Mediaboss Marketing

Hilary B Gayle

From left: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie in Bombshell.

Bombshell, the new Jay Roach movie about the women of Fox News who took down chair Roger Ailes, unveils its story almost like a procedural. If youve been following the news the past couple of years, you probably know the outcome. In 2016, Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment, setting off a chain reaction of other womens accusations including, most prominently, Megyn Kellys which culminated with his ouster from the network he helped build.

The movie focuses on the lead-up to those events, following Carlson and Kelly as they decide to build the case against Ailes and as they maneuver through the media and career fallout that came from their allegations.

The film is one of the more stylish entries in the burgeoning genre of explainer movies that, in breaking down Big, Serious Topics, become awards season darlings. Bombshell is already getting Oscar buzz; its loaded with major star power: Nicole Kidman plays Carlson, Charlize Theron stars as Kelly, and Margot Robbie is a fictionalized (and, spoiler alert, queer) Fox producer among the lower ranks.

By failing to bring race into its analysis, Bombshell falls into the same simplistic empowerment narrative.

Its also being received as a kind of #MeToo movie about women finding their voice in the Trump era and calling out institutions that ignore or outright support abuse and harassment. That this film depicting the realities of harassment was even made is noteworthy, and Theron, who is also a producer on the film, recently spoke about some of the difficulties in pursuing the project after some of the films initial backers pulled out. In some ways, the film complicates the lean-in womens empowerment narratives that permeate Hollywood and the media, especially through its representation of Kelly and the fictional producer. But by failing to bring race into its analysis, it falls into the same simplistic empowerment narrative, though now with a queer twist.

Bombshell is rare for a big production in that its focused on gender and power in a corporation, but it doesnt really provide a more nuanced contextualization of the stakes around Carlsons and Kellys stories. Instead, the movie ends up being, in some ways, an infomercial for their postFox News incarnations while also promoting the idea of a kinder, gentler Fox News without Ailes at the helm.

Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson.

In her essay The Cult of the Difficult Woman, critic Jia Tolentino writes about a certain strain of pop culture analysis predicated on the re-writing of celebrity lives as feminist texts. This framework uses women celebrities as tools for exploring questions of gender and sexism, without addressing, for one thing, the complicated ways that celebrities arent just regular people. And in defending women celebrities from the sexist trope of unlikability, the framework ends up ignoring other vectors of power, namely class and race.

With its emphasis on Megyn Kellys and Gretchen Carlsons stories, Bombshell initially seems like a movie version of that celebrity feminist analysis. The Megyn Kelly we meet here is decidedly not the one who deployed her prosecutorial skills on her show The Kelly File to stoke racist conspiracy theories or lecture viewers about the whiteness of Jesus and Santa. Instead, she is presented, in her own words, as a tell-it-like-it-is journalist who puts powerful people in the hot seat, and faces sexism because of it.

Presumably, representing the networks racial politics would be too controversial and make the protagonists too unlikable for the broad moviegoing audience.

This is how the movie frames her big moment sparring with Trump during the now-infamous presidential debate that turned her into a Vanity Fair cover story symbol of lean-in empowerment. (Her subsequent memoir, Settle for More, pushed this empowerment narrative even further.) Kellys decision to ask Trump about his treatment of women is portrayed less as a journalistic standard and more as a brave bucking of her networks and Ailes own sexism and support for Trump.

As with Kelly, the Gretchen Carlson we meet in the film is not the habitual peddler of racist conspiracy theories and anti-gay and anti-trans talking points. Instead, Carlson is an ideological maverick who faces pushback from Ailes for advocating for (some) gun control, and for appearing makeup-less on an episode about empowering young women. Nobody wants to watch a middle-aged woman sweat her way through menopause, Ailes admonishes her.

As the film lays out its story, it narratively emphasizes the importance of Kelly and Carlsons breaking with the sexism of conservative media orthodoxy, as if this means that they were ideologically independent-minded, rather than also complicit with that orthodoxy.

In the explainer movie mold, Bombshell frames the story so that its not just about individual celebrities but about sexism and the institution of Fox News in the Trump era. In the opening scenes, Kelly whom Theron portrays brilliantly, capturing everything from Kellys confident gait to the husky undertones of her voice speaks directly to viewers as she takes us through the different floors of the Fox building, including the floor where the Murdochs (owners of Fox) operate and the floor where Roger Ailes (the chair and CEO) holds court. In this way, institutional forces become embodied in particular power players whom we are meant to understand arent always in alignment. Yet what forces are represented as causing the misalignments are telling.

The movie defines Trumps, Ailes, and Fox News politics as problematic exclusively through gender, rather than also contextualizing gender within the networks racial politics. In fact, the film only attempts to bring in race in passing, as background information. For instance, Ailes involvement in the racist Willie Horton ads from George H.W. Bushs 1988 campaign, which promoted racist fears about black men as rapists of white women, is only mentioned quickly (without any explanation, assuming the audience will know what its code for) in the explainer-y intro of him.

The types of power dynamics the explainer movie foregrounds in the narrative (sexism against white women) and what it considers background information (racial politics) speaks to how it manufactures the imagined mainstream and white audience identification. Presumably, representing the networks racial politics would be too controversial and make the protagonists too unlikable for the broad moviegoing audience.

Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie, left) and Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon) in Bombshell.

Bombshell isnt just about Carlsons or Kellys stories. In order to be a more universal, 2019-style story, the movie knows it cant just focus on two rich, powerful straight white celebrities. So the narrative includes a third character, a fictional composite aspiring producer Kayla (Margot Robbie). As a neophyte associate producer (and, as we later learn, a queer woman), she helps expand the films depiction of power, both in terms of its identity palette and in giving a view from someone of a lower status. But in many ways, its use of white queerness does help us better understand the films limitations regarding race and identity.

To its credit, the film attempts to use Kayla to show that leaning in doesnt follow predictable alliances. Gretchen Carlson in many ways the films most unambiguous hero attempts to make Kayla part of her team, pitching her on a kind of sisterhood to get to the top together. Kayla declines, opting to join Bill OReillys team, in a moment that implies shes leaning into, even selling out to, the more powerful person to ensure her way to the top.

On OReillys team, Kayla meets Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon), a show producer who is also a (not entirely open) lesbian and liberal Hillary supporter, and they begin an affair. The movies introduction of white queerness into the identity mix is important. Because just as the film sidesteps Carlsons and Kellys problematic racist moments, it arguably uses the figure of the white queer to soft-pedal the networks questionable racial politics. Its Carr, the white gay producer, who matter-of-factly breaks down the nuances of OReillys racial politics supports the wall, but against mass deportation to Kayla.

Similarly, its through Kayla and Carr that we are introduced to Kellys white Santa moment. In an interview with the New York Times, Theron mentioned the inclusion of the white Santa moment as one of the ways the film didnt shy away from Kellys complexities. Tellingly, though, it isnt a significant part of the films actual narrative its just included when Kayla watches a YouTube clip with Carr. We dont love Megyn Kelly because she thinks Santas white, Kayla explains later, we love her because she says it. In this way, she parrots the allegedly nonideological, tell-it-like-it-is narrative that allowed for Kellys mainstream media rehabilitation.

The films depiction of harassment and the fallout from it is an important reality that many women experience, and that, until #MeToo, rarely found its way into the mainstream cultural conversation. But its necessary to question the ways Bombshell uses white femininity and queerness to create audience identification.

Carlson is an unambiguous hero in part because she is seen as refusing to sell out to Fox News politics, which is only possible because her racial and trans politics arent represented in the film. Bombshell suggests Carlson is fired because she refuses to toe the companys sexist party line. She tells her lawyers that Ailes has made comments like Youre sexy but youre too much work and to get ahead you have to give a little head. Not incidentally, during her meeting with her lawyers, they bring up that she graduated summa cum laude from Stanford to emphasize her toughness in the battle ahead, credentials seemingly meant to remind viewers that shes more impressive than shes given credit for. (Rather than suggesting, for instance, how her elite education might have aligned her with the networks, and broader medias, class politics.)

Carlson is an unambiguous hero in part because she is seen as refusing to sell out to Fox News politics, which is only possible because her racial and trans politics arent represented in the film.

You will be muzzled, Gretchen, her lawyer warns Carlson in the final scenes. Maybe, she says, suggesting shed ultimately break through that muzzle, while also presenting her as the heroic voice that made Bombshell possible.

Kayla, who is harassed quite graphically and invasively by Ailes in one of the films most sensitively rendered scenes, tries to confide in Carr as soon as it happens, but Carr asks her not to involve her; she cant help, because shes a lesbian at Fox News. Kayla hesitates coming forward, and after Carlson goes public, she calls Carr for advice while on a date with a man, but their conversation becomes about Kayla not being openly gay (in contrast to Carr).

We are meant to sympathize with the predicament of these queer white women because of the precariousness of their position at the network. The implication is that because Carr is a Hillary liberal, shes in some ways outside the networks racial power structure; yet the film could have complicated their worldview by using the narrative to question the way that their whiteness (and willingness to overlook racism) is what allows them to be at the network in the first place.

Kelly, meanwhile, goes back and forth on whether she should reveal that Ailes harassed her a decade earlier. Its a difficult decision because Ailes ultimately promoted her, she points out, and because when Shepard Smith came out, Ailes told him he didnt care where he put his pecker. Kelly feels like her own advancement and Ailes tolerance of a white gay man make Ailes not quite a monster in her eyes. Again, the film makes tolerance of white queerness a kind of litmus test for acceptability.

Both Kayla and Kelly ultimately decide to talk to the lawyers, helping lead to Ailes firing, and the framing of the aftermath is important. After Ailes firing, the Murdochs are depicted calling Trump after his win, even though they were once against him. This suggests a potentially dark worldview that nothing has really changed. Kayla comes forward and leaves the network.

But in terms of the world of the network, perhaps the most important moment after Ailes leaves is when producer Carr puts a framed picture of her and her college girlfriend which she had hidden earlier back on her desk. Its a melodramatic moment, implying that the Fox News family now has room for her and is now a potentially gentler, kinder place with Ailes out of the picture.

Every narrative has to create a moral universe, and in order to locate power in this film, its important to think about who represents the establishment and why. For Kayla, Carlson and Kelly represent the conservative establishment.

When Kelly is dealing with her post-Trump interview fallout, her husband says, Honey, get real, you are the establishment. He seems to be referring to the fact that Fox News has become part of the mainstream media. After her first post-debate interview, Kellys husband also tells her that she went too soft on Trump, and Kelly admits she needs to keep access to keep up their lifestyle. Most importantly, though, neither Kellys husband nor Kayla mean that Carlson or Kelly are the establishment as powerful white women in media. They are establishment in vague terms of class and media positioning, but can never be overtly represented as the establishment as powerful white women because then the films message would get too complicated.

To be legible as a mainstream movie, Bombshell has to participate in the kinds of narratives promoted by Fox News and mainstream media itself. Namely, that the distinction of liberal versus conservative, framed through debates about white feminism or homonormative gay rights, are somehow the most important political distinctions. This ignores the fact that, for instance, the overemphasis on those distinctions is itself a reduction of political possibilities, or the way that classism and racism in media cut across such distinctions.

To be legible as a mainstream movie, Bombshell has to participate in the kinds of narratives promoted by Fox News and mainstream media itself.

There is a kind of running theme in the film that you cant leave Fox News because youre tainted by association (both Carr and Kelly float that idea). The movie emphasizes the blowback Megyn Kelly receives after the Trump debate, including Trump calling her a bimbo, without also addressing the ways that moment also helped her secure a prominent spot in mainstream media. (Instead, theres even a melodramatic scene asking us to sympathize with her as a mother, when her children are scared by a paparazzo at their hotel. There are later similar scenes of Carlson as a mother.)

Ultimately, the events depicted in the film helped Carlson reinvent herself as something of an authority on harassment, speaking at Women at the Top: Womens Empowerment conferences, getting a Justice for Women television deal with Lifetime network, and even calling the tour for her memoir, Getting Real, Be Fierce. Kelly became a hero of lean-in empowerment with her own network morning show, landing a very lucrative deal with NBC after she left Fox News, where she pursued #MeToo stories.

Despite lacking any morning show hosting experience, the immediacy with which Kelly was hired by NBC might have been a way of appealing to the time slots white minivan majority audience after the election. The fact that longtime network fixture Tamron Hall was passed over in the process is another reminder of the politics about race and gender in the media that Bombshell fails to acknowledge. (Kelly was later fired over a blackface controversy.)

We live in a moment when the complicated intersections between whiteness and gender are made evident by the fact that a majority of white women voted for Trump. But this film is still premised on the idea that conservative white femininity is something of an anomaly and against womens interests, rather than in the interests of plenty of white women.

It would be more interesting if the film had helped explain rather than participate in the medias normalization of radical, right-wing white women with racist, anti-gay, and anti-feminist views. This has a long history, from the era of Phyllis Schlafly (the subject of another current show) and Anita Bryant (subject of a forthcoming biopic), through that of Ann Coulter and Tomi Lahren. There is almost an affirmative action spot for such women on cable news and morning shows including Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Meghan McCain on The View. There is no counterpart, for instance, of radical, left-wing women of color pundits or media figures given that kind of welcoming treatment by mainstream media.

In focusing on the sensational media mechanics and legal machinations of the Carlson and Kelly stories, the film successfully turns questions of power and harassment into a stylish Hollywood procedural-as-thriller. But its selective story about gender and its refusal to complicate its racial perspective missed an opportunity to provide a more nuanced analysis about how power works.

Bombshell was originally titled Fair and Balanced, which is, arguably, a more honest description of the kind of Hollywood-friendly liberal recuperation of Fox News culture that its actually portraying. But its new, suggestive title, playing on the double meaning of news scandal and blonde femininity, has helped sell the movie as a powerful, zeitgeist-y story about women speaking truth to power. The fact that it might become the #MeToo movie of 2019 might be a more salient critique of the class and racial politics of Hollywoods versions of womens empowerment than anything the film depicts.

Read this article:
"Bombshell" Wants Us To See The Women Of Fox News As Heroes - BuzzFeed News

The reason that the Russian attack on the 2016 election worked so effectively is because of the way that the internet abhors moderation. From massive waves of false information spread virally on Facebook to the dark web corners where QAnon was born, the hands-off ideology allowed fascism and the alt-right to, in their own words, meme a president into office. Its not the only reason that Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, but it is a massive factor that cannot be overstated. If we want 2020 and politics beyond to be different, we have to begin the process of cleaning the radiation off the wasteland of the internet.

The question is: how do we do that? With Kamala Harris out of the race, the Democrats seem to have lost the only candidate who wished to tackle online hate speech and fake news as a major issue, maybe because Harris was the candidate who drew so much of it herself that an entire sub-culture grew just to debunk it. That means that whatever happens will have to be because of pressure that the people put on the next leader, whoever she may be.

But its not an easy thing. Even as someone who never misses an episode of Ian Danskins Alt-Right Playbook I can tell you that as hard as it is to understand the alt-right, knowing how to combat them is even more difficult. I spent a little time in my own head and talking with experts, and here is what I can propose for the coming year.

First, if you are dealing with an individual that you actually know such as a family member and close friend, you might be able to deprogram them after a lot of time and effort. Deprogram might seem like a loaded word, but as Danskin points out in How to Radicalize a Normie and the Endnote video supplement, many aspects of the alt-right and QAnon especially are essentially cult-like and will require dedication to combat. Much like how many people do not want to admit a substance use problem in the house, the desire to play down alt-right radicalization of a loved one as merely a difference of opinion is strong.

Most of us are not licensed counselors, and the idea of kidnapping someone to deprogram them went out of vogue in the 1970s. As a person who wants to help, its important to forge a relationship with the affected party by connecting with them through other things like mutual interests. In-person hate group participation dropped dramatically in 2013 as white nationalists and other reactionaries realized that a decentralized, leaderless movement housed on message boards and other spaces would keep them from falling prey to the usual state controls that ended previous groups. One year later, Gamergate happened as a test of the theory with pleasing results to hateful bigots, and it's now become the standard. In-person groups still exist, and there is a lot of overlap, but its this approach that led to things like 8chan becoming a place that has been directly linked to multiple murders.

Opposition to the things your affected loved one says will only reinforce their problems. As a general guide, its best to either steer them away from those topics of conversation and onto things that belong to the two of you instead of the alt-right. If they insist on engaging, ask questions calmly and non-judgmentally without trying to debunk. The alt-right deals in memetic content and in-jokes as an isolation mechanism. Forcing people to articulate why a pizzeria is secretly a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton often makes them realize how stupid it sounds. If youre very patient and very lucky, you might be able to eventually nudge them into counseling and get your loved one back.

Thats unfortunately the only way to fight this as individuals, but what about as a society? Thats even harder, and it will require a lot of activism.

The primary opposition right how is will. Companies like Facebook simply feel no need to tackle the issue, and with 8chan the current owner is mostly immune to financial repercussions (8chan has never made any money) and legal ones (owner Jim Watkins currently lives in the Philippines so good luck serving a subpoena). On top of that is Americas fervent dedication to an absolutist interpretation of free speech despite the fact that American fascists and hate groups have consistently reframed the argument about what they say as an attack on their right to say it. The average American is for free speech, with no desire to look at the fine print of the matter.

Because of that, I wouldnt start trying to jail Mark Zuckerberg over not fighting hate speech or fake news too much. Even if you take on people much further down the food chain such as Mark Meechan (Count Dankula) who taught his dog to give a Nazi salute when asked "Do you wanna gas the Jews?" you often end up starting a giant backlash that empowers people who use free speech arguments to protect white nationalism. As a Gamergate target myself, it is frustrating that there seems to be little to no legal repercussion for the online hate mobs, but often the case is that its just practically more harm than its worth to prosecute even when laws are broken.

Nonetheless, these companies can be influenced by the free market to change and it is probably the best path forward. Twitter, for example, has taken a much harder line against white supremacy content after years of being bashed for allowing it to thrive. Reddit as well has cleaned up its act considerably, recognizing that the constant bad press for being home to so many racists was hurting its image. They are far more careful about banning boards or quarantining sub-reddits. Its definitely a step in the right direction, small as it may seem to people who still get attacked through the sites.

8chan is currently down because even though its hard to hit Watkins for his work personally, the people who have to host the site increasingly want nothing to do with it. Storm Front as well, the traditional home of neo-Nazis online, has found it much harder to find a home for their brand of rancid mayonnaise. All of that comes from pressure on the people who control where the platforms are hosted. These are conservative companies that generally dont want any trouble, and they have every right to tell a client no thank you without raising the specter of official censorship.

Companies like PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo are also susceptible to pressure. Groups like the Proud Boys and people like Milo Yiannopoulos have systematically found themselves ousted from platforms that enable them to raise money for hateful causes. As their reach declines, so does their influence. Fighting hate by going after their servers and payment sources has been a proven tactic over the last couple of years. It should continue in earnest.

Legislation has a place as well as a way to put public pressure on companies. Its a bit early to see if grilling by members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will have much of an effect on Facebook, but its a start. One law I would personally like to see is something mandating a certain amount of human moderators per number of users, and also mandating they be regionally distributed wisely. Non-English speakers should not be the primary moderators of American content, for instance.

Its important to understand that companies like Facebook are perfectly capable of fixing a good chunk of the problem. They simply dont want to. There is this idea that all this can be solved with a better algorithm to automatically shut down hate speech. Algorithms have their place. Facebook launched a great one after the Christchurch shooting to take down content. That said, there is no substitution for human oversight as any woman who reacted to a rape threat with men are trash and ended up with a suspended account will tell you. I landed in Facebook jail for a week over sharing this with a text description for the blind. We need people, not cost-saving bots.

Theres this misconception that we can improve technology to deal with the alt-right and hate speech. While monitoring bots can get better, they only care about what we teach them and they do not contextualize adequately. Well build a machine that can beat nearly anyone at chess but well probably never build one that can beat hardly anyone at Dungeons and Dragons. There must be an increased human presence on the ground that has adequate incentive to fight the problem. A corps of workers in this country who have the human capacity to understand the problems and the ability to fight it, will change the argument in ways that mindless machines built to replace human thought never will.

We have to care if anything is going to be done because left to their own devices companies will just do whatever is profitable no matter the risk to everyone else. Make no mistake, the rise of the alt-right and the new fascist movement in America is big, powerful, and mostly operating un-checked right now. These spaces have already bred multiple killers. And they continue to empower far-right interests by inundating our public consciousness with hate and falsehoods. Its not censorship to demand that lies be treated like lies and its not the death of free speech if Nazis arent allowed to have a 100,000-member Facebook group.

But it will only stop if we start to agree that there is a problem and demand that people who can make a difference do so. The loved ones in your life who have been led astray by toxic online communities deserve and need your compassion to be free of them. The corporations that make millions off these highly-engaged groups and the radical right politicians who benefit from fake news and hate speech do not. They must be pressured into doing something about it with every tool we have at our disposal as a democracy and a free market. If a large enough shift occurs, it will become the new, less-hateful normal.

And that is poor ground to grow the next fascist leader in.

Jef Rouner is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.

Link:
How to Fight the Alt-Right Online in 2020 - Houston Press

When I was 13, I was convinced that Jews controlled global financial networks and that black Americans committed homicide at a higher rate than whites. I believed that the wage gap was a fallacy fabricated by feminists, and I was an avid supporter of the mens rights movement. I accepted all of the alt-right maxims I saw as a Reddit moderator, despite my Jewish upbringing in a liberal household with a tight-knit family that taught me compassion, empathy, and respect for others.

Now, Im 16, and Ive been able to reflect on how I got sucked into that voidand how others do, too. My brief infatuation with the alt-right has helped me understand the ways big tech companies and their algorithms are contributing to the problem of radicalizationand why its so important to be skeptical of what you read online.

My own transformation started when I switched into a new school in the middle of eighth grade. Like anyone pushed into unfamiliar territory, I was lonely and friendless and looking for validation and social connection. But unlike others, I found that validation on the alt-right corners of the internet. The alt-right and the tech platforms that enable it became the community I neededuntil I finally opened my eyes and realized it was turning me into someone who I never wanted to be.

A few weeks after I started going to my new school, I noticed that a bunch of the guys in my class were browsing a website called Reddit. I didnt understand what the site was or how it worked, but I was desperate to fit in and make a mark in my new environment. I went up to one of those guys during study hall and asked how to use Reddit. He helped me set up an account and subscribe to subreddits, or mini communities within the Reddit domain. I spent the rest of that period scrolling through Reddit and selecting the communities I wanted to join.

The alt-right and the tech platforms that enable it became the community I neededuntil I finally opened my eyes.

Thats how I discovered r/dankmemes. At first, I only understood about half of the posts that I saw. A lot of the content referenced political happenings that I had never heard of. There were hundreds of sarcastically written posts that echoed the same general themes and ideas, like there are only 2 genders, or feminists hate men. Since I had always been taught that feminism and social justice were positive, I first dismissed those memes as abhorrently wrong.

But while a quick burst of radiation probably wont give you cancer, prolonged exposure is far more dangerous. The same is true for the alt-right. I knew that the messages I was seeing were wrong, but the more I saw them, the more curious I became. I was unfamiliar with most of the popular discussion topics on Reddit. And when you want to know more about something, what do you do? You probably dont think to go to the library and check out a book on that subject, and then fact check and cross reference what you find. If you just google what you want to know, you can get the information you want within seconds.

So thats what I did. I started googling things like Illegal immigration, Sandy Hook actors, and Black crime rate. And I found exactly what I was looking for.

The articles and videos I first found all backed up what I was seeing on Redditposts that asserted a skewed version of actual reality, using carefully selected, out-of-context, and dubiously sourced statistics that propped up a hateful world view. On top of that, my online results were heavily influenced by something called an algorithm. I understand algorithms to be secretive bits of code that a website like YouTube will use to prioritize content that you are more likely to click on first. Because all of the content I was reading or watching was from far-right sources, all of the links that the algorithms dangled on my screen for me to click were from far-right perspectives.

I liked Reddit so much that after around a month of lurking, I applied for a moderator position on r/dankmemes. Suddenly, I was looking at far-right memes 24/7, with an obligation to review 100 posts a day as a moderator. I was the person deciding whether to allow a meme onto the subreddit or keep it off. Every day, for hours on end, I had complete control of what content was allowed on r/dankmemes. That made me even more curious about what I was seeing, leading to more Google searchesall of which showed me exactly what I already believed to be trueand subsequently shoving me deeper into the rabbit hole of far-right media. I spent months isolated in my room, hunched over my computer, removing and approving memes on Reddit and watching conservative comedians that YouTube served up to me.

It slowly hammered hatred into my mind like a railroad spike into limestone.

In my case, the alt-right did what it does best. It slowly hammered hatred into my mind like a railroad spike into limestone. The inflammatory language and radical viewpoints used by the alt-right worked to YouTube and Googles favorthe more videos and links I clicked on, the more ads I saw, and in turn, the more ad revenue they generated.

Some of the other moderators were under the influence of this poison, too. They started to focus on the same issues that alt-right forums and online media pushed into the headlines, and we would sometimes discuss how women who abort their children belong in jail, or how trauma actors would be used to fake school shooting events like the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Granted, not all of the moderators took part in these talks. It only takes a few though, and those were the few that I admired the most. It soon felt like a brotherhood or a secret society, like we were the few conscious humans that managed to escape the matrix. We understood what we believed to be the truth, and no one could convince us otherwise.

The alt-rights appeal started to dissipate that summer, when I took a month-long technology break to go to sleepaway camp before the start of my ninth grade year. But the biggest step in my recovery came when I attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., in September 2017, about a month after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where counter-protester Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist. I wanted to show my support of Trump while being able to finally meet the people behind the internet forums where I had found my community. After many tries, I finally managed to convince my mom to take me, telling her I simply wanted to watch history unfold (she wrote about the experience in the Washingtonian). But really, I was excited to meet the flesh-and-blood people who espoused alt-right ideas, instead of talking to them online.

We understood what we believed to be the truth, and no one could convince us otherwise.

The difference between the online persona of someone who identifies as alt-right and the real thing is so extreme that you would think they are different people. Online, they have the power of fake and biased news to form their arguments. They sound confident and usually deliver their standard messages strongly. When I met them in person at the rally, they were awkward and struggled to back up their statements. They tripped over their own words, and when they were called out by any counter protestors in the crowd, they would immediately use a stock response such as Youre just triggered. They couldnt come up with any coherent arguments; they rambled and repeated talking points.

The rally left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Seeing for myself that the people I was talking to online were weak, confused, and backwards was the turning point for me. It wasnt immediate, but I slowly and gradually began to reduce my time on Reddit, and I eventually messaged the other moderators and told them that I was going to quit to focus on school. They all said that they wanted me to stay and pleaded with me to just take a break and come back later. I stayed on as a moderator in name only, no longer making decisions about any of the content assigned to me. A few months later, Reddit sent me a message with the subject line: You have been removed as a moderator of r/dankmemes. I felt like the character James Franco plays in 127 Hours as he walks out of the canyon that had imprisoned him for days on end, bloodied but alive nonetheless.

At this point, were too far gone to reverse the damage that the alt-right has done to the internet and to naive adolescents who dont know any betterchildren like the 13-year-old boy I was. Its convenient for a massive internet company like Google to deliberately ignore why people like me get misinformed in the first place, as their profit-oriented algorithms continue to steer ignorant, malleable people into the jaws of the far-right. My own situation was personally very difficult but had no wider consequences. But dont forget that Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015, was radicalized by far-right groups that spread misinformation with the aid of Googles algorithms. It all started when Roof asked Google about black-on-white crime.

Tech companies need to be held accountable for the radicalization that results from their systems and standards.

YouTube is an especially egregious offender. Over the past couple months, Ive been getting anti-immigration YouTube ads that feature an incident presented as a news story, about two immigrants who raped an American girl. The ad offers no context or sources, and uses heated language to denounce immigration and call for our county to allow ICE to seek out illegal immigrants within our area. I wasnt watching a video about immigration or even politics when those ads came on; I was watching the old Monty Python Cheese Shopsketch. How does British satire, circa 1972, relate to Americas current immigration debate? It doesnt.

If we want to stop destructive, far-right, and alt-right ideologies from spawning domestic terrorism incidents in the future, tech companies need to be held accountable for the radicalization that results from their systems and standards. Google and YouTube should own up to their part in this epidemic, but I doubt they will. Ethics and morals have no meaning when millions of dollars are at stake. Thats the America that I, along with millions of other Gen Z kids, are growing up in.

During my ordeal into and out of the online alt-right, Ive learned that anyone can be manipulated like I was. Its so easy to find information online that we collectively forget that so much of the content the internet offers us is biased. Everyone has ulterior motives when they try to persuade you to come over to their way of thinking, and its our job as human beings to understand what those motives are.

View original post here:
I became part of the alt-right at age 13, thanks to Reddit and Google - Fast Company

Posted December 10, 2019 10:54:45

He's been the subject of alt-right conspiracy theories, labelled an "errand boy" for Hillary Clinton, even accused of being a leftist spy.

Australian diplomat Alexander Downer's warning to his US counterpart in London was the "tipping point" for an FBI probe into Russia's interference in the 2016 US election and, even now, may form part of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Now, thanks to the release of a watchdog report, we know what he said.

It started with a night out at the Kensington Wine Room, a posh bar in London, in May 2016.

As Australia's High Commissioner to the UK, Mr Downer was meeting with a member of Mr Trump's campaign team, George Papadopoulos.

According to Mr Downer's account of the night, Papadopoulos revealed information about Russia's plans to interfere in the US election before the release of tens of thousands of emails authored by Mr Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton, a claim Papadopoulos has denied.

"[Papadopoulos] said one of the reasons [Trump would win] was that the Russians might release some information which could be damaging to Hillary Clinton," Mr Downer said previously.

In a diplomatic cable to Canberra, Mr Downer downplayed the significance of Papadopoulos' apparent prediction.

But when Wikileaks subsequently dumped the Clinton emails, Mr Downer requested a meeting about an "urgent matter" with his counterpart at the US Embassy in London.

A report by US Department of Justice inspector-general Michael Horowitz has today revealed exactly what the then-high commissioner said.

Referred to in the report only as a "friendly foreign government official", Mr Downer said that Papadopoulos "suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs Clinton (and President Obama)."

Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe characterised Mr Downer's statement as a "tipping point" in the July 2016 decision to open an investigation into Russia's attempts to interfere with the 2016 election.

"Because not only was there information that Russia was targeting US political institutions," the report states.

"Now the FBI had received an allegation from a trusted partner that there had been some sort of contact between the Russians and the Trump campaign."

The FBI's probe led to US special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation into election meddling, which congressional democrats may now use as evidence that Mr Trump obstructed justice as they start drawing up articles of impeachment.

In short, Mr Downer's suggestion that the Trump campaign "received some kind of suggestion from Russia" set off a chain of events that, along with more recent claims about Ukraine, are likely to see Mr Trump impeached by the democrat-controlled House of Representatives and tried in the Senate.

It's no wonder Trump allies have gone after the former Australian foreign minister.

Many of the theories that spread in right-wing chatrooms originated with Papadopoulos himself. He has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Mr Downer recorded their now-infamous wine bar meeting on his smartphone.

Papadopoulos and other Trump supporters often cite a theory that the intelligence services of several countries, including Australia, had a secret plan to disrupt Mr Trump's campaign.

Mr Papadopoulos served a 14-day prison sentence last year after admitting he had lied in a 2017 interview with the FBI, hindering their investigation.

The wild theories have made it all the way into the halls of power.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump supporter, gave credence to the tale, suggesting in October that Mr Downer was "directed" to seek a meeting with Papadopoulos.

He wrote that "US intelligence communities" accepted "information from an Australian diplomat who was also directed to contact Papadopoulos and relay information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation".

In a letter to Senator Graham, published on Twitter, US ambassador Joe Hockey rejected the assertion.

There were also claims that by reporting the matter directly to the US Embassy in London, Mr Downer did not go through the correct diplomatic channels.

Mr Graham even implied Australia might be working against Mr Trump by initially refusing to release the text of Mr Downer's report.

Today's report offered a 476-page deep-dive on the origins of the Mueller probe. Mr Downer's role as the "friendly foreign government" (FFG) official is scattered throughout, but the main focus is the FBI's propriety.

There's no criticism of Mr Downer or Australia's role, and it's conceivable that, had the inspector-general discovered wrongdoing, he would have found the space to mention it in such a sweeping report.

US Attorney-General William Barr told The Australian that Mr Downer "did the right thing in supplying that information; the FFG has acted at all times just as we would hope a close ally would".

"We are grateful that we have such friends," he said. "What was subsequently done with that information by the FBI presents a separate question."

Only time will tell whether the Australia/Downer conspiracy theories will fizzle out, starved of fuel.

In the meantime, Mr Trump's allies may find alternative sources of ammunition in the report's pages.

The inspector-general ultimately "did not find any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI's decision to conduct these operations," which contradicts Mr Trump's 'witch hunt' narrative.

However, a substantial portion of the report criticises the FBI for failing to meet its own standards of accuracy and completeness in filing applications for surveillance into a member of the Trump campaign.

One low-ranking FBI lawyer may even face prosecution for altering a document related to FBI wiretaps.

Mr Trump described the report's findings as "a disgrace".

"It's far worse than I would've ever thought possible. It's an embarrassment to our country. It's dishonest."

A separate review is also underway, led by prosecutor John Durham, who was handpicked by the President's ally, Mr Barr.

In a rare statement, Mr Durham publicly said he disagreed with today's report, as did the Attorney-General.

The President says he is waiting for Mr Durham's report.

Topics:donald-trump,government-and-politics,world-politics,us-elections,united-states

Originally posted here:
How Alexander Downer set off a chain of events that may lead to Donald Trump's impeachment - ABC News

Is irony or despair the best way to process the news that real was the most used word on Tinder bios in 2019? People are constructing advertisements for their hearts on a platform where their face will be viewed by thousands of people for the fraction of a second it takes to totally reject them. All the while, they say things like Im real, or Im looking for something real or you better be real.

Tinder released a summary of all the data it collected from its users over the past year. And leaving out all of the creepy stuff it keeps tabs on like, your exact location when you get horny for attention and affection, what you do on other apps like Facebook and Instagram, and the exact phrasing of your awkward attempts at flirting with strangers and then sells to advertisers, it presented us with The Year in Swipe: What 2019 Taught Us About the Future of Dating.

And what does it tell us about dating? Other than its a hell we all acknowledge but cant seem to escape? The big revelations includes the fact that Generation Z someone please come up with a better name for this reference politics more than travel, probably because the generation includes those 24 or younger and most of them dont have any money at the moment. Believing in something is free, after all. And people like to spell out their particular dietary preferences, with kombucha, vegan, and avocado all increasing in usage from the previous year.

What that actually says about dating is that it is the same as it always was. People tend to date and mate with people who share the same political beliefs, so flashing AOC or RBGs initials on your profile, a very popular thing to do in 2019, is just a quick way to weed out all the alt-right or Trump supporters in the sea of daters. If you do fight on your first date, if a message on the app leads to a date which it most likely wont, its probably going to be about whether the Irishman was the most boring movie of the year. (I dont know, I think I lost consciousness for like an hour of it, nothing was happening. The Irishman is a profound study of a mans inability to participate in the intimacy... Date picks up their phone and starts texting.)

People also tend to date people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and food has become an easy way to determine which class you belong to, without just announcing your salary to all other Tinder users. Kombucha is about five or six times the price of a can of soda, avocado prices have almost doubled over the past year, and vegans tend to be more financially affluent than meat eaters. Food preferences then become a kind of class signifier, a nicer way of saying No poors, no fattys. And Ive seen language like that on the app a lot, but that will never make one of these surveys.

In other words, people couple (or throuple or whatever poly people do) up in the same way they have for generations, the app simply changes the way that coupling looks. A much more entertaining, and illuminating, survey of Tinder data might be how people actually experience the app. How many people experience soul death when they log into their accounts, how many people have been sexually assaulted by people they met through the app, how the whole format of Tinder creates obstacles to commitment or intimacy, how many unsolicited dick pics and harassing messages and emotional abuse people have to wade through on their journey to love.

But its the word real in an incredibly fake environment where you know the vast majority of people are using face-tuned selfies and photos from when they were five years younger and outright deception in their bios that gets to me. Real bios, real photos, real height if youre a man, unless you really are tall and hot and fascinating, are only going to get you discarded faster.

A few weeks after we met on Tinder, Nicols told me a friend ran an intervention on his Tinder bio. He wasnt getting much attention, and his wise female friend informed him that he was too honest about his belief in social justice, his experiences as an immigrant in the United States, his passion for soccer and jiu jitsu. He needed to tone it down. His profile, when I came across it, was much pared down. It kind of just said he liked coffee. He disclosed his height because that was frequently the first question women asked and he was tired of answering it over and over. He added a picture of himself with a cat.

And it worked. Flattening himself out into a couple of pictures taken at a flattering angle and saying he liked a thing that everyone likes got him more responses, and it got him the first interaction that led to an actual date. And it led to you and me, he said. Because two weeks after we met on Tinder, we were wed.

I didnt have the heart to tell him at the time that I didnt even read the part about him liking coffee. I thought he was hot, and I was looking for a one night stand and figured he would do. The fact that it worked out so well was due to all the ways that courtship has always worked: the mystery of chemistry, the discovery of shared values and political beliefs, and a love for David Fincher movies (always important for any relationship).

Love is and always will be a great, big puzzle. No amount of data analysis will ever reveal the mystery at the heart of it.

View post:
Why are people on Tinder swiping right on Kombucha and 'realness'? - The Guardian