Shaker drawing

I feel like this is a story from someone’s mythology somewhere.

Girls That Never Die

a girl embroidered

a girl teeth bared  locked inside a photograph

a girl dances to the same coiled song    can never leave

keeps her looks       outlives the other guests

filled up with all her teeth    never returns from the party

is never heard from again    is everywhere

Forgotten But Not Gone      

cries into your drink & returns it to you

makes you say her name   salt in the well kills the whole village

— Safia Elhillo, from Girls That Never Die

Chandeliers by VGnewtrend Furniture

i think it's probably best for society if we stop treating bigoted influencers like andrew tate (etc) like some kind of harmless funny joke. we have made this mistake a lot - treating people with extremist views as if they're "so unhinged they're not a problem". we give them free press. i wouldn't even know the name "andrew tate" but for the fact i saw someone making fun of him.

i get it. sometimes they say things that are so off-the-wall incorrect that the only way to respond is to laugh.

but the thing we've seen from alex jones (and many others) is that they don't need to be extreme the whole time. they just need to use shock value enough to get hate-watches. most of these people will demand that you "watch the whole video." this is intentional. at some point in their content, they will probably make a comment that you do believe in - let's call that comment "the gateway comment". (we'll come back to this).

from the point of view of someone who worked in digital marketing (sorry), every form of interaction with these influencers does benefit them.

most hate-watchers will navigate away. but the algorithm still sees that original click. at the minimum, that influencer will be rewarded for click-through. and every public mention of the influencer adds to their SEO. every ironic comment, every redirect, every angry response - it pays the influencer. and if you mention/see/interact enough with even negative content about that person, your algorithm will start feeding you "andrew tate related" materials. it only sees that you interact with that, it does not calculate for if you approve/disapprove.

it might even be able to find materials that have that above "gateway comment." you don't necessarily disagree with it, and it's not as extreme as the usual shit you've heard. but the gateway comment will lead you to influencers who aren't as extreme as the original. and those will have their own gateways. this is how you are slowly pulled into the sense that maybe something you used to see as extreme is now rote to you - and that is extremely concerning.

and no, none of us are able to escape this. the reason it works is because it's based on the law of large numbers - the algorithm works by over-feeding you. but what you remember is the stuff that is extreme. i am not calling you stupid - i'm saying that a very-expensive and constantly-learning machine program is very good at its job. it was designed to do this and only this. you were designed to be a person - you have other programming that is more important to your function.

the best way to engage with these people is to not engage with them ever at all. to give them no interaction. and to, as much as you can, lift up other voices instead. give the right people your click-throughs and your retweets and your name dropping.

being extremist is profitable and we need to stop treating it like it's "so unhinged it's funny" when instead it's "an extremely effective marketing technique."

From St. Nicholas (serial) vol. 12, pt. 2 by Mary Mapes Dodge, 1873

Jane Newland

ig: francescabologni

Sunny Day, Ilya Sokolov