I don’t think social media is the cause of my current troubles. It’s just cranked them to 11. If the virtual world is, as I believe, just the real world coming at you faster and more thoroughly, then my issues with it are simply my day-to-day issues amplified. I like to observe people to get a better idea of how to belong with them, so I obsessively read every tweet and post and comment and link that comes across my feeds in a misguided attempt to understand everyone. I want to be a good person, but I’m so hard on myself that I often end up overwhelming myself with information and external and internal criticism and freezing. I struggle with hyper-empathy, and end up taking in everyone’s emotions in a way that makes me feel like a permeable membrane — or like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s regularly embattled Deanna Troi during a particularly harrowing episode. I’m often too overwhelmed to post anything thoughtful or meaningful in the wake of a tragedy, but I also don’t want to give people the impression that I don’t care about these things. And the “why isn’t everyone posting about ____” posts always seem to hit before I’ve had the chance to process. Social media was, in theory, supposed to be a respite from all of that. But being myself on there also means there’s no escaping myself on there.
In the wake of the Manchester bombing, I’ve seen a lot of misinformation being spread around. Whilst this is a rapidly-updating current event, and genuine confusion will occur, please consider the below before reblogging potentially inaccurate information.
Sharing News
Before posting/reposting news or appeals relating to the attack, please double-check the presented facts with a legitimate and reputable source, such as The
Guardian (live updates here), the BBC (live updates here), or Greater
Manchester Police (live updates here).
Giving Blood
The NHS Blood Donation Service
has confirmed that it has sufficient stocks of blood for hospital
patients, and is not in need of extra donations; is discouraging people
from turning up to donate without an appointment in response to the
Manchester bombing; and has requested that people refrain from sharing inaccurate messages calling for emergency blood donations on social media. (People with pre-existing appointments to donate are encouraged to attend at the arranged time.)
Missing People
There have been numerous posts asking for people to spread photographs of individuals ostensibly missing in the aftermath of the bombing. Whilst some are genuine, many are actually hoax posts originally created by trolls (Buzzfeed has collated a list of several examples here, and there are more in circulation).
Before reblogging a “missing person” photo, please do your utmost to verify the facts, rather than automatically reposting it and so contributing towards clogging up channels and confusing/obscuring genuine cases of missing people being sought.
Responsibility for the Attack
GMP state that the attacker died at the scene after detonating an IED. They have been identified, but their name has not been released at the time of writing. Another
person has been arrested in connection with the attack. That is all we know as
yet. Whilst IS/Isis/Isil/Daesh has claimed responsibility, note that a) they have a habit
of jumping to claim responsibility for terrorist actions whether these are of their making or not; and b) even if the attack has been committed in their name, it does not necessarily mean
that this was a planned and co-ordinated strike on their part rather than a lone perpetrator.
Religious Scapegoating
Leaders representing different faiths also condemned the attack.
Harun Khan, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain,
said: “This is horrific, this is criminal. May the perpetrators face the
full weight of justice both in this life and the next.” The bishop of Manchester, David Walker, said faith leaders in the
city were united. “The guilt for last night belongs to the perpetrators
and the perpetrators alone – it doesn’t go beyond them,” he told BBC
Radio 4’s Today programme. [x]
People of all faiths and none have been helping those affected. They ran into the venue after the explosion to assist. Taxi drivers have been providing free rides to people, as have delivery drivers. They have been opening their homes, workplaces, and places of worship or community to offer shelter. They have been providing food, water, and other supplies. They have been offering their professional medical skills. They have been working as part of the emergency services. They have been supporting the emergency services. They have been doing anything they can to assist.
Those who commit such atrocities – in the name of any ideology – want to shatter the bonds of community described above. They want to splinter society. They want us to turn on each other, to distrust each other, to scapegoat each other, in order to exploit the resulting disaffectation for their own means.
Robert Mercer, who bankrolled Donald Trump, played key role in Brexit by using using military disinformation tactics via Breitbart News and analytic data from Facebook
Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years’ experience in military disinformation campaigns and “election management”, claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers. Trump’s team paid the firm more than $6m (£4.8m) to target swing voters in the US election.
This ‘article’ in the Guardian, Can Donald Trump save Twitter? Is exactly what we are talking about when we talk about media needing to drop its neutrality, its need to entertain and dumb-down in order to sell itself.
Twitter needs to ban Trump and his ilk from their platform. Would you give Hitler your global microphone? One thing this story points out is how much Dump relies on Twitter to play his dangerous game. Without it, he loses immediate focus and the ability to spread his sickening cult of personality.
Media neutrality – social and otherwise – is choking us. Getting past their greed, fear and lack of insight is a challenge we shouldn’t have.
As long as American liberals/progressives stick to the destructive myth that social media is not “real” and activism on it is useless, they will be played by their opponents. Whether you like it or not, Donald Trump would have never won without social media, from the way he used Twitter, to fake news which was more shared on Facebook than real news, to armies of online right-wing trolls. But in 2009 the opposition to the regime and Ahmadinejad’s administration were the ones who weaponized social media against their powerful opponent.
We had no access to the official media. Social media was our way to spread the real news of what was happening in Iran, both to other Iranians, and to the outside world. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube helped us destroy the media monopoly of the regime, and basically make free press possible in an underground way. Our tactics were very similar to the tactics of the alt-right, except we spread real news instead of fake news.
We also used social media to organize. We used social media to come to consensus regarding the next move. We used it to storm the pages of pro-regime websites and show that there is no monopoly of views in Iran. We communicated and organized everything. Without the social media, there would be no 2009 post-election protests, no Green Movement, no President Rouhani, and no reformist-controlled parliament. We won all of those fronts through social media.
I see many liberals ridiculing Trump himself for using Twitter to do his stuff. But he does it because it works. The basket of deplorables who support Trump are not a majority, and they are geographically spread, so they need a rallying point on social media. Trump didn’t win in spite of his Twitter, he won because of it.
I see a lot of young-ish fans on Tumblr being uncomfortable with the idea of “old people” still being in fandom. Even episode 17 of One True Podcast, “Stomping On Each Other’s Lawns – Generational Divides in Fandom”, which was trying to have people from both sides of “the generation gap” actually had fans in their early 20s and late 20s and referred to the fact that there were even some people in their 40s and 50s kicking around tumblr–acknowledging older fans while implicitly claiming they’re much rarer than in reality.
There are plenty of very young people on tumblr. There are plenty of not-so-young people on tumblr. It’s quite a spread.
AO3 was proposed in 2007, almost a decade ago. The people who jumped on board to help build it initially were not primarily students. We were mostly adults with careers already; that’s what gave us the skills to take on a major project like that. A decade later, I am in my mid-30′s. Some are younger; many are much older.
There was that silly wank a while back about the X-Files supposedly being for teens the same way Buffy was marketed for younger people… only The X-Files was blatantly marketed for an adult demographic back in 1993 when it premiered. Twenty-something plus twenty-three years equals a fanbase in its late 40s. The venerable X-Files archive, Gossamer, was started by people who are now officially Old. Same with Fanfiction.net, MediaMiner, and all of the other great fandom infrastructure we’ve known and loved.
I hate that “The kids these days” shit. Young people are just as welcome in fandom as anyone else.
But I wish you guys wouldn’t sell yourselves short by thinking that you have to be ready to build AO3 when you’re a teenager and that you’re passé and must abandon all of your hobbies by 30.
Mainstream media is already going to tell you that adult women are required to take care of other people’s children instead of taking care of ourselves. Culture is already going to tell you that old women can’t have fun or seek pleasure, that women in general are suspect and can’t be trusted to read “problematic” books without being brainwashed.
Fandom is here to tell you that other people’s kids can be your friends if you both choose it, but you’re nobody’s free therapist, nanny, or censorship board. Fandom is here to tell you that you can backbutton when you want, but you can also read what you want, even if it’s “bad”. Fandom is here to tell you that you can enjoy your hobbies for the next however many decades until they carry you out feet-first.
@#%^! ageism.
I didn’t join Tumblr to ‘fit in with the kids,’ I joined because I saw some of my favourite longtime interests being discussed and shared here, finding new life here. In turn, I found newer things, closely related to those interests. I enjoy being able to relate to a new generation through shared interests, fandoms, humour, etc. The autism community, in particular, has really come of age here and is so very welcome after too many years of zero connection in the wider world.
It is also one of the few places we can leave something of ourselves behind. So long as it is allowed to last, this is a place, like all the blog spots and social media sites, of public memory. What you leave here might last. Might delight or influence someone else. Might educate them. Might irritate the hell out of them. Right now, this very moment, you are adding to a time capsule.
Take it from Whitman (he would have Tumbled):
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
The Doctor Is Out 