Mediaboss Marketing

DECEMBER 12, 2019

CHLO VALDARY IS a public educator and lecturer who teaches a program called the Theory of Enchantment to students, administrators, and educators at high schools and college campuses around the country. The program, which aims to teach young people a framework for healthy identity formation, is rooted in the study of classic literature and philosophy alongside cartoons, ad campaigns, the music of Beyonc, and the porous borders where universal narratives merge with contemporary pop culture.

Valdary also hosts the Theory of Enchantment podcast, where she holds conversations with artists, musicians, and authors, as well as business owners and community organizers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and Commentary.

I spoke with Valdary about her visions for social change and how they are informed by storytelling in all its forms, and we discussed the connections between politics and art, anomie and extremism, and volunteerism and self-knowledge.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

OTIS HOUSTON: Where did the name Theory of Enchantment come from?

CHLO VALDARY: I was at The Wall Street Journal for a year a couple of years ago and I was working on a research paper about why we gravitate toward the things we gravitate toward within pop culture, and one of the books I read was called Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki, who was a former marketing director of Apple. And that book was very inspirational to me because the way he defined enchantment was essentially the process by which you delight someone with an object or product or idea or whatever. And this idea of inspiring people or delighting people is a little bit more than a material reaction to something, right? The reason people buy Nike shoes is not simply because they like the design, but because the idea behind Nike speaks to something fundamental to their identity, and so in that sense it delights them. And that has a lot to do with why I picked the word enchantment, because thats essentially what Im trying to do with great art.

Theory of Enchantment is my company and what it aims to do is sell a curriculum to high schools, corporations, and other workplaces. The curriculum specifically focuses on mental health and healthy identity formation for students given that there is an epidemic right now of increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and actions among high school students and also among college students. A study found that one in five college students last year had suicidal thoughts, which is a very new trend that were dealing with in this country. The curriculum aims to teach basic life skills about knowing the self and knowing ones neighbor or the Other, if you will. The idea is that you cannot really navigate the complexity of the world if you dont understand the complexity of your own self. What that means is being aware of everything that human beings deal with, like insecurities and parental baggage and all the things that we have to navigate that are part of the human condition.

I specifically use both contemporary artists and their material in conversation with ancient artists and their material. For example, I teach Stoicism as a sort of emotional regulation practice. I teach what Epictetus and all of the other Stoics actually taught in their original works, but then at the end of a particular section in the Theory of Enchantment curriculum we study the movie The Lion King, which is obviously not really about lions. Its a story about coming of age, of a transition from adolescence to adulthood. And so, what is seemingly just an entertaining Disney film is actually a story that young people can learn from and apply certain lessons in their own lives, lessons that directly relate to their sense of self.

[Discussions of] mental health come with a lot of stigma these days, unfortunately I think thats changing, but it still has a lot of stigma attached to it. So if one can teach this through the lens of pop culture, I think its much more palatable for the demographic in question. Connecting the ancient ideas of Stoicism that touch upon concepts like sympathia the idea that you are connected with everyone else around you is precisely what the song Circle of Life is about. So connecting these things and showing that theres a dialogue happening between ancient voices and contemporary voices I think is fascinating and can help texts come alive in a new way for students that will also help their personal growth.

Your Theory of Enchantment curriculum draws heavily on literature and movies, as well as philosophical texts. And, as you mentioned, you also bring in popular contemporary music for close reading. How can we draw meaning from popular entertainments in ways that are important for how were living our lives right now?

I think that, oftentimes, people who discuss the impact and power and influence of the Western canon do so by referring to people who are no longer with us. And whats ironic about that is that the ideas many of these individuals, authors, and intellectuals actually promoted are what we would call timeless. But if they are timeless, that generally means that they can be found in different forms and contemporary spaces. Its very possible, for example, for me to find ideas espoused by Plato or by the Stoics or other thinkers and intellectuals that could be found in contemporary hip-hop or in contemporary literature.

Even music is a text of sorts, right? So we can look at lyrics from Jay-Z or from other contemporary artists. Even Lil Wayne has certain songs that would be relevant to healthy identity formation. And so I thought, lets expand this canon because what Shakespeare is saying in this piece, I heard in a song by Drake earlier this week. Think of people like W. E. B. Du Bois, who said, I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not, or Baldwin, who was very explicit about how the Western canon shaped and informed his ability to write.

If we bring to light the fact that they are the same ideas that have been promoted by people who have come before us, they can be ideas that are, once again, relevant to a new generation. And so a new generation of students is not forced to simply be in conversation with Plato in a historical vacuum, but can bring him into their own lives and have him sit in conversation with Kendrick Lamar or Jay-Z or some other contemporary artists that they actually look up to.

I sometimes wonder if its becoming difficult for people to connect contemporary narratives with historical ones because, especially in the last, say, 10 years or so, many people have been questioning the notion that we have any kind of truly shared narratives at all. The value and universality of literature from the Western canon in particular is being called into question in academia and in school curriculums, and some are advocating for replacing texts. But Im not sure anyone agrees on what to replace them with or what a more inclusive canon would look like.

I have seen a push to replace, for example, old white male authors with authors who are people of color. But I would say no, just expand the canon! And I would again echo W. E. B. Du Boiss sentiment, which is that I can be in conversation with Shakespeare, and if Shakespeare was here and alive he would actually respect that.

Lets say you wanted to throw out Shakespeare and replace him with Baldwin, just as a hypothetical thought exercise. You cant do that, because Baldwin was influenced by Shakespeare; Shakespeare will still be there. You cant really separate the two, and I dont want to separate the two. And so, I think its better and much more enriching to say that the canon is actually pretty expansive, and lets continue to expand the canon. And thats why we refer to these peoples ideas as timeless, right? Not to be clich, but their ideas echo throughout eternity. These ideas are central to the human condition, and you can find them in different forms, articulated by all different types of authors and intellectuals and influencers, whether they are dead old white men or people of color, because there is a transcendent human condition that connects us in some way.

I would also say that it is incredibly ironic for someone to want to throw out the Western canon in order to replace it with, quote unquote, authors of color. Because if people think that the West is exclusively white, thats the wrong idea. There are white supremacists who extol the virtues of Western civilization, and by that they mean white people. And then there are some anti-racist people who will say, Lets throw out the Western canon because its too white. And whats ironic is that those two camps of people are actually agreeing on that point. And Im disagreeing with them and saying that the West is actually full of people of different backgrounds. The Western canon includes both Shakespeare and Baldwin, both William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. It includes all of these authors and all of these ideas, which are oftentimes in sync with each other, rhyme with each other, et cetera.

I think that Beyonc and Jay-Z represent an interesting conversation on this. I dont know if youve seen her music video Apeshit, where she and Jay-Z are in France. Beyonc and Jay-Z present [Meghan Markle] with this Mona Lisalike figure, but instead of it being the original Mona Lisa its a picture of the Duchess. Beyonc is essentially rejecting the idea that people of color are not part of the West. What she was saying is that we are part of the rich legacy that created the West and makes the West what it is today. And I think thats very clear if you study the African-American musical tradition, which includes blues and jazz. This is the West. This is the Western tradition! So instead of rejecting the West, I think its more accurate and more interesting to say we are very much part of the West and we have contributed to its traditions and we can have our texts be in conversation with those who have come before us without it seeming like a jarring experience.

I was just listening to you yesterday on a podcast with the comedian and writer Bridget Phetasy, and you said something that I thought really got to the heart of what it means to create art or to be an artist. It might sound a little bit provocative on the surface, but I think it got to some truth about the relationship between identity and creativity. You said, essentially, that a person who follows the doctrines of intersectionality as an overarching worldview cant truly be an artist.

Yes. Well, its interesting because, increasingly, I feel like there are some people who subscribe to intersectionality who would come to conclusions similar to mine, meaning they would totally be for more Baldwin in the classroom. And they would totally be for a dialogue between Shakespeare and Kendrick Lamar in the classroom, if that was an option. But I think that the way I came to my conclusions was very different from the way they would come to theirs.

Speaking of Baldwin, he wrote a piece in the late 40s titled Everybodys Protest Novel in which he criticized the author of Uncle Toms Cabin and he also criticized Richard Wright. And he says, The failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of life, the human being, the denial of his beauty, dread, power, in its insistence that it is his categorization alone which is real and which cannot be transcended. I think that is the essence of my critique of certain intersectionalists. And I say certain because I dont think all people who subscribe to intersectionality would necessarily come to conclusions that undermine art. But many of those whom Ive encountered do fall into that category. And its essentializing categories that are constructs and that really dont speak to the essence of who we are as human beings and the universal human condition that we must all navigate. We must all navigate fears and ambitions and insecurities and our sense of purpose and meaning in the world, whether we are white and rich and high status or we are poor and coming from an inner-city background.

Thats the other critique that I have of intersectionality that it seems to understand the meaning of life only in a materialist way, which is, in my opinion, neither the primary form of meaning nor the most interesting form of meaning. So in that sense, I think it would be very difficult for people who really believe in intersectionality to produce great art. I am an African-American woman and if I believed in certain intersectionalist ideas, I would say that you couldnt possibly understand my experience as a human being because we come from different backgrounds. But anyone who knows anything about art, whether youre producing music or literature or a painting, knows that the role of the artist is to facilitate an experience in which the audience can see themselves in the work of the artist. If you subscribe to the idea that someone cant possibly feel your experience or empathize with your experience because they dont look like you, how can you experience art? What is the relationship you have with art?

I hate to say his name, but if we look at somebody like the white nationalist Richard Spencer, although his intentions are not morally equivalent to an intersectional social justice point of view, he is similarly essentialist in his beliefs about race and its singular importance to identity formation. And Ive always thought that, so long as his whiteness is central to his self-conception, its impossible that he would ever produce any poetry, or anything of beauty, because its such a limiting viewpoint to see yourself primarily as a representative of your race or your gender or what have you. Ultimately, it produces an identity thats just too boring to say anything interesting about.

Yeah, I think thats very well put, especially your point about beauty. Its also ironic because [Spencer] claims that he is coming from a sort of Western predisposition or a place of love for Western civilization. I think hes being selective in his understanding of what Western civilization has produced. If I were to reduce it to a very simple formula, I think that this is all a function of unhealthy identity formation and insecurity.

By the way, Im actually about to start doing a lot of work with organizations that focus on rehabilitating former extremists and helping them integrate back into society, so Ill be dealing a lot with the ideology that foments the creation of white nationalists and also members of ISIS.

If you were to study the development of an extremist, oftentimes youll find that the catalyst for diving deeper into extremism has something to do with identity malfunction or just unhealthy identity formation because of a whole host of issues. What often happens is, if your sense of identity is undermined, you can feel that you are totally lost and you will want to latch onto something that gives you a feeling of home, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. And we know for a fact that white nationalist groups oftentimes prey on disaffected youth who are in search of that sense of meaning, and they exploit that.

I do a lot of work in my community with mentoring young people whose parents are incarcerated, and these people tend to be at risk of joining gangs, and the patterns are the same. This also speaks to the universality of the human condition, right? Whether youre talking about studying the factors that go into peoples decisions to join street gangs or peoples decisions to join white nationalist movements, the patterns are often the same. Youre talking about disaffected youth, lack of home structure, lack of meaning and purpose. Oftentimes theres alcoholism in the family. Oftentimes there are low socioeconomic factors affecting these decisions, and all of these things sometimes come together to create this monster, so to speak. If you are of a certain background, you may be more likely to join a gang. If you have all these things happening in your life and you are of another background, you may be likely to join an alt-right organization. So, you can see how all of this is related to mental health and healthy identity formation.

So, when you talk about us digging deep and finding some kind of transcendent meaning or ethos to continue to build our culture or society around, what would that look like on a large scale?

The million-dollar question! I dont know I only know what I can do to contribute to it, which is what Im trying to do with the Theory of Enchantment. But its not one thing, its multiple things. I can tell you about the organizations I love that I think speak to this issue of spiritual nourishment on different levels. For example, I volunteer for an organization in Brooklyn called Children of Promise, which, as I mentioned earlier, mentors kids whose parents are incarcerated. Its given something to the kids I volunteer for, but its also given something to me, and I think that idea of service and experiencing obligation to another in pursuit of a higher good is something that Americans need to do more of. I think if there was a campaign to produce more of the spirit of volunteerism, that would be very useful for Americans. Ive been reading a book called Trust First [by Bruce Deel and Sara Grace], which is about an organization called City of Refuge, which opened in Atlanta and now its in dozens of locations around the country where it helps rehabilitate drug addicts and sex trafficking victims. Theyre really doing incredible work thats bringing people on the fringes of society back into the fold and back into places of love, quite frankly. There are organizations like Homeboy Industries, which rehabilitates former gang members in Los Angeles and gives them jobs and trains them and really helps them grow.

And so, I think its not necessarily one thing that we have to do. But what if there was a new spirit of ideas that came out of the American people about how we shore up people in need, and not simply in a materialist way, but in a way that will rejuvenate their spirit and in a way in which they will know that they are important to us? And by the way, its not just people who are victims of X, Y, Z; its people in general. How can we make it so that our young people in general know that we care about them and know that we believe in them and believe in their potential?

So I think its this idea of a uniting spirit that needs to be fostered by everyone, from civil service leaders to politicians, to business owners, that gives us the sense that were in this together, that we know some of the problems were confronted with, but we have each others backs and we believe in each others potential despite the mistakes we have made in the past. (And despite the mistakes that were going to make in the future, because human beings make mistakes and theres no such thing as perfection, which sounds clich, but no one actually internalizes that fact.)

One of the other things that I teach in Theory of Enchantment is a series of quotes from Maya Angelou. She says, if you tell a person over and over again they are nothing, they will say to you, So you think I am nothing? Dont worry about what I am now, For what I will be, I am gradually becoming.

The moral of the story is that a person cannot develop character unless they are valued. If you were to expand that on a larger scale, a nation cannot develop character unless its citizenry values one another. I think that if we try to endow our work and the way we live with this sense of caring and of valuing both ourselves and one another, then we can perhaps see a renewal of the American spirit.

Otis Houston is a graduate of Pacific Universitys MFA creative writing program and lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared inKitchen WorkandDefenestration.

Link:
Back into the Fold: An Interview with Chlo Valdary - lareviewofbooks

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.

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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.

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