you do that in Word? AI Safety, what say you?

AI Safety: Okay, so we made the images diverse, and ChatGPT will now Wokescold people and let you guys know if they ask if Jews control the media. That should fix the delusion problem, and mitigate any psychosis.

Elon Musk: I’m making Grok not Woke. And also lol tiddies. What say you, Don?

The President of the United States: Electric sharks!

Everyone, in unison: We’re all fucked.

Elon Musk: CHAINSAW! HAHAHAHAHA tiddies on Mars.

Zuckerberg: I love that guy. He’s the best thing to ever happen to Meta. He makes me look normal.

Sam Altman: Same.

Tim Cook: Same. Hey Don, made you a gold statue, Sir. Can I peel you another grape, Sir? Anything else, Sir?

Siri: And you thought I was a sycophant? Broooooooo. That’s just embarrassing, bro.

Everyone in unison: Vomits. Laughs. Vomits again. Laughs. What the actual fuck are we seeing right now. Government?

Government: We fixed it. They’ll get a strongly worded letter from us telling them to knock it off. We’re also upgrading everyone from Word 2007 to Office 365, which includes access to CoPilot.

Everyone: Cool. Thanks for the help. How much does Microsoft get paid?

Government: INNOVATION.

VC, CEO, CFO, Billionaires, Tech Bros: You just don’t understand how it works. You hate AI. You just don’t get it and AI is magic and can fix all the externalities because it is so brilliant! You’re just a hater and a doomer.

AI Safety: I agree. You just don’t understand how it works, and all we need to do is make it more safe for the people who pay us, and also filter out extremist views, like terrorism.

Political scientists, historians, everyone left of Hitler: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck.

AI Safety and Tech Bros: You just don’t understand how it works. We’re working on making it safer, and so we made it so they’d be Wokescolded and added to a list if they ask if Israel controls the media.

Psychologist, UX, Normal Person, everyone: No, we fucking understand how it works. Shut the fuck up and listen to us!

Tech Founder/CEO: add them to the list.

3rd degree Software Engineers/tech bro: Brilliant work, Sir! Can I have a job? I want in on this thing! I am a systems thinker, husband and father. I’m just like you! I didn’t need college, because I had hustle. I work 26 hours a day, like you! You, Sir, are like Steve Jobs meets Tony Stark. You could say, that if Nikola Tesla were alive today, he would be in awe of you and how you have corrected the record on who really did the work.

I’ll sign the NDA, Sir, sure. I just want to be in your presence. I also think its best that nobody knows what I do and how much I earn anyway. You know, because people are jealous of our success and don’t understand that money is like air. Nobody needs to know about my signing bonus, my shares if number go up, or about our organisational culture where you can get colleagues fired anonymously and can get them on PIP for looking sideways or taking the last slice of pizza, or they threaten my bonus or promotion. I just want to do my 4 years so I gets that sweet, sweet vest. Then I can be a Founder.

What’s wrong with sycophancy? I don’t see a problem and my AI girlfriend agrees.

Piss jars? Disinformation. But, Sir, haha we know those brown people probably prefer it anyway amirite Sir ha ha ha…

H1Bs: what the fuck? How can that guy just say that right in front of us? I have a PhD in Engineering and this moron doesn’t even have a degree, I have to fix all his mistakes and he was promoted ahead of me? Obviously I won’t say anything publicly, Sir, but…. okay, sorry Sir, anything you need Sir. I’m sorry I acted Woke. It won’t happen again. I wouldn’t want to be replaced by “AI”, Sir.

Artists: Hey everyone, they stole our work without consent. I mean LOL these guys think they’re doing art, and that’s very cute, but also… yeah you kinda have to pay for a license.

Marketing: You have to pay creatives?

Artists: Pay your fucking invoice, Linda, or shut the fuck up. This is an obvious breach of Copyright and we need to do something. Mr President?

The President of the United States: Everything is computer and they’re eating the dogs.

Everyone: Cool. Awesome. Fabulous. Anyone else? Government?

Government: You can apply for a grant here. Oh, by the way, I have just been informed by my advisors that money is just like air. And yeah, he shouldn’t have said they eat the dogs, but the border…

AI Safety: Oh, we’ve also made it safer by adding people to a list if they ask if Israel is committing a genoci…

Academics: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck. I gotta get out of here, man.

People without H1Bs who are left of olive skin: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck.

Political scientists, historians: That’s what we said.

AI Safety: Stop saying fuck or you’ll end up on the list.

Tech Bro: Let me pitch you my new AI product. It’s the Uber of Police. I vibe-coded it in 3 hours. Who needs college? People need to get with the program and adapt or die.

VC: Here’s my card.

College grads: err, so great product, Sirs, I use it all the time, but could you knock off the whole adding us to lists and policing thing? We’re just protesting a genocide, and it includes a lot of jewish people and you’re letting Fundamentalist Christians label them terrorists and anti-Semites, because they don’t like what’s happening in their name. Also, again small quibble, great product, saves me loads of time and stuff, but we learned in class the other day and I skim-read on SparkNotes that this stuff usually ends badly and is uneth–

Tech bro: WOKE ANTIFA COMMUNIST FASCISTS POSTMODERN MARXISTS

Academics: Huh? What the fuck is this word salad?

Tech bro: WOKE! INDOCTRINATION! GLOBALIST FAR LEFT GENDER IDEOLOGY

LinkedIn Guru: I wrote a best-selling book about this last night.

Tech bro: HUSTLE! GRIND! EMBRACE THE FUTURE! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! MARS! TO THE MOON! DA DA DA DA SEXSSSESEHDHWDKWKEWF!MURDERHUMAN!REDHEIFFERS?BRRRRRAINCHIPOFJLWFH I AM MECHA HITLER lmfao

Everyone: I think he’s run out of tokens.

Founder: It’ll replace everyone and do everyone’s job. It’s amazing!

AI Skeptics: So, back on topic, no it simply can’t do what they’re claiming. This is pure hype. And even if it did do that, which I must emphasise it doesn’t, there’s a social contract and a process that everyone should follow, with any new technolo–

AI Bro: Doomer. Flying Cars. Mars. You just don’t get it, bro. It’s a better writer than you and our writing product is going to replace you.

Writer: Now hang on just a gosh darn minute. No it isn’t. It’s a bad writer. It’s good for basic paraphrasing or summarising but it is mostly unusable slop. I must point out that 2/3 of American adults can’t read at a 5th grade level and that’s why a lot of them think it’s a good writer, when it isn’t. You didn’t go to college, so you may well be one of those people. But, still, I can see a use case for it… maybe in law?

LawAI Tech bro: Yes! Of course it can do law! Lots of law! People don’t understand that this is the future of law!

Lawyer: Now hang on just a gosh darn minute. No. I can see how it works, have tried it, use it sometimes, and I get it. But it makes up cases, confuses jurisdictions, and misunderstands the law… and ultimately it takes longer to wrangle it than it does to just do the work myself.

I’m sure with specially trained models like Lexis+ there is some value/potential, but a) it needs human supervision because I am on the hook if it messes up b) I need to be transparent in all dealings and be subject to audit, and that plus the externalities…well, it’s a fun toy, but it isn’t cost effective. Think I’ll do my own pleadings for now. But I am sure there’s a use case, such as in medicine.

How about you, doctors?

Doctors: Nope. We are a regulated profession and would be sued into oblivion. Also, can I take a moment to talk about not using AI to deny people insurance and ask that they take a break from posting about AI on LinkedIn, and check where my patient’s claim is? She’s waiting to start cancer treatment.

Lawyers: Here’s my card.

Tech bro: Huh? What’s a regulated profession? We are vibe-coding the Uber of Knowledge and Police and Lawyers and Doctors. We’re disrupting everything bro, don’t blame us. You’re just jealous and don’t understand how it works, bro. Universities? LOL we never went, because nobody needs college anyway! We are vibe-coding it so you can have a PhD in your pocket!

PhDs: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Are these guys fucking serious? They do know that PhDs are about new knowledge, right?

Coders: err… mate, that’s not how it works. You need to know what you’re coding and vibe-coding is reckless and dangerous.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Founder: pfft. you just don’t understand how it works, bro.

VC: Here’s my card.

Tech bro: No, I mean it’ll just have general PhD knowledge and create new physics. Also, women should have more babies.

AI Experts, Academics, Scientists, Doctors, Coders, Writers, Lawyers, in unison: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA are you fucking serious right now? Oh my God these people are so stupid.

Workers: I can’t afford to feed myself, let alone have more kids. The fuck?

NVIDIA: lol, we gun be rich as these dumbasses think it’s just about lack of compute.

PhDs: oh man I’m never going to be able to eat, am I?

Tech bro: Have babies instead. Look, I did some art!

Artists: This guy over here thinks he’s doing art. And hey, I didn’t consent to the use of my work.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Scientists: Hey, the oceans are kinda boiling.

Government: Do you want a grant to commercialise your research? We can help you fix the climate crisis and you could also cure cancer with our public-private partnerships where we commercialise research…

PhDs: Don’t do it! It’s a trap!

Tech bros: WOKISM! INDOCTRINATED! DOGE TO THE MOON! FAR LEFT ANTIFA TOILETS POLITICAL VIOLENCE BAD POPULATION COLLAPSE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP.

Parents: Hey, sorry to interrupt, but your AI told our son to kill himself.

Tech bros: Soz about that. Here’s a discount code for BetterHelp.com

Parents: Not good enough. You evil, soulless ghouls.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Teachers: Heaven help us all. These little fuckers already can’t read and our tech bro friend here is the obvious end result. Can I have $20 for some pencils and materials, please?

Government: Here’s a discount code for PragerU. Also, that sounds awful Woke. Are you teaching the children how to do political violence?

Students: Cool, bro. Shrimp Jesus. Heh. Look, I made a deep fake of Miss and she’s getting death threats because I gave her coloured hair.

Media (interest undeclared): Is AI about to take over the world? Lawyers say it’ll be great for code. Coders say it’ll be great for Product Design. Doctors think it’ll be great for Law, Lawyers think it’ll be great for Medicine and Writers say it’ll be good for Physics. Artists know that it’s shit for everything but they’re always complaining anyway and we spend too much on stock photography, so welcome to the AI Revolution!

AI researchers: You know, this really isn’t what we intended to happen.

AI Safety: this isn’t what we intended, but it can be fixed if we get ahead of it. We’ve asked Bari Weiss to come on board as an advisor on how to make the AI Safer.

LinkedIn Guru: I wrote a book about AI Safety yesterday.

Everyone: Fuck off.

AI Safety: Alright, everyone, you’re on the list.

Product Manager: Yes, Sir.

Engineers: Yes, Sir. Can I do anything else for you Sir? Massage perhaps?

Tim Cook: Me first!

Elon Musk: We have to fix the mind virus!

H1Bs: Yes, Sir.

Everyone: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck.

VCs: Excellent.

Founders: Excellent.

CEOs: Yes, Sir. Can I have a pay rise? I need to pay for security detail.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Government: Stop doing all that political non-violence or five years from now we’ll have give you a $50 fine and a warning.

Doctor: I’m sorry, but the cancer has metastasised. I did everything I could.

AI Researchers: Hang on a minute, weren’t we supposed to cure cancer?

“Congratulations”, the Professor said, “you’ve signed up to being frustrated - and even infuriated - for the rest of your life. You’re going to have to learn to be very patient with people or you’ll be very lonely.”

What an odd thing to say, I thought, as I scanned the room and noticed the other 35 people in my class, looking equally perplexed.

“But I need to qualify that. Let me open this class with some things you need to know upfront if you’re going to study political science. It’s not for the faint hearted, and if you can’t learn how to communicate, and be patient with people in your life, you should probably study something that will make you more likeable. Get an A in this class and then apply for Law school.”

Everyone chuckled. Most of us were in political science because we didn’t get into the Bachelor of Laws (which was a lot harder at the time), so it was the perfect ice-breaker.

This guy knew his audience.

“So, with that out of the way, let me explain what I mean.

1. A minority of people are interested in politics outside of election campaigns.

2. The majority of people rely on low-quality information via evening news and sound bytes.

3. The majority of people who are interested in politics are more likely to participate, but that participation does not necessarily correlate with knowledge.

4. “Participation” ranges from talking about politics to joining a political party, and most people are in the former group.

5. The people who “participate” are often very confident they know a lot about our political system. This does not, however, meaningfully correlate with their knowledge.

6. People generally vote for emotional reasons, not logical ones.

7. Getting people interested in politics at all is the hardest part.

8. Apathy is the biggest problem in a modern democracy.

9. And, just in case you all think I’m suggesting that you are instantly one of the knowledgeable ones because you have taken this unit, that is not automatically the case, and you could just as easily end up being one of the over-confident ones that doesn’t know, but simply participates.

10. If you do engage with this course and graduate with a degree, you will likely be in the small percentage of people who do know what they’re talking about, but you will be severely outnumbered, even among those who participate.

11. You will need to learn to communicate, work with people from all walks of life, and most importantly, if you are doing politics right, inspire people to participate above anything else.

12. Politics won’t make you friends, but done right, it can help you influence people.

It’s not verbatim, but I remember this vividly enough to relay the gist1.

He was right.

Over the course of the next 3 years, I’d see half my class change degree. I think once they realised that political science done right was a lot more behavioural science, stats, procedural details, and much less “participating” than they thought it’d be. Most of the people who were in that class fell away and switched to Comms or Business. Journalism students would do an elective here or there, as would the Education students. In my graduating class, I think there were 3 people who finished the degree, and had heard that Lesson One on Day One about the relationship between confidence, apathy, participation and knowledge and the need for patience and humility if you want to persuade people to vote.

Boy, was he right.

I’ve encountered many a single-issue activist in my time, especially those who “participate” by talking about politics. The vast majority of them expected people to change their mind based on one conversation, one touchpoint, one tweet, or one slogan.

Then of course, complain when people don’t appreciate their efforts.

Well yeah...

...duh, it’s hard. If you actually understand politics and paid attention in class, you should know this.

Getting people to support a cause, especially complex ones with a lot of intersecting problems and information, is more like selling million-dollar consulting. The shit or lazy campaigners seem to think it’s more akin to selling knock-offs on Wish. Activists - especially the single-issue ones - don’t understand that they’re in sales, and their main competition is apathy.

That’s always their fatal flaw. They arrogantly assume they can show up and talk features and benefits, repeat slogans and make an instant sale if they push hard enough and handle every objection.

In sales, the more expensive the product or service, the longer the sales cycle. Unless they’re in immediate need and know what they want to buy, they’re going to need time to decide, compare and do their research. High pressure sales rarely results in anything other than buyer’s remorse, or a door in the face.

They may not be in the market right now, or never buy at all.

They may like the product but not want to buy it from YOU, because they find you to be too… salesy or scammy. They may have been ripped off before and therefore be more cautious, need to ask the same questions over and over again and waste your time, only to then go to someone else who explained it better, makes them feel less shit, or myriad other reasons.

That’s what persuasion is. That’s what changing hearts and minds is.

Patience. Hustle. Grind. Humility. Not simply being right or having a good product.

Generally, anyone who wants to stop anyone asking questions because they aren’t sold yet, aren’t caving to pressure and need some time to think about it, is destined to lose the sale.

It’s easy to sell mass-produced junk to idiots or addicts wanting a quick fix, or to scam people into signing their name in the moment.

It is way harder to sell something of substance, especially if they don’t see an immediate threat or problem with the status quo. It is exceptionally hard to sell uncertain or intangible outcomes.

Especially if what you are selling strikes to the core of someone’s self-perception of who they are and where they fit in the world.

Obviously, because internet, there will be “activists” who try to get rich quick using shortcuts, throwing money at things, black hat tactics or silencing competitors, or sell MLM. That’s going to happen.

But ultimately, if you’re selling something but don’t welcome questions about your product, you not only probably have a shitty product, but you also haven’t taken lesson one, day one on the basics.

Let people speak. Let people ask questions. They’re not ready to buy yet. But, they might be. They might be 90% of the way there and just need you to get them over the line.

If your product is good, and you are patient and approachable, it becomes an easy sale down the track, when they see that you helped them along the way, with no agenda, and didn’t pressure them into buying something before they were ready, and when everyone else was trying to sell them crap using high pressure sales tactics.

That can take years, if it happens at all. It takes patience, humility, and good communication skills. People who feel coerced or manipulated into a purchase using high-pressure sales tactics are highly unlikely to become loyal customers in the long term, and most definitely will not refer you to others. In fact, it often turns someone who could have been a loyal and happy customer into someone who tells everyone they know to stay away, because you’re an aggressive lunatic who is trying to pressure them into signing up to a MLM.

Don’t be lazy and stop complaining that it’s hard. Yes. It is. That’s why there are lots of dropouts.

Lazy political campaigners are as bad as lazy marketers and salespeople. They think they can just throw a slogan at it, buy a billboard, silence opponents and delete the bad reviews and you’ve won.

You haven’t.

Long term changes of hearts and minds, loyal fans and die-hard customers takes effort. It’s a grind. It is difficult, especially in a landscape where those with the most resources are able to take shortcuts and sell pre-chewed slop to people who are starving, or don’t respect boundaries and have blocked the doorway and they want to go home.

They may buy in the short term to placate you, but you haven’t won them.

It can take years for someone to go from “questioning” to “on board”, and if you are silencing people, you are going to lose them in the long term, because you lost their trust. And that can be done in an instant, especially if you didn’t pay attention in class, are confident without knowledge, and think “participating” is merely talking at people until they give in or tell you to fuck off.

Stick around, Lesson 2 is wild.

A deep, deep love for a marvellous and important product. There are some who may think it is ‘cringe’ – as the kids say today – to be sad. But it is okay to be sad when you have invested time, and emotions and have happy memories attached to something.

So many take tech for granted. They don’t see invisible labour, the tireless work to remove friction, the tape and glue that keeps servers up, the content moderators’ trauma, the vision that we all had for a product like Twitter.

I’ve been rough on tech bros lately, but that comes from a place of disappointment at having seen what was done to these platforms, and what they were supposed to be.

Maybe I was the gullible one for believing in it in the first place, but there was a window there where things were truly… incredible. Lifelong friendships. So many laughs. So many people who met husbands and wives and whose children grew up alongside each other and never got to meet, making us act like a weird overenthusiastic but distant aunty to a very confused kid who thinks “um… do I know you?”.

I’ve even been the main character – zero stars would not recommend by the way, and thankfully it was in 2011 when it didn’t wreck your life and you could go back to normal by deleting your account, laying low for a bit and then starting over on a new account – but still, it was marvellous for this Perth girl who never fit in anywhere and would have gone insane if not for other weirdos on the virtual watercooler that was Twitter.

Then, selfish people – first, media and ‘brand’ people (who Twitter was supposed to disrupt) staged a hostile takeover, thinking the Internet was theirs to gentrify and control, were then overtaken by the jerks who think the internet is theirs to wreck, and other people mere tools for them to harass, threaten and defame.

Twitter was the love of my life. A deep nerdy love that first turned unhealthy but then turned abusive, where I convinced myself it could change, if I just kept trying harder. I even tried to work there so I could help fix things. I wrote a proposal on how to change the product and processes to solve the problems, several times. That went as far as their support tickets: nowhere.

Sunk costs and habit. That’s what remains.

And the handful of people who are still on there that I don’t want to lose touch with, so I will not completely delete, and still copypasta (I still want it to get better, but not at my expense). But no more than 5 minutes a day.

X in 2024 is a reality-distorting, crazy-making, deeply unhealthy and abusive app. It is the ‘everything app’, but not in the way he’d hoped. It’s everything that went wrong with the dream of the internet, rolled up into a big ball of shit. I won’t let Elon Musk drag me down with him in his descent into madness. Get some therapy, for heaven’s sake. He’s a grown man. It’s just …sad. It was always a bully machine, but the targets were usually deserving, but at some point it just became about righteous cruelty rather than truth to power.

Anyway, it’s been a long road. Yes, it’s cringe, but I’m allowed to be sad over what happened to the lofty idealistic dream that was the bird app from doom. It’s okay if you don’t get that. But know that it represents a dream that was promised, but unrealised, in many ways, for a cohort of people who more than just a financial stake in its success. I invested a lot into it. I got celebrities on it early on. I evangelised it to everyone who would listen.

And it’s done. It may change, but I doubt it. Without some serious intervention, that we all know is unlikely to happen, we have to learn from the mistakes, try again, and try to do it better next time. And no, I don’t think Bluesky is the answer, but… go nuts.

I suggest you do the same. If they’ve lost me, a Twitter addict who rationalises like a smackhead over the greatest app in the world that holds my friends in the little glass box… they’ve literally lost everyone.

Here’s my handwritten notes from 2014 when they were struggling, pre-Trump. Trump saved Twitter. It could have been done differently and executed well, but nope. Musk fucked it and burned through all goodwill from people who agreed with him in the process.

This is still how you fix it from a product POV, but obviously, at the time, because non-psychopaths forget that psychopaths exist… I didn’t really address the bad actors. There are solutions to that, too.

I don’t regret any of it, because it brought me here, but I am still sad about it.

I’ve been trying to think of a term to describe tech bros who are suffering from a severe, but quite specific variation of the Dunning Kruger effect. You may have seen it more recently, with the whole AI reckoning.

Tech bros live in a bubble with other tech bros who tell them they’re brilliant, and they make inflated salaries. As a result have an over-inflated sense of their intelligence and competence outside of code/engineering.

I present the “Code-Savant Illusion”.

Engineers who confuse complex and complicated, and reduce everything (including humans and society) to mere calculations and tools.

But it’s not just that. It’s the hubris. They have answers to every problem. They wander out of their lane and they do so with enviable confidence, but it is utterly baseless.

They confuse their pay cheque with merit, because they have anarcho-capitalist brainworms and think that capitalism is a meritocracy, not a system where many mediocre people and minds get paid a fortune for compliance, not challenging anything in any meaningful way, and enforcing said system on everyone else. And, of course, run interference and turn a blind eye to the collateral damage.

Once it occurs to them that their salaries are higher than many C-levels, that’s when they become insufferable. They start to confuse that with actually being a C-Level, and think they know everything about every discipline, and can solve every problem.

They of course lecture everyone on the social sciences (they know nothing about), and creative industries (they know nothing about), people stuff (they have no people skills), and basically, because they have one niche skill that is in high demand, they think everyone else is useless, and everyone else is stupider than them.

There is a 10x multiplier if said social scientist or creative is a woman.

They write in condescending pseudophilosophical jargon and management word salads that don’t mean anything, which they then bludgeon everyone to death with. When people zone out, they blame the reader for not understanding them and their brilliance, because they conflate the ability to bore someone to death with being intelligent, or having won the argument, when mostly, everyone just gives up because they’re boring and annoying.

They also don’t realise that their field is actually not terribly complex, relies heavily on other disciplines for a good product, and code isn’t really all that hard. They don’t realise that STEM is often not about intellect, but patience, and how high your pain threshold is when it comes to boredom.

And of course, that whole thing where many autists consider themselves savants, because many autists ARE savants. But, unfortunately, they lucked out there, so have to instead deal with the fact it is just a plain old disability that they have not yet processed, nor accepted (note: me and my entire family are on the spectrum, calm down).

So there you go.

The Code-Savant Illusion.

You’re welcome.

The pay was good. It was a permanent full time position. I could make a real difference to people’s lives. It felt really good to be in The Meritocracy.

From as young as I can remember, I had a goal to go to University. I was blessed with the prodigy gene, but cursed with having a prodigy gene in a family for whom education was pointless, and educated people a threat. University was my ticket out. I worked really hard, living on my own from 15, juggling shitty cash jobs, no parents and rent on my roach-ridden flat to overcome the odds. By the time I finished high school, I’d already overcome more than my fair share, and that ‘pointless’ degree was something I valued more than anything in this world. It showed that The Meritocracy existed. Asterisk.

Despite the deck being firmly stacked against me, and having settled into a marriage and motherhood with someone who also didn’t think I needed an education, I graduated in 2002 with a shitty Arts degree, in political science, economics and legal studies.

I’d worked harder for that three year degree than most people do for a PhD, but I got there.

Post graduation, following another three years of shitty casual and contract jobs in child protection, recruitment, retail, hospitality… my first real, proper full time job offer had arrived.

I think its important to give you that context, because this was not just an ordinary job offer to me. It was representative of everything I had worked for.

Security! Finally! An upwardly mobile middle class life from my hard work, sacrifice, and education! In the area I trained in!

Proper merit. Oh, man, it’s true! You can make a difference if you just work hard. Asterisk.

My life was on track. Asterisk.

The Internet was not a real job.

In the decade leading up to this moment, “the Internet” was something I did alongside my actual goals. I played with friends from around the world who lived inside the ugly beige box in my living room. I fucked around, occasionally found out, I made people laugh, I helped people out and learned new skills in the process, paid in exposure, laughter, self-righteousness, occasional cash payments and many, many free tickets and even more merch.

I loved being creative and learning new things. I became good at community management. My policy training and political skills had made me a good and fairly reasonable moderator, so even when I wasn’t an official mod, people would come to me to settle disputes.

Over time I was appointed to run a bunch of communities, but it wasn’t a job, it was just something I had fun doing. I liked solving problems, making a difference and helping people out. If people asked for my advice, or needed help setting something up, I’d just do it for them, or show them how and explain it.

Over time I became known for that. Okay, that, and my writing. Two sides of myself that are in perpetual conflict: competent, serious me; and smart-alec funny writer me. Both smart. Both important. In perpetual conflict, even to this day.

People look at me like I am crazy when I say this, but there are two things you need to grasp about the Internet prior to around 2003. First, the internet was where you put your secrets. Second, it was not even a job, let alone a career or degree. You may laugh at me when I say that I wrote on the Internet to my imaginary friends under my real name with the expectation that nobody would see it. It seems ridiculous. But in most cases, if you were one of the un-famous on the Internet, this was a fair expectation to have. The idea of becoming famous on the Internet, especially under your real name, was also not a thing. And, the odds of your family or people you knew in real life knowing what you said about them on the Internet was close to zero. Asterisk.

It is hard to explain unless you were there. Only a small number of people you knew were on the Internet, and even fewer of them knew how to find things. This all famously came to a head, of course, in 2002, when Heather Armstrong was fired from her job for telling the Internet about her co-workers. You just don’t get it, guys. That shit was wild. You mean… someone… can… read this? Like… from the real world? People can Google you even if you don’t submit your site to a directory? You can not only get famous from the Internet …everyone can read what you wrote?

Well, shiiiiiiiiiit.

Oh, I’d better say sh*t in case my boss or sister can see. F*ck. Real Asterisk*

That is a real thing that happened, kids. Gen Y didn’t invent cancel culture, you dumb motherfuckers. My generation openly trash talked our colleagues, families and kids with abandon thinking we wouldn’t get caught. It’s our Generation’s Woodstock – calling our infant children cunts and bitching about Tracy from HR microwaving fish and having no idea they were going to read it at some point. Every word. You’re welcome. And fuck you, Tracy. You still suck.

Un-famous people could write whatever they wanted. Fuck, shit, cunt. None of this f**k to avoid algorithms crap. The internet was asterisk free. Asterisk.

You must also remember that “the Internet” was not a real job for anyone other than a handful of nerds who were either computer programmers, network engineers or hardware tinkerers. Heather happened to be a graphic designer who was employed in early tech, surrounded by more people than your average person and therefore way more likely to be found out, and even she had no idea what was coming.

She was one of the more savvy people, whilst most designers were barely grappling with the idea that websites were not paper and you couldn’t lay it out like a magazine, (and no, whilst your 7pt Helvetica grey on dark grey text does create a nice aesthetic on your $20,000 Mac, you know, people can’t read it and it doesn’t work on PCs and resolutions over 1024 and no, pitching a fit won’t change that… yeesh).

Web Design (and especially digital more broadly as its own vocation) just… wasn’t a thing in its own right. Unless you were blessed with being in the inner circle in the dot-com boom and one of the chosen few, “webmasters” were mostly volunteers, or, if you were paid for it, consisted of programmers who were shit at design yet lacked the self-awareness to know it, or graphic designers who didn’t understand programming (or programmers), and the occasional Flash animator who just did their own thing in between gallery openings. Fun Times. People like me just made stuff on the Internet, had fun with all of the tools, wrote with abandon, slagged off our neighbours in lengthy manifestos over minor transgressions, and we had absolutely no idea if anyone was reading it, or who. This was before people kept stats. Asterisk.

For the ten years before I went pro, if a programmer or graphic designer asked me a question, I just helped them out. Sometimes they’d offer me money, but it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t my job. Digital was separate from real life. It wasn’t my job. It wasn’t a real job. The Internet was Not Real Life. Asterisk. And it certainly wasn’t a viable business unless you were a programmer or graphic designer, or one of the chosen few in Silicon Valley, and I was neither of those. I’d of course done a few internships at graphic design shops and printers, and wrote for some street mags, but there was nothing that resembled being a “digital strategist” or User Experience or Internet-whateverthefuck I am now, until many – many – years later. Asterisk.

I was a policy person. I would work in policy roles, write lots of things, change the world and then maybe one day run for office or start a Think Tank. Pfft… Internet? That’s just entertainment and nerds, man. I just like making things and writing jokes and ranting for fun. I’m somebody on there, and I am free to be me, and people like me for who I am. Asterisk.

But, I was good at it, and so over time people kept asking me to do stuff for them in exchange for money because people kept telling their friends about me and my willingness to help with… whatever. The engineers would ask me to design for them (ugh) and the graphic designers would ask me to code their designs for them (ugh). I even learned how to smile behind gritted teeth when people would “design” things and ask me to be the “technical person” – a skill I would hone over the years and still use to this day. For a decade, it was just a thing I did, got a little cash from, and acquired skills as I went along. All whilst writing shit about everything and everyone on the Internet with a plan to have a real career and a real job and have this creative outlet where I was free to be myself, without asterisks in my swear words. Asterisk.

Then, in 2005, I was offered that job. I was 28 weeks pregnant with pre-eclampsia, on bed rest and had been forced to take leave from my current short term contract position. I was already finding it difficult being the first Mum to drop my kid off and the last to pick her up, and I was expecting another kid. My contract was ending and I was about to have a baby with no maternity leave, and I had been applying for jobs, knowing it was pretty futile.

I had also just been paid $500US to do a website for someone. That was nice.

Then I was offered the job, but I’d have to go back to work when my son was 6 weeks old. I faced a turning point.

So, I declined that job and decided to go pro with web stuff. Asterisk. It was now my full time business. Asterisk. I remember at the time, saying “if this stops being fun, I’ll quit and go back to policy work”. Asterisk.

My whole life and career that didn’t exist, and made up as I went along, was built on a premise that I was having fun, that I was helping people and that I could go back to my ‘real job’ if it didn’t work out. Turns out, that premise had a whole lot of fine print and asterisks that, had I known – I would not have signed up. I just wanted to help people, and have work-life balance and maybe make a difference. I have had to face the fact that I not only bought these lies myself, I also sold it to everyone else.

I bought the promise. And, what a promise it was.

Win-win! The Internet is a meritocracy where you get back what you put in. Asterisk. Win-win. Innovation. Freedom. Merit. Agency. Choice. Here, just sign the Terms of Service. Sure, what you get back will be that we insist you insert asterisks on your words and thoughts and connections, but you’re totally free. It’s fine. By checking this box, you agree to the Terms of Service.

Asterisk.

By using our products and services, you consent to your data being collected and used for various purposes, including sharing with our partners and to make your experience better and improve our products, of course. We’re all about the open internet, and of course we value your privacy. Just read 19 pages of our EULA written in 7pt grey on grey Helvetica and tell us you consent. I mean, we know you don’t read it because we measure every click and mouse over and scroll to improve our product, but the main thing is… you checked the box. Don’t worry, it’ll hold up in court because we have unlimited resources and you have none. And we’ll make it so you have to come to California to fight it. Deal?

We know you don’t read the Terms of Service, but, you checked the box. We’re off the hook. We’re the good guys. This is a totally free and fair contract where you are free to create and connect. Would a guy wearing jeans and sneakers ever lie to you like those men in the suits? Of course not. We’re wearing sneakers, you see.

We’re just here to help. Create a movement. Tell us how you’re feeling and what you’re up to every minute of the day. Be authentic. Slag off Grandma. Write fanfiction that is a thinly disguised plot to massacre everyone who chomps raw carrots in the office. Connect with your friends and family. Send grandma pictures of your kids and write down your thoughts. Don’t worry, we won’t tell grandma. Asterisk.

Connect. That’s what you gotta do. Answer the questions in the box and connect. Asterisk asterisk asterisk. The brands come to you now, and meet you where you’re at. Asterisk asterisk asterisk. Find more clients who need help with their websites and don’t you know, Word of Mouth is the most powerful form of marketing? Asterisk.

Express yourself freely and share stories with each other. Warts and all. If you have an idea and you put it in the box that is asking you how your day went, you will likely find a way to build an audience and the brands will come to you. Branded content. Win-win. I mean, we own it, and you don’t get paid, but… we’re sure you’ll be right. You’ll find paying customers.

Speak your mind. No, not like that. Express yourself. No, not like that.

Oh, just a heads up: the Coke Brand Manager gave us a call and isn’t very happy with your views on sugar. You can say anything you want and connect with anyone you want, just don’t mention Coke. And please, it’s okay to be authentic, in a branding “we’d like to buy the world a Coke” sense, but not…like… authentic authentic. Also, please put asterisks in your swearing so that people aren’t offended by your swearing. Kthx.

Don’t you know, the rules changed 3 hours ago? Got a problem with it? Delete your account. By continuing to use our service, you agree to our Terms of Service, lack of support, and politicians and intelligence agencies harvesting of your behavioural data from quizzes, presented as harmless fun.

You have a choice. Comply, or delete your account. The account that we promised would be free, allow you to connect, and find an audience, and actively encouraged you to abandon your website for? Well, if you don’t like it, you can leave. Good luck in court. Hahaha we’ll exhaust your resources and then settle so there’s no precedent that says it’s an unconscionable contract. What are you gunna do? Create something elsewhere? Connect elsewhere? Innovate harder if you have a problem. Start your own platform or something. Hope you have good lawyers.

You dumb m*therf*ckers. Haha. You’re our b*tch.

I’d like to invest in your app. Asterisk. Just build that MVP first and hand it over. Asterisk. Sign this NDA. Asterisk. Work with this incubator. Asterisk. Don’t worry, it’s your IP and we won’t steal it and cut you out and give it to a man we think might be more suitable as a Founder. Asterisk. If you work for us for free, we’ll help you later. Asterisk. Come work for us to help us fix our shit. Asterisk. Start your own Agency. Asterisk. Retainers. Asterisk. Help me with my SEO. Asterisk. Send me an invoice, I’ll definitely pay you. Asterisk asterisk Asterisk. 15 years of Asterisk after Asterisk piled up and eventually there was 50 pages of fine print to every one-page brochure.

Try to make your own thing? Well, you can do whatever you want. Asterisk. Don’t think about going back to policy work, because the stuff you were encouraged to write on the internet is now a burn book against you. Don’t complain about it, or say anything about it, or you’ll have every troll farm in town mass reporting you for years, limiting your reach. But by all means, be authentic, grow your influence, find an audience. Asterisk. Asterisk. Asterisk.

Needless to say, I backed the wrong horse. I fell for a scam with a whole bunch of fine print. And as the fine print got larger, and I had to face the fact that I had not only been scammed but was also the scammer… I had to face that it was not only no longer fun, but the programmers who are shit designers and even worse at reading humans are now in charge. The people with $20,000 Macs pitching a fit over aesthetic were now in charge, and the people like me, who had enabled them, had been exploited and left behind. Furthermore, I am no longer able to grow an audience with my “authenticity” and “candour”, because algorithms and Tracy from HR now decide who gets a job, or builds an audience, or makes a living. Unfortunately, now, because I have spent so many years calling people cunts for fun on the internet, that I can’t even go back to a real job. Turns out, I sacrificed it all for a career that didn’t exist.

I sure had fun, though. Asterisk.

F*cken c*nts.

* actual asterisk: I actually found this out in 2001, because I worked in a computer store and had been blogging about being pregnant with my daughter and not telling anyone. My boss said “congratulations” as I walked in the following afternoon. So I found out earlier. Still…shiiiiiiit. And no, I never asterisked my swearing. Fuck that shit. Asterisk people are the worst. Swear or don’t swear. Shit or get off the pot, fuckhead.

So, I tested an AI-generated content detection tool. You know, because I like to test these things and see how they can be misused by bad actors and report back on exploits…

The tool correctly identified AI written text in a test essay I generated.

Good.

However, it also said that all my other articles, that I definitely wrote, in my unstructured and unique very-Téa rhetorical style, were also AI-generated.

I mean yeah, I am kinda like the boss fight for the Matrix and I am very talented at writing fast and good and stuff, but I distinctly remember writing it.

I really hope people don’t start relying on these tools like they do “reputation scores” in HR, to avoid doing any real thinking.

Yikes.

As someone who has watched people rely far too much on social media data (which is wrong, doesn’t accurately represent how people interact and is easily exploited/gamed), or tech that is really, really stupid and doesn’t understand context, strategy, intent, irony, or any of it…

My concern isn’t AI tools, but humans having far too much faith in them, when they are easily gamed.

My concern is how the powerful will use these tools recklessly, take them on face value, and wield them as a weapon and justify it because “the tools said so”.

I get that these shiny tools help you to browse TikTok for longer every day, but you need to know that the data is bad. Bad decisions have been made because of platform manipulation, arbitrary biased algorithms, human failures and bad actors… and the lazy among us can do incredible harm to innocent people, by forming policy based on bad sentiment analysis data, bad content strategy ideas because tools told them that XYZ was popular/trending (even though it is astroturfed and everyone else is censored/quiet), and making really unethical and insane hiring decisions based on stupid tools like Brand Yourself, where the mere mention of politics can put you in the “high risk” category – yes – I’m a POLITICAL SCIENTIST who deradicalises people by meeting them where they’re at so they don’t go further and if you talk to me for two minutes you’d hire me on the spot, you effing nitwit.

Tread carefully. And maybe – just maybe – do the actual work of talking to people, listening to people, paying attention and learning a craft.

That said, I know the data cult will data cult. And they will continue to make terrible decisions and drive us into the ground because of it.

Sit back, enjoy the show, get back to basics and learn an actual skill that doesn’t involve a bunch of predesigned dashboards, spreadsheets and corporate wank.

You cannot replace an experienced, competent human and you most certainly will never attract them if you use these tools to filter them out. You’ll just get more mediocrity. More laziness. No creativity.

Best of luck with that. I happen to be on team human, clever, competent and creative, and I am not threatened by any of it because of those things.

Have a great day.

Now, this could be one of those instances where I am assuming too much. A release was signed. I don’t know the identity of the photographer. It could be her kid, but based on the portfolio I am not convinced. I didn’t even think to check at the time. That’s on me. But nobody else did, either.

This stuff has always played on my mind. I have always been conscious of my role in perpetuating the status quo. I was a Child Protection worker as a graduate, so had some experience on the ground, and I took that seriously. Ultimately, I would have these types of (attempted) ethical conversations many times over my career. Off-shoring was exploitative, stock photography was exploitative, spec work was exploitative, but over time, you not only learn to pick your battles… you learn that people start to think you’re a bit of a bummer.

I have talked a lot about how I quit running an agency in 2019, but I don’t think people realise how deep and wide my disillusionment with tech & business was when I did it (and how much worse it is now). It was so many things, big AND small. Paper cuts AND blows to the head. Bit by bit, watching exploitation and mediocre become baked into everything that was supposed to be liberating and creative, and everyone pretending it didn’t happen, because they were getting paid the big bucks… for putting a smiling face on the cover.

It was lots of things. Spec work. “Exposure” for millionaires. Non-paying clients. People getting a free consult and then taking my IP. Stock photographers who make money in this manner. All of us creative, honest and bold people being told that we could participate in this revolution, and we had a shot at success if we just bent a little further towards that corporate credibility carrot, but ultimately found ourselves used for Wokewashing and keeping a seat warm and lending street cred to the corporate midwits that would eventually takeover and gentrify the Internet (and… eventually, the mainstream political left).

It was lots of little things, every day. Slowly baked in. Slowly normalised. SEO. Keywords. Tags. The race to the bottom. Being told to behave. Called negative. People obsessed with niches, funnels and growth hacks, with no regard for the bigger wrong that their whole short-term, selfish mindset propped up, such as only being able to find usable photographs by writing things such as “happy ugly fat” to get a normal-looking person, or, even worse terms for specific racial or class demographics. And people like me, holding our noses and having to do this on behalf of massive corporations, unwilling to pay photographers and models at the full market rate. And, of course, enabled by an ecosystem full of people willing to do and say anything for a buck. Some of those people are desperate and exploited/misled, in which case, understandable; but others were selfish and opportunistic, and definitely knew better.

I couldn’t push back. I tried. But I lost. So, I quit.

I still see this photo everywhere. It showed up again today, 15 years later, staring at me as I look for a paper on Indigenous Child Development Milestones, in what is a pretty emotionally harrowing assignment on cross cultural clinical assessment of behavioural problems in five year olds. Five years old: a pivotal time where a child learns where they fit, who they are, and how they interact with the world around them.

And there is his face. Five, maybe four. Maybe six. I don’t know. But what I do know is that at the time he was learning what his place in the world was – he was snapped, smiling, and used as the poster child for an entire system that decided what his place in the world is, before he was even born: you better play along, smile, and not push back, or you’ll feel the full force of those institutions that are using your smiling face in perpetuity in exchange for 4 iStock credits.

It’s uncanny that the photo showed up just now. It’s a reminder of exactly why I quit when I could easily coast at this time in my career. I could easily avoid all this pain of learning how to really help people, rather than build creative assets that tell everyone how corporations care about you, and will definitely care harder if you’ll sign up, buy now, learn more or like and subscribe. I could mostly certainly make way more than zero money by not pushing back, pretending it’s all okay, and not be such a bummer.

Every time I see his face, I wonder where he is now. He’s in his twenties. Is he okay? I wonder if the kid who was the face of many a brochure glossing over the pain and torment of his people is okay, and I wonder how he feels about being the face of institutions that promised to help him have a better life, and give him every opportunity to thrive.

I sure hope so. I’m guessing he was up against many obstacles put in front of him by the many bureaucracies that used his face. Much like every brand does with every other cause. We’re all just customers, and assets, and data points to nudge… or to use as a smiling face for systemic cruelty.

I feel guilty as I write this, because I also realise that it is a fleeting thought in my day, and to confront it fully by finding out the answer is a bit too much. Truth is, like most, I have wondered how he is, and I moved on. I wonder if I should even write this post, because it feels like this kid has been used so many times, to tell a story that isn’t his, and to support whatever narrative is attached to this evergreen photo of a moment in his formative years, where he was figuring out where he fit in this world, and finding out that it was not for him, and the organisations that donned his face on the cover were complicit. But I weigh that hesitation over making this about me, with a good faith discussion of a broader problem, and hope that getting people to think, and promote a shift in thinking… and… shit this stuff is hard.

I’m sorry.

This is why other marketers never liked me. It was why I was sidelined. I always try to do better, and think things through, and often fail and end up making it weird. But, I try to hold up a mirror. Oh, and I don’t take money in exchange for my soul… anymore.

It was ultimately why I quit, when I saw the vision for the Internet I signed onto was irretrievably dead, and I had to be willing to pretend it was all okay, wrap it all in buzzwords and slogans on behalf of a machine that used to be for the creative people, built on trust, transparency and emancipation, but now only works for the intellectually and morally void. Where the GPL and Terms of Service were a symbol of trust and paying it forward, not permission to just take whatever you wanted, kick the ladder for everyone behind you and then sending in your corporate lawyers to quibble over the GPL and Terms of Service.

I am now studying Psychology. I wrote this when I was supposed to be writing an essay that I found a bit too painful to face, and needed a break. Psychology is an institution with its own dark past. I’m currently doing a dive on Indigenous child development, and it’s rough going, man. It’s a real bummer. But, what we’ve let happen is a disgrace.

At least I can push back now.

To that kid, I’m sorry. I hope you’re good.

(If you see this, get in touch… I’d love to know. I would do a reverse image search on Google but am afraid of what racist shit their AI will show… which is a whole other problem. Fuck those guys. Forgive me.).

I picked a fist fight with the sun, and the sun won.

Despite how it may appear, I don’t go out of my way to be a contrarian. It just kinda ends up that way, because I believe that truth is more important than tribe, freedom of expression is sacred, and that a functioning society depends on our ability to embrace pluralism. I misstep, like everyone, and might go down a rabbit hole from time to time, but generally, my intentions are always good and always oriented towards fairness, transparency and compassion.

With everyone becoming more polarised, and ultimately more rigid in their beliefs as a result of this insanity called the US Culture Wars, it’s getting easier and easier to find yourself on the wrong side of the military-industrial complex and its hyper-capitalist content factory, which, via the internet, has proven extraordinarily adaptive… and either co-opts or destroys everything or anyone in its path.

Be damned the consequences.

The internet ain’t what it used to be.

Unfortunately, if you are someone like me, your social media experience will not be like everyone else’s. You’ll be on the receiving end of… well… a lot of weird shit. Some you’ll know about; some works quietly in the background to mess with you, because, purely by virtue of being interested in the role the culture wars plays and its impact on users, well, you end up sucked into it.

You may even start to think you’re going crazy or everyone hates you. Well, anyone remotely self-aware would feel that way.

But, don’t worry. It’s mostly just nobody sees your stuff, fuelled by a combination of un-manned algorithms and a series of unfortunate events. I promise. It’s not you.

A series of unfortunate events.

If you’ve ever said anything controversial that rubs up against some well-funded interest – whether it be a major brand, a cryptocurrency, a political issue, an election, the CIA, a 100 year old conspiracy theory or a 13 year old’s favourite game, you might have experienced the following process:

At first, you might notice a bunch of bots, or troll farms in your mentions: a whole bunch of anonymous accounts accusing you of being something-phobic, or a baby-killer, or whatever. If you know what to look for, the language is cookie-cutter, stilted and vague, but can fool someone naive. Or, they may start out polite, but progress very quickly to abuse. If you ignore the abuse or stand your ground, they will mass report you and every tweet on your account until Twitter’s unmanned and stupidly-broken algorithm takes you down. You get your first suspension, sometimes out of the blue, and sometimes for something years ago. Strike One.

Then, you’ve attracted the wrath of the trolls and/or troll farms and/or bot nets. Slip up again or another historical tweet is found. Mass report. Strike Two.

You then are likely to get flagged with Twitter’s internal system as a problem. It looks at who you’re connected to. Note that at no point does a human being touch this. Then, if everyone you’re connected to is also flagged as a problem/and or tripping up the algorithm under, say, #hashtagoftheday with identical language… well, you see how this all goes.

Algorithm trips up, bye bye Twitter account with nary a reasonable human in sight. There are exceptions, but this is mostly how Twitter works.

I’m seriously starting to think that Twitter is run by three kids in a trench coat. But anyway.

In my case, bots and troll farms mess with me a lot, so I started to play with them and see if I could break them, or get them to leave me alone. I successfully got them to leave me alone (Tip: they get paid per engagement so you should exhaust their resources OR tell them you report them (this takes down their networks – see below)). Then the reporting of old tweets started and I started getting suspensions for random things from years ago.

Again, nary a human being to talk to at Twitter.

These troll farms (and unethical agencies) have tools that search individual Twitter accounts for certain words and then mass report you – or – if you are famous enough to be a target (and yes, they know your influence/reach more than you do) – will try to get you trending/publish hit pieces on whack-a-mole ‘news’ sites and create a bot-fuelled, idiot-fuelled ‘cancellation’. And if some influential dimwit thunkpiece writer decides it is newsworthy, well, sorry, but you’re a bit fucked. Weather the storm.

Note that it is not just one interest at play, but multiple. Thousands. All corporations, all political parties, all PR companies, all who have any interest in nudging you in their direction – hire these dark agencies. Many don’t even know they’re doing it, because even the seemingly above-board agencies buy replies, or followers, and frequently do it without the client’s knowledge.

Some even hide in plain sight and have the gall to call themselves a not-for-profit. Cough. Acronym. Cough. Think Tanks fighting “hate”. Cough.

The industry’s worst kept secret.

Nobody will ever admit to these dark tactics, but they all do it. It’s the digital industry’s worst-kept secret. Look in the mentions of any public figure – particularly in the US – you’ll see an army of PR, bots, and troll farms trying to get that influencer to bite. They play dirty whilst nudging the needle …and we are simply collateral damage.

But there’s something far more sinister than a straight-forward ‘cancellation’.

This is where you need to understand how falling afoul of corporate (and political) interests is risky in the long term, because whilst cancellation can be lucrative, suppression… that’ll kill you. Sometimes literally.

Being ‘cancelled’ at a certain level is good for your career, and your numbers, and your wallet – if you’re willing to take that right wing dosh and lie about ‘the left’ for cash.

Being cancelled is the best case scenario.

But being suppressed is the real punishment that nobody talks about. Well, that we can see, anyway.

How does suppression work?

This is where things get tricky.

Social media algorithms generally exist to deal with problems of moderating at scale. Spam, bots, terrorism, cyberattacks, said troll farms etc. Without them, the internet would be 1000x more dreadful than it is. Twitter would be an absolute shitshow.

Algorithms are good and useful things, when implemented well. They look at patterns to detect bad things, such as a cyber-attack, a massive dog-pile, spam or other sinister activity. They also look at patterns to address the troll farms and bots that I talked about above. Or at least, that’s the intention when not compromised by corporate and political interests and the aforementioned agencies doing dark and unethical shit.

If you could talk to a single fucking human being when it gets it wrong.

Algorithms look for patterns and respond accordingly. Patterns of behaviour, language, interactions, and yes… who you are connected to in order to determine your level of risk.

A social score, if you will.

The most backwards compliment of all time.

It’s been a weird and interesting journey for me this last few years – going from being a Pied Piper, able to gather followers at-will and make anything travel online, to everything going – well, completely dead.

Like, tumbleweeds. Frozen follower count. Not getting notifications. Next to no engagement. Aside from the occasional troll farm account suggesting that nobody liked me and my mentions were tumbleweeds.GIF.

Admittedly, at first it was a bit of a mind fuck. Especially because a large part of my sense of self (and brand) has been my ability to ninja the fuck out of social media.

Until I suddenly couldn’t.

My Advertising Account was disabled, as was my Twitter Media account. My developer access was revoked, but on appeal reinstated. I appealed the Advertising & Media accounts, and they said it was because of swearing. At which point I nuked 30,000 tweets and asked them to reinstate. No answer from Twitter Business. Cough.

Initially it did have an effect on me. What did I say? What did I do? Have all my friends abandoned me? WTF why am I suddenly not getting followers or engagement? All these people who are far shittier than me get engagement… what the hell have I done?!

Like any rational or self-aware person, I assumed I had done something wrong. Talking about the gender wars, or swearing too much. There were things I could point to that might’ve been the cause. But I saw that others were doing so much worse – and it just didn’t add up. I was being unfairly throttled somehow, and mass reported, with zero support or understanding, and I simply wanted to know what I had done and how to fix it.

I assumed it was just me or something about me that I didn’t understand. That I am a horrible person and nobody likes me. That’s why nobody showed up to your 11th birthday party and your mother doesn’t call.

Heh.

Like I said, I am not a contrarian on purpose. I just give a shit.

See, the thing about these dark UX agencies is that they are effective at getting under your skin. They know what to say, how to say it, and most of the time, it works. They get paid to nudge people in whatever direction.

It worked, for a time.

Until people started to DM me asking me if I was okay because they hadn’t heard from or seen me recently. Even though I had been posting as-normal and despite those little dark thoughts creeping in occasionally, generally happy and carrying on as usual.

Weird, huh.

Well, not that weird if you understand how [actual, good faith] disinformation & radicalisation researchers track networks.

Turns out, through a series of circumstances and platform manipulations, I’m just influential and potentially dangerous. heh.

I have always been a little bit influential – never on purpose – but I straddle lots of different networks online. I’ve been on this thing for 28 years. And one thing I have always done extremely well is persuade and bring people along with me.

Initially when I started talking about the Gender Wars, I spoke up in support of Meghan Murphy and how I don’t think a permanent ban of a journalist was the right way to go. And I have said repeatedly how much I underestimated what the impact of that would be. But I can see how, from an unmanned-algorithm-and-three-kids-in-trenchcoat I am what is called highly fucking likely to be a cult leader. Technical term. Heh.

So when I started talking – like a moron – about the gender wars in good faith, and all this triggering of troll farms and bots and mass reporting and my general influence… and being connected to other influencers.

Shut down.

Bye bye.

Unlike others, who exist mostly within their own networks, I straddle others. And the algorithms see all. They see the non-public relationships too. They see all. They see who I am really connected to – not just the ones that I make public.

So yeah, this is basically a long-ass post that tells you I’m suppressed because I am influential and meet a certain risk profile, and not necessarily because I am an arsehole. And it makes me feel weirdly good about things.

Yes, it’s shitty, because it means I can’t promote myself like I used to. It’s upsetting, because it wasn’t the deal, and there is no way to correct it. But it at least manages my expectations. And, more importantly, it means the trolls haven’t won, and I am the boss fight for all this shit.

Has the sun won?

Probably.

So far.

But hopefully this makes you feel a little better, if you’re not getting the reach you used to, or feel you’re being suppressed. It’s likely the case, unless you actually are deliberately harassing or being a fuckwit – in which case, stop it. Because you’re dragging me down with you.

Till next time

T x

I have always said that fans and communities built around fans are the scaffolding of the Internet – particularly social media. Connecting with fans, talking to fans, listening to fans and getting feedback, are fundamental to what makes the Internet valuable for users, creators and corporations alike. There was an opportunity with social in the early days for governments and brands to embrace this concept, take the feedback on the chin and do better.

That was what I was sold, anyway.

In 2010, I gave a talk to the Women Parliamentarians conference on Twitter called “I Tweet and I Vote”. The crux of the talk was to sell every female MP in the country on the value of social media, the opportunities to listen to the electorate and be, well, a better representative. I also started to consult with brands at that time, in that brief window before the advertising agencies decided they were digital agencies and squeezed out and gobbled up and started talking over (and in my case, stealing from) the digital specialists.

One my catch-cries at the time being “nobody wants to talk to your logo“. A brief window where people were excited about, and open to, the possibilities, there was excitement in the air and people were willing to listen. That very quickly faded, though, and it all fell away when the people the internet was supposed to make uncomfortable and disrupt – became pretty unhappy with the feedback they were getting.

Greater access to information has always been a disruptive, and you could even say, revolutionary development. The printing press and pamphleteers, radio, telephone, television, the Internet and Open Source code and now social media – they all follow an uncannily and devastatingly similar pattern: new technology emerges, we have some hope of a voice and for things to change, the powerful give lip service to said disruption and change, it becomes a threat to the powerful, and so the powerful use their unlimited resources convince you that this time it will be different, we swear, and ultimately take the revolutionary teeth out of it. Rinse and repeat.

The internet has followed roughly the same pattern: the great unwashed being given the capability to influence large numbers of other great unwashed people quickly… and that ain’t gunna fly, proles. Here, have a 3 cent cut for every $10 we make on your content. If, of course, you say the words we want you to say.

It’s great.

Unfortunately, as our leaders are now (albeit precariously) pretty much locked into this whole illusion of liberal democracy problem, and those pesky proles might start to call bullshit… and all those really annoying laws and rights and regulations about election funding and unethical and harmful products that we want to sell people… what a pickle for the powerful with all that feedback and information sharing and potential revolution and ethics and laws and stuff…

…enter the troll farm.

Not sure if you’re aware, but the vast majority of what you see online has been carefully curated for you by an algorithm working in the background – often well-meaning to avoid beheadings and snuff being livestreamed 24/7, but really vulnerable to manipulation.

I would argue, in 2022, that most social media is no longer organic, and generally assume that if I am seeing a piece of content, it is because someone, somewhere wants me to see it and act a certain way (in marketing, that’s called a call-to-action (CTA). Everything on the internet has a call to action. What is it asking you to do?).

You can pay to get your YouTube videos in the “Up Next”. You can pay for boosts on Facebook. Everything you see – declared or not – by an influencer who manages to make a living, either has some product or idea or ‘thing they want users to do’ behind it …that benefits some third party. That’s the business. That’s how it rolls. There are, of course, both ethical and unethical ways to do this.

Think of it as a spectrum from white to black: many shades of grey in-between. White hat to black hat. Good marketers use ‘white hat’. Unethical marketers use ‘black hat’. And the shades between often come down to case-by-case (and ability to rationalise, and intent).

The manipulation of algorithms using black hat tactics, whilst tech companies and governments turn a blind eye (and occasionally even collude themselves), have made it easy for anyone with enough money, or enough desire for fame, and no conscience to sway public opinion in any direction they desire. Campaigns like #kony2012 are relics of an organic past.

Organic is, for the most part, dead.

Unscrupulous entities like troll farms have exploited every aspect of social media that made it great: for everyone to have access, everyone to be anonymous and for everyone to have a voice. Bad Actors, however, use that as a weapon – maliciously steering conversations, intimidating opponents, and even coordinating en masse to de-platform entire communities in order to sway opinions. The intricate mechanics of bot armies, troll farms, and their methods are far more sophisticated and pervasive than you’d think, is used by pretty much everyone who wants to persuade you of something – from your friendly neighbourhood ISIS recruiter, to your local paper right up to the Pentagon. The problem is so pervasive that it is easier to list who doesn’t use these tactics, over who does.

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind

Jim Morrison

What is a troll farm?

A troll farm is like any other digital agency, social media management firm, or PR firm, really. They just have no ethics (and some even believe they’re fighting a bigger enemy or evil, and feel righteous in engaging in these practices – righteousness is a helluva drug). Where someone like me would turn clients like that away (and am much poorer for it… alas…become a Patron or donate), others build their business specifically for that purpose.

Note: “Troll farm” is a catch-all term for many different things, but think of it as a business that uses a set of unethical (‘black hat’) tactics to manipulate social media conversations. Again, remember… intent.

Troll farms have varying degrees of skill, but the good ones are difficult to detect, even for a professional, and especially for an easily-gamed algorithm such as Twitter’s. These organisations are just businesses, taking a retainer like any other agency, sometimes even playing both sides of a debate (I would be so rich if I had no ethics… seriously… oh em gee) are usually well-organised, extremely well funded, and run either by individuals with a political or social agenda, or on their behalf.

It’s just a job like any other. They turn up, they fuck some shit up, they go home to their families. It’s just Public Relations and social media management. Run some bots here, buy Likes there. Harass someone to suicide. You know… the usual work day.

Digital agencies currently fall through the cracks with regard to political fundraising. As they are privately run companies, they do not need to open their books for public scrutiny. They can simply have a number of Not-for-Profits as clients, hooked into a shared CRM such as ActBlue or WinRed, where those organisations can pool funds and gather all the data across all organisations, and even share with other external providers (I mean, you signed the Terms of Service, right?), and bam.

Money laundered, not accounted for, and everyone’s data being used to target you for fundraising, which is then funnelled into the agency to use on ad spending for Cats Against Trump merchandise and Jen Psaki socks and influencer campaigns and stealth Patreon donations to avoid detection.

With or without the content creator’s knowledge. Cool, huh. Creepy as fuck. That’s tech for ya.

If you are active on Twitter, you have definitely interacted with a troll farm. If you are very active on Twitter and don’t know how to spot them, you are probably inadvertently sharing propaganda from a troll farm. If you are a journalist or public figure on Twitter, you are most definitely being aggressively targeted by troll farms or bots that are trying to harass you into either reporting a certain way, supporting a cause, or bullying you into submission or to back down on a position.

That’s what they do.

Astroturf.

Here’s a link for later:

Social Media Influencers and the 2020 U.S. Election: Paying ‘Regular People’ for Digital Campaign Communication – Center for Media Engagement

The Center for Media Engagement’s propaganda research team reports on the phenomenon of social media influencers as an avenue for political campaign communications, describes the challenges this issue poses to platforms and governments, and briefly explores solutions.

And, as AI becomes more accessible, and writing scripts that can target specific accounts for any reason using their own data as a weapon becomes easier (I have had these bots on me… they’re kinda cool, but creepy as fuck)… well…

What is astroturfing?

The term “astroturfing” is derived from the brand name of a type of artificial grass, which is meant to suggest that the campaign or community is fake or artificial, rather than authentic. It is the practice of creating fake grassroots campaigns or online communities with the intention of promoting a particular product, service, or idea. This unethical, ‘black hat’ tactic involves using a combination of fake social media accounts, influencers paid reviews, and other forms of online propaganda to manipulate public opinion and create the illusion of widespread support for a particular cause or viewpoint.

People who have been called a bigot, fascist or TERF with a cartoon avatar, and then sat perplexed at how really dumb tweets are getting thousands of Likes and good faith thinkers are being harassed and mass reported have likely witnessed astroturfing in action. Remember: it is difficult to detect 1) because it is designed to appear organic and spontaneous and 2) because you just don’t know who is on the take and who is genuinely stupid and trying to say whatever will stick to get famous. That’s the content factory, never-ending Idol Audition we live in.

Those engaged in these practices (whether agency or in-house) use a combination of tools, from bots (which are more obvious) for reporting and harassing low-levels, to MLM-like engagement pods where wannabe influencers are invited to “promote each other’s tweets”, and then end up too far in and at the mercy of the exact same mob if they break ranks. I watched this play out most recently with Ana Kasparian of TYT. Watch that space, folks. The TYT Army turned on the TYT Army. Like what…

Researchers and marketers who rely on Twitter data to make decisions are none the wiser. You just gotta get your opponents banned and harass the rest into silence. Any absurd idea or falsehood that nobody offline thinks is popular is able to become true, backed by a dimwitted rich kid who is only in college because their Dad is paying for it and they want to talk about coded heteronormativity or whatever the fuck in a children’s book like they do on Tumblr. You know, social science. Studies. Backed by research. With a weird grant from an NGO that seems totally legit. Sound familiar?

Troll farms use a variety of tactics to influence conversations and manipulate public opinion. These tactics include the use of bots, fake accounts, and automated tweets. Troll farms also use targeted advertising to reach specific audiences and manipulate conversations. They are able to generate a large amount of traffic and activity, making it difficult for users to distinguish between real information and false information. They spread false information quickly and easily, as well as manipulate conversations, often in subtle ways, using nudges.

Nudges are discreet prompts or indicators intended to shape the actions of both influential individuals and users using various rewards and punishments. Say the right thing, here’s a Patron or 1000 views or 1000 Likes. Say the wrong thing, lose a bunch of followers or get mass reported so the algorithm kills your reach and think your friends and family hate you and did something wrong for years. It’s easy to do. Even if influencers won’t come to the party, or want to disclose their paid endorsements, you can theoretically reward any content creator on any platform with love, praise, cash, punishments, shuns and bans. People with unlimited money can do anything they want if a content creator is desperate enough – either for money or clout or both.

Despite the cries and side-eyes over the use of the word “disinformation”, it is a real problem. The only problem is that they’re all accusing everyone else of doing it, when everyone is. This is why I decided years ago to focus less on the politics and more on a) educating people and b) focusing on the tactics and pushing to attach harsh penalties for those who are caught and c) making any digital agency who has political parties or NFPs on the books to be subjected to the same reporting as the NFPs themselves. Disinformation networks are the real threat to democracy, the authenticity of online discours, research data and democratic process.

To safeguard users from deceitful information and manipulation, it is crucial for social media platforms and governments to detect and dismantle such networks and to open up agencies to further scrutiny. Facebook’s Ad Library has worked well in some ways to combat this, however, what counts as ‘political advertising’ is getting harder to detect, because now, as the adaptive fuckers crooks are, they will run ads that aren’t political, or are just selling merch (see: Cats Against Trump – one of several thousand Pages that sell merchandise in an online store, and have approximately $500-1000 a month ad spend on Facebook, but all lead back to the same digital agency), and then taking you off-site or get you via email, which is then outside the view of Facebook or any other public scrutiny.

Fact-checking is a crucial step for both influencers and users. It is imperative to check the authenticity of any information before sharing it to avoid spreading misinformation. It is also essential to introspect and understand your own motives behind sharing or withholding information, and your own vulnerability to audience capture. If you think you are susceptible to being influenced for personal gain, you must remain extra vigilant and conscious of your vulnerability.

I’ll say upfront, that the irony of this is not lost on me. The idea that people are spreading misinformation and disinformation about misinformation and disinformation seems – well – almost peak Internet.

Whether it is the hysterical and ill-informed fools on the right spreading disinformation about misinformation being outlawed by the EU via the Digital Services Act, or the professional communicators on behalf of the White House using misinformation-disinformation interchangeably and scaring the shit out of us all.

You see, they are very different things.

Misinformation refers simply to false information that exploits our blind spots. It could be pseudoscience, misrepresentations about policy or law, or anything that falls afoul of facts or critical thinking. We all fall victim to it.

Importantly, sharing misinformation is accidental.

Think tripping over in public. It’s a bit embarrassing, but it is an accident. You can’t get criminal charges for tripping over. You might get a fine if you were drunk and disorderly, or sued for negligence if you were being a fuckwit and fell into someone else, but tripping over, in itself is not a crime. And never will be.

Disinformation, on the other hand, is the deliberate sharing of false information in order to cause harm or mislead. So, rather than accidentally tripping over in the street, someone deliberately walks up to you and pushes you over, causing you to fall. Or, deliberately puts their foot out. You get the drift.

Disinformation laws have criminal intent built in. Those words have legal significance, and will be resolved through case law over time. Just like every other law before it.

Interesting how Ben Shapiro, Mister Lawyer, doesn’t mention this.

It’s always the bits that they leave out.

Anyway, this is what is being legislated around the world. It is no different to ACMA or the ACCC (in the US it’s the FTC) regulating false advertising or spam, that allows for criminal proceedings to be brought against those who deliberately share false information with the intent to deceive.

You can’t charge anyone with a crime unless there is a law. So they’re making a law, that align with other laws in the same vein, like the Spam Act (2003) in Australia. Nobody has been charged for their web server accidentally sending Spam.

It’s about intent.

Misinformation is simply the flip side of virality and “frictionless experiences”. Most advertising and comedy is technically misinformation. It isn’t inherently bad.

The Sleight of Hand

It is important to be vigilant around the use of “misinformation” and “disinformation” interchangeably, because people who should know (and do know) the difference are being slippery.

Note: I hate using ‘right’ and ‘left’, because the sides of the US Kleptocrat-driven culture wars are right and further-right. Centrists are probably the confused centre-left, just to complicate matters. But, I’m meeting you where you’re at.

What the ‘right’ media ecosystem does

By ‘right’ I mean the Fox networks, Daily Wire, Fox, Breitbart and that ecosystem, which has been well-studied, and it is well established that they engage in disinformation. Constantly.

The right claim that these laws are a) fighting misinformation and b) anti ‘free speech’. They switch out misinformation and disinformation on purpose to make people think there is a war on opinions or an anti-conservative bias when there isn’t.

So the right call disinformation misinformation to get you believing you’re defending your right to opinions or mistakes, so that they can protect their business model of bullshit.

What the ‘left’ media ecosystem does

By ‘left’ I (cringe) mean CNN, MSNBC, corporate Democrats/BlueAnon blue checks, uncritical consumers of Media Matters intern-generated content about Joe Rogan types.

They call everything they don’t like or want to silence ‘disinformation’. Or, say ‘misinformation-disinformation’ in order to lump them together, with plausible deniability of having misspoken. I’m pretty sure that professional communicators working for the most powerful political office in the world are not prone to gaffes, so will assume that every word is intentional. Which, ironically, makes ‘misinformation’ a ‘dog whistle’ for censorship of opponents. Mostly of people to the left of them. Not to the right.

So the ‘left’ call/lump in misinformation and disinformation to get you believing you’re defending against the bad guys, and quietly manufacturing consent to silence those who oppose the corporate narrative, so that they can protect their business model of bullshit.

What idiots on the internet do

Confuse and conflate the two. Accidentally spread misinformation. Engage in flame wars and talk shit about stuff they know nothing about. Internet gunna internet. Dunning-Kruger gunna Dunning-Kruger. Nutters gunna nut. Americans gunna Mericate. Grifters gunna grift. And they are all incentivised to pander to whichever tribe provides the reinforcement, cash and clicks, all whilst engaging in both misinformation and disinformation about policy conversations that they have absolutely no expertise in, but always seem to have the super-human ability (and resources) to learn all about a topic, and produce an essay or video every day whilst begging you for money.

Misinformation-Disinformation is big business, and that is why the culture wars consumes it, misrepresents the issue, and effectively kills any productive conversation about the real issues.
And of course, leaves people like me shouting into the void hoping that one or two people might see the issues more clearly.

What can you do?

You need to use your critical thinking skills and learn to ignore the nonsense. Stop sharing their bullshit. Check sources. Think things through, rather than react. Stop giving money to people who mislead you, and hopefully give money to those who are oriented towards truth and integrity. It’s far less sexy, and a lot fewer easy answers/fun conspiracy theories, but it’ll keep you sane.

The videos

Sorry, tripped a fuse for these so its in two parts. I don’t have time to edit into a single video. But if that is a barrier for you, then I gotta say, you’re part of the problem. You gotta get used to some friction (and things costing money), my guy.

I hate this part

If you want to become a Patron, that’d be ace. Or PayPal here. Seriously, every hour I spend on this stuff loses me money. I’m sorry if it needs a second draft, or my videos need editing, or I make mistakes or misspeak… I do what I can with the time I have, and yet have to compete with people with a tonne more resources than me. If they say they’re doing it for free, they’re lying. I know what things cost to produce, so they’re either using unpaid help or not declaring their funding.I have courses coming with the hope that they will generate enough income so I can do this stuff for free without resentment (heh), but if you want to invest in me so I can do this properly, well, hit me up.

Anyway, hopefully this newsletter finds you well in these strange and unprecedented times that are actually completely precedented. Love you. Be well.

Truth is, in the early days I did it to get away from most of you. You didn’t get me. You teased me. You called me weird. You made me feel like I was a problem because I wouldn’t just take things on face value and had to be “difficult” (read: curious.). The Internet was my sanctuary. I existed in a space where I could be smart, imaginative and weird, with other smart, imaginative and weird people, who understood what it was like to be different, to want more, and to want to be free from the shackles and gravity of meat space, and just be… curious and see where our clicking took us.

On the Internet, I was not a teenage girl. I was not stuck in Perth. I was not poor. I was not motherless and effectively fatherless. I was not my abusive and neglectful upbringing. I was not a mother, nor an illness, nor a segment to sell to. I sure as shit was not an identity in which to pit me against my neighbour in a never-ending culture war. I was simply a head in a jar, on a level playing field with all the other heads in jars… with nothing but our stories, our curiosity and our wits at our disposal.

For a brief moment, we had the glimmers of meritocracy, before being reminded we were, and always would be, held captive by everything we thought we could escape.

Every day, I long for the space us weirdos briefly held for ourselves. Without the schoolyard bully or the teacher’s pet (who on Twitter are usually the same person), the grown-ups telling us to stop asking questions, and the corporate arseholes with their boring doublespeak, and that extra special brand of superficial, meaningless filler words that say absolutely nothing …and accomplish even less.

I have to keep reminding you that you moved in on my turf. A wave of mediocrity and banal evil in an eternal September where, over a decade, big tech carrot-and-sticked us with promises of happiness, connection, success, and saving the world. If we would just click “I agree”, or change the product a teeny bit, or pitch a little bit differently or add in this one little pixel. Don’t worry, it’ll just give you better insight into your customers so you can serve them better.

“Trust us”, they said.

Bit by bit, we signed away our spaces, our dreams and (in my case) our souls. The corporate numpties, choice architects and ‘advertiser friendly’ influencers took over our spaces. They pushed us weirdos to the fringes, gentrifying every part of the Internet, bit-by-bit with every nudge, every pop-up, every selfie and every thunkpiece and brand partnership, with zero understanding or respect for anything we’d built before they showed up and started bossing us around. Then they kicked us weirdos out, conveniently forgetting that we built everything they take for granted.

At some point, it was decided that all of those structural barriers and limitations we had shed in order to feel free, and our collective and good-faith efforts to build something different were now simply theirs to exploit. Our ‘identities’ became ‘content’ and content was King. Our stories, our ‘life events’, our words and even our Open Source code, suddenly became theirs, with them having built nothing like the rent-seekers that they are. And, if they couldn’t exploit it, they could weaponise it.

All without our consent and most certainly not a choice.

Well, tech companies, corporate HR and brand managers can go get fucked, and I ain’t leaving.

In 2010, I was a panelist at a business networking event, talking about social media for business.

Ah, the olden days.

A lifetime ago.

As someone who has lived on the Internet for 28 years (!), I’m often in a state of time dilation, where the 90’s feels like ten years ago, yet 2015 feels like fifty. Where a flame war from 1998 seemingly goes on forever, but my first marriage is a blip I can barely remember. The Internet is funny like that. It is cyclical, it is predictable …and it is absolutely magnificent.

Anyway, in the before times (somewhere between five and fifty-thousand years ago), I was talking about Twitter and its possibilities for business. It was everything you would expect from that time: people not getting it, tactically-minded, too focused on shiny new tools and apps, nobody wanting to pay for any of it, plus the inevitable questions about how to control negative feedback (haha), how to control employees (haha), every aspect of how to control the uncontrollable, put it in a box, constrain it, and either not let themselves get caught being human, or how to catch employees being human after hours.

And more importantly, how to exploit it for profit.

How about you just stay off the Internet if you want control, dickhead, I often thought to myself.

By ‘thought to myself’, I of course meant ‘sub-tweeted later’. Hey I’ve evolved. I’ve learned. I have the battle scars. Sort of.

I’ve evolved since. A little.

This event blends into many others I would do that year. The same faces, the same questions, the same banal not-getting-it nonsense from corporate types who were trying to invade my special place: the Internet, not only assuming they were welcome, but that they had the right to suddenly start bossing everyone around.

It wasn’t long until I fell into the role of contrarian, against what felt like a tsunami of corporate bullshit. But, as I tend to do, I made lemonade, and made it my mission to get them to understand that the power, beauty and chaos of the Internet was nothing to be afraid of, they would fall in love with it like I have, and we could do business differently and change the world.

The panel took questions. I can’t recall who asked, but if you try to picture a corporate fuckwit, you’ll be correct.

“Why do you swear so much? Especially the C-word. Don’t you know that word is offensive and unprofessional? Aren’t you concerned you will lose business?”

That was the first of many times I would turn red in front of 200 people (even though, in retrospect, I had nothing to be ashamed of and it was just a very early form of the corporate-backed public shaming that was refined over the years).

That few seconds – ears burning and cheeks flushed, ashamed of who I was in front of the popular kids – felt simultaneously like a year and time standing still.

Reminders that meat space people knew about my Internet and were reading my stuff had happened before, but only rarely. I’d had bad clients use “unprofessional” whenever I had the audacity to ask them to pay their bill, or said no to them, but this was the first time it had happened to me in public.

I wanted to crawl away and die in that moment, but somehow, managed to answer:

“I operate from the True Fans Theory online, and advise others to do the same. This means my focus is on finding people I want to work with, and leverage those who are not my fans to get mad and share my stuff. So, to answer your question, no, because my use of the word cunt [yes I did say the word] filters out the people who ask dumb questions about me using the word cunt, and their outrage attracts likeminded people who think you’re a bit uptight.”

I have evolved since. A little.

This week, the Bird App of Doom that I-used-to-love-and-desperately-want-to-love-again received an offer from Elon Musk to buy it for $44bn and take it private. Fellow geek. Fellow Maverick. Except, admittedly, quite a bit richer, a way bigger fuckwit, and much less prone to flushing cheeks and self-loathing.

Most people rejoiced. Or laughed. Or didn’t care.

But hoo boy, the normies were salty. It was funny. It’s still funny.

The people who seized control over my Internet (on the platform that I and millions of others had helped build) were now trying to impose their dogma and kick us out, had pretty much been told to go fuck themselves by the richest man on earth.

That 2010 panel was front of mind. That moment where I was gaslit by a room full of people who didn’t understand that I didn’t need or want their approval. I didn’t need for them to think I am “professional” or “responsible” or “authoritative”, because I already was, in my world, in my industry that didn’t even have a name yet, that I had built from scratch: not off the back of my identity, or my parents, or my networks or my gender or money; but off the back of my brain, my curiosity and a $450 computer. I simply wanted them to leave me (and people like me) the fuck alone and let me get on with my work.

That attitude worked, for a little while. I carved myself out a nice little career out of trailblazing. But the signs were there, early on, that corporates weren’t happy with not controlling the Internet, and especially not having control over people like me who told them to fuck off. They didn’t like that people like me could buy a computer, say what we want, make money, have access to knowledge and influence, and not be coerced by them and their caste.

They were the ones who decided who got to speak, who could progress up the ladder, and who got to control the record. Not me. Not poor kids with no networks or money. And especially not a lippy woman who didn’t know her place. It was simply not the natural order of things.

There was a brief window where “content” was organic. We had fun, and could even occasionally go viral. But over time, the agencies and “brand partnerships” seized control of all of it, replaced the unpredictable spontaneous creativity of the Internet with a Deep Faked version of Being Caught Being Human, cut us out of it, and replaced us all with perky young things who are offended by the word cunt and journalists who have no training in, or understanding of, the art of rhetoric.

Order was restored. The rightful owners had reclaimed what was theirs, and made it so that success on the Internet was only available if you had money, networks and were ‘advertiser friendly’.

Of course, that definition got narrower and narrower and stupider and stupider, as US Cultural Hegemony enforced its will onto all who dared try to participate.

Over the years, all the corporate ninny ‘concern trolls’, tattlers, dibber dobbers, bored and bitchy housewives, cancellers, BlueAnon, QAnon and MAGA hysterics in a never-ending Idol audition provided enough of a distraction, and ran enough interference, to fast forward us into a technofascist hellscape and turn Big Tech into the full time distractors and redactors on behalf of the United States military-industrial-academic complex.

Not a decade later, logging on and seeing where our clicks would take us was a relic of the past. We were no longer in control of that journey. They A/B tested and nudged us all, held us captive, with the primary goal of discouraging us from clicking anywhere else…. for own own good, of course. Not for the ad revenue. It’s Win-Win. Branded Content. Synergy between “content” creators and brands to create contextualised data-driven integrated omnichannel WOM experiences.

Fucking… gag.

To add insult to injury, if we dared click on an unapproved no-no site like 4Chan (fun fact: the site where LOLCats and “Memes”/Macros came from) or build unapproved Subreddits or have unapproved thoughts or dare have in-jokes you midwits didn’t get or couldn’t control – or worse, were at your expense – congratulations… you are now a Nazi, and a criminal. Put on tech hit-lists without your consent, with no right of appeal.

I thought I just liked ceiling cat and jokes, man.

My only crime was answering, in good faith, the question in the box that asked me what I was thinking, what was up, and asked me to trust them, bro. I did that over 200,000 times. They asked how my day was, I answered them. I trusted them.

I didn’t know that by making fun of Americans and defending women’s right to define womanhood differently than an obviously astroturfed Pharma-backed campaign, that I was now an enemy of the US Government for filling out that box and being a political scientist focused on empiricism …and for being a bit of a smart-arse.

Woops. Silly me, thinking I could be left alone. I am out of control, will not be pulled into line, will not have my needle nudged on a ladder of engagement, and hoo boy are HR and the Brand Managers mad about it.

In response to Musk’s purchase, the corporate invaders are now flinging around words like “responsibility” (which sounds an awful lot to me like “professionalism” – cough), yet never seem to define what exactly “responsibility” means. Nor do they explain how kicking people off a platform they used in good faith, removing their voice and reach for being “irresponsible” or “unprofessional”, with no recourse or avenue of appeal, is a) not open for abuse and b) any different from censorship.

As authoritarians, and like every other coloniser before them, they insist that these things are defined, and that this is settled, simply because they said so.

Sorry, but that’s not how any of this works.

Maybe get off the Internet, dickhead.

This isn’t settled simply because you say so.

I have some follow-up questions.

What do you mean “responsibility”? To whom? You? Fuck off. You aren’t the boss of me. No, seriously. To whom are we responsible? Who do I report to? I thought I was my own boss.

Is social media a public space? Have you considered the broader implications of this, especially if it is the United States’ public space and we, the rest of the world have to be dragged into, and suffer though that oppressive fascist clusterfuck without our consent or a vote?

Who runs the public space that you are apparently in charge of now? How does it operate? Whose laws apply? Did you know it is illegal to swear in public in many places around the world? Are you aware that women aren’t allowed in public in parts of the world, including in Saudi Arabia (one of the original major shareholders of Twitter… yet another Téa fun fact)?

Is the entire Internet a public space? Whose public space? Whose rules? Whose norms? If it’s the United States running things, the word cunt is offensive. If it’s Australia or the United Kingdom, it’s less clear. And more importantly, if it is a public space, then who is a citizen? Corporations? That’s gone really well so far. Do we want every aspect of our society to be ‘brand safe’ (gag)? Fuck off. I am not your billboard without a cut.

If we do have responsibilities, what are they? And who are we accountable to, exactly? What process is in place for when there’s a mistake? How do we fix it or redeem ourselves from the invisible, untouchable, unaccountable Responsibility Police?

With responsibilities, aren’t there are also rights? Aren’t responsibilities a two-way street, such as not doing harm to users? Who is responsible when users are driven to suicide by tech companies deliberately making it so those in trouble can’t be seen because they are on the receiving end of an algorithm that feels justified in hiding them from their family and friends?

Who did we sign this contract with? Is there a contract at all? Hang on a sec, weren’t we promised emancipation and freedom and moving fast and breaking things and innovation and not being corporate?

Or, are we talking about a social contract? Which definition of the social contract? Are we talking Rousseau or Mill? Probably Hermann/Chomsky. Cough.

Isn’t it the courts’ job and isn’t there due process, if we’re talking about public spaces and social contracts? And, if that is the case, why am I, as an Australian citizen, suddenly signing a contract with United States Corporate HR departments, the Evangelical Right, Coca Cola, Raytheon, Inexplicably Sexy M&Ms and the CIA?

Do you have my consent? What is the nature of that consent? Is it tacit or explicit? I mean, you’d think I’d know, seeing as I am party to a contract and am free, it was transparent and not done under deception or coercion. The contract I thought I signed had a promise, which was that I was able to write what I was thinking, into a box, and others could read it, within the bounds of local laws. And that I am in user experience and Human-Centred Design, not Big Fucking Tobacco. I was promised that I would be free to interact, to explore and to create, and based on that contract I stopped writing those thoughts on my own website, and moved to theirs. Those words were sold to the highest bidder, again, without my consent.

What contract did we sign, and with whom? The Terms of Service that users don’t read, and if we were to subpoena the analytics, would show that you also know this? Or, have United States-based corporations unilaterally decided they have our tacit consent, and get to appoint themselves of arbiters of who I talk to and who I get to work with in this supposed free market, because might is right, and they can back it with unlimited resources, military force and a hegemonic empire, like they did with Julian Assange?

I didn’t sign that contract, fuck you very much.

These things are not settled. They are legally and politically significant definitions.

But of course, you know that, don’t you. When you refer to some fuzzy notion of “responsibility”, it’s never because you are uncomfortable and just want that icky feeling to stop. No, you’ve definitely thought this through. For you are the authority, and I am the problem. I mean, you have an iPhone and did it yourself with Wix, have nothing creative to say and therefore nothing to worry about. And I am out of line, and must be dealt with, because God forbid you be made to feel uncomfortable or a poor person become insubordinate.

Maybe get off the Internet, dickhead.

This is far from settled, and if you can’t see that, or have a problem with it, then maybe you should just get off the Internet, dickhead. I am no longer a curious child that you can punish and sideline simply because you are ill-equipped to deal with me. I am not a young woman who can be humiliated. I will not be punished for asking legitimate and tough questions. You are not my teacher, my client, nor my boss and you don’t control me. And this time, I won’t hide away or go red-faced. I shouldn’t have done it in 2010 and I will not do it in 2022.

This is not yours. This is everyone’s, and if you can’t respect that, then get off the Internet.

Dickhead.

Sincerely, a “Responsible”, “Authoritative” Internet “Professional”.

Without dissent, you end up here.

“Here”?

“Here” is the internet gone off the rails with cults.

“Here” is 24/7 non-consensual surveillance.

“Here” is siloed disciplines so nobody saw the consequences of giving the brains-trust-known-as-marketers unfettered access to psychologically manipulative tools with zero awareness or accountability… and yet inexplicably thinking they know best, because a University exchanged 50 grand for a Cert IV and called it a degree.

“Here” is rooms of engineers, doing ‘cool shit’, with nobody in the room to object.

And, if (like me) you tried, they patted us on the head and said “we got this, sweetie”.

Obviously.

From where I sit, it looks like you’re kinda out of your depth.

“Here” is an echo chamber of US Ivy Leaguers, handed the keys to every castle on the planet, and nobody in the room to object, with all of the institutional power backing every bone-headed idea, and telling everyone else how the world works, how we need to work harder and Lean In and maybe – just maybe – we won’t destroy you for defying us.

“Here” is rooms of rich men called Peter and John with no idea their worldview is not the default, or even accurate, whilst the negative impacts ‘trickle down’ and literally nothing else does.

“Here” is, when under scrutiny, Peter and John sneakily replacing the rich Ivy League men with other rich Ivy Leaguers-slightly-less-white-and-male, hoping the proles wouldn’t notice that it is business as usual, just now we can longer complain about it or be branded a goddamn TERF.

And, hoo boy, are Peter and John’s mates also incensed by that tiny amount of progress.

Cancel Culture!! WOKISM!

Try Leaning In or a gratitude journal, fellas.

“Here”, if we don’t change course -quickly- is the inevitability of some pretty bad stuff.

Yes. Even worse.

The bad stuff is something misfits tend to warn about, whilst non-misfits believe history and gravity are things you can engineer and market your way out of.

Like the engineers and marketers who are in way over their heads.

Like the engineers and marketers who ignored everyone who objected.

Like the engineers and marketers who are now in charge of deciding what gets heard and who’s a misfit.

Given they’re so smart, they obviously know that dissent is an important part of a functioning society, because engineers and marketers tend to have blind spots and groupthink can go off the rails.

TL;DR – Bad ideas travel when there’s nobody to object. Bad shit happens without dissent. Especially when it’s engineers, a profit motive and a bunch of dimwit marketers to sell it.

You might think people like me are a problem, but it is my JOB to be a boil on the arse of everyone in my industry. Because you writing people like me off is how we got here.

If you don’t see this, YOU need me more than anyone.

I tried it your way. And, sorry, my guy, but we ended up here.

So maybe, just maybe, the misfits have a point.

Now pay me for a consult, jerkface.

Hello, reader. You may have come to this article in order to find out what “Mass Formation Psychosis” is, after seeing this viral clip of Dr Robert Malone, MD on Joe Rogan:

Welcome, Unwitting Internet Person.

Welcome. I hope you’re doing okay. Shit’s crazy, hey. It feels as though everyone around you has lost their minds a bit, doesn’t it?

I want you to know that it isn’t just you that has noticed, and it is definitely happening. Just, it’s not happening quite in the way you’d think. There’s definitely a bunch of complex explanations for why people are being so weird: trauma, grief, fear. Resulting in a never-ending feeling that you are being fucked with, but can’t fully articulate how, what, why or by whom.

That’s because you are being fucked with. But it isn’t “them”. You know. Whatever the “them” is that probably got you clicking on this article in the first place.

It isn’t you, either. You’re actually fine. I hope you stick around long enough to hear me out.

With any luck, and if I have optimised this properly, you should have searched or stumbled on this article having searched for “What is mass formation psychosis?” on Duck Duck Go or Google. After I hit Publish, though, I know the chances of you finding this organically are pretty low, despite “mass formation psychosis” being an obscure term with low competition up until a week ago.

You may notice that this article is keyword-optimised for that term.

Do you know why it likely won’t get seen?

There’s a whole bunch of people (and ?? bots) at the ready to tell you that it is some huge conspiracy to silence “conservative voices”, or “people who question the vaccine”, or whatever slogan du jour there is on the list this week.

Well, as someone who has worked in digital strategy and run online campaigns for two decades, let me tell you what is actually happening.

What is “Mass Formation Psychosis”?

Who the fuck knows? I’m sure it’s a thing, among the dusty books of those who worship the Greco-Romans and love pulling out obscure words, stripping problems of context and drag us all into tedious quibbles 24/7 on Twitter. It’s pretty niche for something that is pretty well established in social psychology under other names. To be honest, your takeaway should be that it doesn’t really matter what it is, but because you probably came here searching for the definition of “mass formation psychosis” and I don’t want to be accused of clickbaiting (other than to make my point), here you go.

There are many other, more mainstream concepts that better define this phenomenon that Dr Malone is claiming happened in Nazi Germany:

• Mass Psychogenic Illness/Mass Hysteria

• Moral Panic

• Attribution Errors

• Diffusion of Responsibility

• Folie à deux

• Thought Reform

• Alienation

There has been substantial research into the rise of fascism, especially in Nazi Germany and, more broadly, the psychology of totalitarianism (which is also one theory of many… there is never one catch-all term for any complex problem). In fact, pretty much the entire discipline of social and political psychology to date has been dedicated to the question of “how on earth did that happen?”. Milgram. Ash. Lifton. Arendt. Some research it to prevent it happening again.

Others, to make sure they get away with it.

I’ve recommended this book to gain better understanding of how fascism works politically. But, it is an important side-note to state that what happened in Nazi Germany was not a mass psychosis. The reason this fact is so fascinating to social psychologists is because it was actually completely rational, in the humans-are-vulnerable sense. What is left out in the United States politico-media-complex was that it was also the result of an unholy alliance between traditional conservatives and the Nazis, who formed said alliance based on their shared hatred of socialists and a moral panic over Communism.

Now, this is not an article about the details of Nazi Germany or about the pros and cons of theoretical economic frameworks. There is always so much to address when commenting on these culture wars topics (this is by design… a deliberate tactic to drag you into haggling over details rather than arguing the bigger political picture).

I am also not going to do anything to question or discredit Dr Malone, as such. If anything I believe that most of the people that are propped up and used in this ecosystem (Rogan included) are as oblivious as everyone else. Debunking scientists is really not something I care about or am qualified to do. But what I am qualified to talk about is how this “Mass Formation Psychosis” debacle is a perfect example of how the United States far right use long tail SEO and a media ecosystem of unwitting participants to peddle… well… bullshit… and coax you into a funnel that bypasses any opposing viewpoints, and where you can be nudged and radicalised and within a few short months be led to believe that Critical Theory and “the left” are bringing about the end of Western Civilisation.

And ultimately, keep falling on their own sword because the thing they demonise (socialist analysis) is the shoe that fits, and the culprit is the thing they benefit from (capitalism).

The ‘IDW’ can never say the C word, and this is how we get here.

These problems are easily explained when you do a critique of capitalism, or understand the complex set of factors that led to the Holocaust. Unfortunately for the rest of us, a lifetime of propaganda and a political culture whose inclination it is to oversimplify, exploit and commodify and then prop up televangelists who blame that on a moral failing of individuals or groups, well, you can see how this all lands in one big Dunning-Kruger, pro-capitalist cope.

If you know your history about Nazi Germany, anti-communism and red scares were a significant factor. Not “mass formation psychosis”. It was a working class whose revolutionary rage was misdirected and exploited in an unholy anti-communist alliance. Sound familiar? But the details of this are another red herring that will no doubt be explained to me at length by men who know better, so I will move on.

Also, dudes, don’t do that. It’s annoying and if you waste my time, I’ll send you an invoice. As a socialist, I own my own labour and charge what I want. You know: a free market. Capitalism means you feel the right to exploit my time and labour without having to pay for it. Nope.

Moving on.

But, what is “Mass Formation Psychosis” …really?

Why use this specific phrase, when there are so many others that can be used and more readily understood? There is vast literature on the political psychology of the Holocaust. The Holocaust happened pretty much exactly the same way the United States war machine works today: the banality of evil, siloing, alienation/atomisation, outgrouping and… well… the diffusion of responsibility that comes from a middle class, middle management desk job.

There is also vast literature on Holocaust denialism and how the United States have rewritten large parts of that history in their own favour. Again, fucking distractions and tangents. Ugh.

So anyway, I saw the clip. Standard stuff. I saw Malone had been banned. Honestly, I wasn’t all that interested. But, also I saw the machine that I am all too familiar with go to work, doing what it does. Astroturfing with MAGA bots. The ecosystem of useful idiots and good people amplifying outrage. The Wokies doing what the Wokies do and the MAGAs doing what the MAGAs do in their sick for-profit symbiosis that closely resembles a crackhead marriage.

Nothing unusual.

Like a crackhead marriage, it gets dull after a while and you just close your blinds and let them get on with it.

Then, I saw that Google was suppressing it.

A-ha!

One thing that has bugged me for a long time with the Anti-Woke, #WalkAway, #exLiberal online-political-commentator crew, is how they drill down into semantics, narrow definitions and distractions that even someone who knows a lot would have to look up in order to debate. 

They’ll take some random philosopher or concept, and then throw you off point because you’re trying to recall this tangentially related thing. This makes it look like they won, because you weren’t able to recall a narrow barely-related concept in a whole body of literature and study. This has happened a few times when I have interviewed people (side point: it is why I decided to not do ‘debates’ and be used as a prop.).

After having DESTROYED their opponent with LOGIC and FACTS (rather than simply bewildering you at how aggressively stupid they are), they look like the better expert and… then comes the oversimplified. heavily loaded “checklist” married to whatever silliness they’re trying to sell you.

With a series of nudges that has you losing your kidney:

Anyway, I was always a bit perplexed by this tactic, and wrote it off to stupidity and sloganeering, until this week, when I saw Google suppressing the term “mass formation psychosis”, and then saw the “uncensored” results on DuckDuckGo:

Long Tail SEO

What is Long Tail SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

Let’s say you sell widgets in London, in a fairly competitive market. People will search for “widgets london” and expect to see relevant results (the amount of searches per day is called “volume”). Now, imagine Amazon also sells widgets in London, as well as Apple and Sony, plus a bunch of other bigger businesses. You, the small business owner, only have a few thousand dollars to spend per month vs their massive budgets.

So, what do you do? You sell on lower volume keywords that are more niche, that aren’t dominated by the bigger players. You write blog posts and articles and reviews on specific brands of widgets. Fewer people search, but you can dominate that search term because the bigger guys aren’t investing in it.

All you really need to know is that posts and pages are optimised so that when someone searches for a certain keyword, yours will show up. This is why I found it curious that “mass formation psychosis” was the term used, and not the established terms. But now I know why.

Those terms are dominated by mainstream sources on the first pages of Google.

You’ll see that when you use DuckDuckGo to search “mass formation psychosis”, you get Malone’s Substack and then a whole bunch of articles. Now, unless you know what you’re looking at, you’ll think this is just benign list of media sources, like any other. However, if you actually click on them (in my case I already know of them), you’ll see that there are a whole bunch of US Right Wing Propaganda outlets dominating the first page. No dictionary. Not even urban dictionary. No Wikipedia. No .edu. No Psychology Today.

This is the tactic. Long Tail.

What I initially thought was just douchebags being idiots, is a deliberate and methodical attempt to get you looking up slogans, concepts and keywords that those who are running the campaign want to control.

Let me qualify this again and say that everyone does this – which is why I focus on the tactics and unethical practices. There is an information war happening.

That weird itchy thing you’re feeling, that you are being fucked with? This is why you feel it. Not because of some imagined other, but because you are literally having your head scrambled with competing propaganda because of a war over the space between your ears.

Let me qualify something else: this is not a conspiracy theory. I don’t know if Malone knows about it, or whether these campaigns just prop him up for their own nefarious purposes and he is conveniently just using a long tail term. But all I see is a mention of an unknown concept, with a whole bunch of very recent long tail propaganda content, designed to scare you and get you – with that weird feeling that you’re being messed with that is 100% correct – on a radicalisation funnel. The direction of that funnel doesn’t matter – just know it is always happening and you have to be vigilant, and walk a delicate line between healthy critical reading of authoritative and credible sources and bypassing them altogether.

How it’s done

If you wanted to hijack people’s critical thinking on an issue, you would first create a long tail term, such as “mass formation psychosis”. Then, using a network of “media” that backlink to each other, you publish a series of articles to create authority for that term.

Then, if it is mentioned on a large platform – say like Joe Rogan – you drive traffic to search the obscure term “mass formation psychosis”. Which, is obscure, even though the bros on Twitter will pretend you’re stupid for not knowing what it is. See above red herring debate tactic.

Why Malone didn’t refer to mainstream concepts would be conjecture on my part. But I will assume that, like many other American MDs in a culture of MD Gurus, a “borrowed coined term for an established concept”, is easily manipulated and used in this way. The main point of curiosity for me is that Malone could have used mainstream social psychology concepts to describe the same phenomenon, especially to be easily understood on such a big platform. It’s… curious.

But you can’t get people’s traffic into your funnel if there’s competition.

What this does is it bypasses any mainstream intervention in that funnel. You are at the top of said funnel every time you search. Heck, reading me, right now, you’re on a funnel of sorts to get you to become a Patron. Wink.

But, know that with a funnel, the expectation is that not everyone will share it, but enough will with the right nudges. Most people will click away on the more outrageous stuff, or read it for a second and close, but if they are already vulnerable, and angry, enough people will read it, be persuaded, and start sharing it with other vulnerable and angry people (we know they tend to cluster).

A war over the territory in your brain.

So, watch Charlie the Unicorn. Or, you can watch my longer stream on it if you like.

What you need to understand is that pretty much every marketer – including the bad guys – are using these tactics against you, and there is a constant battle in the media and online to get you onto a funnel so you can be nudged in whichever direction is most persuasive. With no mind for the impact, or the outcome.

You are constantly a persuadable in the nudging war where they tell you it’s “them”. It’s not “them”.

This is all a race to be the first point of contact, the first source when people search, so you can be nudged and converted for whatever conversion metric has been set.

Politically, even if we are outside of it, we are all being recruited as soldiers in a war between two warring factions of the far right in a trigger happy, failing empire: the United States.

Remember, the Democrats and the Republicans agree on far more than they disagree on when it comes to policy, and you must remember that Nazi Germany did not come from a mass psychosis, but an unholy, cynical, conscious and rational alliance of shared interests and the anger and confusion that made people vulnerable to their own perfectly normal psychology.

Top of Funnel

I don’t want to introduce too many concepts, but once you understand how a funnel works, understand that you are a lead. A mark. And if you have any influence, you are most definitely useful to everyone in this war. Astroturfing is not just Twitter bots and troll farms – this digital strategy is incredibly sophisticated and complex – not to mention extremely well funded.

This is not a “far right funding” boogeyman. This is someone who has worked in this space and knows what things cost. And I know what they’re doing.

Conclusion

I have gone to pains to qualify that I am merely pointing out the tactics here, and using Malone as a glaring example of fuckery. It would be a pretty big leap to suggest that it is a conspiracy, and that Joe Rogan is in on it. How much he knows about this, is anyone’s guess.

If anything, I think the phrase “there are no allies, only interests” applies here.

This is a pervasive industry-wide tactic, and is used everywhere from a small business selling widgets in London, to billionaire-funded propagandists who want to destroy and undermine their political opponents, and form unholy alliances with those who want to do the same, with zero considerations for human cost.

There is only one parallel with Nazi Germany that is real: the apparent crumbling of the United States and the chaos (and resulting crossfire) that is causing people to be so afraid of their neighbours, so afraid of their government, so lacking in trust and economic stability… that they may well act completely rationally.

That’s the bit that should terrify you.

I love the internet.

I have loved the internet since 1994. I have sold it, defended it, talked non-stop about the possibilities for nearly 30 years.

Now, thanks to American corporations, their special brand of puritanism making everything they touch turn to shit… I think I hate the internet. Which makes me unemployable, because it’s the only real skill I have.

With Facebook announcing their new name, Meta, well all I can say is a hearty “whatever” and hope everyone disappears into it, never to be seen again.

Everyone and everything is being… dumb. Every single day, I feel like I’m in a 24/7 Idiocracy nightmare that I cannot seem to wake up from. My own personal version of purgatory where I have to guess what I did wrong to deserve being there.

I loved the internet.

Whilst I naively thought I could persuade people that our blind spots are being used and nudged by greedy and bad people, and that by being committed to what is correct and true, and to keep my integrity… I am not convinced. I will tell you, the asymmetric propaganda machine I am up against is powerful. The culture wars content factory is a massive scam.

The Dunning Kruger effect is very, very real, except rather than being funny, now it is actually incredibly dangerous. Because it is not just about a little knowledge giving too much confidence to a bunch of ordinary harmless people, but a system that incentivises deliberate and wilful ignorance, expertise being punished and told to be more stupid in order to “reach an audience”.

Sorry, but some things are complicated and take more than 30 seconds to explain, arsehole.

This race to the bottom is affecting people’s grip on reality, history, evidence… and now also affecting everyone’s mental and physical health.

Americans in particular are so unbelievably, wilfully obnoxious. The United States’ unique brand of weaponised stupid used to be quaint, but being bombarded with their ill-informed, aggressive nonsense is now like being waterboarded with liquid shit.

I find it completely unbearable to be on the internet with them and their death cult Coke vs Sprite nonsense.

I find it completely unbearable watching liars and conmen and people with no interest in politics outside of “content” for clicks, making them effectively televangelists with updated firmware.

I find it completely unbearable watching people with no training, education or even meaningful insight other than pandering to angry men and teenage girls elevated as “thinkers”, whilst people who actually invest the time and effort are frozen out – only to then be told it is a meritocracy. Bullshit. Your content is crap and your audience is dumb. Anyone can do that. You’re a symptom of a broken system, not an expert, bro.

America, and those who listen to America more than they should: “Cancel Culture” and “Wokism” and “Trumpism” are not a mystery. Pick up a book, maybe even two books and learn about your own history and government and how the death cult known as the United Corporations of America is the unrelenting, loud-chewing elephant in the room.

The world isn’t “meta”. It isn’t something that you can simply dream into existence and hack into existence. You have to do the structural and foundational work. People aren’t a construct, or a tool, or a simulation. This isn’t a multiverse. This isn’t about “possibilities”.

Why on earth would any sane person want to disappear any further into this hell hole of stupidity, greed, narcissism and neoliberal propaganda?

This is a psychological weapon with very real consequences. Seemingly, there is an inverse relationship between expertise and audience: the more wrong you are, the more people listen to you. This is not only a terrible outcome, but a deliberate one.

I think I hate the internet.

What started out as a world of thoughts and ideas and facts and hope and change, quickly turned into scams, slogans, gotchas and demands for hours and hours of “debate” from radicalised fools who think your lack of engagement with them is further proof of them being correct – and not them being a time wasting idiot.

This is why I just can’t do digital anymore. It sucks because I love it. But the worst, most unethical people are rewarded, and people like me are punished.

I hate the internet.

Now this is meta.

Have a great day.

Don’t be impolite. To be taken seriously, you must be civil. You must be patient. If someone demands you back your position, you must take the time to respond or you’re being rude.

I mean, we can’t be rude. Can’t be uncivil, or impolite.

Or vulgar.

How utterly vulgar you are.

If you stumble into what is colloquially known as the “Intellectual Dark Web”, their adversaries and their ilk, you’ll see a whole bunch of people (okay, Americans…) talking for hours and hours and hours and hours about civility.

About politeness.

Discourse. Nuance. Thought Experiments.

Oooh you fancy people and your fancy words.

Not vulgar and tasteless and uncivil words like mine.

America loves words. They’re obsessed with words. They have the best words. They make up words, they redefine words, and more importantly, they pretend to own the definitions of words. They argue over who can say which words, to whom. Which words are banned, and what they mean. This is not just the linguistics departments, but in the broader culture. Censorship and Puritanism is in their DNA.

No matter which “side” of US politics, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the vast majority of content is focused on who was trying to tell who what words mean, and what words they can and cannot say. Whole industries are dedicated to long and tedious conversations about compelled speech and compelled thought by the other side and who can say what and who can’t say things and bore our tits off with all their free speech about free speech… without ever saying much of substance at all.

And, paradoxically, it never occurring to any of them to pick up a dictionary and look it up.

Blogs, articles, tweets, videos, research papers, Clubhouse rooms… all just talk talk talking and using all the words (that they never looked up and don’t know the meaning of) to tell others which words are acceptable and which words are not, all whilst avoiding the elephant in the room: that Americans are incapable of to a) being honest or self-aware and b) ever shutting the fuck up and listening to someone else.

It’s fucking unbearable.

It’s also how we ended up here.

America. Online. Live. Syndicated. 24/7, sponsored by HelloFresh and BetterHelp.com, because the two things Americans love more than obsessing over all the words is food and talking about themselves. At length.

By civility, of course, they mean that special brand of saccharin insincere politeness. “Have a Nice Day” delivered with a far more noxious gas than any honest “go fuck yourself”. Platitudes. Say the right words. Don’t say the naughty words. It doesn’t matter whether you mean it. It doesn’t matter that contempt and arrogance is dripping from your pores, so long as you use the correct words. Which then, after using the polite words and the big words and the fancy words that America totally invented the meaning of… fuels another bloody conversation about whether they actually meant the words and whether the subtext of the words says different words and it all fucking starts again.

But it’s polite, right? So long as it is polite, even if it is coming from the most dishonest, exploitative, obnoxious country on earth… I mean they told us to be polite.

… a bit rich.

America has a 3 hour conversation about words that, in Australia would have been “Year nar get fucked cunt… agree to disagree… it is what it is”. Which is used as both an affirmation AND an insult because frankly, we’ve got better shit to do. It’s bloody hot and the Seppos are getting on our tits.

This idea of civil discourse coming out of America, particularly online in a toxic political environment, is not only tedious: it is also intellectually dishonest.

Because in 2021, especially those who are hurting and grieving and traumatised – in large part due to the actions of the US government, tech companies, markets and free range idiots, are actually allowed to be angry about not only what you’ve done to words and discourse and the internet and the environment and everyone’s brains and Venezuela and all that other stuff…and owe America fuck all respect or politeness.

Signal vs. Noise using Coke vs. Sprite.

As someone who researches online radicalisation, and specifically the Propaganda machine that is the US Culture Wars I’m in the signal business, in amongst a fucktonne of noise. With pretty important information, that needs to be made more accessible, because it’s pretty bloody complicated. Especially when trying to get cut through on this bizarre whirlwind known as “Wokism”, otherwise known as the US Gentrification of the global left.

And I am up against takes that are pushed and promoted and perpetuated by design… that claims that Likes and Followers are what make you influential (there’s that wordplay again) and popularity is what makes you correct. All that merit. You’re famous. You must be smart or you wouldn’t be there, right?

The fact is, we are dealing with deliberate, weaponised stupidity. That is the nature of this beast, which is that it relies on linguistic tricks, availability heuristics, political illiteracy, emotion and thought reform to function the way that it does.

Not a single person who is considered influential has, for example, pointed out that ideology has several meanings. Every disagreement between disciplines or schools or theories is pitted against each other in a war, rather than simply a bunch of different perspectives on shared problems, where the operator is usually AND rather than OR. Because the country is in perpetual war with both itself and everyone else and this has to be the state of things, because otherwise, people might figure out who the real perpetrators are.

The United States Culture Wars makes the simple complex and the complex simple. It’s quite the paradox.

Which is how we have the world’s biggest bullies, and the world’s loudest chewers, the country whose foundations are exploitation and domination, all lecturing the rest of us about how we should be more polite, and civil, and reach “across the aisle” with those who seek to destroy us, who colonise our cultures, our minds and, most importantly our time and energy.

Nar, mate.

I don’t think you mean it either.

I prefer discontent, vulgarity and directness.

You dominate enough of my day without also having you dictate what words I can say. It’s bloody hot.

I’m just gunna call you a fuckwit and go back to work.

Now of course, I am making generalisations, but unlike you, I can’t seem to make a career out of the smell of my own farts, so I’ll build a fun straw man of Uncle Sam covered in ejaculate, and get back to work whilst you DESTROY me with FACTS and LOGIC in your own imagination because I simply can’t be arsed.

I’m tired of being told that we need to treat all ideas – no matter how ill-informed or unqualified – as equal.

Not all ideas are equal.

Obviously I am generalising about a dominant hegemonic force, and actually love individual Americans. But on mass… ugh. This happens everywhere, of course, but it is something that the United States does better than anyone else: co-opt, repackage, and then sell back a shitter quality product at twice the price.

Guru culture, man. Televangelism. Ponzi Schemes. Propaganda. Weaponised, loud angry mobs.

Taking complex philosophical concepts like the Principle of Charity or Principle of Humanity that are intended for peers with equal qualifications, and tilting it on its axis slightly so that you have listen to every dickhead heckler on the internet with an opinion and debate anyone who asks.

And be polite or civil with people who deliberately serve the powerful, whilst pretending to be oppressed, with distracting 6 hours long conversations about ultimately sweet fuck all.

Let me qualify this.

• I believe that good ideas CAN come from anywhere. In a specific setting. I also believe everyone has the right to an opinion.

• I also believe in the Principle of Charity and Principle of Humanity, and generally avoid fallacies. However, those concepts are intended for philosophical/logical debate between people who are arguing at the same level, in formal debate. Not a dickhead offering you $2 to dance for them in bad faith clickbait.

• As someone with qualifications and a lifetime of work experience behind me, it is not fallacious to dismiss an idea as false and/or stupid. The fact that we’ve worked our arses off to say that does not necessarily constitute an ad hominem attack.

People often misunderstand the role of fallacies. Everyone knows that dude, who parrots concepts and terms without context, or accuses everyone of fallacies because they won’t give their stupid ideas any time.

Ironically, this is the balance fallacy.

This is the biggest problem with online “discourse” (content factory) right now. This idea that all opinions, accounts, ideas should be given the same degree of consideration.

Three times this week I’ve had foreign YouTube “experts” tell me I don’t understand my own country.

Yeah, I kinda do. In fact, I was the person who initially explained the concept of the authoritarian-libertarian axis to one of your guests who repeated it as their own. And it ain’t that.

Thing is, I don’t need to respect a wrong or stupid idea. I don’t need to debate it. I’ve earned that right. Some ideas are just so wrong or dumb they aren’t worth it. Like Australia’s supposed authoritarianism coming from US/UK commentators who don’t know anything about Australian politics.

This is one of the tricks of the content factory, that people can just say an ill-informed, dumb statement, and then put the onus on me to prove it wrong. No, I am telling you it is wrong. That is enough.

I am writing this to give people permission to reject dumb ideas. The engine of this model is that those who say the most tedious, most inflammatory shit can say it to a large audience, and then demand the time and respect of those who know better, then pull out their My First Book of Logical Fallacies and think being told to fuck off means they won the argument.

That’s not how any of this works. Especially you, dudes. Women who are expected to write and think for free whilst you throw money at stupid dudes who tell you what you want to hear, should not be expected to argue with you as if we are peers. You’re not. Sorry, but our degrees actually matter.

It is not elitism. It is because we all have finite time and resources. I chose to dedicate ten years of mine, plus 25 years of work experience becoming an expert in the thing you only just learned an hour ago. So, maybe respect that.

So if I call something ridiculous…

My opinion on politics has more weight. That’s a fact. Get over it.

This extends to so-called thinkers on the culture wars, the cam-girls, the people who identify as journalists (but somehow didn’t make it to an ethics or civics class) and the anti-Woke pseudo-intellectuals.

I realised a year ago that just because I saw people asking questions about the thing I was researching, that they wanted the answer.

They don’t.

The answer is readily available. At this point it is a decision to ignore it.

The anti-Wokers are mostly bad faith. I was researching it in good faith, from MY DISCIPLINE, and had absolutely no interest in having any of my work used to destroy the (actual) left or the Humanities, which is the political outcome the right are pushing for, by legitimising this idea of a Critical Theory boogeyman with parts conveniently left out.

I had a prominent UK “civil discourse” bro ‘splain that in order to be more persuasive I should just “produce better content”, which is a shitty thing to say given that a) it isn’t fucking CONTENT and b) I do, but your bros ignore me because I’m inconvenient.

One of his comebacks was that I shouldn’t call people who “disagree” silly, or pull rank in debates. Yes, I should. I worked my arse off for the right to call your wafting brain farts and uninformed takes stupid. They are not equal and I can give you a commissioned research paper IF YOU PAY ME.

Second, my work is not “content”. This is the problem: people only listen to people who produce “content”. I’ve spent 5 years balls deep in journals and theory and strategy FOR FREE to write a book FOR FREE whilst watching people push this anti-intellectual nonsense.

I am not in this for friends, an audience, or money. If I wanted money, I’d go back to running an Agency or consulting. I am frustrated that a hack with an opinion can lecture me about a) politics and b) how to grow an audience online. The two areas in which I am a fucking expert.. and think that’s not insulting. And gaslighting.

But again, reverse victim and perpetrator, coloniser and colonised, and you get to accuse the person who is being punched of punching down, simply because they think you’re a disingenuous grifter.

The life coaches and health bloggers and eBook sellers have found a new grift in politics, and are robbing people of their money and causing very real harm to policy, public trust and people’s mental health.

I only care about money insofar that it is necessary. Same with an audience. I have always preferred to be the behind the scenes person, and value the work. My work isn’t fucking “content”. It is my fucking legacy, of which most is in the background. I make very little money. I gave up a profitable business to pursue this important work.

I will not accept 2-bit commentators talking about my country, its politics, the internet, the left… they’re poisoning all that I hold dear with stupid opinions and actively sabotaging my work. Which, whilst it may not be fodder for outrage and easy pre-packaged answers (turns out, it’s complicated and uncomfortable), is actually rigorous and not trivial. When your content is long gone, my work will stand the test of time.

So I do not need to be civil. I do not need to debate you for free. We are not equal on this issue. To tell me that I am not allowed to be pissed about what the content factory is doing to people’s brains and wellbeing, that they are exploiters and liars and smiling assassins who are recruiting armies that ultimately feed the same power centre. To tell me that I should just try to get more of the right wing merity-merit by being a cam girl for fuckwits AND tell me that I’m not as qualified in the Humanities as a fucking mathematician & a failed comedian.

There is only one reason that I don’t have a PhD: I don’t see the value in spending $100k to write a watered down version of my work, and then not own my IP. Also, I am cross discipline (Politics, Comms & Psych) so it is harder to find a supervisor. That’s it. I haven’t bothered with it.

Let’s be clear, I am more qualified than any of these hacks. They use my ‘impoliteness’ as an excuse, but I know it is ultimately because I expose their grift, and their troll farms. If I get airtime, the whole televangelism 2.0 scam is over, and it is shown that both sides of this thing ultimately serve the same beast, and they deliberately leave important stuff out – including the answer to the unending question that seemingly never gets answered. Nobody accurately diagnoses the root of this issue called “Cancel Culture”, because it’s bad for business.

I refuse to pander to these “content” dickbros.

TL;DR – some ideas are just stupid. Some people are just dumb.

And just because you’re famous for “content” doesn’t mean you are an expert, and it’s okay to tell people on Twitter that they’re being dumb without having to expand on why.

Just not at a peer.

I honestly think that a big reason why the IDW-types are so drawn to this idea of “civil discourse” is basically a power flex to put people who laugh at their superficial takes on the back foot, and feel like they have to engage their stupid ideas. Like the “far left” premise. haha.

It is also fundamentally anti-left and anti-socialist to demand civility. People have the right to be mad. They have the right to be rude. And, there’s a whole bunch of oppression and fuckery that is wrapped up in politeness. It’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say in the land of gurus and branding and spin, and that is obvious to anyone who pays attention.

I pay attention to the gaps. I pay attention to the spillage, the non-verbal, the stuff that is left out. And that is that the whole US Culture Wars is one big hot wet fart that leaves a stink on discourse, on the internet, on politics, and ultimately the rest of the world.

It is a funny old thing though, the people preaching for “civility” on one side, and “inclusion” on the other (Coke vs. Sprite, same coin two sides), and the Conservative censors that have always existed… all whilst a literal dick flies through the air and we teeter on the brink of World War Three because you lot can’t just shut the fuck up for two minutes and heed any warning that doesn’t come from Oprah. Ultimately, it is all a big ruse for the big Imperialist bully in the room, and the Woke and anti-Woke alike in the content factory are the people with the stupidest political ideas who pretty much wouldn’t get a seat at the table if not for the insistence on Inclusion, or Civility with the common goal of being everyone else’s Word and Morality Police.

I passionately believe in making political education, media literacy and civics more accessible to people. In fact, I think that is my superpower. But it is also not necessary in the content factory, because understanding and answering questions is not the point. The signals get lost in all of the noise, and then it blames you for being impolite and calling a fuckwit… a fuckwit.

People don’t understand ‘cultural hegemony’, but if you say ‘hot wet wafting fart’, they immediately understand the concept enough to move onto greater understanding. This is more powerful than impenetrable, inaccessible jargon that says little, is usually wrong, and is not interested in a call to meaningful action from the powerless.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to please the fancy people behind desks who love using big words to stop ordinary people from understanding their own power and the world around them.

I’d rather be free to communicate in ways that I know works, and give people …HOPE.

The thing I love most about (real) politics is that when you understand how it all works, it is absolutely magnificent.

Real life intelligent design.

It is empowering to know how it all works.

Culture wars doom & gloomers sell nothing but fear and the opposite of hope.

I know we focus on the minutiae of differences – that’s pluralism at work – but the fact that we have all these systems that largely keep us all getting along… that’s pretty spectacular. And the history of the left wing will tell you that a) civility is the least of our concerns and b) this is precisely the critique Marx and Bourdieu had of the Middle Class telling working class people they needed to be respectable. Fuck off, shill.

I am allowed to be angry. I am allowed to think what you have said is stupid. And I do not owe anyone my time without payment. After all capitalism is the best, right? Everyone sets their own price, right, and if you won’t pay, you don’t get me, right?

If you’re calling Australia Authoritarian, not only is it stupid: you’re serving the US Far Right. That’s a fact. Regardless of intent.

That is not a “you’re part of X tribe”, but that you are perpetuating bullshit that benefits them and feeds people’s delusions. They’re really not well right now and you’re not helping. It doesn’t matter what the issue is, it is being used. Also, MYOB Yanks lol

If it gives you comfort, I know some of the people who are in the government roles. They’re chill. Chill.

And, America: fuck off. You can have an opinion when you can tell me three things about the Australian political system without Googling or point to me on a map.

Yeah. Thought not.

Australia is not authoritarian, no matter how many times you say it. Stop being stupid. Fuckwit.

It had turned ugly.

The internet has always been mean. My career, in many ways, was built on that. I am a veteran, survivor, perpetrator and victim from the days of IRC, UseNet and Something Awful. I am an old troll from the trenches of alt.ozdebate. I’ve been on Reddit since the beginning and blogging (with comments on) since 1999. I was on rotten.com at 2am, and have been doxxed, harassed, trolled for sport pretty much every day since I first heard the soothing tones of a dial up modem in 1994.

I’ve definitely had some flame wars and sleepless nights in my time. Mostly, and ironically, from other women. I’ve designed, moderated and managed large fan communities and advised normies who had lives on how to navigate this space, by diving in and making myself a Crash Test Dummy and reporting back, often well before the battle scars had healed.

In other words, I’ve seen things. I’ve done things. I’m writing a book about this.

I ain’t no snowflake. I’m hard to break.

But it was still mostly separate from “real life”.

So, when I stumbled on the online “debate” between trans rights activists and radical feminists online (something I had, honestly, never even given much thought), I initially saw it as any other “debate” on the left: two sides that mostly loudly agreed with each other, heels dug in, in conflict, but ultimately just another epic internet flame war that would be resolved by the sensible normies who had lives. Because of course there’s a real and practical legal conflict. Of course this is a tricky issue. But, we’re all friends in the end, right? We see each other’s point, right?

I hadn’t been that active in the political scene for a while… but… they’ll talk it out, right? We’ll figure it out. It’s what the left do best. Eventually. After we’ve screamed it out, of course.

Right?

I sat, quiet, observing this insanity, for well over a year. It was interesting. I hadn’t considered the arguments before. It was simply an interesting cleavage.

Anyone who organises on the left is acutely aware that the only policies we agree on 100% is that single-issue activists will always have tunnel-vision, the perfect is always the enemy of the good, and in order to be a bona fide lefty organisation, it must split in half over a minor disagreement every few years. Despite this, I was hopeful for some sort of resolution and saw it as, well, same old same old. Lefties gunna shitfight due to the narcissism of small differences.

I’d occasionally mention it in passing in offline settings, suggesting that maybe things had shifted, and people would look at me like “Yeah, Téa’s talking about some irrelevant niche internet crap again”, or, like most healthy normal people with a basic understanding of the world, laughed at the absurdity that there are people on Twitter who think humans are clownfish, and therefore human women should just shut the fuck up.

As time went on - unlike a traditional policy disagreement that would eventually end up in some sort of compromise or consensus - it kept escalating. It had none of the sport of a good-spirited internet flame war, or even the deference to jurisprudence or data, and it started to resemble actual, real-world abuse using similar tactics to the Church of Scientology.

The threats were also similar in nature to online threats that, in 2010, led me to a helpful conversation with a Police Officer who told me – digital strategist and web designer – to “turn off my computer”.

But, it was just crazies on the internet and one arsehole telling them to turn off their computers. This is an outlier, surely. Right?

Right?

Until I saw a rape shelter in Vancouver defunded because of a campaign by trans rights activists who had tormented them for months, including nailing a dead rat nailed to their door, encouraged by a member of parliament, for excluding natal males. I saw death threats, rape threats, and a whole cascade of shit flung toward women for what I thought were reasonable questions about the implications of Bill C-16. And the delightful Jessica Yaniv, who, whilst clearly not representative of the trans community (more representative of the George Santos community), presented a potential policy problem that we, in Australia, had the opportunity to proactively address and handle better if we paid attention to what was happening in Canada. I was increasingly concerned it might be a blind spot that well-meaning mainstream lefties hadn’t considered.

With everything that happened there, it looked, to me, less like an internet flame war, and more like women were saying no and being punished for it and cut out of what should be a fair consultation process. And whilst our lawmakers and representatives clearly have good intentions, like me, they just weren’t aware of what was happening there, or the internet chatter, and needed to be alerted to the glaring loophole created by legislation that came to be known as “Self-ID”.

So, in 2017, I said something. I genuinely assumed I would be okay, and what I was saying was completely normal. I have left-wing bonafides, and standing with the business community. Even those who don’t like me because they think I am abrasive or inappropriate, will still begrudgingly concede that I am usually …right. Twitter was my people. I built my brand there. I went viral there. I have a small platform and some credibility, so I thought I would use it to bring attention to this potential problem with censorship, bullying, and the manipulation of social media algorithms to silence critics.

I hadn’t been on Twitter for a while. Trump’s election had turned Twitter into fuckwit central, and it was nowhere near the Twitter of old, and I was… just busy running my business. Also, when you’re a politics grad and actually know things, it can be stressful seeing bad political takes, much like it must be for a Doctor watching House MD. Entertaining, but… yeah it really doesn’t work like that and it’s probably going to take 10 years minimum to get any of this to the High Court, my guy. Calm down.

The whole time, even up until 2019 or so, I continued to think “it’s just the internet. It’s just the comments section”, “it’s just Twitter’s immature algorithm making false positives and it’ll be alright once it learns”, “C’mon, everyone sees this is astroturfed… right?”.

I’d moved on from Twitter, because I was busy, had remarried… and honestly, was happy enough to not be on Twitter. My day-to-day was spent persuading CEOs to take the internet seriously, not be afraid of it, and learn how to work with it. Internet is what I do. I’d seen it all before, lived it all before, but, c’mon, the normies with lives know the internet, right? It’s been a decade since social media took off. They knew the journalists who took tweets and turned them into stories were hacks who worked for rags, right?

The grownups know this, right?

Right?

Anyway, after Megan Murphy was banned, I felt a need to add my voice in her defence. Even though I didn’t fully agree with her double-down (something I would see over and over again. RIP Glinner.), I felt that her de-platforming was an overreach. I honestly thought it was a misunderstanding. So, I was back on Twitter, in good faith, using what social capital I had built over the years, trying to make people aware that this was happening.

Holy shit.

I brought it up. Some women called me a bigot and blocked me, and many men showed their true colours, telling me (at length) they understood feminism better than I did, had I heard of Judith Butler (the newly appointed CEO of feminism, because that’s exactly how it all works), that I was a TERF and that TERFs are revolting.

Was I? Well, if you’re treating me like this, and other women like this, which looks like good old familiar misogyny-this-woman-in-tech endures daily, then it looks like I must be a TERF.

I was put on a list of TERFs and instablocked by people I didn’t even know, before I even knew what a TERF was. I tried to explain that this was simply a misunderstanding, not what happened, and I was just concerned about someone having a personal relationship with Twitter being able to use bots to get someone banned. I had connections at other platforms, but none at Twitter, so I tried to find contacts who would take this issue seriously. This would result in several dead ends over the next few years.

Let’s just say, it all fell on deaf ears. And yeah, I was pissed. But mostly… just perplexed by an interesting Internet anomaly. My instincts kicked in and so, I decided to use myself as a Crash Test Dummy and pull out the old toolkit and see where it went.

What I did get very early on, was a massive love bomb from US right wingers. And I don’t mean the nice right wingers, who disagree simply because they’re conservative, or Christian, or haven’t actually read Marx, or see the world differently to me… or for some reason were lumped in with GamerGate, Reddit, Kiwifarms or used a cartoon frog once and any corner of the internet that is interesting and fun and has been called right wing by nitwits.

I mean hardcore, bad faith MAGAs, Red Pillers, Fundamentalist Christians, Far Right. Birther nuts. Nazis. Actual Racists. Real Transphobes and anti-LGBT. I saw a bunch of otherwise reasonable people there too, who seemingly had no idea what was going on, and were just asking questions (a dog whistle), noticed (dog whistle), or had concerns about online speech (dog whistle), or thought that Twitter had become overrun with corporate media figures (dog whistle) because of the supposedly-reasonable faces of the Intellectual Dark Web that greeted everyone as they arrived after being called a TERF and were just trying to figure out what the fuck a TERF was.

As I said, I know about these things. I have jokingly referred to it as the 3-clicks-Klan, because you are almost always 3 clicks away from some Klan shit on the internet. This is not new. I have to emphasise, that I knew these things and it is my job to know these things, but this wasn’t that. This was something else.

After playing whack-a-mole with the obvious Klan and aggressive far right nutters (because I was still trying to understand this without being doxxed or getting threats), I turned to some content creators who (seemingly) were asking the same question I was:

What the fuck is going on here? Am I a bigot?

This is where this all takes a turn, because, I am going to say, at the time there were very few people on the left openly talking about this. I know that people are rewriting it now, and saying they did (another pattern I would notice in content creators on the left, of lying by omission, or nudging their audiences to harass by proxy, and then pretend they always said X, Y or Z in order to save face. No. You didn’t.)

Every time I raised it in an online setting, no matter how good faith I was, I found myself blocked, or hounded by seemingly endless insults and threats by Twitter accounts with anime profile pictures (again, weird, but ok what is this thing…oh… botnets… cool. Terrifying how good they’ve gotten, but also… cool.). And if I raised it offline, people acted like I was just talking about some random super-niche internet thing that would never affect the real world.

You know, turn off your computer.

All I saw was what went down at Evergreen College. I saw a bunch of “reasonable” people writing about the “problem on College Campuses”. Having been in student politics, I knew that fringe was always there and this was nothing new, but, again, like a normal person, I simply assumed they were relegated to the playpen and given busywork like we did in the old days.

In the back of my mind, it was always “this is just the comments section and crazy people and botnets and Americans being… that…”.

That’s all this is, right?

Right?

Right.

The handful of “reasonable” influencers that were saying they were “left” or “liberals” who kept talking about “conversations with the other side” were not good representatives for the arguments, but you have to understand that none of that is abnormal. The first thing you are taught on day one of political science is that very few people actually know anything about politics, and we have signed up to being frustrated for the rest of our lives. The IDW, like most people, they just seemed confused. Confidently confused. They didn’t seem to know political theory or anything about the history or makeup of the internet, so, in good faith, I thought I should add to the conversation and correct some things.

But, oh shit. I hate video. Ugh.

Also, I was still not 100% sure what this phenomenon even was. I had seen micro-cults forming in the fandoms and had been monitoring the communities (as you do), but it always just felt like a ‘fan’ thing. As someone pretty well-versed in the excesses of the parasocial, this felt… similar. Intense. Histrionic. Toxic. I felt the campfire that was the Tumblr fandoms had jumped the road and I needed to alert the Mayor that the town was about to burn down.

I don’t really have as much time to write as I would like, and had been out of Academia for a long time, so I took a lot of what they were saying on face value. I assumed the IDW PhD people knew what they were talking about, and I was clearly missing something. They all seemed smart and, because I am not arrogant enough to question a PhD (and my own emotional baggage about not having one myself) intimidating.

Given I had already severely miscalculated with the Meghan Murphy thing, and how scary some of the extremists I had encountered are, I thought I should cross my T’s and dot my I’s before I write anything of substance, lest I be DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC by Ben Shapiro, or highly regarded public intellectuals Tim Pool and Dave Rubin.

But I was missing something, and, fuck it, let’s kill two birds with one stone. I started streaming and talking about this stuff on my YouTube channel, which I had been meaning to start anyway, talking about data, ethics, surveillance and some of the problems with Big Tech moving away from Human-Centred Design that I saw coming down the pipe, whilst also trying to reverse engineer the problem and… hit the books.

This seemed like a good case study in what I already thought was going wrong, and where I saw tech going if we didn’t start caring more about ethical design and corruption in the industry, so, I ran with it. I put up a few videos that leaned into the “I left the left” trope and the “apparently I’m a Nazi” thing that we’ve all seen so many times now it is boring.

Initially, I would talk to anyone I found interesting, that would talk to me, within reason. I talked to quite a few of the IDW, and even helped them out with their digital strategies and made introductions. I’m a connector, and they all seemed nice enough, and so I connected them. They were saying they were left wing or moderate, but kept confusing me because their theory/reasoning was off. Again, I just assumed that they didn’t know political theory in detail and needed correcting. Most people don’t.

So my first mission was to try and enlighten them on political theory… and also how tech works. Konstantin Kisin in particular, seemed to need some hand-holding on basic political theory, the internet, and even basic digital strategy. I once spent several hours, prior to the lead up to Posie Parker’s Triggernometry appearance, explaining to him the basics of this issue, and where the conflict is. He didn’t know. I explained it to him, and suggested he talk to Meghan Murphy.

I honestly didn’t know. I had no idea he was a sociopath. Note that as soon as I realised he was a liar and not above board, I cut ties. I’m sorry. I was naive.

Weird how he has a book about politics now and is constantly going viral, explaining the internet to everyone, though. Not bad for someone who didn’t know what web hosting was in 2021, and who spent most of our first consult making hack jokes about feminism from 2014 to try and get a rise out of me. I write comedy. I am passionate about it, and part of that is defending bad and lazy comedy. So, in the interests of the craft, hoping he’d one day be able to write a good joke, I let it slide.

What was waiting for me, though, was a big ol’ love bomb from a whole bunch of “reasonable centrist people willing to talk about the thing everyone wouldn’t talk about but giving the slightly wrong answers and leaving out the Tech angle”. Many of them were comedians. Not good comedians, but people who identified as comedians nonetheless.

In hindsight, obviously I know they were presenting a reasonable front for the crazy and extreme people. Despite the red flags, they kept distancing themselves from the “actual Nazis”, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. It was glaringly obvious they had no freakin’ clue what Marxism is, and really didn’t want to hear it. But… Murica. What ya gunna do. Not my first day in Dunning Kruger Thought Leader land, and the people who were calling them Nazis were so laughably insane that I let it all slide.

I was naive. Even being a bonafide, lifelong, materialist, educated lefty. Even understanding political theory. Even being in tech. Even literally working with digital funnels for a decade and getting people elected… they still managed to hide in every blind spot and I still got hoodwinked by these people. Thankfully, with my experience, a painstaking literature review and being taken advantage of professionally… meant I was able to self-correct.

This, is where I get to the fatal mistake the (actual) left are making.

Over the last five years, I have seen person after person go down a similar track, ask “what the fuck is going on, why are these idiots suddenly in charge?” only to find easy (but cherry-picked) answers and a warm embrace. Contrasted with an army of adolescent high school bullies nitpicking language and building Burn Books over minor differences whilst leaders and influencers ignore it and hope it goes away.

That gateway is a thing. It is a serious thing. I have watched it happen, over and over again: you’re called a TERF out of the blue, didn’t put up a black square on Instagram in support of George Floyd (or, in my case, just found the over-the-top corporate #Kony2012 #ruok flagellations ridiculous: anything to look like they’re doing something about racial injustice without actually doing anything about racial injustice *cough*), or even, like me, expressing genuine concerns about tech censorship, fascism or authoritarianism – and get what feels like a personally tailored AI abuse bot, an army of less subtle bots of American patriots and Anime furries, get love bombed by an eager right wing looking for more friendly faces to lend credibility to their swastikas, and a whole bunch of smiling, reasonable-sounding YouTubers and essayists who tell you that “Wokism” and “Critical Theory” is the biggest existential threat to Western Civilization.

There’s an opportunity for an audience, there are Patrons and donations and an audience begging you to be part of that narrative. So long as you go along with that story and are willing to make LibsofTikTok your business model and never, ever bring up how both sides are astroturfing all of this shit to hide their corruption and they’re dragging users down with them.

For some, within a few months, you’re buying a gun and spreading bunk anti-vax conspiracies and screaming about how perfectly reasonable policies are proof that Australia has fallen.

This is where the mainstream left constantly refuse to learn from our own history (and blind spots).

At the time, nobody but me and a handful of other broke-ass nobodies were calling this what it is: the mainstream corporate “left” abandonment of the working class base and historical materialism in favour of a handful of Super Woke Super Online kids, career politicians (and children of former politicians), corporate HR Departments and celebrities who identify as left wing for their brand, but are anything but.

The end result? A union-busting, unfair dismissal enabling, censorious, oppressive, harassing, disclosure-in-the-workplace-forcing ‘ideology’ that doesn’t at all resemble the political left. And, the added benefit of killing every genuine progressive cause they touch, by pushing away every imperfect ‘ally’, and large parts of our voting base, into the loving arms of the right.

And then repeatedly calling them far right, until they make it so.

Anti-mask and anti-vax don’t happen in a vacuum and we all know it.

And, side point, I also thought that Corporate HR were the oppressors, not our bloody allies.

At no time was any of my participation in this done in bad faith, even though I know that there will be some Twitter dipshits who, no matter what I say or do, will spin it.

Honestly, it was just really confusing, professionally intriguing and utterly ridiculous, because I am ahead of the curve on a problem that others can’t see. I never once considered that it might be high stakes for me. There are times I wish I had approached this with more restraint and care, and not doubled down, but it was just so fucking absurd, and I am a human being who had fallen out of a plane and expected to build the parachute.

I thought it was just a silly internet thing and a silly America thing and a 3 clicks Klan thing and a dumbarse Tumblr thing and the normies with lives had it handled and would maybe eventually want my advice about the internet like they always did if I just drew them a map.

It most certainly wasn’t about ‘bigotry’ or about clout for me. It still isn’t. It was simply curiosity. The same curiosity that had me click on rotten.com in the 90s and why I coined the term 3-Clicks-Klan in the 00s. This perfect cancellation machine, that you were never sure if designed or not, organic or not, who was human and who was bot, is fascinating. I needed to crack this dagnosis, and understand the Internet properly so I could report back on why things were weird, potentially warn people what was coming, and advise on why strategies needed to change.

I am a boil on the butt with an even bigger mouth, and a curmudgeon and a bit of a cunt, but I miscalculated this. In retrospect, I would have been better off not talking about it, either continuing to just consult, or set up shop as a corporate Diversity and Inclusion consultant and charging $10k a pop to talk over black people and make white people feel better, which appears to be the trend. Or, you know, really debase myself and take all that fat right winger cash rather than tell you all of this.

I did none of that. I am simply reporting back, like I always have, before the battle scars have healed.

I can tell you for certain, that most people don’t go into any of this with bad intent: they get sucked in. They’re mostly good people who have been given a really hard rap, who for whatever reason - either through trauma or disenfranchisement - land in a funnel. There are several touch points where the left could intervene with a conversation, or resources that face these issues head-on, and we don’t. Instead, people are met with abuse, straw men and disrespect from shitheads who are more concerned with clout than with truth. Every single time we don’t show up with a proper argument, they feel further rejected, gaslit and persecuted and are nudged further and further away from the left, their networks and sometimes …even their sanity.

This is how the internet’s business model and incentives, unethical nudges and radicalisation funnels are set up. Unfortunately, they’re also basically the same as every other marketing funnel, and unfortunately rely on people doing the right and ethical thing. Cool.

The ‘culture wars’ provide endless content, and endless drama and spectacle and clicks, and gives people dopamine highs that make it easy to turn anyone who doesn’t know better into a cam girl for political fetishists and mentally ill cancelfucks.

For me, I just wanted to help answer the question: “what the hell is going on?”, “what am I missing, here?”, and figured that if I was confused by all of this, after 27 years on the internet and a politics degree, then a lot more people were too, and I had to help.

I don’t avoid difficult things. Unlike the data cult that has swept our industry, I generally don’t take data on face value if I see something anomalous to my quarter-century of loving and building this thing called the World Wide Web. I observe. I listen. And, yep, I go in, experience it and make myself the crash test dummy for everyone else online. Rather than go around a problem, I go through. It’s what I do best and why I am good at this shit.

So, as I always do, I jumped in, waded through lake after lake of shit, mud, occasional clear waters and the delicate and unique politics that is TERF Island, and shared my experiences along the way.

I was determined to answer the question and resolve this somehow. I had no idea it would be this huge, or I’d have packed more than one pair of underwear and stashed away some extra traveller’s cheques. But I explored every avenue, every nook and cranny. I found many dead ends, and loads of crazy and scary. It is the Internet, after all. But I was still determined to answer the question.

This Woke shit’s weird, man. But what is it? What are the real world implications? What the fuck is going on here? Is this serious? Is it just online? What the hell…

It was so confusing I spent three years going back to the books, starting with what is known to be true, reverse-engineering what looked to be a perfectly designed Burn Book Drone that could burn down anything it set its sights on…

A-ha.

The biggest part that was missing was a deeper understanding of American history – in particular the history of the culture wars and red scares. After three years of basically working on a PhD’s worth of study for nothing, I was delighted to have found the answer a year ago, only to realise nobody wanted to hear it.

And I was on all the blocklists, so… here we are.

I was helping… right?

I discovered I was actually – simply by participating in what I thought was a fight on the left, between the left – we were helping the US far right destroy us, and recruit our base from under us.

As someone who saw this weirdly un-left authoritarianism called “Wokism” being not just ignored/minimised, but enabled, and seeing how this could be easily exploited in our electoral system (most of the deciding seats are won by a handful of preferences from minor parties – most of them far right), I felt I needed to warn the normie politics grown ups (who aren’t addicted to the internet) what was going on, because lots of people were asking questions, but nobody ever seemed to have the answer, and everyone was “leaving the left” over what looked like a Facebook argument.

Five years after first being exposed to the “Gender Wars”, I am less naive.

It’s never actually been about the answer to the question, but about constantly having questions that never get answered. The confusion is the point. Deflection. Distraction. It’s about stealth authoritarianism, and creating a narrative that ensures that anyone who asks for remotely (actual) left wing policy that challenges the powerful is demonised as “Woke” or “Alt-Right” or “Conspiracy Theorist” and ultimately enables any beneficiary of these power structures to declare war on anything they decide to attach to us: the Humanities, the Arts, democracy, social justice, sex education and… well… anything that stands in the way of far right corporate America. Good ol’ Hermann and Chomsky.

Back to basics, and what we know to be true.

It’s not about the issue, it’s about who you’re enabling. Yes. Even your issue. And yours.

If there’s an issue being discussed that has two sides to a debate, there is currently some sinister and well-resourced force trying to put you, the user, on a radicalisation track. We are on lots of those on any given day, being nudged in all directions and A/B tested until we finally crack. It’s not about the issue at hand, but about how people talking about the issue are exploited, with a warm and welcoming influencer who talks about these issues in good faith (and often bad faith) radicalising their audiences, and their audiences radicalising them.

Marketers will see it if you squint. You’ll see a clever, well-funded and sophisticated omnichannel marketing campaign, but the goal is to get you to join a side in war.

Gender, Race, Censorship, COVID, masks, vaccinations… you name it. If you talk about it online, you have to understand that – even if you don’t consent – you’re likely Top of Funnel for the Far Right, or a soldier for the powerful to manufacture consent against your enemy.

The left need to address this. I wrote about this some time ago (yes, I was wrong about a few things, and fell for James Lindsay’s takes for a while before I read his book, but that’s the nature of this research and going through).

The answer is not to demonise or call people Nazis and TERFs or deplorables. That is what the funnel banks on. It is known to nudge people and get them to double down. There is a clear and obvious strategy around it, which I will map out another time.

The first step is to acknowledge the divide, talk it out, and deal with it. And find a way to get along and have zero tolerance for cancellation or anyone who instigates it. And start equipping people with tools that don’t feed (or turn you into) the monster you’re trying to fight.

It’s taken me three full years of full-time research, with no funding other than a handful of Patrons (and then promptly losing a bunch when I started to call out the US far right) to figure out what the hell had happened to both the internet and the left wing of politics.

It isn’t good news.

First up, no politician in the United States is left-wing. Let’s get that cleared up first. But that’s a whole other 50 essays. Trust me.

It is an inherently conservative/corporate impulse to avoid interpersonal conflict, especially over important social issues. The left used to push through differences and have difficult conversations. Tedious meetings over minor disagreements (and sometimes major ones, and sometimes even pizza toppings…) is one of the best and most annoying things about us. And it has never been more important to remember this.

The idea that you can just use a (both figurative and literal) block button is fairly new to the left that I know. There has been many a meeting where ejecting someone would have made everything way more productive.

Funnily enough, this coincides with a generation who grew up on US-dominated media and internet, banging on about politeness and nono-words and banned books and 24/7 fear of literally everything that is different.

It’s insidious. This middle class-dominated, homogenised, Americanised and gentrified version of the left that I no longer recognise, has somehow replaced tolerance (and the occasional ugly face-to-face shitfight over the thermostat) with US-saccharine-politeness-and-avoidance and UK be-polite-and-fucking-mean-it-or-you’re-vulgar being the constant demand imposed upon us by an Internet and Economy we did not consent to, with the totalitarian and fundamentalist forces constantly lingering in the shadows, waiting to pounce and explode into full-blown fascism.

The left is uncomfortable and annoying to power. And pretty impolite. Not this horseshit.

This has dire political consequences.

I’ve worked, in various capacities, on the left my whole life, sat in tedious policy meetings, with annoying stakeholders, and angry people threatening to start their own thing and take their money with them.

They generally don’t go. It’s a bluff.

It’s a LARP.

Like the comments section.

Politics is not a consumer brand or Facebook group or fandom. Politics is not a customer demanding to speak to the manager and going to a competitor across the street. Politics is about values and principles. It is about building bridges, working through disagreements and sticking around. Anyone who can leave the left for the right, weren’t left for principled reasons and will likely drift there with time anyway.

Let ’em go.

Because I feel the left’s fight is about to get a whole lot harder, and a lot less sexy for brands. And when that flip comes, they will flip with it and the backlash on us will be fucking severe.

We must get back to the base.

I’m deeply concerned to see the far right co-opting class “us vs. elites” populism and radicalising people in reaction to the excesses of the Super Rich Super Woke Mean Girl caste, turning everyone’s pain and suffering into a personal brand, brandishing oppression and serious issues around like a tote bag made of human skin.

It’s creepy. And gross.

Left Wing leaders need to start facing this problem head on, have that uncomfortable conversation, and stop the exodus of our rightful voter base to the right because you’re asleep or can’t be arsed meeting them where they’re at and feeling a bit of discomfort. Not around. Through.

That’s what we fucking elect you for, so that I don’t have to do your job for you, for free.

If you are familiar with history, this is not just early or fringe fascism, but we are at the edge of that cliff where populism begins to make fascism inevitable. We keep teetering on the brink, and you keep hoping it will fix itself if you just pretend it’s just an internet thing and they’re all bigots anyway.

This will not go away and there needs to be a sober and clear conversation about what it means to be oppressed, and get clear on who we are fighting, and who we represent.

If it is policing gig workers who say rude words on Twitter, then fuck off. The left doesn’t weaponise employment against workers. That’s what the other guys do.

For those who have been alienated by the fancy cancellers calling themselves progressive and “Stans of AOC”, please stay. We can figure this out if we put our swords (and phones) down.

Please stick your necks out and stubbornly stay put on the left, and name this problem. Define what it means to be progressive, and not be afraid to inform everyone of the serious risks of alienating/cancelling left-wingers.

You’re handing it all to the far right by letting it continue. Fuck what your ‘data’ says. I went in. I checked. The data is wrong and I am right and we can fix this, but the will needs to be there.

We need to sit the children down, and inform them of the political impact and consequences of their actions and behaviour. We need to set the tone for how politicians and journalists conduct themselves in this space. And we certainly should never reward that kind of behaviour with appointments or preselection. There needs to be disincentives in the real world that balance out the seductive incentives on the internet to be a fuckwit.

We’re better than this.

This US-driven influencer campaign known as “Wokism” (but I prefer to call it the gentrified left) is empty calories packaged as food. The left is nutritious and we are better than that processed junk. But, there needs to be a genuine, difficult conversation about the long term harm… and we need to risk alienating the media and corporate types (who secretly vote conservative anyway), and get back to basics.

The left cares about everyone’s material wellbeing, even fuckwits. And also often forget that we mostly agree. We fall victim to the narcissism of small differences time and time again. It is our greatest strength, but also our biggest flaw. Because when we double down, we double down counter-productively, and right now, that means alienating just enough working class voters and women to destroy us for good.

Don’t go around, go through.

By ignoring this problem, you’re ultimately helping the people who want us destroyed. I think that is worth a pause to see if you’re being honest with yourself, and whether you actually want to do that. It certainly gave me pause, and as a result I decided to be more mindful of who I am actually serving. Remember: most people aren’t politically literate. Many claim to be, but the stats don’t lie. We have a responsibility to think through the impact and outcome of our actions and online allegiances.

We simply can’t keep avoiding these serious and uncomfortable and impolite conversations, hoping they’ll go away if we avoid it long enough.

It’s not going away.

The far right are savvy and know we’re on the back foot with this problem, which is why it is working. Let the Super Woke rich kids drift to the right, because they’ll likely end up there anyway when they see where the real money and fame is, and they settle down with a corporate lawyer.

Keep the base. Don’t avoid. Don’t go around. Go through.

The base isn’t fashionable, and has far fewer gift bags and Superchats, but it is the right side of history. Marx said so. Gramsci said so. The data is wrong. I said so.

I want to introduce you to a concept: Stealth Authoritarianism.

I truly believe the vast majority of us are good people. Yes. Despite, well, everything. I like to think I am, contrary to what those who choose to misunderstand me might say. I love people madly. Too much. Unconditionally. The real kind of love that tells you when your fly is down and you have B.O.. Because I care about people and their welfare. I even believe that ‘bad’ people are misled or traumatised good people. I empathise with everyone and forgive easily. Yes, it kinda sucks having all these bleeding feelings all the time, but hey, it’s just who I am.

I am sure that, like me, you don’t always live up to ideas of your best self. Because of the way the world around us is constructed, most of us are on a hamster wheel, you just want to get your never ending list of urgent-but-pointless shit done, go for a walk, have a laugh, hang out with friends, eat some food, watch some TV, have a drink or three or ten and be allowed to live your life.

You don’t want to hurt anyone, upset anyone, or cause deliberate harm, so if that means going along with something that’ll make things go more smoothly, you’ll do that.

You just want to be left alone and be free and want that for everyone else, right?

#MeToo.

The thing that you probably don’t understand – and take for granted – are the foundations, mechanisms, processes and systems that create blind spots – both in our individual psychological makeup, how we behave in groups, how we interact with other groups and the intricate and overwhelming institutions that are cobbled together out of those individuals and groups to form some sort of functioning society.

I study those blind spots at all levels, and particularly how they’re exploited online by bad actors: how facts are misrepresented, how we get tricked, how individually good people do bad things in online mobs, how good social causes are exploited for profit, and …how all of these things work together to manufacture consent for sinister political motives/outcomes. I am particularly fascinated when it all fails, at all levels, and ends in catastrophe that should have been avoided.

The Gender movement (distinct from trans rights), is one example of this phenomenon. Corporations (US Universities are also billion-dollar corporations, even when you exclude the ‘industry partnerships’) obviously saw an opportunity to expand a growing market.

Unless you live in a land of unicorns and rainbows and have never needed a specialist or a surgeon (or bought a used car), you’ll see an obvious potential exploit in any for-profit healthcare system, let alone in the insane corporate exploitation factory that is the United States.

To make that perfectly reasonable observation online, in 2020, however, is now branded as ‘hate’. Tougher questions about how the way this has been aggressively marketed and astroturfed like Monsanto and Big Tobacco before it, or to point out how this came out of the US (land of the free, home of the plastic surgeons and kleptocrats) and might have less-than-pure political motives, is beyond the pale.

It’s so impolite and rude you find yourself aligned with Westboro Baptists, or worse, J.K. Rowling. And to point out the clear exploitation by Fox and the GOP in their seemingly never-ending culture war, also gets you accused of being a Communist, a Groomer, someone trying to bring down all of Western Civilization (which part, specifically? Marx? The French Revolution? The statues you’re obsessed with? Be clear, my guy, my head hurts.)

Or, worse, Jameela Jamil. Gosh and here I thought I just knew stuff and see a problem and am talking about that problem. Guys, seriously. Take it easy.

If you understand how things work, both on the internet, in social psychology and politics (especially the problem of dark money and televangelism-meets-politics in the US) can see a problem: gaping loopholes that are not only exploiting vulnerable people for power and profit, but selling a future to kids that isn’t realistic, might leave them with a lifetime of pain and regret, and possibly even kill them.

This warrants scrutiny. Sit down, authoritarians whose impulse is to shout “trust the experts and shut up”. That’s not how it works. You shut up for a second, would you? I’m trying to care and trying to do my job and you’re making it really bloody difficult.

Systems fail. A lot. People are fallible. As much as we don’t like to believe it, we are all vulnerable to powerful biases that allow us to bullshit ourselves better than anyone else. When in groups, we also behave in ways that we wouldn’t as individuals. And, because we live in a shitty structure that encourages and rewards all of the worst behaviours at the expense of our best ones, our system fails more often because we are all trying to get by in a system that ultimately depends on, and exploits, that fallibility.

When you’re in the business of truth-seeking, it can be lonely. Especially when you are dealing with issues that strike deep to who we are. For example, there is a concept called identity fusion. That visceral reaction you have when you hear someone challenge a deeply held belief? That’s normal, but it’s also where the exploit is. This is why there is a strong correlation between identity fusion and radicalisation. You see how they are two sides of the same coin? All biases operate in this way: they are both protective and they are vulnerabilities. Ah, humans. Look at us.

These divisive issues are difficult and painful to talk about. Admitting weakness is terrifying and vulnerable. I have to push through that stuff every day, and I frequently fail. The problems are emerging, challenging, and I am frequently misunderstood. But, I’ll tell you, when you are focused on sorting out a mess that nobody else sees and focused on truth, it may be the right thing to do, but it really doesn’t make you friends.

But, you need to understand that bad actors use our biases in order to nudge us towards a certain direction. When you are given an order (even if it is to ‘be polite’ or ‘be kind’) without further explanation – or the inverse, are told that legitimate questions or clarification-seeking based on empirical data is ‘hate’ – never take that on face value.

First, we live in a democracy, which means that anyone who is passing law, or proposing policy, or making a judgement in an official capacity, has an obligation to be clear, define their term and explain their reasoning – even to people they don’t like. This is what helps a democracy function well and gives us a protective layer against bad actors and those who exploit gaps: checks and balances. Especially when there’s money to be made, you need scrutiny and due diligence.

This is how our society functions. You propose a law in parliament, it gets a reading. It gets a second reading. It might go to committee. It might then have a third reading. It may pass, it may not. It may then get reintroduced. If it passes, it goes to the Upper House for further scrutiny.

At all stages, the public can ask questions and make sure the law isn’t going to hurt people. When that law is interpreted in the courts, a judge has to give their reasoning for laying down a sentence or judgement. This is how democracy works. At every turn, you have interest groups that try to corrupt that process, but that is what these checks, balances and levels of government are for.

But that process is also boring. And complex. And sometimes futile. The ‘system’ – for all its flaws – is designed to be the anti-slogan, the anti-bias, the checks and balances on power. Most people do not participate in that process, nor understand how it works. If the democratic process is working as designed, it works to stops us all being caught up in a slogan that manipulates all our blind spots, terminates thought, and suppresses dissent.

In theory. See stealth authoritarianism above. You might know it as institutional capture. I just see it as boring old capitalism and how it operates, but, tomato potato.

Anyone who demands we bypass the often-challenging democratic process is not playing fair. Anyone who avoids scrutiny, will not define terms, won’t answer questions, or goes on the attack – they are either deceiving you, or, in most cases grossly uninformed about how democracy is supposed to work and have an inflated sense of their own authority. Let’s say, authoritarian.

Policy affects the lives of people. As long and boring as it may be, and as urgent as the issue may feel, this process has to have checks and balances in it to avoid catastrophic mistakes and unintended consequences.

It is well established that the vast majority of people – whilst having a lot of feelings and opinions on things and me having to live in a Dunning-Kruger nightmare, are generally unfamiliar with how government works.

• People don’t know the difference between branches of government and their responsibilities.

• People don’t understand underpinning concepts such as separation of church and state, or separation of powers.

• People don’t understand the role of the courts, or the role of the houses of parliament.

• People don’t understand how these interact, why they are set up the way they are, or all of the nitty gritty procedural stuff that goes into living together on this planet.

• And don’t get me started on all of the theory and how it works/interacts with other disciplines of similar complexity, say like tech and psychology…

Most importantly, people have absolutely no clue how fragile all of this is, if we don’t all follow certain rules and discourage certain behaviours. Whilst far from perfect, and definitely needing to be more inclusive and accessible, we work together better when everyone adheres to the social contract. We have learned over time, and often the hard way, that democracy is the only system that works.

Well, so long as totalitarians, whack jobs, corporations and extremists don’t try to subvert it to corrupt it, that is. In this case… we’ve got all four joining forces on a daily basis to create online cults that have swept the world faster than Beatlemania and American Hegemony. The Internet has poured jet fuel on bad actors and selfish people exploiting all the gaps in all the places, and we are only starting to see the consequences of naively designing frictionless experiences that enable it.

Listen to the experts, but also… don’t. But do. But don’t.

If there is one thing you need to know among all of the boring things, it is that our systems exist for a reason. Yes, they’ve sucked for people. We can work on that. But know that we’ve settled on varying flavours of “democracy” for a reason.

We have experts, but they work within a democratic pluralist structure, ideally so that no one person or group or idea gets too much power without a bunch of eyes on it. This is by design. It ends badly and people tend to die if we don’t follow that process, or, even worse, it gets co-opted by bad actors. Pretty much 100% of the time.

Back to stealth authoritarianism.

Think of all the little pieces of information and learning that goes into a parent telling a toddler to stop trying to climb on the roof.

In that moment, you don’t need to tell them all of that information – that there are any number of potential consequences, including death, based on previous experience, that tells you that allowing a toddler to climb up on the roof is a bad idea. It is assumed that you are the more knowledgeable person in that interaction, and so you have the final word. You don’t invoke Isaac Newton or pull out a Powerpoint with child injury stats on it. That’s not authoritarian, that’s just having authority.

Or, think about an all-too-familiar scene: your 14 year old daughter is flailing and screaming at you for not letting her “hang out with her friends”. You, as parent, said no, because she left out some details: that party is in Bali and a bunch of seedy older men are paying for it. She was getting permission by leaving out details and exploiting your trust. She’ll scream at you, call you names, but, because you have more knowledge and experience and have their best interests at heart, it was considered good parenting to say “no” when you found out.

But, she’s still claiming that you are being ‘abusive’ because you won’t let her go to Bali with some dirty old men.

In both those cases, you had the foresight to pull rank and say “sit down”, in front of someone who was very unhappy with you, but any court or reasonable person would back you.

It’s the stuff that is left out that matters. The devil is in the details when you are talking about people’s wellbeing.

So, right now, I am also a parent saying “hey, everyone, we have a problem here”.

What lies beneath

So, what you may see is me mocking people’s “Preferred Pronouns” like an arsehole, or making generalisations about Americans, or generalising about fandoms, or cults. First, I need economy of language and I am trying to persuade. I can’t qualify everything or we’d be here for years. This stuff is complex. But I am always happy to elaborate. My reasoning is clear, and I am being honest with you as best I can.

But as an authority on certain matters, earned through a combination of years of education, practical experience and building trust, I too make comments with an expectation that you see the work under the surface of everything I say, and trust me as an authority.

How do I earn that trust? I state my case and I answer questions. I orient myself towards better thinking, critical thinking, overcoming biases and hopefully getting closer to truth as best I can. I make mistakes, of course. Like everyone else, I have my biases and get tired, or miss things, and need to survive too – often whilst ingesting a firehose of pain, trauma and diarrhoea.

On the flip side of that is I have a few certificates that say I know things, have tenure in my industry and a record of being correct most of the time. I can back my claims, explain my reasoning (if you pay for my time), and I would think it generally has more weight to it than someone who doesn’t have those things. That record is also a shortcut, much like a parent telling a kid to get off the roof, to not have to explain the laws of gravity and write 75,000 words to randos on the internet who read James Lindsay or some thunkpiece on Jezebel and think they’re social scientists now and are pitching a fit.

You’d think that, but no. Sigh.

So, if I mock people who use pronouns in their bio, there is something underneath it that I am happy to explain. Nothing I do is accidental. Impulsive? Sometimes. Premature conclusions in a constantly shifting landscape? Often. But never baseless.

Corporate HR’s hijacking of social issues in order to get around things that are otherwise illegal – stealthily forcing LGBT disclosure in the workplace, or putting misconduct loopholes in unfair dismissal laws, is an egregious and immoral exercise. It warrants ridicule. I make fun of pronouns because it is as meaningful to trans people as a cupcake on R U OK day. I make fun of pronouns because it is revolting to use trans people, vulnerable kids and women as human shields so they can indulge their authoritarian streak and do some good old union-busting with an email signature and a morning tea whilst the left are none-the-wiser and too busy fucking bickering over bullshit like always and forever and for infinity and beyond.

Most people, if asked nicely, will likely use pronouns. I do too, on an interpersonal level. If it was just about that. Don’t care, whatever. Wear a dress, whatever. So long as you hide your boner, shower occasionally and don’t reheat fish in the microwave, I really don’t care. I generally like being left alone, and I want you to be left alone as well. We all gotta get by and get our urgent-but-pointless stuff done.

But the thing is, we aren’t being asked. We are being coerced into accepting an entire premise on which an entire belief system and house of cards is built, which is totalitarian, destructive, and … well… erodes our privacy, trans people’s dignity, has some pretty severe malpractice consequences and will likely result in some heinous legislation from the right that everyone goes along with because they don’t like being forced to use pronouns at work.

But of course, we are told to be polite (again, how you know this stuff came out of the US and is right wing… the left ain’t polite, mate… in fact we tend to be pretty rude, especially to HR and especially to those bougie cunts making us go to a stupid morning tea). We are told that it is ‘rude’ to ask questions. Or, worse, hateful. No, it is democratic to ask questions of people who push for policies that impact others. If you won’t do that, you have an authoritarian streak and that means you need more scrutiny than anyone else.

Corporations, corporate structure and middle managers are anti-democratic/authoritarian by design. But we live in a democracy, and the rights of a citizen are not yours to control. You aren’t in charge. There is a process to follow, there is a social contract, and in a democratic system with checks and balances to protect us from you, well, if you are suggesting a change that affects us… you need to state your case.

Not simply write a cheque and do whatever the fuck you want.

You need to state your case and we get to ask questions, including about who the cheques are coming from and where they are going and how that is relevant to this change in policy. That is our right, not a conspiracy theory you’ve concocted with your team of copywriters at CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

We need to stop being “nice”. For there to be any meaningful change to the way things are, we need to pay attention and start being honest, curious and authentic from a kind and loving place. Because you know who uses “niceness” as a weapon?

Abusers. Bullies. Liars. Manipulators. Bad guys. Human Resources. Advertisers. Cults.

And you know who uses love? Sometimes people who risk it all and take a massive hit to tell you truths that you don’t want to hear. Like, “hey, I know you’re a good person, but you’re being misled and hoo boy, will you look like a bad guy when this all comes out in the wash”.

That’s kindness. That’s bravery.

This is the sleight of hand. Under immense social pressure, you are expected to say “Trans Women are Women” – which – for most people obviously means “yes, I will treat you as a woman if it helps you feel better because I’m not a jerk”, not “Trans Women are literally women”. But there will be those who genuinely despise women and exploit that gap to then argue that in all instances in law, where “woman” is a protected class – such as prisons, rape shelters, clubs, sports etc – that most people believe that “Trans Women are Women” and that anyone who doesn’t is a bigot and a Nazi who deserves rape and death threats.

See how this works?

This is called “Loaded Language“.

They’re basically taking the piss because you know that’s not what we meant, mate. Fuck off. Which is how it makes people like me look “unkind” or “mean”, because I am aware of the traps and don’t fall for it, and am simply fighting for a fair process and open conversation and yeah, some tough love that tells everyone that no, there’s a process to follow and everyone gets a say, whether you like it or not, you bearded smug fuck.

Similar with the linguistic trick of demanding someone say they are ‘anti-racist’. You can’t refuse. You’re kind. you don’t want to get on the back foot with HR by asking why they spent $150k on workshops by obvious grifters who co-opted Black Lives Matter, and that none of that money reached organizers on the ground. That makes you racist. Aren’t you anti-racist? How can you refuse that? Yep, sorry, I can. Doesn’t work. Try again, morning tea cunt.

Fact: the crooks live in the gaps. Bad actors exploit our gaps. Our personal gaps, social gaps, our system’s gaps. Which is why being transparent and precise is the most important thing we have to protect us from bad shit, like violent men ending up in women’s prisons because everyone was too polite or bewildered to say no, girls as young as 12 having mastectomies because everyone was too polite, or blindly trusting of that surgeon with the $80,000 smile to ask a few follow-up questions, defence lawyers for sex offenders arguing that children can in fact consent due to the precedent of said mastectomies, and anyone who questions it being subjected to the most heinous threats and abuse, having their lives destroyed, because they’re a “bigot”.

Sorry, but guess what, even bigots get to ask questions in a democracy. That’s how you stop bad laws from hurting people and cults running roughshod over everyone calling them all bigots.

If you think for a second about the stuff you are being told, none of the language is clear. It’s not clearly defined. It is not precise. It is emotive. It is loaded. This is on purpose, because it is a Trojan horse for some seriously sinister shit, that continuously gets brushed off as an overreaction (gaslighting), rather than legitimate concerns based on facts, history, economics, psychology, and Isaac Newton. And politicians, leaders, and charity groups are all pushing for this opaque, loaded language in law.

Personality test. It’s just a personality test. What are you? A Bigot?

Beware those who will not be clear and precise.

In the law, definitions really matter. Roe vs Wade was fought on the meaning of a few words. With one poorly worded law, people (in this case women and children) suffer. Again, this is mostly because people think a) that if something is illegal, people won’t do it and b) nobody would misuse the law when they know what it meant and c) some imaginary idea that the Police and justice system play fair (but only when it suits them, of course…).

Well, hate to break it to you, but as a former child protection worker, I will tell you now that concepts like “children cannot consent” are challenged in the courts every single day. Row v Wade is always one case away from disaster. Abusers misuse Family Court blind spots that are intended to protect children every single day to get back at their exes. People try their luck on technicalities all the time. In fact, accountants build their entire livelihoods on testing their luck and arguing their case. Jessica Yaniv. Karen White. Lily Madigan. Laurel Hubbard, and so on and so forth. Yes, they might be outliers but they represent a very real problem that needs more public scrutiny.

This is why, in matters of public policy, the law and its language MUST be precise and MUST consider all potential unintended consequences before it is passed. It is fundamental.

Politicians know this.

And yet, trans activists are arguing against precision and deflecting and bullying and destroying anyone asking for clarity.

Why? I dunno. Lots of money and power in it I guess.

So, whilst I am happy to try and find solutions that make life better for everyone, I will not back down when it comes to censorship or silencing of those who have concerns, oppose a policy, or want more information. Even if I disagree with them, they have a right to be heard.

Policy affects everyone, and the way you get that policy implemented affects how our democracy functions. It affects public trust, which matters more than anything in something like, say, a pandemic. Please understand that – right now – whilst it might be the “nice” thing to do, what you are doing is giving legitimacy to a totalitarian movement that is trying to intimidate us into silence, to pass vague and irresponsible law, with anyone requesting transparency and clarity being harassed and abused and destroyed.

All so a bunch of billionaires get richer. Read your Chomsky.

Meanwhile, kids that society is supposed to be protecting are put on experimental drugs with very little scrutiny, and no checks and balances, and young girls having their breasts bound up and even removed. Rape shelters are being hounded and defunded. Domestic abusers are able to terrorise their ex-wives and children. Women are being re-traumatised by a system that is failing to hear their words, and calling them bigots for simply wanting to express their fears and legitimate concerns about women’s rights. And given the reaction by many men, it would appear they really need to be heard.

If you want to understand the sleight of hand that is going on:

“It’s a matter of respect/politeness”.

No, it is a coercive control tactic, using emotional manipulation and social pressure to get us to accept terminology, based on untruths, that asks us to deny facts. It gaslights anyone who has doubts or seeks clarity/asks questions. There’s no detail, and you keep saying “no debate”, which honestly, is a red flag for anyone who cares about a functioning democracy.

“It’s just about rights and dignity”.

No, it is about a loophole where men can fill out a form (Self-ID), pay a few hundred bucks and get access in women’s and girls spaces, no questions asked. And the only answer to any objections is “you’re going to have to trust the system works” to generations of women for whom the system has repeatedly failed (hysteria, lobotomies, vaginal mesh anyone?). This is not about trans people any more than Westboro Baptists are about the teachings of Jesus – they are hiding behind them and lying to you. This needs more checks and balances, whilst also balancing the needs of trans people to not have unnecessary and humiliating bureaucracy. If men who supported this were legit, they would welcome a conversation and seek clarity and consensus, not bully and gaslight critics into compliance like every male abuser since the beginning of time.

“If you don’t respect pronouns, you’re a bigot”.

Nar. Try again. That doesn’t work on me. Why are you using it? Is it because you genuinely care about trans issues? Then why aren’t you listening to many who say this has the opposite effect? Why are you forcing LGBT out of the closet? Why are you enforcing a policy that half your employees disagree with?Why don’t you tell everyone what’s actually going on, what you real motivations are, and answer my actual questions: do you think women have the right to say no? Do you think that young girls should be in changerooms with an intact adult male?

Why won’t you answer? Oh, looks like you’ve blocked me and are telling others to harass me.

And get off the fucking roof. You’re going to get hurt.

Also:

Hands on with Telepath, the social network taking aim at abuse, fake news and, to some extent, ‘free speech’

There’s no doubt that modern social networks have let us down. Filled with hate speech and abuse, moderation and anti-abuse tools were an afterthought they’re now trying to cram in. Meanwhile, personalization engines deliver us only what will keep us engaged, even if it’s not the truth. Today, a num…

First – the chilling rewriting of internet history in this article is concerning. It is absolutely NOT true that the internet of old was anything but free speech/Wild West. Or at least it was until AOL, which provided a sanitised, filtered, “safe” internet, and sent the rest of us a flood of spoiled, loud chewing puritan middle class Americans and they made it utterly intolerable for the rest of us… and we’ve been fighting these fuckwits and their stupid culture wars ever since.

I have a chapter called “America Online” in my book. I am also writing about how that impacted online conversations during 9/11 and stuff. I’ll get there eventually

Second – I am deeply concerned about the subtext in this article and I will try to write a better essay ASAP. The answer is 100% not to create cult tech bubbles for totalitarian ideologies to radicalise any more than they have been. 

This will be a continuation of the Tumblr v 4Chan wars that have infected all of us. This is going to get so much worse before it gets better. I have been 5 years ahead – always – and the writing is on the wall here that if these are the “solutions” as imagined by American Tech Companies, we are all screwed.

Third – if you are one of those people who say that you shouldn’t ‘tolerate intolerance’, that is absolute bullshit. That twisted logic is also used by cults like Scientology to rationalise violence against enemies and Fair Game. It has no decent philosophical basis unless you are a totalitarian.

The “don’t tolerate intolerance” crap assumes 

• you have all the information (you don’t) 

• you have the moral authority to determine which view is the ‘correct’ one (you don’t – moral philosophy is complex) and 

• that other people don’t disagree for valid reasons that you are not aware of (most often they do) 

• that disagreement causes ‘harm’ – or your beliefs are somehow a mark of your character rather than your behaviour (yes I know, deontological vs consequentialism but whatevs).

It is astonishing how many people are abandoning friends and family over them simply having different political views. 

That mindset is so dangerous and we are seeing this all play out. You should tolerate *all* ideas – especially of those you love. You should always try to make your own ideas better and be able to argue them. 

If not, you are the very definition of a bigot.

I wrote a whole thread on this over on Twitter if you want to know more.

Tolerate intolerance. Use the Principle of Charity and Principle of Humanity (*actual* Philosophy not pop-philosophy that rationalises cult-thinking).

The answer is 100% not in creating more bubbles. This will end really badly. It’s bad enough as it is.

These people really need to be challenged and disagreed with because they legit already believe that any disagreement is hate speech, and that material reality is a fucking Multiverse.

When this (extremely and opaquely funded) platform talks about ‘bullying’ and ‘fake news’, they mean the ability to disagree, or the ability to say things like “hey, you can’t change biological sex” or “this issue is more complicated” or “race relations in America is different to other countries” or “hey, that’s actually not what that word means”.

Creating platforms that allow cults to double down and become more totalitarian and less tolerant of dissent, means we are all completely screwed.

PS. Cutting off friends and family over political or religious disagreement is the #1 sign you’ve joined a cult. #2 is feeling like you’ve been psychologically harmed because someone challenged your beliefs. Just saying.

I will tell you now: This is bad. This impacts us all. I mean, it’s been pretty bad for a while, but this is now way out of hand.

Yep, I am going to defend QAnon.

Not because I agree with them, but precisely because I don’t.

We have a major problem with the Internet’s promise, of which QAnon is the latest of a long line of victims… and will most certainly not be the last. That promise was broken.

We need to stand up for our right to speak, our right to think wrong thoughts, our right to be unpredictable, have a bad day and make mistakes, and ultimately, our right to live our lives. Tech, in collusion with the increasingly Borg-like military-industrial-media-politico-complex are fast narrowing the window of acceptable conversation and heading scarily into the world of Newspeak and Thought Reform.

The censorship of ‘bad’ information, however well-intentioned, inevitably means censorship of information the powerful deem ‘bad’.

This never ends well.

It allows potentially anyone who breaks a story, supports a cause or even does research to be discredited, censored, slandered (and even harassed or fired or imprisoned). This strikes at the heart of free speech. You know, that thing that everyone says them and their friends should have, but their political opponents, or people they find irritating or crazy, shouldn’t.

That’s not how this works. You either have freedom of expression or you do not. Everybody should have it, as the law allows. It is a cornerstone of democracy, and, in the case of QAnon, their censorship shows a deeply troubling trend, which is that they are not only going to ban your speech, but they are going to ban you by association – hiding behind something that is ‘true’, but is really a lie by omission.

Is QAnon crazy? Yes. Culty? Yes. Is it a tricky problem and a tough balance between a duty of care to users (which tech companies ignore in every other respect, but suddenly care about when it involves censorship or the bottom line?) Also yes.

Is it also a lot more wrong to deplatform anyone even remotely connected to, following, interacting with or otherwise associated with at best an oversimplification and thought terminating cliché, and at worst a very serious accusation of being a domestic terrorist, all determined by some opaque algorithm and network map, with that user having no recourse, no right of appeal, no remedy and no ability to defend themselves?

I would hope the answer is …”obviously”.

Welcome to Oceania. Read your Orwell. Then read Chomsky. Then about Securitization if you’re feeling masochistic. The fact is, you are either for lawful freedom of expression, or you are pro-censorship. If you are pro-censorship, especially if you just go along and don’t even check to see if the allegations are true – you are the bad guy, or at least, a billboard and a mule for their interests.

Sorry. It’s time to choose.

There is this thing called rights and a social contract. Something that tech seem pretty hellbent on ignoring as they drag us into a technofascist hellscape where they get to do whatever they please, to whoever they please, whenever they please and launder it behind a “brand safe” user experience.

There are legal standards. A burden of proof. The right to a fair trial. The right to appeal. And if corporations can be citizens, then they have to act like one and abide by those same principles. I don’t care if someone’s speech hurts feelings. I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable. I don’t care if they’re batshit insane. Trial by media and arbitrary deplatforming is not the answer (and, in most cases it just makes radicalisation worse because, funnily enough, persecution tends to feed a persecution narrative). It is in times of discomfort when our principles are tested. Our principles are only tested when it’s hard to defend them. If you have a principle that you only defend when it is comfortable for you, it isn’t a principle. Sorry.

Tech companies (who, despite the jeans and kicks and the perfect American Ivy League smiles, are still massive global corporations) should not be deciding who gets to speak or not. If it is illegal and a judge has ordered it, fine. And even then, maybe. There’s laws and mechanisms for that to occur. If you want to change the law, then work through the correct democratic processes to change it. But unilateral, secretive, unethical, arbitrary and often downright maliciously deciding what people are and are not acceptable and what people can and cannot read? Removing a person’s access to financial services, email, social support, website hosting, and deplatforming entire groups of people who have the ‘wrong’ opinion with no recourse or remedy?

Fuck no.

The thing is (aside from the unprecedented power of tech companies and governments’ sheer incompetence at regulating any of it effectively), the fact remains that one person’s “conspiracy theory” is another person’s investigative journalist or exposer of corruption. And even the most insane conspiracy theories start with truth, and might have information that leads us to a very real story. Which is why I tend to be suspicious when large corporations start writing things off as a “conspiracy theory” – because it is well established that many of them, or at minimum some aspects, turn out to be true with time.

And that’s the point. That’s why I have no choice but to look ridiculous and defend QAnon’s right to be nutcases, and Alex Jones to do… whatever it is he does. Because I care about the truth – wherever it comes from and whoever uncovers it.

Because sometimes, they’re right. Even in a sea of wrong. And every time someone you don’t like is taken down, you can guarantee that those same precedents can and will be used to silence all dissent that is even remotely associated. Snowden. Assange. Manning. And, sure enough, with time, countless others who defended them because an algorithm said they met the same profile. Algorithmic judge, jury and executioner, with nary a human, a warrant or a jury to be seen.

‘Conspiracy theories’ often contain some truth in terms of the building blocks, material facts, or relationships etc (in fact, that is usually what makes them so compelling… there’s truth in it), but they have simply taken a wrong turn and come to the wrong conclusions. Some of the information might still be important, for someone else to make better sense of, and to put people back on the right track.

Obviously, the *leap* is the conspiracy part. Or the aliens. Or the conclusion that it is all orchestrated, rather than simply how power, propaganda, human psychology, capital, US interests, patriarchy, human trafficking, warfare & PsyOps etc work and have worked throughout history.

Anyone who has done any kind of intensive research work on one topic knows that it is very easy to occasionally go far too deep in the wrong direction, and that even legitimate academic research on a complex topic resembles a crazy board at some point or another.

Our brains are wired to look for patterns and have a number of cognitive biases that make it very easy to turn a wrong corner and end up lost in Tin Foil Town. Mine definitely does occasionally. But, with more information, a grounding in theory, and a willingness to hear different perspectives, I then self-correct and find a better answer. That’s how it works. That’s how we get to truth. That’s how we learn.

With new, and sometimes confronting, information. By limiting access to information, you not only make the bad information more interesting, but you also prevent those who might self-correct or find a better answer from getting there. Which is kind of the point. This is only ever going to lead to the powerful abusing it to quell dissent, for corporations to bust unions, for the corporate media to continue to just manufacture consent for whatever supports their advertisers and the bottom line.

Propaganda, and particularly propaganda in the corporate media (with jet fuel poured on it via social media), is really, really difficult to fight off. It is literally designed to hijack our biases and get us to make irrational and emotional decisions based on our lizard brains. Single issue activists, in particular, can be weaponised through tunnel vision and redirected in favour of – I dunno – a synthetic version that makes them feel better about progress. That’s why we study how to overcome those hundreds of biases in Postgrad. I’ve been fighting this shit HARD for the last few years. Hell, I have even realised how wrong I was in my last major blog post.

I write this as I realise that I am literally writing about the CIA and their fuckery over the years within left wing politics, and it is all truth. There’s no “conspiracy” as such, but explaining a political strategy and system and history that underpins a lot of what we are seeing now. In fact, when you look at it and know your theory, the conclusion is just boring as fuck business as usual.

Why the CIA Cares About Marxism [article ⬀]

In different hands, with a simpler vocabulary, this could easily look like a “conspiracy theory”. And it’s hard not to see how this has been weaponised over the years.

It is important to know what Big Tobacco did with cancer researchers. What Monsanto did to environmentalists. What the US Intelligence community have done to every single whistleblower since the beginning of time. They do what abusers do to their victims: they call them crazy.

They discredit them.

They even imprison them and have them tortured and killed, or drive them to suicide. Troll farms and buying gutter press hit pieces from bloggers who identify as journalists are child’s play by comparison.

And it begins with having to defend QAnon, and every other victim of deplatforming, whether you like it or not. I sure don’t. It just ends really badly. And, you know… is a little… fascistic.

It’s frustrating that people write off/mock everything a group says based on them coming to the wrong conclusions with the information that more informed people might be able to explain better. I often joke that QAnon is International Relations without the books, and Chomsky without having to read Manufacturing Consent. I can look at Q and see what is batshit and what might have some truth in it, trace it back and how they got to where they ended up/went wrong. It’s actually kind of funny to reverse engineer these things and see where it took the turn it did.

But, I am concerned about people writing *all* dissident information off as a “conspiracy theory”, because it is also a convenient way to discredit and silence critics when corruption IS going on. It’s getting pretty chilling, watching ordinary and fairly intelligent people suddenly dismissing perfectly reasonable comments and claims as “conspiracy theories” or “disinformation”, as if they are in some sort of trance. It creeps me the fuck out, because, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, people seem to have no idea where this leads if we don’t say no.

Especially all these so-called journalists, who, let’s be honest, have had their masks slip pretty epically. Just as I think I can’t have any more contempt for the world’s oldest profession (boot-licking), let’s not forget, they’re ONLY there to propagandise for corporate interests, not to get to the truth. They’re only in the job in corporate media because they have been selected as someone who can spin facts and lie by omission. That is the only job of the corporate journalist: branded content.

That’s why, even though I think QAnon are batshit and attracts batshit people who want everything to make sense and connect in a linear way where people are evil, rather than victims of our own human weaknesses when in a group in a system that rewards those who exploit, we should still, always, have the ability to see if there is any truth in the actual information underneath.

Anyone who doesn’t want people to have more information is not to be trusted.

Totalitarianism starts with Thought Reform. People who control information control what you think. Censorship is bad. Censorship is wrong and oppressive. Censorship is how the powerful retain power and the powerful will stop at nothing to keep their power, which is why it will inevitably be abused and used against those who speak up against the powerful. The only way to beat bullshit is by debunking it, understanding the root cause and logical leaps that leads people there, and by telling the truth and having an ARGUMENT.

Or, ya know, work on that whole public trust thing. That.

Don’t forget, that the idea of a “conspiracy theory” has been used for decades to also silence genuine dissent. And continues to be. Look at the people who say biological sex is not a “social construct” up against the billions of dollars of the “gender” movement, who call working class feminists and victims of domestic violence “Nazis”. Or how you can’t even ask a question about vaccines or masks without a pile-on from lunatics in all directions, who seemingly don’t connect how toilet paper and censorship share a common enabler: our lizard brains.

Also , seriously, don’t demonise the Q. Or anyone that is engaged with finding truth or sleuthing. There’s a pandemic on, people are afraid and coping the way they’re going to cope. Some will try to connect dots in the wrong directions, and it is up to our leaders to persuade them otherwise, and win back their trust. At least they’re trying to think for themselves. Most don’t. Most of you just laugh at the nutjobs and do sweet fuck all whilst the 1% fuck us, all whilst mindlessly quoting the New York Times and the ABC and sharing random thunkpieces from acceptable outlets without questioning it. But hey. Your media is the acceptable-thought media, so no problem.

Until you have to ask a question or have an opinion that the increasingly narrow window of acceptable thoughts decides is a threat to yourself, society or the powerful, and you find yourself securitized, cut off from your social networks, debanked and fighting for your life. And if that happens, I’ll be right here, speaking up for you too. It’s what I do.

Please, especially at the moment, teach your kids to think, and discover, and research. Commit to some uncomfortable learning and thinking so that you can engage curious people in a conversation, rather than shut it down. And don’t be afraid get it wrong, or receive blowback, because until that is again just part of a normal healthy society, rather than a thought crime, we do not have a chance and it will get worse.

And ask questions, especially of media, corporate interests and the powerful. If you laugh at people who do that, then frankly you’re an elitist asshole and a sellout.

Curiosity is a gift.

You’re welcome.

Sincerely, someone who is about to be very unpopular and called such things, purely because my work has uncovered something people don’t want to know.

Ciao.

It’s not exactly new that people are confused about me and what it is I do. For as long as I have been writing on the Internet (going on 25 years now), I have had an almost obsessive interest in the social and political impacts of this new shiny thing called the Internet. I’ve personally grappled with my own persona, and the idea that we are all public figures now. I’m writing a book. I have a large body of work, spanning decades, on this topic, and have pretty much been a crash-test dummy for the information revolution.

I study the Internet. I have always studied the Internet. I am an expert on its interpersonal, psychological and political impact. I write with a personal and casual style, because I want my work to be accessible and engaging, but I am still a researcher/analyst.

I thought that was clear.

It would appear that it needs explaining again.

Unfortunately, and no matter how many times I say it, I think people are still confused. They conflate my professional/academic specialty of an emerging phenomenon with a lot of moving parts (unintended consequences of the True Fans principle creating actual cults, how well-intentioned UX & marketing psychology, community building and CX work has led to filter-bubbles & radicalisation with pretty dire political, psychological and legal consequences), with activism.

Ask me a deceptively simple question like “so, what’s going on with J.K. Rowling?” and it takes hours to explain just one facet. This is my life’s work. I’m working really hard to try and drill it all down to bite-sized content, but I sit where three complex fields intersect: technology, psychology and policy/law, and is a Herculean effort that requires time and money and resources that I simply don’t have. I wish I did. I do this all for the love of it and because I think it is important and I see where it ends.

It is easy to get lost in the noise of the online culture wars. It is especially easy to be misunderstood/mischaracterised. That’s kind of the point of it. A big factor in “Wokism’, “Anti-Wokism”, MAGAs and the so-called “Culture Wars” gaining online dominance, is largely that it has made itself completely impenetrable to the vast majority of people, and almost impossible to argue without looking evil or crazy. Because you inevitably end up brushing up against global politics, intelligence agencies and cybersecurity shit. The crazy is built in.

I mean, I found myself defending Donald Trump over his deplatforming for fuck’s sake.

But this stuff is really complicated if you’re researching it, because we are on the receiving end of a firehose of pain, trauma, bullshit, and genuine grievance 24/7 and the signal-noise ratio is constantly off-whack.

One thing we can agree on is that everyone has lost their damn minds. Right?

To even start understanding why, first up, you need bulletproof boundaries, balls of steel, resolve, a commitment to empiricism, and be willing to be misunderstood (and often viciously so). You need the ability to spot emotional manipulation, know it isn’t you, and stand firm. You’ll be told it’s you, by bots and dodgy agencies, before you even start, in the hope you back off. Then, you only need an advanced understanding of worldwide political systems and history. You really need to understand your theory. You need an understanding of several disciplines at roughly 3rd year undergrad level.

You need to be able to go into dry detail with data, and also try to figure out history and everything that led us here.

You need experience with policy, law, organising, campaigning and lobbying and how that process can be corrupted. For the Gender Wars alone, you need to know your Marx, your Dworkin, your Chomsky, your Foucault and your Butler. You need to know all of your Feminist theory, and the cultural and historical differences between the European and American movements (and all the different meanings for the same words). You need to understand the history of Intersectionality, and how the “left” of the United States has been co-opted and all but replaced in United States mainstream political discourse. That’s important. You also need to understand the context of all of this and Sociology’s tense relationship with the Hard Sciences and Materialist Social Sciences. Oh, and the United States overarching global war on Communism, Imperialism and Cultural Hegemony.

You need to be able to recognise entryism/infiltration and other political tactics. You need to know social policy and trends across a number of countries, and how “Wokism” (otherwise known as the gentrified left, which is the term I have settled on for it) has attached itself to genuine social movements worldwide. You need to know about US Foreign Policy and Cultural Hegemony and the tensions in France post-USSR. You need to know Securitization Theory and Cybersecurity and Cyberterrorism and Military PsyOps…. you need to know child development and adolescent behaviour. You need a cross-cultural understanding of the legal systems and history of politeness and speech and etiquette. In the Gender Wars, you also need to know your DSM V and your “basic” biochemistry and medicine (lol). You need to know all the different schools of thought in all the disciplines, across different cultures and how they clash across every single issue that has been impacted.

You need an understanding of the central role that corporations and the business incentives around content/branding and PR, and the push for “corporate social responsibility”, and how “diversity and inclusion” has been misused so that to question the ideology means to question the cause, and said corporations go about business as usual whilst dressing themselves in a rainbow flag and Black Lives Matter. Oh, and it’d be good if you have also designed and built some tech products and run those projects so you can identify the gaps and figure out solutions.

And that’s just for fucking feminism and gender, let alone race, environment, disability and the range of other social justice issues that have been tainted by the Critical Theory, “Woke” strawman.

Oh yeah, you also need Media Studies, Semiotics, Persuasion and Propaganda, Neuroscience, Critical Thinking, Logic, Epistemology, Ethics, History, Anthropology, English, Politics, Psychology, Biology, Marketing, Journalism, Public Relations, Economics, Finance… oh yeah and it also helps to understand how Facebook ads and micro-targeting and moderation and big tech algorithms work, including SEO and digital marketing funnels. A decade running an advertising agency at this point (as I did) is also helpful.

…And oh Lord, the dark money and network of charities and NGOs that are nested and nested and networked to create what is basically a massive MLM scam for donations and radicalisation.

Then, there’s the coercion, the linguistic tricks, sleights of hand, emotional manipulation and propaganda techniques that would get Goebbels doing the chicken dance in no time.

Oh yeah, and you need to be able to navigate extremely dense theory on all these things (ugh).

You need to either be very clever. Or very crazy (I am always open to the idea that I have lost my mind). And know that even if you’re clever, you’re going to be called crazy, and if you happen to also be a woman on the Internet saying clever things, crazy is the default, and crazy men will be the ones considered clever. Yes, even if they’re not even in your discipline, don’t work in tech and do 1/100th of the work.

Are you exhausted yet? This is my day. Try doing this only to be called a ‘bigot’ on one hand, and an idiot by men who read fools like James Lindsay and think they’re social scientists on the other. And to be shouted over by people who think Tim Pool and Jimmy Dore are knowledgeable. And, do that with no financial support, no University behind me, no money and a bunch of bros asking me to distill all this complexity into a tweet (without appealing to authority or being credentialist, of course)…. just me, my time, my brain and my ruthless desire to try and explain why everyone’s brains are melting and warn that this has severe political consequences that nobody can even understand, let alone care about.

To be a critic or questioner of the weapon of so-called “Wokism” (which I focus on because I am only concerned with how US Neoliberalism has managed to successfully attack and replace and mischaracterise socialist critique and destroy not only the Humanities, but are a direct threat to our digital rights, and is one of the several micro-cults that have formed on the Internet, but is the most prominent outside MAGA/Q), especially when it costs you friends, family and opportunities, is inherently crazy-making, because it gaslights, manipulates and bullies you into compliance and self-doubt every step of the way, even if you do all of the work that I have mentioned above. It is designed so that it is easier to go along with it or pick a side, and if you don’t, you end up in the fight of your life.

That’s called Thought Reform.

And everyone thinks I am crazy and/or stupid when I am not. I am just uniquely qualified to diagnose and treat this.

So, the crazy is built in. Your life is more peaceful if you go along with it. In order to fight it, you have to be insanely informed, insanely politically savvy, and even if you have all of that, insanely committed to receiving death and rape threats and able to withstand harassment, de-platforming and being hauled into HR and potentially fired for liking a tweet or making a joke.

And ideally, you need to be a beloved author and/or billionaire. That also helps. I’m broke because I don’t pander to either side and am focused on diagnosing the problem.

Obviously, people don’t understand the work I’m doing. It’s definitely niche, but it’s extremely important. And it’s a job. I feel like I am working with a Magic Eye Painting 24/7, trying to get people to see the sailboat. I am constantly moving it around, shifting the light, getting you to squint and tilt your head until you finally see the sailboat. Oh, and that sailboat is hurtling towards us all, on fire, and about to explode if we don’t start seeing it now and address it (EDIT: I wrote this when I was less clear on what was happening, but the thing I warned about was… ironically, the strategy. You try doing this, building a parachute on the way down, and see how often you end up being wrong.).

There is always a fine line between ground-breaking research in an emerging and complex area that nobody else understands, and a crazy board. It is not fair to lump researchers in with crackpots. I assure you that I am the former. I am just way ahead of everyone else and up against… well… a lot. For free. With no support.

I wish that I could get funded to perform all this research (if anything just so that I am seen as legitimate) but I have stumbled on something that is not only incredibly corrupt and dangerous, but incredibly powerful. I’m not a journalist and have no desire to be (although I will happily write essays and Op Eds). I am stuck, just chipping away at a YouTube channel in my “spare” time, and hopefully, one day, a book or three.

I’d love to be a full time author, but there is only one way to get paid to write these days, and that is by being a soldier/cam girl in the US culture wars. No University will touch me, because I can’t find a PhD supervisor who isn’t balls deep in Postmodernism and “corporate partnerships” (which is what I critique), and because I am cross-discipline and have been in the business world, I’m not sure I fit there either. Not to mention PhDs are expensive and a full time commitment around work and family. I’d love a book deal, but I have to do it without funding, because first time authors don’t get advances.

So, I’m stuck, but I do it anyway, because I feel it is important, because everyone’s takes are just… bad and wrong. In fact, the more famous they are and the more they make, the more wrong they get. This seems deliberate, like nobody really wants the answers. Something, of course, is better than nothing, so I write Facebook posts and Twitter threads as much as possible in the meantime to get my thoughts out quickly, so that at least I can say I said it and there’s a record. Because a hefty number of dudes like running with my ideas and pretending they didn’t and then telling me that if I had a book or PhD then I’d be more credible. You know, merit. All that hustle.

Anyway, all I’m asking is that you try to see the things I post as analysis and ideas, not me being crazy or “radicalised” (whatever the fuck that means… I research radicalisation!). I am just working with what little resources I have, in an emerging and complex phenomenon that crosses about 15 disciplines in order to even describe, that very few people understand, in a world where even uttering a question about it gets you cancelled and punished and called crazy or worse.

It’s literally like this thing was manufactured in a lab, taking all the lessons from every failed totalitarian regime, fused with capitalism, big tech, pharma and patriarchy to make a Frankenstein’s monster that somehow sees brightly coloured hair as part of the dress code, because if you have colourful hair, you can’t possible be a neoliberal or something… like three kids in a trenchcoat to pass as the “revolutionaries”. Yeah, that’s the funny part.

I’m acutely aware of how single-minded I look, and how super-niche this is, but that is because this is important. It’s my life’s work. I reiterate: this is my area of professional expertise and I am trying to write books that actually make a difference.

So, I am not saying it flippantly when I say that:

• Online cults are an unintended consequence of Human-Centred Design thinking, user-centred algorithms and are a serious threat to our political systems;

• It can be largely explained by looking at unethical digital industry practices: black hat SEO, dark patterns, radicalisation funnels/propaganda networks, ‘reputation management’, astroturfing, troll farms, dodgy self-help communities, inexperienced community moderators and a number of MLM-style tactics. Focusing on the tactics is to diagnose the problem and regulate/find solutions.

• “Wokism” is deliberate gentrification of the left. The left is the easy target, as is feminism, because it gets people angry and hacks the left’s lizard brains. It exposes an unethical campaign strategy that rationalises violence and utilises Fair Game-style tactics under the guise of legitimate social justice issues/concerns, in order to deplatform and scapegoat people. It also has the institutional power, financial backing and dodgy financial interests, that replaces us with pro-corporate, pro-censorship, pro-establishment distractions, and have the result of driving people to the US Far Right, both in terms of scapegoat for liberals who have sold out workers for their own careers, and in making the right look reasonable. Pro Tip: No socialist would ever weaponise employment or livelihood. Ever.

• We are ill-equipped to deal with this threat, as law and policymakers have been asleep for a decade with US-dominated “Big Tech”, and these tools that were supposed to democratise now have the ability to destroy lives, communities and entire nations with no accountability/recourse;

• “Critical Theory” – specifically Tumblr Deconstructionist versions of Critical Theory (what others call “Wokism”. Note: YES, academics: I understand it is a generalisation, but I have to meet people where they’re at and nudge them towards me, and that’s what they think it is… you can learn from me…), via the Internet, US Sociology Departments and for-profit Universities, has been weaponised by bad actors and big, oh so dark money)- outside of the walls of Universities, has been used as a deeply problematic and totalitarian framework and it has the potential to go completely off the rails if not kept in check and put back into the sandbox, and despite the core theory being legitimate, is being used by the powerful to 1) implode and distract from materialist critique of US Imperialism and Neoliberalism, and 2) as a boogeyman to defund and take the teeth out of the Humanities and 3) to build frameworks that are pro-censorship, anti-democratic and fundamentally unethical and oppressive;

• United States political culture, Cultural Hegemony, corporate media and their cozy relationship with US Foreign Policy in particular is a significant root cause in a lot of this (hence Chomsky, and, alas, without invoking Godwin’s Law and thus losing all credibility, sigh, think how Nietzsche was misused…);

• Dark Money is a massive problem in every country, but particularly the United States, and Facebook (with the help of digital agencies, which people are ignoring) is an easy way to ‘launder’ said money and ideas. There is little scrutiny over ad spend and how it is managed, and the massive network of tech companies and agencies that can hide money, radicalise and misuse data. The law has not kept up with this and it is ripe for abuse. And the cultural power of the United States means that their dark money campaigns are our dark money funded campaigns.

• There is one dominant narrative that is not being truthful, and not even trying to hide it, but because their opposition is so repugnant/indefensible, they are getting away with it – with increasingly bigger targets every time. I believe it is much more sinister, mostly because the left refuses to talk about it and provides cover when we should be critiquing it and addressing it using our toolkit. Yes. The US Democrats have turned eerily fascistic, using people’s fear of Trump or other scapegoats as a ruse.

What is happening is just WRONG.

And this is the activism part.

People being fired, deplatformed and subjected to death threats for an opinion is a dangerous abuse of power by employers and corporations. The power of Big Tech and advertisers is out of control, unaccountable and terrifying. And this mass-hysteria over diversity & inclusion and ‘kind-washing’ of well-intentioned corporates, means if you question it, you are (so far, figuratively, but…) burned at the stake… and all of those extremely important issues go unaddressed.

Every Western institution has been captured – in varying degrees – by online micro-cults with far too much political power who are able to be nudged in any direction the powerful see fit.

The mainstream US media is manufacturing child consent and gaslighting all of us into accepting something that we cannot come back from. If you know your Chomsky, replace the Military-Industrial Complex with a Politico-Media-Pharma-Tech Ubercomplex, and the Fifth Filter with “Alt Right/Hate/TERF” and you’ll understand.

In other words, for the last time, I am NOT fucking Alt Right or radicalised or crazy or a TERF or a transphobe. I am also not a “leftist”. I am a senior woman in tech who sees a serious problem and want us to correct course. I am a researcher of the political impacts of the internet and a feminist who has a grip on history and data and sees where this takes us. That’s it.

Well, also a smart-arse but you can be funny and smart, folks.

I’m just building on Herman/Chomsky and studying in my FIELD OF EXPERTISE, which is the Internet’s role in this.

And you’re fortunate enough to be watching me work through my thoughts as I am doing important work.

So, in summary, I am an expert talking about complex issues. I am unfunded and independent, because I want to do it properly, without being compromised. I have no way of monetising beyond consulting or maybe doing courses or lectures. I have no book deal or sponsors. I freelance with select clients to fund this work, because I am not wealthy enough to just go and do a PhD or take a year off to write a book. Which means I then have even less time to do this work. I’m tired, you guys. I’m sorry I don’t output as much as I’d like. I really wish I could.

I work around the clock for what often feels like massive personal and financial cost (and honestly, it seriously isn’t worth it most of the time unless you actually care), bucket-loads of shit, and no credit, and to have many of my thoughts co-opted by the US culture warriors on the right and turned into a weapon so that when I say it, it sounds like a “talking point”. I’m not fuelled by anything other than intellectual curiosity and solving the problem, and wanting to help find solutions for something I believe is going to end really badly. I’m told constantly what my motivations are: hate. By the very people I am trying to help, and to try and save the political ‘left’. I have lost so much to this shit because of this sudden extrapolation from professional interests to personal qualities.

I write all this here in the vague hope that one day, I might actually get some recognition, even if I don’t have a PhD or a book (Yet! Soon! Maybe! One Day!), or don’t have the right pedigree or groin appendages to have an opinion that actually gets heard. It’s why I have spent two years trying to get over my camera and mic fright and to become a better speaker. Nobody works as hard as I do on this topic and I am not even going to get a doctorate at the end, let alone riches. I am hated for doing my job when I could just shut up, go back to corporate gigs at $300 per hour and sit pretty. But I don’t. I do this because it is right. And it is important.

I’m not interested in tribal wars. I am not a fucking Trump supporter, nor a transphobe, for fuck’s sake. I am an analyst. And furthermore, I fucking know what I am talking about.

So, if you can’t tell the difference between me exploring arguments within my vocation, and just talking made-up shit, well, I suggest maybe you need to listen to what I have to say more than anyone.

It’d be cool if you could support my work. I’m setting up some members only stuff and courses, but like everything, it is a chicken-egg problem where I have to constantly triage my time. But it’s coming as soon as possible

Hope that at least clears some stuff up.