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dolorosa_12Today's ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge prompt is Tell Us about a Personal Win.
Mine is something that exists on the bordery, blurred space between fandom and personal lives: last year I left Twitter, and I didn't join any similar social media platform to replace it.
It sounds like such a silly and minor thing, but the burden it had been placing on my mental health and just general ability to manage my emotions was immense. I would see things pass by my feed that left me enraged and despairing for days (usually people quote-retweeting terrible things in order to argue with them, but sometimes just people sharing tweets whose content aligned with their own beliefs on a particular issue — but the tweet originated from someone who had otherwise terrible beliefs on other issues, or from someone I knew to be a harasser or bully — would be enough to send me into a spiral of despair*), and it would completely suck all the joy out my life and render me incapable of doing anything. Worst of all was when I saw people I otherwise liked or admired sharing what I knew to be blatant misinformation, or deliberately selective information, and the various large-scale disinformation campaigns that I witnessed unfold and take effect. This sort of thing genuinely rendered me incapable of doing anything (exercising, reading, cleaning, writing, non-work projects) that wasn't immediately essential for my survival/ability to earn money for days or weeks at a time. I was locked in this endless cycle of spiralling despair/rage/inactivity, shaking myself out of it by avoiding Twitter for long blocks of time, rinse and repeat.
By the end, the value of being on the platform (which for me was getting information and context on unfolding current affairs events from people who weren't normally afforded a permanent space in English-language mainstream media — Arab Spring activists, Belarusian opposition politicians, refugees trapped in Australia's offshore detention facilities, Ukrainian journalists, Hong Kong dissidents and so on) was by far outweighed by all the stuff that so debilitated me. I remember when I finally had wiped my entire 15-year archive of tweets clean, and deleted the account for good, vague conversations about some new round of SFF publishing drama started circulating on Instagram, I had no idea of the details, and to find out I would have had to have joined BlueSky — and I didn't join, and felt this sense of sheer, overwhelming relief that I wasn't party to whatever endless petty infighting was going to unfold over the next few weeks.
Unfortunately, I am seeing similar waves of large-scale, deliberate (geo)political disinformation campaigns circulating (and finding willing root) on Instagram, and I possibly need to do a cull of the accounts I'm following there, but it certainly feels a bit more manageable, and I have no regrets about leaving Twitter.
I'll end this post with a couple of links. After mentioning in my previous post about the Hugos kerfuffle that I feel people in democratic countries misunderstand how state censorship tends to operate, Ada Palmer (who is writing an academic book on the history of censorship) wrote a fantastic post explaining how it does tend to operate. I think it's definitely worth a read.
Edited to add a new link:wearing_tearing has started up watcherscouncil, a comm for all things Buffyverse. The description is: a community for anyone interested in embarking on a Buffyverse rewatch and discussing other Buffyverse-related content. Join and subscribe if it sounds like your kind of thing!
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*I'm too much of a journalists' daughter: it matters just as much to me who is saying something and why they might be saying it, not just what they're saying in that one single instance. But unfortunately I feel this is a futile, losing battle: my impression is that most people using social media treat the contents of any individual tweet/post as something that exists in complete isolation from any broader context. Does the content of that individual tweet/post align with their own beliefs on an issue? If yes, they'll share it, even if every other thing that person ever posted is in service of an extremely objectionable agenda — but most people won't have attempted to investigate the broader social media output of a person whose individual tweet/post they want to share, and will therefore never see this broader context.
I mean, I saw people sharing what appeared to be livetweeted breaking news about protests in China that came from a pro-Orban/pro-Polish far right propagandist. I'm currently seeing people share material in support of Palestinians in Gaza that comes from individuals who a) were supportive of Assad in Syria, b) regularly give interviews on Russian and Iranian state TV, including one individual who mocked and psychologically tormented Ukrainian prisoners of war on TV broadcasts and who is to my knowledge the only British citizen actually sanctioned by the British government in relation to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, c) have denied the Uighur genocide, etc etc. As I say, it feels entirely fruitless to fight against this, but all the above makes me want to lie on the floor in despair. Forget fannish wishlists: if I had one wish for 2024, it would be for people to stop, investigate the broader output background of the people whose pithy posts or emotionally affecting Instagram videos they're poised to share, and only share said material once they're convinced that the person's broader outlook beyond the content of that individual post is one they're comfortable endorsing.
snowflake_challenge prompt is Tell Us about a Personal Win.Mine is something that exists on the bordery, blurred space between fandom and personal lives: last year I left Twitter, and I didn't join any similar social media platform to replace it.
It sounds like such a silly and minor thing, but the burden it had been placing on my mental health and just general ability to manage my emotions was immense. I would see things pass by my feed that left me enraged and despairing for days (usually people quote-retweeting terrible things in order to argue with them, but sometimes just people sharing tweets whose content aligned with their own beliefs on a particular issue — but the tweet originated from someone who had otherwise terrible beliefs on other issues, or from someone I knew to be a harasser or bully — would be enough to send me into a spiral of despair*), and it would completely suck all the joy out my life and render me incapable of doing anything. Worst of all was when I saw people I otherwise liked or admired sharing what I knew to be blatant misinformation, or deliberately selective information, and the various large-scale disinformation campaigns that I witnessed unfold and take effect. This sort of thing genuinely rendered me incapable of doing anything (exercising, reading, cleaning, writing, non-work projects) that wasn't immediately essential for my survival/ability to earn money for days or weeks at a time. I was locked in this endless cycle of spiralling despair/rage/inactivity, shaking myself out of it by avoiding Twitter for long blocks of time, rinse and repeat.
By the end, the value of being on the platform (which for me was getting information and context on unfolding current affairs events from people who weren't normally afforded a permanent space in English-language mainstream media — Arab Spring activists, Belarusian opposition politicians, refugees trapped in Australia's offshore detention facilities, Ukrainian journalists, Hong Kong dissidents and so on) was by far outweighed by all the stuff that so debilitated me. I remember when I finally had wiped my entire 15-year archive of tweets clean, and deleted the account for good, vague conversations about some new round of SFF publishing drama started circulating on Instagram, I had no idea of the details, and to find out I would have had to have joined BlueSky — and I didn't join, and felt this sense of sheer, overwhelming relief that I wasn't party to whatever endless petty infighting was going to unfold over the next few weeks.
Unfortunately, I am seeing similar waves of large-scale, deliberate (geo)political disinformation campaigns circulating (and finding willing root) on Instagram, and I possibly need to do a cull of the accounts I'm following there, but it certainly feels a bit more manageable, and I have no regrets about leaving Twitter.
I'll end this post with a couple of links. After mentioning in my previous post about the Hugos kerfuffle that I feel people in democratic countries misunderstand how state censorship tends to operate, Ada Palmer (who is writing an academic book on the history of censorship) wrote a fantastic post explaining how it does tend to operate. I think it's definitely worth a read.
Edited to add a new link:
wearing_tearing has started up watcherscouncil, a comm for all things Buffyverse. The description is: a community for anyone interested in embarking on a Buffyverse rewatch and discussing other Buffyverse-related content. Join and subscribe if it sounds like your kind of thing!___________
*I'm too much of a journalists' daughter: it matters just as much to me who is saying something and why they might be saying it, not just what they're saying in that one single instance. But unfortunately I feel this is a futile, losing battle: my impression is that most people using social media treat the contents of any individual tweet/post as something that exists in complete isolation from any broader context. Does the content of that individual tweet/post align with their own beliefs on an issue? If yes, they'll share it, even if every other thing that person ever posted is in service of an extremely objectionable agenda — but most people won't have attempted to investigate the broader social media output of a person whose individual tweet/post they want to share, and will therefore never see this broader context.
I mean, I saw people sharing what appeared to be livetweeted breaking news about protests in China that came from a pro-Orban/pro-Polish far right propagandist. I'm currently seeing people share material in support of Palestinians in Gaza that comes from individuals who a) were supportive of Assad in Syria, b) regularly give interviews on Russian and Iranian state TV, including one individual who mocked and psychologically tormented Ukrainian prisoners of war on TV broadcasts and who is to my knowledge the only British citizen actually sanctioned by the British government in relation to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, c) have denied the Uighur genocide, etc etc. As I say, it feels entirely fruitless to fight against this, but all the above makes me want to lie on the floor in despair. Forget fannish wishlists: if I had one wish for 2024, it would be for people to stop, investigate the broader output background of the people whose pithy posts or emotionally affecting Instagram videos they're poised to share, and only share said material once they're convinced that the person's broader outlook beyond the content of that individual post is one they're comfortable endorsing.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 04:49 pm (UTC)I guess from the sound of things, it's a good thing you're blocked from accessing Twitter now.
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Date: 2024-01-23 07:15 pm (UTC)Apartheid Clyde is also beautiful, though. :)
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Date: 2024-01-24 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 05:38 pm (UTC)I share your frustration with this and, at least in regards to things about current affairs/politics, I always like to investigate the source, in fact I think people have a duty to do so before they share tweets/posts etc. The amount of misinformation being spread around and posts being shared that are written by people who shouldn't have any kind of platform is a particular annoyance for me with tumblr at the moment.
Sorry, I don't mean to rant on your post. It sounds like leaving twitter was a really good decision for you, especially as it can be so hard to give up these kinds of sites.
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Date: 2024-01-23 05:56 pm (UTC)My wake up call about this actually happened close to a decade ago on Tumblr (back when I was still using Tumblr): in the wake of the 2016 US election, it was revealed that a lot of accounts that appeared to be innocuous fandom accounts, or accounts ostensibly belonging to Black people posting about anti-Black racism in the US, activists posting about abortion rights etc were actually the work of paid Russian propaganda networks. It was possible to check if you'd ever reblogged material from this network of propagandists, I did so, and discovered that a bunch of seemingly innocuous posts (fanart celebrating Black American women athletes like Simone Biles, Serena Williams and so on, random text posts about sexism, etc) turned out to have originated with this network. They were mostly either fandom stuff, or things on the face of it that seemed to be about social justice or marginalised identities in the US — but they had an incredibly sinister origin.
That moment was enough for me: lesson learned, and I never clicked retweet/reblog/share again without investigating the source in detail. I really wish other people would do the same. The above is a really stark illustration of how something seemingly light-hearted and insubstantial (pretty fanart of Simone Biles, for example) can contribute to something much bigger and scarier.
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Date: 2024-01-23 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 03:32 pm (UTC)You said it. I am glad that leaving Twitter has been aa relief.
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Date: 2024-01-24 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 07:14 pm (UTC)The wilder/more outlandish the claim, the better it should be investigated before sharing. Someone claiming on Twitter that Israeli snipers are gunning down children better have confessions or actual footage, I won't even bother before that. (Yes the IDF obviously isn't perfect bc nobody is but the wild shit people ascribe to them without proof while there's direct proof of what crimes were committed against Israelis on October 7th is...disappointing to say the least).
Alas.
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Date: 2024-01-24 06:31 pm (UTC)To summarise the stuff that I've seen (both at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, in later years as the full-scale war has ground on, and in relation to Israel's war against Gaza), it falls into the following broad narratives:
In relation to Ukraine:
In relation to Israel/Gaza:
So basically that's what I've been seeing — even the stuff about Israel seems to have an undercurrent of either convincing left-leaning Americans not to vote (which would of course benefit Russia), or convincing left-leaning Americans that the war in Ukraine isn't real, isn't serious, or should be stopped immediately with a 'ceasefire' (which would of course benefit Russia).
I haven't personally witnessed the things you're describing, but I definitely believe they exist (Jewish friends and people I know through Dreamwidth have told me they've seen a lot of it), and it's horrifying. To deny or minimise what happened on October 7th is reprehensible.
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Date: 2024-01-23 08:43 pm (UTC)Wishing for this right along with you.
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Date: 2024-01-24 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 09:52 pm (UTC)I was only ever on there to follow a large group of people in my profession but all the insanity began to bleed into their posts and I just couldn't take it anymore. I'm much happier for it!
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Date: 2024-01-24 06:34 pm (UTC)I'm glad the decision to leave has been a positive one for you.
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Date: 2024-01-23 10:19 pm (UTC)I too have given up on twitter and not replaced it. I think the time I was spending is going on a mixture of More Dreamwidth, More Discord (specifically the women's ice hockey server) and language study. All of these are much better for me :-)
no subject
Date: 2024-01-24 06:34 pm (UTC)Congratulations on quitting Twitter
Date: 2024-01-24 12:02 am (UTC)I know I’ve ranted before about my disconnection from social media and its beneficial effects on my mental health. The day Trump was elected I stopped reading the news. My survival depended on that refusal. I’m not proud of it, but it’s what I had to do.
Not a journalist’s daughter, but I was bedbound 1989-1991 and read two newspapers, back to front, and listened to BBC/NPR/CBC, Kol Israel and Radio Netherlands. It was a fascinating time!
The ease of misinfo spread now is terrifying to contemplate.
Re: Congratulations on quitting Twitter
Date: 2024-01-24 06:42 pm (UTC)You're not the only person I know to do that, and it feels entirely justifiable to me. I went through long stretches like that in relation to UK politics a few years back, because the anxiety caused by various Brexit-related things was having physical effects on my body, and I don't regret that choice for a second.
That definitely sounds like a fascinating time to have witnessed! I was alive then, but just a small child so it passed me by at the time. I really think it was a huge moment in history — one of the few times when people were aware of the enormity of what they were witnessing in real time as it happened.
The ease of misinfo spread now is terrifying to contemplate.
The thing that really terrifies me is that people on the centre-liberal-left side of the political spectrum can spot misinfo easily when it's the sort of campaign targeted at the far-right (e.g. conspiracy theories about Covid lockdowns and vaccines, fearmongering about refugees and migrants), but they're generally bad at recognising the similar campaigns that target the political left — I can often recognise these campaigns now that I know what to look out for, but it often requires a level of understanding of the politics and histories of specific foreign countries/regions that many people in the US or Western Europe lack. And because there's no culture of pausing to research and check before clicking 'retweet'/'reblog'/'share' on a context-free post that presses the correct emotional buttons, people spread this kind of disinformation without checking. Left-wing people can be very smug about the stupidity of people who buy into right-wing conspiracy theories, but can be susceptible to exactly the same thing.
Re: Congratulations on quitting Twitter
Date: 2024-01-24 07:11 pm (UTC)This is another reason why Twitter etc was so toxic for me. Because I would take that time, which meant I spent hours researching “truthiness” (Stephen Colbert’s perfect neologism), bathing in the often grim details of oppressive policy and human suffering. Then I realized that retweeting &c had become a fandom: that folks were displaying solidarity and common interest with their retweet/quote/reblog. That’s great for fanfic and art and SF and TV — fandom positivity can be so rewarding. But folks were bonding over misery.
Re: Congratulations on quitting Twitter
Date: 2024-01-24 08:28 pm (UTC)This is very true.
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Date: 2024-01-24 06:58 pm (UTC)it matters just as much to me who is saying something and why they might be saying it, not just what they're saying in that one single instance.
That is a very good point.
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Date: 2024-01-24 08:33 pm (UTC)Oh, this is a very common far-right conspiracy theory (often they include things like autism, being transgender and other similar stuff). The reason why these things 'weren't around' in the 1980s is a) we often didn't have the terminology to describe them, so these things existed but nobody knew what they were, and b) even if we did have the terminology, they were stigmatised so nobody wanted to admit that they had ADHD, were autistic and so on. As social stigma decreases, more people feel comfortable identifying that they have certain disabilities or other marginalised identities.
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Date: 2024-01-25 01:57 am (UTC)my impression is that most people using social media treat the contents of any individual tweet/post as something that exists in complete isolation from any broader context.
I've noticed this too and it fascinates me because it exists alongside the contradictory tendency to dogpile and permanently ostracize users for the content of a single post. Not that I always disagree with this: James Gunn, for instance, absolutely deserved to suffer consequences for those posts, no matter how long ago and "how different things were" when he made them. But that's not always the case, and you can't really predict which way the social media undercurrents will flow in any given instance—another reason I prefer to stay clear of it entirely.
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Date: 2024-01-26 05:16 pm (UTC)This is a very good point — I'd not really drawn the connection between those two things, but now that you mention it, it's very true. I guess that reinforces my sense that there's a lot of hypocrisy at work: people are more willing to let things slide in some cases (objectionable content and opinions held by people whose posts they agree with/share on individual issues) and not in others (single objectionable posts by people they don't consider friends/allies/admirable).
I'm glad leaving social media has been such a positive decision for you.
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Date: 2024-01-25 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-26 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-28 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 11:28 am (UTC)I've started subscribing to a lot of non-Dreamwidth blogs and newsletters through Dreamwidth feeds like that, and I appreciate how easy it is to do so in most cases.