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daylflay · 4 years

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Socially Acceptable Insanity

Love Hurts

What is love? It’s an old, essential question that to this day eludes a conclusive response. Having said that, despite love’s ambiguous nature, most types of love seem to share a somewhat masochistic element. The artist Haddaway famously asked the question in his 1993 track, What is Love, and his own response was: “Baby, don’t hurt me”. Haddaway probably used that line more because of its catchiness than anything, but it nonetheless contains powerful elements of emotional truth. Another artist, Incubus, in a less iconic track than Haddaway’s What is Love, entitled Love Hurts, makes similar statements about love; by most accounts, it’s painful. The harm inflicted by love is what leads the character Amy, in the film Her, to label love “socially acceptable insanity”. Why, if love is so dangerous, then, do people pursue and desire it with such a powerful fervor? In Love in the Time of Tamagotchi, Dominic Pettman makes an attempt to understand: “Love is a privileged, semi-flexible, semi-coherent, ingenious, and intricately codified form of communication…we like to think that love exists sui generis”. Pettman seems to be suggesting that love makes us feel special, but is it worth if it’s especially painful?

But Sometimes It’s A Good Hurt

From the very outset of the film, Her establishes its main character, Theo, as a deeply lonely individual; even the videogame he plays looks lonely. Then, Samantha comes into the picture. Samantha is Theo’s “OS/Operating System”, i.e., his computer, as he puts it himself at one point in the film: “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my computer”, to which Samantha responds, “you’re not, you’re having it with me”. Samantha proves herself to be much more than just a “computer”, as she quickly grows into a unique, substantial person in her own right throughout the course of the film. Ultimately, Theo fully embraces Samantha for who she is, bodiless or otherwise, and allows himself to fully commit to loving her. There are so many humans attempting to contrive artificial sentimentality in the world of Her, including Theo himself, yet Samantha is essentially the only one who we see succeed in engendering genuine affection. Some individuals in the film, like Theo’s ex, Catherine, are dubious of Samantha’s personhood, but in reality, Samantha represents something that transcends mere humanity. At one point in the film, Samantha communicates with another OS “post-verbally”, because she’s posthuman, and consequently is able to be a vehicle for love that is unencumbered by human elements. Pettman touches upon the nature of the posthuman in his aforementioned article: “Indeed, what Heidegger says of modern technology can effectively be applied to modern love: that it embodies an ‘unreasonable demand’ of nature (and thus has the capacity to reveal something essential about the posthuman condition)”. Pettman is saying that love is unnatural, which is why it takes something beyond human limitation to elucidate its nature, and ours. Through Pettman’s lens, Samantha, a “modern technology” portrayed as a disembodied voice in the world of Her, is what allows Theo to conquer the unreasonable demands of “modern love”; Theo’s no-contact form of intimacy with Samantha is what helps him reach his existential breakthrough at the film’s denouement, something no human capable of palpable contact manages to accomplish.

And It Feels Like I’m Alive

In the aforementioned Incubus track, Love Hurts, the band follows the titular line in the song with, “but sometimes it’s a good hurt and it feels like I’m alive”. To say that life is finite is a cliché, but it’s also the only way to understand why one would deliberately hurt oneself; it’s because the subsequent joy that it opens one up to makes it worthwhile, and we don’t have enough time in this life to spend it deliberating on such things; we want to feel good while we still can, even it means feeling bad first. In Love Messaging: Mobile Phone Txting Seen Through the Lens of Tanka Poetry, Sunil Manghani makes the case for transience beautifully: “In expressing the transience and pathos of life… that which is transient…is capable of a melancholic beauty”. It’s the spirit of such reasoning that makes Her’s conclusion so powerful. At the end of the film, due to Samantha’s inhuman capacity to feel and think at an infinite and instantaneous rate, she realizes that she doesn’t belong in our world, so she makes the decision to abandon humanity in favor of some ambiguous part of cyberspace. She essentially commits suicide, and her final words to Theo are: “If you ever get there, then come find me”; of course, it’s clear that they’ll never interact again. It’s as if our humanity and our flaws moor us, and since the OSes don’t have that anchor, they ended up transcending our human conceptions of love and life and floated away. As Incubus put it: “Without love I won't survive”.

#haddaway #incubus #her

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daylflay · 4 years

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Determining History

The Skeptic

In Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Morozov douses the flame of technological utopianism with a deluge of skepticism and rationality. Throughout history, paradigms that optimistically viewed new technologies as revolutionary and inherently benevolent emerged in order to advocate in favor of their respective technologies’ “ability to raise the level of public debate, introduce more transparency into politics, reduce nationalism, and transport us to the mythical global village”, but Morozov points out how futile such optimism is when faced with the social and political realities within which these technologies exist. Morozov cites the example of the airplane during its unveiling as a new technology and how people "expected the airplane to foster democracy, equality, and freedom/ to improve public taste and spread culture, to purge the world of war and violence and even to give rise to a new kind of human being." What the initial optimism germane to the airplane wasn’t able to foresee was its use as a vital weapon of war starting in World War I (WWI) until now and the foreseeable future. Airplanes facilitated the deaths of countless soldiers attempting to survive the No Man’s Lands of WWI, they were the vehicles used to introduce nuclear weapons to the world when the United States dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end of World War II, and they’re being used currently to bomb civilians into oblivion in warzones such as that of modern-day Yemen. Morozov proceeds to criticize technological determinism, which is an extension of the aforementioned blind optimism individuals espouse about new technologies: “What is, therefore, most dangerous about succumbing to technological determinism is that it hinders our awareness of the social and the political, presenting it as the technological instead.” Morozov’s ultimate point is that technology isn’t inherently anything, nor is it simply neutral, but rather open to debate, inquiry, and, ideally, regulation. The web, for example, shouldn’t be treated complacently as just a new technology, but should instead be constantly scrutinized and challenged in terms of ethics, morality, etc. Morozov brings up social determinism in addition to determinism of the technological variety, and he does so in order to highlight the danger of determinism in general: “Determinism whether of the social variety, positing the end of history, or of the political variety, positing the end of authoritarianism – is an intellectually impoverished, lazy way to study the past, understand the present, and predict the future.” Morozov’s plea to us readers is a simple but crucial one: Don’t be lazy, do the intellectual work and be as cognizant of technologies old and new with as much depth as you can muster; this is the only way to responsibly use, invoke, and critique technology.

The Brawler

I typically analyze most if not all of the accounts my blog has been tracking, but this time I’ll only be focusing on Rick Wilson and his mission to separate conservatism from Donald Trump and his sycophant Republican party. In #Ferguson is everywhere: initiators in emerging counterpublic networks, Sarah J. Jackson & Brooke Foucault Welles examine the use of Twitter in mobilizing a counterpublic to create a counter-narrative in opposition of the often racist and problematic mainstream-media narrative that emerged in the wake of Michael Brown’s untimely death in Ferguson, Missouri. Jackson and Foucault characterize counterpublics as “traditionally marginalized groups [that] create and maintain their own, alternative publics with the express goals of both legitimizing and communicating their lived realities and pushing the mainstream public sphere to acknowledge and respond to these realities.” As a white man of considerable financial means, Wilson is by no means representative of a “traditionally marginalized group”, but he is arguably part of a marginalized group within the sphere of conservative politics: the anti-Trump conservatives. Wilson was one of the first, and most prominent, Republicans to break from the party in opposition to Donald Trump, a decision he still receives immense backlash for, as evidenced by this tweet directed at him on 3/23/20 from user @JamesWi90509820 (said user is probably a bot based on the handle, but it’s nonetheless being directed at Wilson by someone): “You DUMB FUCK…YOU PATHETIC LOSET PIECE OF SHIT”. Wilson helped establish a counterpublic within conservative ranks in order to push against mainstream conservative-media sources such as Fox News and their shameless pro-Trump narratives. Wilson’s entire shtick is best described by his Twitter bio: “Apostate GOP Media Guy, writer, NYT #1 best-selling author. Lincoln Project co-founder. Order "Running Against The Devil" here: http://bit.ly/RATD2020”. Wilson’s Lincoln Project (https://lincolnproject.us/news/virus-in-the-world/) creates anti-Trump ads which he often circulates via the use of Twitter, and his book, “Running Against The Devil”, which he linked to in his bio, is essentially an anti-Trump jeremiad (the eponymous “Devil” being none other than Trump) and political handbook detailing anti-Trump political strategies. The efficacy of Wilson’s anti-Trump campaign remains to be seen, but with his large Twitter following and commensurately impressive media profile, it’s likely that he’s engendering some level of anti-Trump sentiment that ideally will spur voters to cast their votes for whomever is running against Trump this November.

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daylflay · 4 years

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It’s Always Darkest

Before the Dawn

“It’s always darkest before the dawn”; that’s how the old adage goes. Having said that, it’s currently pretty difficult for most of us to see past the dark. COVID-19 continues to spread (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-argentina/argentina-announces-mandatory-quarantine-to-curb-coronavirus-idUSKBN216446), the economy inexorably spirals downward (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/echoes-of-the-great-depression-us-economy-could-post-biggest-contraction-ever-2020-03-19), and my home state of California has just been put into lockdown (https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/19/newsom-orders-all-40m-californians-to-stay-home-in-nations-strictest-state-lockdown-1268248). The world is currently facing a crisis the scale of which arguably hasn’t been seen since said world was at war with itself, and for some, at least in America, that crisis started in 2016 when our current president was elected; for others, it started back during the 2007/2008 financial crisis; regardless of when the crisis started, the only path forward starts with labor.

During the early 20th century, when industry was changing the nature of then-modern life, global conflict’s grisly violence shocked sensibilities, and the meaning of life in Western culture started being questioned by the masses, a group of writers/artists known as the Modernists rose to the occasion and attempted to encapsulate the malaise and spiritual unease of their milieu. Poets like Edward Arlington Robinson chose to focus on the cynicism of the moment, as portrayed in his poem, Richard Cory. At the end of Robinson’s poem, the titular Richard Cory commits suicide: “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.” I’m personally a highly cynical individual, and can very much understand Robinson’s disposition, but in this particular moment of ours, amidst a pandemic, I believe there’s much merit in the antithesis of my usual misanthropy; I think it’s optimism that gets us through this, not the other way around, and that will take work in our current social climate. Ezra Pound was another Modernist, and famously cynical, but he did have a somewhat famous catchphrase that I think is helpful in spite of his problematic nature: “Make it new”. Though neither Robinson nor Pound achieved the success they desired via their poetry, both economically and otherwise, until their latter years, they still labored on and continued writing, because they understood the importance of what they were creating; they understood that the moment in which they lived demanded their sacrifice. In our current moment of crisis, when nothing is certain and everyone’s on edge, we have to take our usual misplaced hatred and diametric opposition towards each other and work towards transforming it all into something else; we have to make it new.

The New

The idea of making something new can result in positive and negative developments, and Brooke Erin Duffy delves into some of the latter in The romance of work: Gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries. In Duffy’s article, she rallies against a new form of exploitative labor unique to the digital era: “While critical discourses of precarity and instability offer a decidedly bleak view of the contemporary labor market, individualist appeals to passion and entrepreneurialism temporally reroute employment concerns. That is, affective mantras like ‘Do What You Love’ shift workers’ focus from the present to the future, dangling the prospect of a career where labour and leisure harmoniously coexist. This illusory coexistence is well suited to descriptions of work in the culture industries, widely understood as environments where low pay and long hours are a tradeoff for creative autonomy”. I think Duffy’s ultimately correct in her assessments, but this present moment of ours compels me to momentarily disregard the nefarious implications of the modern labor market. I think that if you’re able to create entertaining content for people during this dark period of time, and you get to “do what you love” while doing so, then you’re providing a mutually beneficial service when people need such a thing most. It’s during moments like these that the best in people can shine through the ominous haze, and the individuals I’m tracking are (mostly) no exception. For the most part, the people I’m paying attention to are already professionally involved in media to some degree, so they’re not vying for employment on the same level the individuals Duffy refers to in her article are, but that makes their intent clearer to an extent.

Rick Wilson always makes attempts to simultaneously espouse his ideology while humorously attacking individuals on Twitter, but he’s also been posting a lot of entertaining memes/gifs recently. Just today (3/19/20), he posted two of them within a couple of hours of one another: One was a gif pulled from a South Park episode, which itself was a reference to the film The Human Centipede, and it read, “I wonder if Hannity likes the cuttlefish or the vanilla pudding.”; the other was an image of Donald Trump in a Star Trek costume, and it read, “Glad we have a space force instead of a pandemic response team”. Rick was not being incredibly nice to either Sean Hannity or Donald Trump, but the overtly humorous images are bound to brighten the days of folks that are rightfully upset with both Hannity and Trump for their respective roles in exacerbating the current crisis.

Mehdi Hasan is generally a solemn tweeter, which is sensible considering that his occupation as a journalist entails that he maintain a certain sobriety when communicating anything to the public. Mehdi’s approach to producing sunnier-than-usual content today involved (somewhat) praising a man he loathes, and bestowing loving and kind thoughts upon his children: In a tweet directed at Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Mehdi tweeted a link to a Clickhole (a humor/satire website) article whose headline read, “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point”; in another of Mehdi’s heartfelt tweets of the day, only a minute separated from the prior tweet, Mehdi responds to a tweet by Time magazine editor Anand Giridharadas that read, ‘What have you watched, read, or heard in this strange, dark time that has given you comfort and joy?’, to which Mehdi says, “My kids”. It’s a nice moment from Mehdi, and a reminder of what’s important during times like these.

Like with most things in life, women, relative to men, have to deal with additional complications attached to their actions online, and that unfortunately remains true even when it comes to them trying to do moral and selfless things. In The Unwanted Labour Of Social Media: Women Of Colour Call Out Culture As Venture Community Management, Lisa Nakamura, like Brooke Duffy criticizes exploitative digital labor practices, especially germane to women: “Digital labour is ‘difficult to conceptualise’ because the internet creates new styles of labour: it not only traffics far more in the immaterial, it is also arrayed along new axes of production, new forms of compensation, and new forms of gendering and racialisation. It is this kind of labour that interests me. I am specifically interested in the hidden and often-stigmatised and dangerous labour performed by women of colour, queer and trans people, and racial minorities who call out, educate, protest, and design around toxic social environments in digital media.” All of the women I’m following fall into at least one of the aforementioned social/cultural categories, i.e., they’re all women of color, and one of them is trans. These women, even while being entertaining are still politically conscious, and just by existing on Twitter are making a statement while simultaneously making themselves vulnerable. Having said that, they still persist in generating entertaining content for everyone’s sake despite it all.

Patti Harrison is trans and Vietnamese, and doesn’t hide either from her 100,000-strong Twitter following, so she’s someone whose very public existence is a powerful declaration of pride in of itself. On March 15th, and also today (3/19), Patti shared how she was spending her isolated time at home, in typically candid form: (3/15) “I am playing @AbzuGame right now on PS4 & it is really good also I am high and online! Love the websites on here. This tweet go viral now!”; (3/19) “Uh oh…craft alert…I hand-painted these @Margiela tabi boots. And Per @tweetrajouhari I added an awful foot tattoo of Elsa from Frozen.” Patti, by simply sharing the details of her seemingly enjoyable time at home, invited her Twitter feed into her life, and she was happy to do so, which must’ve made a plethora of her followers feel markedly less alone with such a vibrant personality keeping them company virtually.

Kashana Cauley is a black woman, who, like Patti, has upwards of 100,000 followers, which inevitably results in some negative attention, but she tweets on regardless. Kashana hasn’t been very active on Twitter recently, but when she does tweet, she makes it count, as evidenced by this tweet from March 15th: “Ask not what staying home on the couch can do for you, but what staying home on the couch can do for your country.” That tweet of hers was liked by over 100,000 people, which exceeds her follower count. The amount of people that it reached, and the amount of people who interacted with it, is astounding, and the amount of humor and joy she surely brought to those lives, even if just for a moment, is commensurately astounding.

Candace Owens, unlike the aforementioned women, is not exactly one to diffuse joy; in fact Candace loves doing the exact opposite. Her presence on Twitter is almost exclusively designed to anger people and start fights, which is why I’m so shocked that even she is attempting to lighten up the mood during this somber period of time. This is a tweet of hers from today (3/19): “I wanted to do panic buying, but then I checked my account. Turns out I can only afford to panic…#CoronavirusHumor…Lighten up folks.” If even Candace is willing to perform humorously in favor of the greater good, as opposed to inflaming tensions with her usual provocative rhetoric, then I have hope for the dawn.

The Dawn

In Of Modern Poetry, Wallace Stevens communicates the spirit of Ezra Pound’s directive to “make it new”: “The poem of the mind is the act of finding what will suffice. It has not always had to find: The scene was set; it repeated what was in the script. Then the theatre was changed.” Our global theatre has officially changed, and each and every one of us has a responsibility to work towards finding what will suffice in this maelstrom of ever-changing circumstances. For me, that means working on a script for a movie that has zero chance of actually existing (which means that I have zero chance of profiting off of any of this), because I’m just hoping that it makes someone out there smile.

In my last blog post, I imagined what a contemporary addition to George A. Romero’s living dead cinematic universe might look like. Personally, the act of simply thinking and writing about this silly, hypothetical project has brought me some sense of joy during all of this, and that’s saying a lot for someone as typically nihilistic as myself. I’m going to add to said hypothetical entry in Romero’s saga, entitled Gen-Z, with a speech delivered towards the end of the “film”. This speech is delivered by a Communications student at the university in Fullerton, California in which the living dead outbreak originated. A number of the university’s students have barricaded themselves in the campus, and are about to engage in a last stand against the hordes of living dead. Their survival is unlikely, so they’ve decided to gather one last time in an attempt to rouse one another before their climactic battle.

This is the speech that the student delivers: “I remember my first official day on this campus vividly, but not fondly. It was the first day of the Fall ’18 semester, and I guess classes just let out because I saw what felt like thousands of people suddenly rush across campus. It was like the running of the Titans, and I was wearing orange. Or the running of the dead, and I was alive, as the case may be. College was never part of my plan, so I had never toured any university campuses, and I did not know what to expect. I kind of freaked out and started questioning all of my decisions, like: Why did I decide to attend a school with 40,000 students if I don’t even like small groups of people? And why did I major in Human Communication Studies if I don’t even like myself? It was overwhelming to me that I could be surrounded by people, yet feel so alone. Then I walked over to my first class, and I saw some of the same faces that I’m looking at today. Everything can be overwhelming when you feel like you’re alone, but what I started to learn that very first day, and what this major continues to teach me, is that I am not alone; none of us are. I have not had the pleasure of knowing everyone on this campus, but we have all walked this path together despite that: We have all been stressed out because of Finals, we have all battled personal demons, and zombies, we have all lived life with its many complexities, and we did it all together on this campus. To this day, I still do not like myself all that much, but that’s okay, because none of this is really about me; it’s about all of you. Look to your right, and to your left, and in front of you, and maybe behind you; that is why we do what we do; we fight alongside each other, for each other. In this era of social media, divisiveness, and the living dead, nothing is more important than empathy, and that is the core tenet of our work here. We have been trained to understand each other, and that means that it is incumbent upon us to help mend our fractured communities; our fractured country; our fractured world. It is going to be a lot of work, but it’s work worth doing, because we’re not just doing it for ourselves. As Zac Efron once said in the 2006 hit film, High School Musical: ‘We’re all in this together.’ Rest in peace, Zac, this one’s for you. Now let’s go kill some fucking zombies!”

#Rick Wilson #Mehdi Hasan #Patti Harrison #kashanacauley #candace owens #coronavirus #covidー19 #earobinson #ezra pound #wallace stevens #highschoolmusical #zac efron #california #georgearomero #livingdead #zombies

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daylflay · 4 years

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Gen-Z

Biters’ Remorse (Or Lack Thereof)

Most good horror movies have something to say, some social commentary to thrust upon attentive and thoughtful viewers, especially zombie movies. George A. Romero was perhaps the most prominent director of zombie movies in cinematic history, and that’s because he basically invented the modern, flesh-eating, slow-moving, undead variety of zombie that contemporary audiences hunger for (forgive the quip). With Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s first, and arguably most seminal, foray into the genre, he used imagery such as that of hordes of white people attempting to kill a black protagonist in order to comment on the racism endemic in America circa the 1960s. Ten years later, In Dawn of the Dead, Romero once again used zombies as a vehicle for criticism, but this time he set the action in a mall in order to tackle the issue of consumerism. The latter portion of Romero’s zombie oeuvre features a couple of entries, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, whose messages would undoubtedly resonate with modern audiences even though the two films were released almost fifteen years ago: The former features a fortified city separating the entitled from the rest of the embattled world, commenting upon the xenophobia and nationalism engendered by a post-September 11th America; the latter features individuals recording the horrors of the apocalypse with handheld cameras, an obvious allusion to the advent of YouTube (Diary of the Dead was released in 2007). If Romero were still alive, then I’m certain that he would still be making zombie movies, and furthermore I’m pretty sure that the criticisms he’d be levying would be directed at misinformation and its propagation on the web, among a plethora of other subjects (recent events would’ve given him plenty to work with, to say the least). The world is currently facing a real-life pandemic, COVID-19, and its spread is attributable to many factors, such as lack of hygiene, large gatherings of people, etc., but I’d argue that misinformation has also played an inordinate role in this crisis. In Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology And The Law To Lock Down Culture And Control Creativity, Lawrence Lessig states that “the internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility…to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries.” Lessig isn’t criticizing the internet with his statement, but I’m indeed doing so with my quotation. That “reach” that Lessig referred to, it’s what ultimately makes it difficult to quarantine those infected by misinformation, and it in turn makes life more difficult for those trying to survive in the web’s hordes of misinformation/misinformed people.

The Survivors

Not all of the individuals I’m tracking carry pretensions of professional journalism, some are simply trying to live their lives as normally as possible during this national emergency. Having said that, considering the prominence of the novel coronavirus currently present in practically all matters of public discourse, much talk of the epidemic is present in almost everyone’s tweets to some degree. Of the individuals of my blog’s focus, Kashana Cauley and Patti Harrison are easily the least politically active and journalistically inclined. The Twitter accounts of both women have been producing a minor amount of content as of late, which makes sense considering they, like everyone, are likely dealing with the coronavirus situation and all of its associated complications upon quotidian life. Cauley’s only tweet from 3/12/20: In response to a quoted tweet from CNN journalist Ana Cabrera that read, “McConnell ally says Senate won't take up House #coronavirus bill until after recess. ‘The Senate will act when we come back and we have a clearer idea of what extra steps we need to take,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander told reporters.”, Cauley tweeted, “I don’t know why, but I think if the rest of us rolled into work & said ‘let people die until March 23rd’ we might get fired.” Cauley is obviously paying attention to the news, but not necessarily engaging with it in any major way. Harrison only tweeted twice on 3/12/20, and one of the tweets read: “Lying in bed bottomless, legs spread, patting my mound, my phone 2 inches from my face, arching my back and moaning with SINFUL anticipation for all of the front-facing character videos we are about to see when all these comedians get quarantined inside our houses…mmmm fuck!”. Harrison is responding to the news, but not intimating at criticism of said news like Cauley did in her aforementioned tweet, instead vying for the use of apolitical humor in order to entertain her followers.

Rick Wilson spends a lot of his time on Twitter attacking Donald Trump and the Republican party, and that hasn’t changed, as evidenced by his activity from 3/12/20: In response to a quoted Trump tweet that read, “Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record. His was lowest!”, Wilson tweeted, “So this is how you want to play it?”. Wilson has never claimed to be a journalist, but he provides a lot of commentary on the news, especially news of a political variety, so it’s no surprise that a lot of his current tweeting pertains to the coronavirus considering its proximity to politics. Despite lacking in professional ties to the journalistic industry, Wilson is still playing an important role in the fight against misinformation by fact-checking and pushing against sophistic Trump/Republican narratives being circulated (https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176750/trump-coronavirus-response-disaster).

The Quarantine

For all of the responsible web users who aren’t contributing to the spread of misinformation, there are of course those who need to be quarantined due to their being carriers and deliberate disseminators of said misinformation. Candace Owens is one of those individuals who needs to be quarantined, immediately. Twitter is by no means a newspaper, but it’s nonetheless a source of news for some, and when one has a following the size of Owens (2 million as of 3/12/20), then one has a responsibility to at least attempt to promulgate accurate information, especially when one likes to play at being a journalist. Owens has always fancied herself a journalist of sorts, but if she hadn’t dropped out of the University of Rhode Island while attempting to acquire a degree in journalism (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/youtube-tested-trump-approved-how-candace-owens-suddenly-became-loudest-n885166), then perhaps she’d understand that the journalistic institution has a code of ethics. One of the most basic aspects of journalism, an aspect that’s tragically being undercut in the modern era by irresponsible fools such as Owens, is so simple that a child could ascertain it: Get the basic facts straight. This is one of Owens’ tweets from 3/10/20: “One day, we will look back and study the impact of the coronavirus…Not the virus itself of course, but the mass global mental breakdown that it inspired…Because people think it’s novel that 80 year olds are dying at a high rate from a flu…This tweet will age well.” Not only is the information contained in her tweet plainly incorrect, but it’s dangerous. First of all, there’s a big difference between coronavirus and the flu (https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-vs-flu-which-virus-is-deadlier-11583856879), evidenced not only by the disparate terms, but by the simple fact that the flu doesn’t lead the World Health Organization to declare the presence of a pandemic every flu season (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51839944). Secondly, while it’s been reported that it’s primarily older people dying from COVID-19, youth doesn’t preclude one from catching coronavirus and spreading it to those older people; not to mention those of varying ages with underlying conditions such as autoimmune diseases who could easily die via coronavirus (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/health/coronavirus-midlife-conditions.html). Owens is just an extension of a type web-user Christian Fuchs refers to in Social Media: A Critical Introduction: “Cultural communities are not automatically politically progressive...Facebook group[s] [exist]…for Norwegian right-wing extremists…[like]the fascist terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in the Norwegian terror attacks on July 22, 2011”. Owens isn’t a violent terrorist (that I know of), but the misinformation she’s spreading could nonetheless be responsible for far more deaths than that of Breivik. It’s no wonder that Owens is a pariah to the vast majority of professional news outlets and can’t find columnist work outside of conservative propaganda-peddlers such as Fox News.

The Anti-Quarantine

Graduate of the University of Oxford, host of UpFront on the Al Jazeera network, writer/podcaster for investigative journalism outlet The Intercept, frequent commentator on networks such as CNN, Mehdi Hasan is essentially the diametric opposite of Owens (https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/14/18678698/mehdi-hasan-intercept-impeachment-donald-trump-pelosi-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast-interview). Hasan is a serious, passionate journalist who takes the dissemination of information/news very seriously, whether it be on Twitter or otherwise. Hasan has been absolutely restless on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting on germane news as it breaks and fact-checking those who attempt to misinform. Here’s Hasan challenging NBC columnist Richard Engel on 3/12/20, less than an hour after Engel posted his tweet: Engel tweeted, “The reaction/overreaction in the US to the virus seems largely political. Trump’s critics have no confidence in him, so they panic. Others defend Trump no matter what he does and don’t listen to anyone else. Not a recipe for keep calm and carry on. When broken you can’t be strong”; Hasan quoted Engel’s tweet and responded with, “Please don’t ‘both sides’ the anti-science, failed-on-testing, pandemic-minimizing conspiracy theorist in the White House.” Hasan is the antidote to the infection being spread by individuals such as Owens; whatever the opposite of a quarantine is, that’s what we need to do to Hasan.

The Line

The line between amateur and professional may be blurred in some cases due to the rise of social media and the power of web-based technologies such as smartphones, yet in a lot of cases that blurring isn’t relatively important, but in the case of a pandemic such as COVID-19 and the blurring between amateur and professional journalism, the difference between an amateur like Owens and a professional like Hasan is of the utmost importance. Owens’ misinformation-spewing may well contribute to the deaths of actual people, and furthermore disrupt the important work of good-faith journalists like Hasan. What’s at stake here is clear: life and death.

Life and death were subjects very much on George A. Romero’s mind during his filmmaking career, e.g.: Romero’s cinematic universe, a patchwork of films loosely connected to each other by an overarching narrative a la the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was kicked off by Night of the Living Dead; the concept of the living dead of course remained a linchpin of Romero’s work until the end. Unfortunately, like the namesake of so many of his films, Romero himself is now dead, so I have taken it upon myself to propose the concept for the next film in his cinematic universe of the living dead. In Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins talks about “the story of American arts in the twenty-first century [and how it] might be told in terms of the public reemergence of grassroots creativity as everyday people take advantage of new technologies that enable them to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content.” If I had more time, I’d certainly attempt to contribute to Jenkins’ perception of “twenty-first century” art via a short Romero-inspired film uploaded to YouTube or some similar platform, but I’ll settle for this faux-blurb instead: The year is 2020, and the world has rarely been more divided and vulnerable. Catastrophic weather events have ravaged the globe and displaced millions, spurred by a rapidly changing climate and subsequently decaying ecosystem. Political divisiveness has led to international protests and civil unrest with heretofore unparalleled levels of fervor. A highly contagious virus has begun spreading inexorably from country to country, slowly but surely infecting and killing an increasing number of people. Misinformation is running rampant on the web, leading to mass confusion and extreme skepticism of any and all information being disseminated. At the Biology department of a university in Fullerton, California, an accident is about to take place that will blur the lines between the living and the dead. For some, it’s felt like the end of the world for a long time, but those feelings are about to validated, and the world will be too distracted warring with itself, and the truth, for anyone to do anything about it. When the world already feels like hell, the living dead will feel right at home. Welcome to the world of…Gen-Z. Like those selfies while you still can. Coming to a theater near you…NOW! It’s already happening, so stock up on toilet paper…

#coronavirus #candanceowens #Mehdi Hasan #Rick Wilson #kashanacauley #Patti Harrison #zombie #georgearomero #genz #trump #night of the living dead #dawn of the dead #landofthedead #diaryofthedead

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daylflay · 4 years

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The Fashion Show

The Runway

As I’ve progressed through Twitter’s cold, violent, and virtual theater of war amidst the rhetorical conflict that is 2020, which is not (figuratively) dissimilar to the frozen and bloody tundra of Russia circa 1941-1944, what I’ve realized is that this struggle is one of aesthetics rather than principle. Individuals with considerable online followings aren’t concerned with much beyond the consolidation of their brands, and that means walking a certain walk. In Feminist sexualities, race and the internet: an investigation of suicidegirls.com, Shoshana Magnet “argues that the capitalist market serves to depoliticize queer activist movements and assimilate their members – drawing ‘social movements focused on winning rights’ into ‘market-based tactics and objectives”. The individuals I’m following, some of whom are queer and most of whom are “activists” of some sort, are selling something, and they strut that something while walking the virtual runway.

The Models

Rick Wilson is the only white person I’m tracking, and his Twitter feed is unsurprisingly devoid of anything related to people of color; he really doesn’t even try to broach issues related to minority communities, which isn’t shocking for a former GOP strategist (he clearly hasn’t shed ALL of their values). The only people-of-color related visibility on his Twitter are the occasional photos/gifs he posts in a comedic context, seemingly as a way to address the whiteness of his online presence. Wilson comes off as the anti-Trump/GOP persona for white people that still aren’t particularly comfortable with people of color. In a selfie Wilson tweeted out on February 17th, he’s featured in a large, idyllic looking backyard enjoying his morning coffee (or so I assume that’s what it is) and flanked by two dogs running around in the background; the text accompanying the photo reads, “morning. I have had two days off the road from the book tour and I’m starting to feel human again”. I believe Wilson’s aforementioned tweet symbolizes his brand perfectly: He’s the embodiment of classic Americana, but with a neo-conservative twist (he’s staunchly anti-Trump, as his most recent book’s title, Running Against The Devil: A Plot To Save America From Trump – And Democrats From Themselves, suggests) that serves to draw (some) conservatives, centrists, and (some) liberals into his following.

Mehdi Hasan, as a liberal journalist, man of Indian descent, and a self-professed Muslim, is very active in addressing and criticizing the oppression of various minority groups on Twitter; most of his recent tweets target some issue pertaining to minorities, such as this one condemning Mike Bloomberg for unethically surveilling/targeting Muslims in New York: [2/27/20] “Finally, finally!, Bloomberg gets asked about his spying on Muslims in New York and his answer is... to double down and defend it as the right thing to do. (He also brazenly lies about what it involved.)” Having said all of that, Mehdi is not very conservative/traditional regarding his religion, at least not in terms of sartorial choices, in fact he dresses very white, but that’s most likely due to the (probably negative) attention such a cultural performance could engender for someone with as large a following as himself. In New Media, Old Racisms: Twitter, Miss America, and Cultural Logics of Race, J. David Cisneros & Thomas K. Nakayama address the prevalent issue of racism online (specifically on Twitter) and connect the issue to Nina Davuluri, who is a woman of Indian descent (like Hasan) and the 2014 winner of the Miss America title; here’s a tweet they point out directed at Davuluri: “How the fuck does a foreigner win miss America? She is a Arab!#idiots...congratulations Al-Qaeda. Our Miss America is one of you”. This is likely the kind of attention Hasan is trying to avoid by presenting himself and his brand the way he does. In a selfie Hasan uploaded on 2/10/20, he’s wearing a suit in front of a Starbucks with fellow, blue-checkmarked-Twitter-user (not to mention, white man) Andy Lassner; this is about as safe and culturally innocuous as one can play it on Twitter.

Patti Harrison, as a trans woman of color and the dual-minority category that places her in, puts less focus on ethnic minorities like herself (I could only find a single instance of Asian advocacy on her Twitter from months ago, but the person she was advocating for was also trans), but more of a focus on trans-related issues (maybe because that garners more attention on Twitter?). I’m not entirely sure what counts as Vietnamese sartorial chic, but she doesn’t represent it, instead vying for outfits that looks as if they came out of Carrie Bradshaw’s (of Sex and the City fame) closet, as evidenced by a selfie she tweeted out on 1/24/20. In general, she doesn’t seem to put a huge spotlight on neither trans nor Asian matters on Twitter, and I believe it’s because she represents the 2 aforementioned cultural minorities and as such she would engender double the amount of potential negativity; she’s not dissimilar to Mehdi Hasan in this case with his Indian and Muslim identity. It comes off as rather tragic to me that one would have to choose between which minority identity one performs.

In Tweets, Tweeps, and Signifyin’: Communication and Cultural Performance on “Black Twitter”, Sarah Florini talks about a concept known as “signifyin’”: “Black users often perform their identities through displays of cultural competence and knowledge. The linguistic practice of ‘signifyin’,’ which deploys figurative language, indirectness, doubleness, and wordplay as a means of conveying multiple layers of meaning, serves as a powerful resource for the performance of Black cultural identity on Twitter... Signifyin’ is often...derived from Black Vernacular English and phonetic spellings that convey specific pronunciations. Often, this is a relatively minor modification like ‘wit’ (with), ‘tryna’ (trying to), or ‘you’ instead of ‘your.’” In other words, signifyin’ abbreviates online language to more accurately portray offline language/pronunciation, which subsequently consolidates Black culture online. The two Black women who I follow don’t engage in signifyin’ very much on Twitter, but for different reasons: Kashana Cauley does well with bringing issues regarding people of color to the forefront of her Twitter, but she is very careful with diction, probably due to her occupation as a writer (which causes me to ponder that particular industry and its whiteness). There are minor instances of Cauley signifyin’, though, such as in this tweet from February 16th: “Kinda wild how the most far-left, extremist, militant position you can take on health care is that people should have it”; the “kinda” was a very minor example of her signifyin’, but it’s something, and besides that she also performs Black culture via her publicly displayed hairstyle (the image in question is her current profile pic), which she wears in its natural fashion. Cauley ultimately is willing to perform Black culture on Twitter much more-so than the other Black woman on Twitter that I’ve been paying attention to.

Candace Owens (the aforementioned other Black woman that I’m following) has no problem invoking Blacks on Twitter, and in fact makes many Black-centric arguments, but framed through a conservative (and thus white, due to the demographics of the conservative ideology) lens. Owens makes it a point to deliberately style her tweets without the use of signifyin’, i.e., she tweets like a white person because she’s appealing to her conservative brand; the pinned tweet on her account exemplifies this as well as demonstrating her intent on selling more copies of her book (not unlike fellow conservative Rick Wilson): [8/6/19] “LET’S GO AMERICA!...After 2 years of fighting and challenging the status quo— I finally wrote it. The book Democrats don’t want Minorities to read. BLACKOUT: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape From The Democrat Plantation. Available for pre-order on Amazon today!” In addition, many of Owens’ tweeted selfies are of her dressed like a white woman (with always-straightened hair, in contrast to Kashana Cauley’s display of her natural hairstyle) while appearing on (the veritably conservative) Fox News; she seemed to take particular pride in a pic of her with President Donald J. Trump (Fox News’ favorite person) tweeted out on January 21st. Owens’ brand is as translucent as the skin-color of the majority of her followers.

Vladimir Lenin, when he was walking the political runway, once said: “Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.” Lenin was a man of strong principles, and he was memorialized by his country via the former name of one its most well-known cities (formerly Leningrad, currently St. Petersburg). Leningrad during the second world war was the site of a 2+ year siege (9/8/1941-1/8/1944), but Russia persevered and were critical to fighting off the threat of Nazi Germany; the Russian people who fought and died during said siege were, ostensibly, like Lenin, men and women of principle. These individuals I’m tracking on Twitter, with their potential access to people numbering in the millions, are capable of engaging in the “serious politics” Lenin referred to, but are they people of principle? If they can be bought and seduced by capitalism and its associated power, an ideology despised by Lenin, and are fearful of repercussion from those with views antithetical to their principles, then I’d argue that they do not share the aforementioned strength of principle, and considering the theoretical power they possess, that should worry us all.

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daylflay · 4 years

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He/She/Him/Her/Liberal/Conservative

All the Twitter’s a Stage

The performance of gender is typically engendered via societal/cultural inculcation. The gender archetypes germane to traditional Western culture are familiar to most of us: Men are supposed to be tough and stoic, whereas women are supposed to be compassionate and emotionally expressive. Online, though, gender performance takes on an additional dimension; as Sarah Banet-Weiser puts it in Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls’ Media Culture: “The construction of the self is not an insular, isolated activity but is rather situated in a media and cultural context that involves a dynamic between the self and others, or…content and user feedback”. Due to Twitter’s focus on creating/growing a following, for example, gender performance for those with significant followings on the platform is arguably the result of their ideologies/audiences. On Twitter, in some cases, general societal expectations seem to take a backseat to one’s ideological leanings and the subsequent type of following that attracts.

The Actors

All of the individuals I’m monitoring were raised within a Westernized cultural framework, so they no doubt are fully aware of the gender norms expected of them, which Rosalind Gill delineates in Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility: “A key feature of the postfeminist [era] has been the resurgence of natural sexual differences…[,] one arena in which this played out was the media debate about…an unashamed celebration of true or authentic masculinity”. Rick Wilson/@TheRickWilson and Mehdi Hasan/@mehdirhasan, the two men I’m tracking, are both heterosexual Westerners, but their gender performances are dichotomized based on their identification with conservatism and liberalism, respectively.

Conservatism, as a social ideology, is concerned with conserving traditional Western values, and in Rick Wilson’s case that means performing as a tough, red-blooded, take-no-shit kind of man similar to what Gill described as “authentic masculinity” (though Wilson takes politically moderate positions on myriad issues, he still self-identifies as conservative). Perusing his tweets/replies, it’s clear that he takes a very aggressive posture on Twitter. Wilson seems to constantly be engaging in Twitter spats with a variety of users, and is crude and condescending towards his targets: Just today (2/20/20), in response to a Twitter user who said something that Wilson considered distasteful, Wilson sarcastically tweeted, “I am intrigued by your views and wish to subscribe to your news letter”; the Twitter user in question had a minimal following, and Wilson, with his formidable following and widely recognized body of online content, clearly delighted in mocking her and her nonexistent newsletter. Regarding the photos/videos he posts to Twitter, Wilson almost exclusively uses those forms of media to promote either his most recent book release, or his media appearances; it all revolves around self-advertisement, which is consistent with the typical capitalistic leanings of economic conservatism. There also seems to be a lack of emoji use by Wilson, which is basically a portrayal of the stoicism associated with the Western male archetype.

Socially, liberalism, which Mehdi Hasan proudly identifies with, espouses an open-minded and empathetic mentality unlike Wilson’s display of “true masculinity”. Hasan’s tweets/replies can be aggressive at times, but he’s much more open to the use of humor and emojis than Wilson is, which sets a friendlier tone than Wilson does. In general, Hasan seems more interested in engaging with current events than with Twitter users; the majority of the photos/videos Hasan posts are germane to whatever current event is on his mind, whether it’s a screen-grab from the most recent Democratic debate or a video of Iranian activists protesting their current political regime. Hasan cultivates a Twitter identity that is focused on informing the public without the use of pontification/condescension, which jives with liberal precepts. One of Hasan’s most recent tweets simply stated, solemnly and without a trace of irony, “interesting argument”, in response to a tweet by New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones/@onesarahjones.

The Actresses

Kashana Cauley/@kashanacauley and Patti Harrison/@Party_Harderson are both liberals, and the general atmospheres they curate via their Twitter accounts are mostly friendly and overtly humorous. One of Cauley’s tweets following yesterday’s (2/19) Democratic debate humorously read: “Bloomberg’s going for the left vote by being publicly owned”; her tweet was jocular and tame in tone compared to the vast majority of political tweets and their vitriolic nature. Both women engage enthusiastically with other Twitter users, and their tones when engaging are supportive and optimistic; I wasn’t able to discern any recent instances of either woman sparring with other Twitter users, in fact.

Cauley and Harrison have a lot in common in terms of their Twitter use, but the latter is much more active in feminizing her tweets than the former, and it’s for a good reason: Harrison is a trans woman, and that typically entails the performance of some form of traditional femininity. Though being trans is obviously a major aspect of her identity, it’s also part of her brand. I’m not suggesting that Harrison is capitalizing on her identity in a reprehensible way, but being publicly trans is bound to attract a plethora of other trans and marginalized peoples to her, which is commensurate to what Patricia G. Lange touches upon in The Vulnerable Video Blogger: Promoting Social Change through Intimacy: “Years ago, exposing oneself through writing and art constitute[d] a kind of vulnerability”, and now that vulnerability is expressed and subsequently shared via social media, which has undoubtedly worked in Harrison’s favor. In comparison to Cauley, Harrison tweets many more selfies, as well as videos featuring her doing silly things, and also frequently uses emojis that invoke traditional femininity such as hearts, kissy faces, etc.: e.g., about a month ago (1/24/20), Harrison tweeted a photo of herself dressed up for a night out accompanied by text describing a hair-iron related debacle; the tweet concluded with a series of red heart emojis.

In opposition to Cauley and Harrison, Candace Owens/@RealCandaceO is passionately conservative, and as such her gender performance has more in common with a traditional male archetype than a female one. Owens’ Twitter behavior has a lot in common with Rick Wilson, although their views in many instances, despite both being conservative, are polar opposites. Regarding their similarities, Owens, like Wilson, is highly aggressive on Twitter, probably more-so than Wilson, and her photo/video uploads primarily consist of self-advertisement; here’s a recent (2/17/20) Owens response to a Twitter user who tweeted at her: “This would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that you were too stupid to actually listen to the clip where I clearly said that Bernie Sanders would destroy Black America for the next 100 years.” Another commonality between the two conservatives is the lack of emoji-use and humor; Wilson is basically a comedian with a sunny disposition in comparison to Owens’ austerity. Owens basically bucks every trend of typical online female performativity in favor of a an extremely aggressive and traditionally male posture that appeals to conservatives. In Virtual Feminisms, Jessalynn Marie Keller states that “feminism has helped to redefine notions of…resistance and activism, with cultural and political action taking on new forms that ‘may be unrecognizable if interpreted through more traditional paradigms of activism’”; although Owens is vocally anti-feminist and would emphatically reject the feminist label being applied to her in any capacity, it can’t be denied that her Twitter activity falls in line with a conservative form of the neo-activism that Keller articulates in her article.

As Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…and one man in his time plays many parts”.

#liberal #conservative #Rick Wilson #Mehdi Hasan #kashanacauley #Patti Harrison #candace owens #sarah jones #michael bloomberg #bernie sanders #politics #feminism #masculinity #twitter #shakespeare #western #society #ideology

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daylflay · 4 years

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Twitter “Friendship”

The Menagerie

Twitter, unlike other social networking sites such as Facebook, doesn’t necessarily encourage users to amass a large number of followed accounts. On Facebook, when you befriend someone it’s mutual (i.e., if one successfully adds an individual as a Facebook friend, then it’s reflected on both accounts), which creates a different context when it comes to the number of friends one has. Some individuals collect friends as if they’re Pokémon, attempting to increase the size of their collection for bragging rights, but on sites like Twitter that catch-em-all dynamic doesn’t really exist. In fact, on Twitter it’s typically seen as more impressive to follow less accounts than the number of accounts following you; it shows that one can attract others without the promise of reciprocation, which creates a sense of fandom as opposed to friendship. Danah Boyd touches upon this in Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media: “The vast majority of those who collect large numbers of friends are…musicians, politicians, corporations, and wannabe celebrities…[;] mass friend collecting is just one of the practices of connecting with strangers”. As I mentioned previously regarding Twitter, one doesn’t really amass friends, but instead tries to establish a following, so the “mass friend collecting” Boyd mentions can be more accurately described as mass follower collecting when it comes to Twitter. The accounts I’m tracking are not musicians, corporations, or politicians, but they are essentially wannabe celebrities who are politically active, and they’ve each established rather large followings.

Kashana Cauley/@kashanacauley and Patti Harrison/@Party_Harderson currently have over 100,00 followers each and are following less than 1,000 accounts; Rick Wilson/@TheRickWilson and Mehdi Hasan/@mehdirhasan have over 700,000 followers each and follow a few thousand accounts; Candace Owens/@RealCandaceO has almost 2,000,000 followers and only follows 14 accounts. The follow/follower ratios of these accounts are rhetorical statements in of themselves. Kashana Cauley and Patti Harrison, for example, are in the entertainment business, but seemingly focus more-so on writing than performing, so it makes sense that they’re not aggressively pursuing larger followings; their form of occupation is more subtle in nature than the other accounts I’ve mentioned. Rick Wilson and Mehdi Hasan are large-looming figures in political media, so their followings are understandably larger than that of Kashana and Patti; Rick and Mehdi basically don’t have jobs unless people are paying a lot of attention to them, because otherwise nobody would invite them onto their political shows in order to provide commentary. Candace Owens is arguably the most unique individual among the five. Owens is a staunch conservative, so her invitations to provide political commentary for notable media networks are limited, which makes it a necessity for her to have as large a following as possible; having said that, as a Black woman who identifies as conservative (which basically makes her a unicorn in the world of politics), she’s able to easily attract the attention a plethora of individuals on social media. Some Twitter users follow her because they share her values, but others undoubtedly just follow her because she’s a political curio; either way, Owens has carved out an impressive social media niche for herself.

The Cool Kids

Throughout Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media, Danah Boyd is primarily talking about teenagers, which is why it was humorously surprising to find that these adults with their massive social media followings seem to have instincts similar to said teenagers: “The issue of whom one is friends with…is embedded in a broader set of struggles over status among peers…[,] it is important to pay special attention to the role that social media play in the negotiation of…status.” I’ve already established how the number of followers one has on Twitter compared to the number of accounts one follows is important to Twitter-fame, but besides the importance of the aforementioned numerical dichotomy, there is also something to be said about whom exactly one follows. On Twitter, there’s a notorious emblem that signifies the importance of an account: The blue checkmark. If one’s Twitter account is deemed worthy by the powers that be, then one will receive a blue checkmark at the end of their name. All of the accounts I’m monitoring for this project have this checkmark by their names, and I discovered something curious about the accounts that they tend to follow, and that’s that the vast majority of those accounts also have the blue checkmark. These faux-celebrities that have cultivated cults of personality around themselves seemingly prefer the Twitter-company of other faux-celebrities. It reminds me of how movie stars like Brad Pitt and Leonard DiCaprio only hang out with other stars like themselves. It makes me think that these blue-checkmarked Twitter users have developed a sort of social media elitism, and only those who are part of the checkmark-club are worthy of their attention.

Cool as Ice

Twitter, seemingly by design, is a colder (figuratively, in terms of human interaction) social networking site than most. In Faux Friendship, William Deresiewicz primarily writes about Facebook, but his commentary is of commensurate relevance when applied to Twitter and the nature of followers: “We have stopped thinking of them as individuals. We have turned them into an indiscriminate mass, a kind of audience or faceless public…climbing the jungle gym of…contacts in order to advance your career”. Deresiewicz hones in on exactly how individuals such as those I’m following are using Twitter and their respective followings in order to capitalize on their sizable online presences. For the most part, there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of social media in order to maximize one’s career prospects, but it does give me pause when I think about the rhetoric espoused by some of these individuals. People like Candace Owens and Rick Wilson have the power to legitimately influence individuals on a real-life, political level, and when their motivations are muddied by the possibility that they’re simply trying to strengthen their brand, then they become dangerous. I suppose only time will tell whether I’m being hyperbolic or there is a genuine threat to society to fear from these blue-checkmarked faux-celebrities.

#Rick Wilson #Patti Harrison #kashanacauley #candace owens #Mehdi Hasan #politics #twitter #democracy #conservative #brad pitt #leonardo dicaprio

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daylflay · 4 years

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The Coming Storm: 2020 and the rhetorical war we’ve all been drafted into

As we (hopefully) all know, this year is an election year, and for some it’s the most important one of their lives. As it currently stands, America is more ideologically divided than it perhaps has ever been, and that division is sure to intensify over the coming months. It’s only the beginning of February, but already we’ve seen passions erupt over the tragic and unexpected death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant (along with his daughter and various others), the frustrating mess that was the Iowa Democratic caucus, and of course the acquittal in the senate of President Donald J. Trump; only the latter two of those examples are political in nature, but all three have evoked intense responses from individuals of all ideologies. It’s easy to imagine how the political occurrences can inspire bifurcated responses from the public due to the divisive nature of politics, but Kobe Bryant’s death also came with its share of controversy. It may seem to some that the Kobe Bryant tragedy could only create solidarity and evoke responses of compassion and mourning, but there are segments of social media that are applying focus to Kobe’s legacy as an alleged rapist; this is just an example of how any major occurrence can produce myriad responses and conflicts. As I said before, the year is just beginning, and people are already on edge due to the tumultuous nature of an election year, so I can only imagine what’s going to transpire as time inexorably marches forward and people respond to whatever it is that’s occupying news chyrons at that moment; my guess is that things will get far darker before the dawn.

The focus of my blog will be to monitor and report on the social media accounts (though primarily Twitter accounts) of select individuals in order to ascertain the current state of public rhetoric as the year progresses. The individuals I’ve chosen to analyze are a collection of men and women of various ideological leanings and cultural backgrounds. I’m certain that over time certain themes will begin to emerge in the rhetoric of the individuals I’ll be following, and I’ll be utilizing not only class-assigned readings in order to analyze those themes, but of course I’ll also be implementing various germane articles from a plethora of news sources.

The soldiers on the front line

I’ve chosen a total of five different individuals and their social media accounts to focus on: Kashana Cauley/@kashanacauley is a female writer of African American descent who writes for television (e.g., Fox comedy The Great North, and The Daily Show) and contributes to outlets such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, The Atlantic, Esquire, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone among others; I chose Kashana because she’s politically active, but not overwhelmingly so, and will likely provide perspectives on a diffuse range of issues as a result.

Mehdi Hasan/@mehdirhasan is a male British journalist/broadcaster/author of Indian descent who hosts Head to Head on the Al Jazeera network every week, has a weekly podcast called Deconstructed, and is constantly featured in the online news outlet The Intercept; Mehdi is one of the most astute voices in politics, and thus will provide sharp commentary on whatever political event is trending at a given time.

Candace Owens/@RealCandaceO is a female conservative commentator of African American descent who can be found primarily on Twitter, but occasionally appears on networks such as Fox News; Candace is not only a prominent voice in the world of conservative politics/activism, but she’s also a woman of color, making her representative of one of the least common demographics in conservative politics.

Rick Wilson/@TheRickWilson is a male commentator/author/former Republican strategist of Caucasian descent whose columns can be found in The Daily Beast, Politico, and The Federalist among others, and who often appears on political shows such as Real Time with Bill Maher on a semi-regular basis; as a former GOP strategist, Rick is very critical of both the Democratic and Republican political establishments, and subsequently serves as one of the few prominent individuals in politics/media who’s able to deftly walk the line between political ideologies.

Patti Harrison/@Party_Harderson is a trans woman of partial Vietnamese descent who practices comedy, acting, and writing (e.g., she’s featured as a writer in the upcoming season of Big Mouth), and can be seen on shows such as High Maintenance, Broad City, and Shrill; Patti, like Kashana, is not enmeshed in the world of politics, but is still politically active, and as a trans woman of color, her perspective on matters both political and otherwise is a unique and thus valuable one.

The beachhead

All of the individuals I’ll be monitoring and reporting on have substantial social media followings/influence, and for various reasons they’re each targeted often by social media users of all ideological leanings, making them perfect for my analyses. In addition to monitoring the social media content these individuals produce, I also will pay close attention to how other social media users react to said content. Individuals like Candace Owens, for example, represent a fascinating intersection between ethnicity and ideology that evokes intense passionate from some social media users, and the progression of that passion over time is something I’ll be paying very close attention to. These five individuals will surely be defending themselves on their respective social media beachheads over the coming months, and I’ll be there to count the bullets in the sand after every battle. Let the rhetorical war for the soul of America begin.

#kashanacauley #mehdi hasan #candanceowens #rick wilson #patti harrison #politics #liberal #conservative #democrat #republican #2020

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