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[34]organizing
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You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism
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[35] Janus Rose
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· Feb 5, 2025 at 11:47 AM
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Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an
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eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them, Janus Rose writes.
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You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism Unsplash / Collage via 404 Media
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If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four
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years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online
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posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to
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accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
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Trump’s second presidential term has arrived amidst a new golden age for
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internet grifters, propagandists, and bad-faith hucksters of all stripes. The
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contours of this era of untruth have been flashing like neon signs for the past
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decade, constantly enticing us to engage with its impenetrable nonsense.
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Whether it’s gaslighting everyone who saw Elon Musk give two Nazi salutes [36]
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during the inauguration or blaming the Los Angeles wildfires [37]on the racist
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dog whistle of “DEI,” lies and absurdities now regularly flood our senses,
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having long outpaced the media’s capacity to filter them.
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Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under
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banners like “fighting disinformation” and “accountability.” While these
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efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal
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calculus. Thinkers like[38] Jean-Paul Sartre and[39] Hannah Arendt warned us
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that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze
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our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral
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outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims
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actually [40]reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a
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media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger,
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endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.
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To that end, the age of corporate social media has been a roaring success.
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“The reality is you are oxygenating the things these people are saying even as
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you purport to debunk them,” Katherine Cross, a sociologist and author of Log
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Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix, told 404 Media. “Whether it’s
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[New York Times columnist] Ross Douthat providing [41]a sane-washing gloss on
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Trump’s mania or people on social media vehemently disagreeing and dunking on
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it, they’re legitimizing it as part of the discourse.”
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Cross’ book contains a meticulous catalog of social media sins which many
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people who follow and care about current events are probably guilty of—myself
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very much included. She documents how tech platforms encourage us, through
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their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void,
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always reacting and never acting.
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But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is
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a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an
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individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective
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action. This, says Cross, is the primary way tech platforms atomize and
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alienate us, creating “a solipsism that says you are the main protagonist in a
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sea of NPCs.”
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“Everything on social media is designed to make you think like that,” said
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Cross. “It’s all about you—your feed, your network, your friends.”
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In the days since the inauguration, I’ve watched people on Bluesky and
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Instagram fall into these same old traps. My timeline is full of reactive hot
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takes and gotchas by people who still seem to think they can quote-dunk their
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way out of fascism—or who know they can’t, but simply can’t resist taking the
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bait. The media is more than willing to work up their appetites. Legacy news
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outlets cynically chase clicks (and ad dollars) by disseminating whatever
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sensational nonsense those in power are spewing.
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"For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care
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about everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world
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while it’s on fire"
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This in turn fuels yet another round of online outrage, edgy takes, and
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screenshots exposing the “hypocrisy” of people who never cared about being seen
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as hypocrites, because that’s not the point. Even violent fantasies about
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putting billionaires to the guillotine are rendered inept in these online
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spaces—just another pressure release valve to harmlessly dissipate our rage
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instead of compelling ourselves to organize and act.
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This is the opposite of what media, social or otherwise, is supposed to do. Of
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course it’s important to stay informed, and journalists can still provide the
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valuable information we need to take action. But this process has been
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short-circuited by tech platforms and a media environment built around seeking
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reaction for its own sake. Many Twitter refugees made a good choice in
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migrating from Musk’s X to Bluesky, carving out a new online space that is
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inhospitable to bigoted debate bros and time-wasting trolls. But in their
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enemies’ absence, many of these Left-leaning posters have just reverted to
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dunking on each other, preferring the catharsis of sectarian conflict over the
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hard work of organizing.
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Under this status quo, everything becomes a myopic contest of who can best
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exploit peoples’ anxieties to command their attention and energy. If we don’t
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learn how to extract ourselves from this loop, none of the information we gain
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will manifest as tangible action—and the people in charge prefer it that way.
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It’s no surprise that tech billionaires like Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark
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Zuckerberg have rushed to kiss the ring of the twice-ascendent Trump. The
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marriage of big tech and Trumpworld should make clear that Silicon Valley and
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authoritarians share the same goal: to crush dissent by keeping their would-be
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opponents spinning on an endless hamster wheel of reactive anger. And just like
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in the classic 1983 thriller WarGames, the only winning move is not to play.
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That can be a tough pill to swallow when the internet is our main window into
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the world, and that world seems to be rapidly falling apart. We gaze into our
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phone-portals, paralyzed by the trance of the doomscroll, reacting and swiping
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from one news article and hot take to another. Authoritarians issue frightening
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proclamations that may or may not be legally enforceable, seizing our attention
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and energy and ensuring that the process will repeat, ad infinitum.
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So what is the alternative? If we log off, what exactly are we supposed to do
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instead? How are we supposed to get information without constantly raising our
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antennae into the noxious cumulonimbus cloud of social media?
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It isn’t quite as simple as “touch grass,” but it also sort of is.
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Trusted information networks have existed since long before the internet and
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mass media. These networks are in every town and city, and at their core are
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real relationships between neighbors—not their online, parasocial simulacra.
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Here in New York City, in the week since the inauguration, I’ve seen large
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groups mobilize to[42] defend migrants from anticipated ICE raids and provide
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warm food and winter clothes for the unhoused after[43] the city closed
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shelters and abandoned people in sub-freezing temperatures. Similar efforts are
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underway in Chicago, where [44]ICE reportedly arrested more than 100 people,
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and in other cities where ICE has planned or attempted raids, with volunteers
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assigned to keep watch over key locations where migrants are most vulnerable.
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A few weeks earlier, residents created [45]ad-hoc mutual aid distros in Los
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Angeles to provide food and essentials for those displaced by the wildfires.
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The coordinated efforts gave Angelenos a lifeline during the crisis, cutting
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through the [46]false claims spreading on social media about looting and
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out-of-state [47]fire trucks being stopped for “emissions testing.” Many mutual
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aid groups in Los Angeles have not just been helping people affected by the
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fires but have also focused on distributing information about how to learn
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about and resist ICE raids in Los Angeles. It is no surprise that some of the
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[48]largest and most coordinated protests in the early days of Trump’s term
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have happened in Los Angeles, where thousands of anti-ICE protesters shut down
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the 101 highway and several streets in downtown Los Angeles Sunday.
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Some of these efforts were coordinated online over Discord and secure messaging
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apps, but all of them arose from existing networks of neighbors and community
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organizers, some of whom have been organizing for decades.
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“For most people, social media gives you this sense that unless you care about
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everything, you care about nothing. You must try to swallow the world while
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it’s on fire,” said Cross. “But [49]we didn’t evolve to be able to absorb this
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much info. It makes you devalue the work you can do in your community.”
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It’s not that social media is fundamentally evil or bereft of any good
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qualities. Some of my best post-Twitter moments have been spent goofing around
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with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity
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and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world. But when it comes to
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addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info
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consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.
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It’s a lesson the Extremely Online Left still hasn’t fully learned, failing
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where its political enemies succeed. Reactionary right-wing groups like the
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homophobic and transphobic [50]Moms for Liberty—which seeks to ban books from
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LGBTQ and BIPOC authors under the guise of “parental rights”—have claimed
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political victories by seizing power one public school board and small town at
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a time. Other reactionaries have similarly managed to take their pet grievances
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about diversity and wokeness to the national level by moving from online
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outrage to on-the-ground community organizing.
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You can discourse and quote-dunk and fact-check until you’re blue in the face,
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but at a certain point, you have to stop and decide what truth you believe in.
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The internet has conditioned us to constantly seek new information, as if
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becoming a sponge of bad news will eventually yield the final piece of a
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puzzle. But there is also such a thing as having enough information. As the[51]
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internet continues to enshittify, maybe what we really need is to start
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trusting each other and our own collective sense of what is true and good.
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We don’t need any more irony-poisoned hot takes or cathartic, irreverent snark.
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We need to collectively decide what kind of world we actually do want, and what
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we’re willing to do to achieve it.
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Janus Rose is New York City-based journalist, educator and artist whose work
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explores the impacts of A.I. and technology on activists and marginalized
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communities. Previously a senior editor at VICE, she has been published in
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digital and print outlets including e-Flux Journal, DAZED Magazine, The New
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Yorker, and Al Jazeera.
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More like this
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[52] The Dude Whose Brain Turned to Glass
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[53]The Dude Whose Brain Turned to Glass
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He was hanging out in an ancient Roman port town 2,000 years ago, when
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something struck him (a deadly volcanic eruption).
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[54] Becky Ferreira Becky Ferreira
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· Mar 1, 2025
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[55] Behind the Blog: Stunt Blogging and the 'Fuck It' Paradigm
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[56]Behind the Blog: Stunt Blogging and the 'Fuck It' Paradigm
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This week, we discuss stunt blogging, Signal pains, and murderous Reels.
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[57] Samantha Cole Samantha Cole ,
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[58] Joseph Cox Joseph Cox ,
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[59] Emanuel Maiberg Emanuel Maiberg
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· Feb 28, 2025
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[60] The Digital Packrat Manifesto
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[61]The Digital Packrat Manifesto
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DRM and big tech's war on ownership has led me to make my own media libraries,
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and you should too.
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[62] Janus Rose
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· Feb 28, 2025
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Advertisement
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[63]Go ad free
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Advertisement
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[64]Go ad free
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Unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL.
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404 Media is a new independent media company founded by technology journalists
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Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox.
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[34] https://www.404media.co/tag/organizing/
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[35] https://www.404media.co/author/janus/
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[36] https://apnews.com/article/musk-gesture-salute-antisemitism-0070dae53c7a73397b104ae645877535?ref=404media.co
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[37] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/15/republicans-dei-la-fires-00198551?ref=404media.co
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[38] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-anti-semites-are-completely-unaware-of-the-absurdity?ref=404media.co
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[39] https://www.openculture.com/2022/02/hannah-arendt-explains-how-propaganda-uses-lies.html?ref=404media.co
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[40] https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10095997?ref=404media.co
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[41] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/opinion/columnists/o-canada-come-join-us.html?ref=404media.co
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[42] https://abc7ny.com/post/nyc-immigration-ice-agents-arrest-hundreds-migrants-sanctuary-cities-including-new-york/15835897/?ref=404media.co
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[43] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nyc-to-close-13-more-migrant-shelters-by-june-2025/ar-BB1rfS3Y?ref=404media.co
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[44] https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/27/chicago-ice-raids-what-to-know/?ref=404media.co
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[45] https://itsgoingdown.org/report-from-los-angeles-mutual-aid-hubs-fires/?ref=404media.co
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[46] https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/video-shows-people-evacuating-home-not-looting-amid-la-fires-2025-01-13/?ref=404media.co
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[47] https://www.thereflector.com/stories/no-out-of-state-fire-vehicles-turned-away-from-california-due-to-emissions-testing,373975?ref=404media.co
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[48] https://abc7.com/post/dozens-march-101-freeway-downtown-los-angeles-during-protest-deportations/15857649/?ref=404media.co
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[49] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6502424/?ref=404media.co
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[50] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-group-banning-lgbt-books-wants-to-replace-them-with-anti-gay-propaganda/?ref=404media.co
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[51] https://gizmodo.com/enshittification-is-officially-the-biggest-word-of-the-year-2000530173?ref=404media.co
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[52] https://www.404media.co/the-dude-whose-brain-turned-to-glass/
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[53] https://www.404media.co/the-dude-whose-brain-turned-to-glass/
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[54] https://www.404media.co/author/becky/
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[55] https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-stunt-blogging-and-the-fuck-it-paradigm/
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[57] https://www.404media.co/author/samantha-cole/
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[59] https://www.404media.co/author/emanuel-maiberg/
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[60] https://www.404media.co/the-digital-packrat-manifesto/
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