Factual Dispatch #22 - Fascist YouTube, Lovecraftian Garfield

Pride has been accompanied by a heartening amount of brand skepticism this year, which couldn’t have come at a worse time for YouTube and Vox Media. For those of us not Extremely Online, the news of the week makes no sense at all, and that’s because it shouldn’t. This confluence of corporate stupidity, wildly unsupervised reaction, brigading, and bad faith negotiations should in no way be looked to for guidance, or one day taught as a case study in business school. It’s so stupidly bizarre, by the end of it, you’ll be more gratified by the explanation of why people are drawing Cthulhu Garfield. Meet Carlos Maza. He’s great. While I can’t say I am a fan of everything Vox does, Carlos is a wonderful educator and storyteller.

Carlos Maza has done a bunch of long-form videos for Vox talking about various topics. Steven Crowder is the guy from the Change My Mind meme from back in the day, that managed to get himself deplatformed by Fox News for sucking damn hard.

YouTube gaslighting queer people about being their ally, while allowing Crowder to make video after video attacking him, was too much for Carlos. In a viral tweet thread, he discussed the brigading of his social media accounts by Crowder’s fans, and the years he & Vox spent pleading with YouTube to do something.

While this was initially waved off as a non-issue by YouTube, the outrage grew over this week steadily. Especially with the optics of YouTube ignoring the pleas of a queer producer in favor of a fascist producer during Pride week, eventually they relented, responding quickly, and semi-badly. Blanket demonetization, poorly targeted, and quickly rolled out, ended up raising the hackles of people who didn’t participate in the knife fight at all. Some have tried to argue that Maza & Crowder had done equivalent things to each other, but to be clear, Crowder literally sells a shirt that says “Socialism is for F*gs” then pretends the * is an “i.” Tim Pool and other faux free speech advocates stood by him, repeating this idiotic assertion.

This type of disingenuous/bad faith argument from the alt right and fascist elements on Twitter and YouTube is just one of thousands of examples LGBTQ influencers and liberal media personalities have had to deal with over the years. And this entirely ignores the brigading, death threats, and harassment Maza faces every time he posts on Twitter. But once Crowder started loudly claiming he was being censored, the bad faith brigade led by Ted Cruz himself, piled in.

This was all happening the week that Vox was trying to fight off a unionizing push from its editors and media staff, so it’s not even as if Vox is some blameless company compared to YouTube. Ultimately, it’s pretty clear that Twitter & YouTube have no intention of bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice, or even attempting to build mechanisms to allow marginalized voices to defend themselves against the onslaught of bilge that 100% of women who have ever been on Twitter can tell you about. Meanwhile, free speech advocates remain curiously silent every time a left-of-center voice is suppressed.

And now, for something completely different.

Those of us who spend their time in the darker places of the internet have noticed a weirdly compelling, yet horrifying trend taking place over the last couple of years, related to Garfield. Yes, everyone’s favorite obese cat, Garfield, has become a victim of what can only be described as lovingly nihilistic reinterpretation. A great comment on Reddit described the phenomenon, and this quote, says it all I think:

There are a bunch of interpretations of Garfield along the way, with Gramfel, Garfield Minus Garfield, and even the OG Conan & Garfield, to help you understand how the internet will take even the most milquetoast construct and, given enough time, produce something absolutely horrifying. r/imsorryjon contains some truly worrying images, so proceed at your own risk.

Eye-Watering Data Visualization of the Week: When one party controls the entire state government apparatus, the Democrats & Republicans do depressingly different things with that power. Democrats:

Republicans:

Vaguely Dystopian News of the Week: While Tim Cook goes on a privacy victory tour, Amazon continues to fumble when it comes to proving their Alexa ecosystem isn’t a glorified wiretap you pay for.

Annoying-But-Correct Take of the Week: If you support public schools, you should support Universal Child Care. Also, the new standards the SEC rolled out are more grift than protection, so caveat emptor.

“Huh, Interesting” Read of the Week: Some lunatics ran six marathons a week until their bodies couldn’t take it anymore, to test the limits of human endurance. Unlike what your Crossfit friends says, we do actually have limits.

Royal Sampler

7% of Kindergarteners are vaccinated at one of the elite Waldorf schools in California. Seven. (The Guardian)

Many ideas are only good in hindsight, no matter how smart you are. (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Of course Fox News personalities are still campaigning for GOP officials, in clear violation of a non-zero number of rules. (Media Matters)

Polygon expanded its evaluation of how the Trade War hurts the gaming industry, and it’s not pretty.

This Crazy/Genius podcast & article looks at the creeping similarities between the surveillance state in Xinjiang & East New York. (The Atlantic)

The patriarchy can even be blamed for drugs being less effective on women, as researchers are much more likely to use male populations of mice. (The Guardian)

Did anyone think the Trump Tax Cuts were going to do anything but be good for super rich people? If so, they should read this. (LA Times)

The hype around Charter schools is finally dying. (Washington Post)

Amazon is dumping a bunch of questionable documentaries on “cancer cures” onto their streaming services. (Wired UK)

Lastly, here’s a great video on Meritocratic Hubris by RSA, that does a great job complimenting this piece discussing the radical implications of accepting the role luck plays in our lives.

Dunk of the Week: Since everyone’s watching Chernobyl, I’ll just leave this here.

Walk in the light, but be careful not to overheat.

T