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Emoji might not be 66 million years old, but they are pretty much everywhere. Join Ben and Amory as they explore the history of dinosaur emojiin LGBTQ+ communities and their more recent use as an online dog-whistle for anti-trans activists. What happens when one symbol is used for conflicting reasons? And can the dinosaur emoji avoid redefinition or extinction?

Thanks to Dane Grey for this week's artwork. You can find more of their work on InstagramorRedbubble.

Episode producers: Dean Russell and Ben Brock Johnson

Co-hosts: Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson

Web producer: Rachel Carlson

Show producers: Dean Russell, Nora Saks, Kristin Torres and Quincy Walters

Editor: Maureen McMurray

Mixer, sound designer and music creator: Matt Reed

Additional production: Nora Saks, Kristin Torres, Quincy Walters, and Rachel Carlson

Show notes

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This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben Brock Johnson: All right, so Amory, can you read this incredible piece of literature?

Amory Siverston: We've got a telephone little dude making some kind of expression with his mouth open, but I can't really see what the eyes are doing. Got a sailboat, little whale. And...

Ben: Just just for the record, just for the record, I'm not asking you to literally repeat the emoji. I'm asking you to read this. Because it is an incredible piece of literature.

Amory: Well, the first line of it looks like Moby Dick.

Ben: Hmmm! How would you translate it?

Amory: First line says, got a bad phone call, I got to get on a boat and go see about a whale.

Ben: So this is what you are looking at right now, Amory, is an excerpt of a translation, an emoji translation of the Herman Melville classic Moby Dick or The Whale.

Amory: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben: And it's called Emoji Dick.

Amory: (Laughs.)

Ben: This was admittedly years ago. And the book was translated by people all over the world. And whats interesting here is that they actually translated some of the same words differently in emoji. Like Queequeg or the whale or the sea. And you know what this is like. Like, so do you know the hot and sweaty, red-faced emoji with its tongue out?

Ben: What does that one mean to you?

Amory: That, to me, is it's a it's a hot day and you're cleaning out the garage and you're like, Oh, this sucks, I'm so hot and I hate this so much.

Ben: I'm pretty sure that's not how the kids use it.

Amory: Oh no.

Ben: I think the kids used that emoji as in like this makes me horny.

Amory: What?! It's not the way we did it in my day.

Ben: So I want us to explore this. This specific thing that is happening with this specific set of emoji that's really become this heated debate involving who gets to own the meaning of symbols, specifically the symbols that we all use to make meaning on our phones.

Ben: And the specific emoji that I want to talk about today, Amory, is not the eggplant emoji. Not the hot and bothered emoji, or cleaning out your garage.

But I want to talk about the T. rex and brachiosaurus emoji.

Amory: Im Amory Sivertson.

Ben: Im Ben Brachiosaurus Johnson. And from WBUR, Bostons NPR Station youre listening to Endless Thread.

Amory: 2022 BABY!

Ben: And were gonna start with this one: The saga of those innocent little dinosaur emoji that ended up getting used for something not so innocent.

Amory: And what the tug-of-war over the meaning of these dinos the tiny-armed green tyrannosaurus and their goose-necked sidekick and prey, the blue brachiosaurus or brontosaurus or apatosaurus ... WHAT the meaning of these dinos tells us about how we use symbols.

Ben: So, to understand this dinosaur emoji story, we thought we should start with a little dinosaur knowledge. So, Amory. Join me on this chopper to Isla Nublar?

Amory: (Sings.)

Ben: (Sings).

Amory: When did you first become interested in dinosaurs?

Ben: Was it the Cretaceous or?

Riley Black: I'm 38, so going backwards that would be... (LAUGHS)

Amory: This is Riley Black.

Riley: I'm a science journalist and author. I've written books like Skeleton Keys and The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.

Ben: Riley LOVES her some dinos.

Riley: Big and loud, for whatever reason, was my jam.

Amory: Like when she was five and visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Her first encounter.

Riley: at the time, it was very dark and it was dim, very moody. And just seeing these skeletons that were so much bigger than I was, you know, seeing them in that kind of ghostly light and thinking about what did they look like, what did they sound like, what did they eat? I remember being very struck, standing in the shadow of a brontosaurus skeleton. Like, what did it sound when it breathed that sound of just like life coming out of this animal out of these old bones?

Ben: Now, she digs for fossils professionally. She writes about it and tweets about it. Online, she exists in multiple worlds. And multiple dinosaur communities.

Riley: A lot of it is very professionalized people talking about their new papers and new studies coming out in their latest field expedition. There's also a broader community of dinosaur and paleontology enthusiasts, people who just like to know more, or they were inspired by Jurassic Park, and they want to find out the real stories behind these animals. And the number of paleo-artists on social media right now is astounding...

Amory: If you look through some of this paleo art, it is astounding. Some of these things look real. A feathered sinosauropteryx, which kind of looks like a lemur-duck hybrid and it kinda looks like it was caught on camera.

But within this group of dinosaur artists and enthusiasts or, overlapping with this group theres another subset of people.

Riley: Many people who are queer, whether they are trans or some other form of genderqueer or whatever it is...We love dinosaurs.

Ben: Along with being a dinosaur expert, Riley is, herself, transgender. And according to Riley, there is a whole community of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts online. We had no idea. So we checked it out. Sure enough, theyre there. We found dozens of paleoartists online that identify as queer.

Amory: Type "dinosaur" into the LGBT subreddit. Hundreds of results, with pride dinos, rainbow dinos, dino moms, dino dads, and a LOT of puns. Like, Ally-saurus.

Ben: Trans-ceratops.

Amory: In 2018, the Twitter account for SUE the T. rex one of the worlds most famous dinosaurs, held at the Field Museum in Chicago that account updated SUEs bio to include the dinosaurs pronouns: they/them.

Ben: Whats the connection between people who identify as genderqueer and dinosaurs?

Riley: I am not entirely sure why this is an aspect of social psychology. I think that has not been plumbed as yet.

Ben: Social psychologists, please get plumbing. Because were not sure why either. Dinosaurs have been around for a whilejust like the LGBTQ community.

Amory: And, if you remember your elementary school science class or Jurassic Park youll recall that dinosaurs are all around. Because birds are dinosaurs. And Riley says that fact may be part of the draw for transgender people.

Riley: And I think that aspect of falling into more than one category at once and some of these threads of sort of transformation through time are just naturally appealing to people like me and other people in the trans community.

Ben: This community might not be gigantic. But it is strong and undeniably present. And along with art and expressions of pride, you will definitely see dino emoji.

Ben: Were you using the dinosaur emoji relatively frequently before all of this stuff happened?

Riley: Yeah, I mean, I would use dinosaur emojis for emphasis just to share things I was excited about, especially when paired with other emojis like I have a book that's coming out in April about the extinction of the dinosaurs that occurred 66 million years ago. Whenever I talk about it, I use a little dinosaur emoji, a comet emoji, a plant emoji and a raccoon emoji to kind of tell that story of like the dinosaurs going extinct and plants and mammals coming back afterwards and just having fun like with storytelling.

Amory: But a few months ago, Riley started to see dinosaur emoji that werent so fun.

Riley: I think my initial knee-jerk reaction, um, was just like, Well, you can't have them. Like dinosaurs are ours.

Ben: The T. Rex and brachiosaurus were showing up in the profiles of a different online community. Kind of as a badge. A dog whistle to say to others within that community: Im one of you.

Riley: It really just made zero sense to me whatsoever in terms of like, you know, they could have picked anything else and it might have made a little bit more sense to me.

Amory: Riley refers to the group of co-opters as TERFs, as in T-E-R-F. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, who call themselves gender critical. In other words, anti-trans.

Broadly speaking, TERFs promote the idea that trans women are really menthat, unlike cisgender women, trans women have benefited from being a part of the patriarchy and thus are a threat to cis women. Above all, they say that, unlike sex, gender identity is an ideology and is not grounded in science. Well come back to this.

Ben: You may recall the most famous or infamous person associated with TERF ideology is J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author. Among other things, in 2020, she published a 3700-word essay defending her belief that the term woman as a political and biological class was being eroded by people who refer to trans women as women.

Anyway, TERFs using dinosaur emoji was a problem for Riley.

Riley: To see, you know, our social enemies for lack of a better term taking, you know, these symbols and trying to use it as their dog whistle, it was something where it's just like, Where's this even coming from? This makes zero sense. And also dinosaurs are ours. I hate to speak for the entire trans or genderqueer community but, like, no. Weve already been wondering about them and drawing them and interested.

Amory: No matter who you are, if you see something beloved taken over by someone else, that can be hard. Suddenly, genderqueer fans of dinos everywhere felt under attack as TERFs kept dropping the emoji into their feeds.

Ben: And we know how these things go. Just think of Pepe the frog. Or the Punisher skull. Or the swastika. When outsider groups latch onto a symbol, that symbol is often changed. Irrevocably.

But emoji rex and brachiosaurus? Its more complicated. Because Riley and others refused to let go.

More on that in 66 millionmicroseconds.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Ben: Its not clear if TERFs knew they were co-opting something beloved to this slice of the genderqueer community. As far as we can tell, dinosaur emoji began showing up in anti-trans Twitter bios around October of last year.

And the catalyst may have been the UKs Parliament which reminds one of Muppets in more ways than one.

David Lammy: Denied their rights in this country under her watch. (Hearrr.)

Lammy: Once enslaved, then colonized, then repatriated. (Hearrr.)

Lammy: When will Black lives matter once again? (Hearrrrr.)

Amory: David Lammy is a liberal MP. Hes also a shadow secretary. His job is to criticize the conservative government. To stir up controversy, in a way. Hes good at it.

Ben: And back in September, Lammy was asked in a meeting about transgender rights. So, he responded calling out his colleagues on the right and in his own party for being anti-trans. He called them dinosaurs. As in, behind the times.

Amory: This was not big news. Except on Twitter, where a little pocket of the internet was blowing up. TERFs were offended by the analogy. And then, they embraced it.

Like one person who goes by the handle @LilyLilyMaynard. She started tweeting videos of her fellow TERFs outside the Labour Partys headquarters.

Ben: Theyre dressed in cheap, inflatable dinosaur costumes, singing off-key about genitals, which, were not going to play for obvious reasons. But if you Google Labour Party Head Office, the main image representing the building is of these dinosaurs. It would be comical if it werent in service of one group rejecting anothers identity.

Jeremy Burge: I feel like the first time we really saw the double meaning of the emoji has to be the eggplant.

Amory: There is one guy you have to call if you want to understand emoji.

Jeremy: They felt like an odd choice to put on the emoji keyboard, so people kind of immediately saw that and said, Thats funny. That now means a penis.

Ben: Say hello to Jeremy Burge.

Jeremy: And I'm the founder and chief emoji officer at Emojipedia.

Ben: What does that mean?

Jeremy: That's a good question, what does it mean? Emojipedia describes every emoji, what it looks like, what it looks like on all platforms. And for me, I oversee a small team of people who do exactly that describe how people use emojis and how they evolve over time.

Amory: We asked Jeremy, how common is this? Emoji double-meanings used like a badge

View post:
The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji | Endless Thread - WBUR

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert lamented the inflation of food prices on Tuesdays Late Show, specifically: meatflation, as prices for sirloin, boneless chunk roast and bacon have increased by 25%. In Canada, a rib roast could now cost as much as $100. Thats ridiculous, said Colbert. A hundred dollars? The only hunk of Canadian meat worth that much is Ryan Gosling.

But meat is only the rib-tip of the iceberg, as prices are increasing for everything from cooking oil to dairy to pizza ingredients, forcing many New York pizza shops to abandon the classic $1 slice. Its gotten so bad that Pizza Rat can only afford garlic knots, Colbert joked.

The inflated meat prices have been a drag on Joe Bidens approval ratings, now down to 38%, and a CNN poll found that the majority of Americans believe Biden isnt paying attention to the nations most important issues. Yes, hes focused on things Americans dont care about, like infrastructure, Colbert observed. He needs to change his slogan from Build Back Better to We Have the Meats!

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah celebrated the passage of Bidens $1.2tn infrastructure bill, which received support from 13 Republicans, to the chagrin of many colleagues. Donald Trump said Republicans who voted for the bill should be ashamed of themselves, while Representative Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called them traitors helping the communist takeover of America.

Which I know sounds crazy, but think about it how are Soviet tanks gonna invade America? Over the newly refurbished roads and bridges, Noah joked. Thats why youve gotta keep your roads and bridges broken, its called homeland security, people.

Its not just fellow lawmakers Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan said he was harassed by constituents for working with Democrats, with a voicemail calling him a traitor and a piece of shit whose family should die, among other insults.

And they say political discourse is dead, Noah joked. This is really disturbing, because what kind of person leaves voicemails any more?

This partisan anger, its happening over an infrastructure bill, people, he added. Infrastructure! I mean, I would get it if the new roads they were building all led to an abortion clinic, or if they were adding special carpool lanes for nonbinary people, but its just fixing things for everybody! So I dont get the anger.

And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel updated viewers on the congressional inquiry into the insurrection on 6 January. On Monday, Team Trump asked a federal judge to prevent the records from being released, which the judge refused. This could be bad for Donald Trump, Kimmel explained. If these documents are made public, we may finally know whether Trump and his associates were as involved in the events of January 6th as we already know they were.

The congressional committee issued subpoenas on Tuesday for 10 associates of Donald Trump, on top of six subpoenas on Monday. Congress wants them to provide testimony and to shed light on the war room that was assembled at the Willard hotel in DC, where Trumps minions brainstormed ways to overturn the election, Kimmel said. Boy, if they do ever end up arresting Trump, they should let Hillary cuff him. Shouldnt they, just for fun?

Kimmel also touched on how Trump acolytes in the media have begun to spin the siege in January. At first they seemed to agree that it was bad, but the new thing these rightwing cable channels are doing is treating these criminals who literally tried to overthrow our government, who if they werent white people with tattoos of Pepe the frog on their necks, Newsmax, Fox, OANN, theyd be calling for the death penalty, he said. Instead, theyre treating them like some kind of conscientious objectors, or something.

Continued here:
Stephen Colbert: Biden 'needs to change his slogan from 'Build Back Better' to 'We Have the Meats!'' - The Guardian

After a simple painting of a frog led The Gaming Goat to be accused of using a white supremacist symbol to promote their new title, Tournament Fishing, a number of tabletop RPG developers have since chosen to believe said accusation and publicly condemn the publisher.

Source: Tournament Fishing Media Kit, The Goat Games

The backlash against the publishers newly announced fishing-based deck-building game began shortly after its Kickstarter campaign went public on August 7th when The Dice Tower TTRPG news site contributor Suzanne Sheldon drew attention to how theres a game on @Kickstarter (being run by the publisher who just threatened to make me a good time) whos got a frog throwing the wh*te p*wer symbol on the rulebook cover.

Drawing comparisons between the artwork in question and the exaggerated use of Pepe the Frog and the OK hand symbol, Sheldon tweeted, Just awful. If you dont get the symbology being used here, youve missed the last 5 years.

100% this imagery was intentional to trigger the libs, Sheldon continued, turning to call on her Twitter followers to report Tournament Fishing for its perceived use as a hate symbol.

She added, So be it. They can laugh at me being upset at their racist bs all they want. If you want to report a project click the report the project button at the bottom hate symbols are in the prohibited > offensive category.

Related: Evil Hat Productions Attempts Combative Marketing For New TTRPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians By Declaring If You Dont Like Our Politics, Dont Buy Our Games

And look theres a reasonable chance that KS will make them change that image to keep the campaign going. And they will. And this terrible thing will be forgotten the next day, Sheldon surmised. But theyve shown who they are. Hold them accountable.

It should be noted that Sheldons comment that The Gaming Goat threatened to make me a good time refers to a recent post by the publishers CEO, Jeff Bergren, as part of an ongoing spat between the two.

On August 29th, Bergren shared a screenshot to his Facebook of a tweet made by Sheldon in which she asserted, as part of an ongoing Twitter conversation, Considering who [Bergren] is and his history in the industryId be surprised if he didnt reply with a sty take demonstrating his continuing stiness.

So many people that Ive never talked too in my life posting fun things on the internet, Bergren said of Sheldons tweet. Their friends slandered someone for not wearing a mask in a photo, while all of them have photos without masks. That political party affiliation rides hard! I guess if you have no other significance to the world, then this is the leg you stand on?

Source: Jeff Bergren Facebook

In reply to Bergren, another individual, Dwight Cenac, sarcastically stated, This person looks like theyd be a lot of fun at parties, to which Bergren answered, I bet only us could make her fun at a party. You down for the challenge?

Shoot me the ping, Ill bring the box of cats, said Cenac, assumedly referencing an inside joke between himself and Bergren.

Source: Jeff Bergren Facebook

Related: Player-Curated List Of Woke and Non-Woke TTRPG Companies Sparks Discourse Among Listed Entities

At some point following Sheldons tweets, a caption was added underneath the image of the frog on the Kickstarter page which cheekily read, This is Bob the frog. Bob is A OH KAY. Bob the frog does not have a hateful bone in his body and loves everyone.

Source: Tournament Fishing Kickstarter

As Sheldons accusation began to spread across social media, it eventually spawned its own topic on the popular TTRPG forum Board Game Geeks, wherein Tournament Fishing project manager Mathue Ryann eventually responded to the backlash and explained, I can assure you there is no ill will or intent with any of our art images.

He continued. While I dont want to see anyone leave the campaign if you want to cancel your pledge and are unhappy I completely understand and that and it is 100% obviously your right.

Reaching out to the artist, Ryann later shared the reference photos used in the creation of the frog artwork as further proof that none of the art in the game is intended to be ill willed or hurtful.

However, though he noted 100s of people look at all the art in the game and this was not something that was noticed by anyone, Ryann then announced, Now that is had been brought to our attention we will change the card art.

Yet, despite this explanation, The Gaming Goat still received condemnation from their TTRPG peers, as many designers and developers refused to accept that the artwork was anything but a Nazi dogwhistle.

On Board Games Geek, Badgers From Mars designer Andy Richdale announced that the developer had exercised its right to end its licencing agreement with TGG Games which will come into effect later in the year. The reason for this is the inappropriate behaviour that Jeff (CEO of TGG Games) has displayed when communicating with others in the hobby.

Further comments in response to concerns raised around their latest Kickstarter campaign have been unacceptable to us and failed to meet even the minimum standard we would expect from an industry professional, he added. We truly hope that Jeff gets an opportunity to reflect on recent events and come to an understanding of why these comments are unacceptable.

On Twitter, Mr. Cabbagehead Garden developer LudiCreations wrote, Racist statements and actions, explicit or implied threats, abusive and aggressive behavior are something that we condemn and deplore, whether it is in social media or in person.

We do not want to be part of any community or business relationship where those are tolerated or taken lightly, they added. So, to be clear: We will not have any future relationship with anyone making light of white supremacy and its signals, no matter how subtle.

Related: Ernie Gygax Jr. Claims Wizards Of The Coast Acted Like Corporate Raiders Towards Dungeons & Dragons, Criticizes Current Tabletop Trend Of Pushing Out Players Who Do Not Follow Modern Trends

Cauldron and Unbroken creator Artem Safarov similarly declared that he would be withdrawing from a solo game design to be published next year by TGG Games as a result of what he believed was a dismissive/defensive reaction to the issue of white supremacy/frog image on the Tournament Fishing campaign.

For the record I am fully confident that the image itself was accidental, he clarified. The reaction to it, however, made light of the issue and was a missed opportunity to understand the connection, acknowledge the threat of white supremacy and denounce it loudly and boldly.

Ultimately, on September 11th, The Gaming Goat took to Tournament Fishings Kickstarter page to address the frustrations about an image within the game and the initial response.

It was never our intent to offend anyone, we do not tolerate or support any form of racism, they reiterated. TGG-Games prides itself in creating games with diverse characters that promotes inclusivity and we believe that will shine through in this game. We truly value any chance to make the game better with not only stretch goals, but also with community feedback and we look forward to continuing this campaign with excitement and positivity.

Source: Tournament Fishing Kickstarter

Novelist, comic book creator, and YouTuber Jon Del Arroz responded to the backlash against The Gaming Goat by stating, The only way to deal with this is to have humor. If you have humor the SJWs lose every time. Because you are going to live your life to the fullest, you are going to have fun, and you are going to have a good time. And everybody wants to have a good time with you.

He added, The people like Suzanne, who want to create anger, hostility, and division in the board game industry, in the sci-fi industry, and the comics industry, they are going to lose at the end of the day and they know it. And thats why they are so miserable they want to drag everybody else down with them.

What do you make of the backlash to both Tournament Fishings artwork and The Gaming Goats subsequent response? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!

More here:
The Gaming Goat Condemned By TTRPG Community After Being Accused Of Using White Supremacist Symbol In New Tournament Fishing Game - Bounding Into...

Photo: AFP via Getty Images

On September 11, 2001, Donald Trump honored the then-unknown number of dead in lower Manhattan by pointing out that the collapse of the World Trade Center meant that he now owned the tallest building downtown. To commemorate the events 20th anniversary, he visited a fire station and police precinct in New York City before flying back to Florida to guest-host a novelty pay-per-view boxing match with his son.

The former president, a promoter at heart, mostly stuck to vague bromides that couldnt get him in trouble as he provided color commentary during four underwhelming bouts at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. I think tonights card is going to be very successful, he said, when asked about his expectations for the evening. He is like a totally different fighter, he said, seconds after a co-host made the exact same observation. I like to do that, he said, when asked if he liked to eat lobster. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the night is that Trump hung on for the whole undercard without getting visibly bored.

Though he largely behaved himself, a few non-boxing jabs inevitably came through. When asked at the beginning of the broadcast about 9/11, Trump said that the anniversary was made even worse because of a very bad week from President Joe Biden. He praised the state of Florida for the way they ran the election clean. Describing the way that referees decide boxing matches, he said, Its like elections: It could be rigged. Donald Trump Jr., during a particularly boring moment in the first bout, said that right now, the audience likes politics better.

It was an astute observation: During the first two fights, the only real noise from the crowd came during outbursts in support of the former president. Cardboard banners dotted the casino arena: Bring back #45 and Trump won. (Im watching the signs, said Trump.) The home audience that paid $50 to stream the fight also got access to a live chat in which viewers talked about QAnon, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden sucking, Pepe the frog, Trump actually winning the 2020 election, and Jeffrey Epstein not actually killing himself.

Theres a reason the boxing wasnt really the main event: Celebrity fights, of the sort featuring aging heavyweights, jacked influencers, and retired NBA players, are a sideshow of the sport itself designed purely to make money. (Other than Anderson Silvas first-round knockout of Tito Ortiz in the third bout, many of the boxers on Saturday night spent more time trying to avoid boxing than actually boxing.) Into this world enters President Trump, a man whos never been afraid of a weird opportunity to make money. His presence was a perfect addition to the resurgence of novelty fighting: a domain full of shady financing; alleged sexual assaults; aging stars who are trying to mount a comeback; and guys who really like Florida.

In some ways, he never really left the sport. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Trump hosted several marquee fights in Atlantic City, including Mike Tyson vs. Larry Holmes and Evander Holyfield vs. George Foreman. Since the 80s, Trump has been friends with World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon and once shaved his head in the battle of the billionaires at WrestleMania. McMahons wife, Linda, served as the head of Trumps Small Business Administration and worked on his 2020 campaign, while Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White is also a close friend. If his observations on Saturday night werent particularly insightful, it was clear that this world claimed him as one of their own. To his credit, Trumps best moments were his recollections of his Atlantic City days, and he seemed genuinely animated when Jorge Masvidal, a UFC champ who campaigned for him in south Florida, stepped into the announcers box.

George Foreman, Donald Trump, and Evander Holyfield promote an Atlantic City fight in April 1991. Photo: The Ring Magazine via Getty Imag

After his year of almost nonstop assaults on American democracy, its very strange to watch Donald Trump talk boxing, enjoy himself, and be in charge of absolutely nothing for a few hours. This bizarre appearance on a mostly tedious three-hour stream felt like a peek into another reality: one in which the 45th president accepted his electoral loss last November, and instead of flirting with a second run, he spent his time chasing quick cash in man-o-sphere appearances events that can be outrageously fun and stupid if you choose to engage and completely inconsequential if you do not.

As the night wore on, it got more absurd. Before Evander Holyfield got in the ring with former UFC champ Vitor Belfort, the audience was asked to observe the anniversary of 9/11 for a ten-count of the bell. The silence was broken up by a woman yelling, Feel that fuckers! Shut the fuck up! the crowd screamed back. The memorial bell tolled as the audience booed and a woman in short shorts walked around the ring with an American flag.

Once the fight started, Belfort more or less beat the pulp out of the 58-year-old Holyfield until the sad display was called off before the second round. (Holyfield wasnt actually supposed to fight: He was subbed in after Oscar de la Hoya got COVID at the last minute; his last opponent was in a charity fight against Mitt Romney in 2015.) When he was interviewed after the fight, Belfort called Jake Paul a bitch and demanded that the celebrity-boxing moneymaker fight him for $25 million on Thanksgiving. Trump, after avoiding the crowds chants requesting he give a speech, closed out the event with an address to his many supporters in the casino. This is like a rally, he said. We love you all. We love this country.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

Originally posted here:
Trump Guest-Hosting a Boxing Match on 9/11 Was a Vision From an Alternate Reality - New York Magazine

There are some things so difficult to countenance that it can seem simply easier to believe they didnt happen: that one man could put a bullet through the presidents skull, that human beings could stand on the moon, that a seemingly average man might walk into a school and kill the children inside. And, throughout history, many people have chosen simply not to believe those unfathomable events, telling themselves stories that help make the world make sense, albeit more sinister.

So when the first plane and then another collided with the Twin Towers 20 years ago in lower Manhattan, it opened a wound so unfathomable in its horror that it seemed necessary to tell a new kind of story one that helped make sense of the tragedy, even as it distorted it. The conspiracy theories began almost as soon as the attacks had finished, and they have stayed with us to this day.

The theories themselves are so well-worn that they have progressed all the way to memes: the common refrain that jet fuel cant melt steel beams, once an earnestly communicated part of conspiracy lore, has now become so hackneyed that it is almost meaningless. But there are many others, which either tend to suggest that that the US could have intervened but decided not to, or that it actually orchestrated the attacks itself.

At the same time, however, they borrowed from tropes and ideas that had existed for centuries before, and which have continued to prove popular in the decades since. For the most part, 9/11 conspiracy theories are the same as those that went before, and those that followed, with the nouns swapped.

Perhaps the most distinct facet about the 9/11 conspiracy theories is the way they were pushed through formats that are familiar now in everything from advertising to the arts. In 2005, as the early viral internet we know today was finding its feet it was the year of the first Pepe the Frog drawing, the beginnings of Chuck Norris facts and the Million Dollar Homepage there appeared a video known as Loose Change, a documentary that presented the central ideas of the 9/11 conspiracy theory in a way that sent it swiftly across the internet.

Korey Rowe, the Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who made the film with friend Dylan Avery after returning from those wars confused and disillusioned, has drawn a straight line from the film to the various conspiracy theories that surround us today.

Look at where its gone: you have people storming the Capitol because they believe the election was a fraud. You have people who wont get vaccinated and theyre dying in hospitals, he told the Associated Press. Weve gotten to the point where information is actually killing people.

One of the legacies of 9/11 was to give prominence to the idea of the false flag attack

(Reuters)

It can be easy to blame the internet. Experts are divided on whether technology has really made people more given to believing in conspiracy theories.

9/11 conspiracy theories existed, and the internet existed, says Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and author of books on conspiracy theories. But it wasnt the case that conspiracy theories somehow couldnt grow before the internet; thats just completely false, and it reflects a really rosy view of history.

We had multiple red scares in this country, Freemason breakouts, Illuminati panics, crushing and drowning witches all before the internet.

One month after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, 55 per cent of Americans believed that the assassination was pulled off by a conspiracy rather than a lone gunman. That number increased to 80 per cent in the 1970s, and stayed that way for three decades; we havent seen 80 per cent numbers on anything in the internet era.

The view that the internet is to blame either for promoting or discouraging conspiracy theorists looks at the problem from the wrong perspective, Mr Uscinski argues; people are not simply blank slate lemmings walking around that can have their mind changed by any piece of information they run into, whether that emerged from the internet or the printing press. Instead, conspiracy theory belief is a worldview and interpretation of the world like any other.

Theres no evidence whatsoever that people believe conspiracy theories more now than they did in the past. We can only see it more.

Perhaps one of the more potent legacies of 9/11 conspiracy theories is the establishment of a career that has continued to flourish: the professional conspiracist. And perhaps nobody has embodied that more than Alex Jones.

Alex Jones feeds the disbelief and accusations that surround major tragedies

(Infowars)

Jones was already a relatively successful radio host by the time of 9/11, and some of that success was built using the same playbook he would use after the attacks. Before 2001, he had focused on other traumatic events and claimed to know the truth of them the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, for instance, and the Waco siege that had happened two years before and helped inspire it. While the late 1990s are sometimes depicted as a prelapsarian time of social harmony and reliable information that was broken by 9/11, those events and the response to them show that the foundations were there already.

And while 9/11 helped establish the Alex Jones brand as it exists today, it was only one stop on his road to underground domination. He has applied the same format of disbelief and accusations that the media story is a hoax to everything from school shootings to the Capitol riot.

He has been able to do so because one of the legacies of 9/11 was to give prominence to the idea of the false flag attack, a theory that an organisation or country conducts an operation under the banner of another. While that idea has been present for centuries its name derives from the very real flag that would flown on navy ships it became increasingly popular after 2001.

It is a way of explaining what the motivations were for, say, George W Bush to the extent that you believe that the president and certain aspects of the military industrial complex would be interested in allowing or organising an attack on US soil because it creates an enemy that you can go fight for whatever nefarious purpose you have, says Mark Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida and author of the seminal book Conspiracy Theories. And that has just become a trope that explains everything now.

And so the Sandy Hook shooting massacre becomes not the horrible slaughter of kindergarten students by a teenager, but instead a fake operation through which Barack Obama could impose stronger gun control laws. The Capitol riot on 6 January was not an insurrection against Congress by the far right, but the intentional creation of chaos and violent mayhem to be used against conservatives.

20 years of conflict and terror since 9/11

Some of todays conspiracy theories have become far more involved than the ones that cropped up after 9/11, with their adherents behaving more like those interested in myth or religious texts than scholarly study. Those who believe in QAnon, for instance, gather their beliefs primarily through the almost-sacred texts that are posted by the mysterious Q, not by endlessly replaying videos and conducting experiments to understand whether the official story makes scientific sense, like those who believe in 9/11 conspiracies.

Others today are laced with a specific kind of irony, that does appear to have been born out of the internet. Accusations that Beyonc is a member of the Illuminati seem at once earnest and something of a joke; the slogan Epstein didnt kill himself emerges from both a sincerely held belief and has become enough of a meme that it could be slapped on beers and novelty Christmas jumpers.

At the same time, those conspiracy theories have deadly consequences. Covid and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories often borrowing from those same health-based scares that have spread for centuries continue to prove popular both online and in person.

Each age has its truths, its lies and its conspiracy theories. As much as the truth of 9/11 defined those first years of the 21st century, the conspiracy theories around them have helped colour the lies the world has told itself for the last 20 years.

Read more:
How 9/11 influenced the way conspiracy theories spread today - The Independent