Image via TechCrunch

“How tall is Jeb Bush?” This was the question on (apparently) many people’s minds leading up to the February 13^th CBSN GOP debate. Thanks to Google, in partnership with CBSN, we now know that Americans are asking the hard questions, like “What is Ted Cruz’s real name?” “Why did Ben Carson wait to go on stage?” and, of course, a real deal breaker for me as a voter, “How old is John Kasich’s wife?” 

The integration of mass media broadcast and social media platforms has shaped the way Americans engage in electoral politics. Debate coverage this election cycle has included solicited questions via Facebook and YouTube, anchors and pundits reading tweets on air, and live coverage of debates from corporate social media accounts. February 13^th’s GOP debate was a stunning example of how social media and the Internet have shaped broadcast news. For the entire debate, two graphic overlays displayed information from Twitter and Google. The Twitter live feed featured tweets curated by CBSN that, by and large, featured the #GOPdebate hashtag and offered a range of commentary, summary, fact checking, and humor.

What did Trump say about ______? is a pretty good summary of his campaign.

The Google bar at the bottom of the screen switched between two topics: search trends over time and popular search questions. A bar graph showed the “search interest” trends for the top three candidates at the time (consistently Trump and Cruz, with Bush and Rubio swapping places occasionally). Every 30 seconds or so, the bar graph was replaced with the “top trending questions” on each of the candidates. Well, all except for Marco Rubio, who never got a set of top trending questions, for reasons that I’m sure are fascinating and nefarious.

I do not know how this information is meaningful. 

The relationship among these three entities—CBSN, Twitter, and Google—are by and large mutually beneficial. Twitter, which has been facing death knells for quite some time now, gets to remind the country that yes, people are still using Twitter, and doesn’t it look exciting? Google also gets its logo on the screen for the entire debate, while showing off its analytic capabilities. And CBSN gets content from both of them to accompany the debate. There is undoubtedly some sort of monetary relationship among them as well, though if this information is at all available I have been unable to find it.

These sorts of strange bedfellows arrangements are nothing new. They’re akin to what Daniel Boorstin called “pseudo events,” also commonly referred to as “media events.” Boorstin defined pseudo events according to four characteristics: 1) they are not spontaneous, but carefully planned, 2) their immediate purpose is to be reported on by the media, 3) they have an ambiguous relationship to reality, and 4) they are intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy—a pseudo event simultaneously makes a claim and makes that claim real.

Boorstin gives the example of a hotel that’s looking to increase its prestige and, subsequently, its income. Rather than improving the accommodations, they hire a PR firm who tells them to use their upcoming 30^th anniversary as an opportunity to drum up attention. The hotel partners with leading community figures—prominent bankers, lawyers, and members of society—to draw attention to the event. The hotel makes the case for its prestige by holding a 30^th anniversary banquet attended by important people and covered by the media and, in so doing, proves itself to be prestigious. Sometimes pseudo events fail spectacularly, as in the infamous 2012 Mitt Romney food drive in which the campaign purchased canned goods and gave them to supporters so they could be filmed giving the cans directly to Romney. Unfortunately for him, the media event revealed itself to be a farce. It backfired quite forcefully in his face, exacerbated by the fact that the Red Cross does not even accept canned food donations. Oops.

Image via Yahoo News

But the Twitter-Google-CBSN partnership, and others like it, is different from Boorstin’s media events in important ways. While it is planned, it also relies on an element of spontaneity to make it interesting. The inclusion of the Twitter feed and up-to-date Google analytics gives the event a sense of movement and dynamism. Of course, to keep it from getting too spontaneous, the Twitter feed is curated, and moments like the MSNBC Iowa Caucus F-Bomb can be gracefully avoided.

What we have in these mass/social media partnerships is an extension of Boorstin’s media events. I call them new media events, and offer a few preliminary observations on the characteristics of new media events:

• Semi-planned: some elements are carefully crafted while others remain dynamic, shifting according to changing circumstances and content availability
• Multi-media: users and curators piece together text, photos, videos, and other mediums to tell a story
• Free content generation: corporate media entities rely on users to produce free content
• Contextual: rather than being mired by context collapse (PDF) or conversation smoosh, events are centered on a specific topic, and content is curated as such

Unlike (old?) media events, new media events are less about building prestige for a certain business or political entity and more about fostering engagement between media producers and audiences to increase revenue for corporate partners. They walk a fine line between being perfectly choreographed and algorithmically generated, with a curatorial middle person selecting content that is generated “from below” that suits the interests of the event sponsors. Their primary purposes is not to be reported by news outlets, but to be circulated by audiences themselves.

New media events aren’t just for presidential debates. For example, Twitter Moments share the same characteristics, and were created to combat many of the problems of context collapse and conversation smoosh mentioned above. Facebook trends perform a similar function. Reddit AMAs also exhibit the qualities of new media events described here.

Media theorist Marshal McLuhan, and later Bolter and Grusin in their book on remediation, argued that new media are always mediations of old media. Writing mediates speech, moveable print mediates writing, digital text mediates the printing press, film mediates photography, and so on. Digital media are hypermediated—they remediate all of these, fostering for the rich semantic space of multi-media interaction. For McLuhan, the significance of any new medium is the ways in which it extends the human sensory experience, the “self,” outward. Without any mediation (speech, writing, etc) we exist only within ourselves. As new media extend the boundaries of exchanges of thoughts, we stretch and grow, and in the digital age our selves extend all across the world.

This extension is key to new media events. Every entity involved—from Google to the searchers asking how tall Jeb Bush is, from Twitter to the tweeters themselves—uses the occasion to grow itself. Hashtags introduce the tweet, and the tweeter, to a larger audience. CBSN then extends that moment of mediation to its entire audience. So tweet, and use the hashtag of course, and watch yourself grow. McLuhan would be so proud.

Britney is on Twitter.

Getting my first Tamagotchi was a transformative moment in my life. I vividly remember standing in the Walmart aisle with my mom, painstakingly selecting the egg-shaped device that best represented my tastes. I was 9. I settled on the see-through purple plastic version—feminine and sophisticated, just like me. I was living in the golden age of Tamagotchis, when they were popular enough that all of my friends had one, but before teachers and schools started banning them in classrooms. Tamagotchis were, without a doubt, a status symbol. I can remember a friend of mine plopping down a key ring with SIX different devices, all the colors of the rainbow. I wondered how she could keep them all healthy. It seemed like a lot of responsibility for a single fourth grader. Not to mention that the net worth of this key ring was over $100, a fact that didn’t quite resonate with children whose allowance was around $10 a month.

Tamagotchis required quite a bit of care. After our state-mandated standardized tests, during which we were absolutely not allowed to touch digital pets of any kind, I sat on the school bus and checked on my little alien baby to find that it was hungry, bored, and sick from the poop that had accumulated all day. It died later that evening. I was heartbroken, and directed my rage at the forces that be. Standardized testing had killed my beloved pet. A few months later, schools started banning the devices in class and I couldn’t keep mine alive anymore. I eventually gave up, as did many of my friends.

Before Tamagotchis, I was thoroughly enamored with the desktop game Petz, in which the player goes to the adoption center to select either Dogz or Catz to care for, raising their Kittenz or Puppyz into adulthood, feeding them and giving them Toyz, selecting adorable little outfits for them and taking pictures to email to… well, no one, because most 7 year olds don’t have anyone to email.

I forgot how terrible the Graphicz were

Throughout my life, I’ve seen digital pets come and go. But now, Neko Atsume has stormed the digital pet gaming world, and stolen my heart.

Neko Atsume is different from a lot of other digital pet games. For one, it requires very little on the part of the player. Cats don’t die. You don’t really “own” them, you just lure them to your yard with fancy foods and toys and pillows. You don’t have one or two pets, you “collect” many of them, and currently there are 49 cats in all. 17 of those cats are “rare” insofar as you need specific toys and food to draw them in. Rare cats have clever references to popular figures, such as Guy Furry (Guy Fieri), Joe DiMeowgio (Joe DiMaggio) and Chairman Meow. You can’t really interact with the cats in Neko Atsume; you can give them various foods ranging from cheap and basic to expensive and extravagant (sashimi, anyone?). You can purchase “goodies” such as cardboard boxes, paper bags, and fluffy pillows—the stuff cat dreams are made of. You can take pictures of cats, which go in their albums and show up on their profiles on “Catbook,” along with their personality traits and stats (number of visits, favorite toys, etc.). You can’t pet them, play with them, or give them anything directly.

You can’t really win Neko Atsume. You can collect all of the cats, purchase all of the goodies, upgrade and remodel your yard, and fine-tune your strategies for drawing in the cats you most desire. And then, when all of that is said and done, you can wait for the developers to release an update with new cats, new goodies, new yards.

What most interests me about Neko Atsume is that the cats don’t need you. It’s a one way relationship really—you try to attract the cats, and they favor you with their presence before setting off for, presumably, other yards with other toys. They leave a few fish—the game’s currency—behind, and after many visits they will give you a memento, such as a wet box of matches or a broken toy.

Neko Atsume also really gets cats, and cat owners. Here, I speak from personal experience as a loving mother to two cats. Paper bags with little cat butts sticking out, cardboard boxes (some of them quite elaborate) with contented faces peeking out of them, goofy furballs cramed into glass vases in ways that seem entirely uncomfortable: most cat owners can whip out their phone and scroll through albums full of these pictures. The feeling that you need your cats more than they need you is also familiar to cat “owners,” as is the frustration when you spend hundreds of fish on a cushion that Xerxes refuses to sit on even though it’s a perfectly good cushion. One difference between NA cats and IRL cats is that they are always ready for a photo: perfectly posed, never moving to lick their butt at the last second.

You should probably not let your cats play with plastic bags tho

There’s so much I’d love to say about NA, such as why so many fans have such strong feelings about Tubbs, who will eat all of your food but is very generous with his fish gifts, or why fans dedicate time and energy to compiling guides about collecting rare cats. And don’t even get me started on the fantastic Neko Atsume Memes Instagram account. But ultimately, I have just one burning question about NA: why do we like it so much? And why digital pets in general?

Via @nekoatsumememes

It’s significant that Tamagotchi was originally marketed to girls, as a way to prepare them for the nurturing role in which they are so often cast. Plenty of toys and games perform a similar function, and practicing caretaking skills is something that children of all genders often engage in. As an adult, having something to care for has always been an important part of my life. I’m quite proud of the fact that the plant I was given my freshman year of college still thrives after a decade under my care. Taking care of my cats also gives me a great deal of satisfaction, despite the fact that they are frequently a real pain in the ass. And even when it comes to digital pets, I’m glad if I can keep them happy and well-fed.

Being able to quantify these elements in our digital pets’ lives is also somewhat compelling. Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of quantifying my quality of life. However, it certainly simplifies caretaking. I know for a fact that if I could opt in to a smart phone app that measured my cats’ dental health or could spot the presence of fleas, I’d absolutely sign up. And even though I can see the problems with quantifying health in this way and the persistent surveillance that digital technology has amplified, I’d still do it. Because I love them. And some part of me tells me that they’d be better off for it.

But NA is different, because you don’t really take care of them. They don’t seem to need you at all. The cats have personalities all their own: Callie is carefree, Marshmallow is aloof, Mack is determined, and Speckles is lonely. And Speckles’ loneliness can’t be cured with treats or heated blankets. NA cats are what they are, and for the most part they’re indifferent to the player, except insofar as the player can offer some creature comfort that they avail themselves of for short periods of time.

Neko Atsume isn’t about caretaking. It’s about collecting, documenting, and classifying. The goal isn’t to have happy cats, it’s to have lots of cats. All of the cats. And all of the consumer items necessary to obtain them. It is, in short, about consumption. Just as digital companions are much lower stakes than IRL pets, consumption is lower stakes than caretaking. Unlike my dead Tamagotchi, I will never know the pain of a sick or sad NA cat, though I may feel a slight twinge at the sight of an empty yard. But even an empty yard is easily remedied; refill the food, swap out some toys, and wait for the sweet sweet kitties to come pouring in.

Neko Atsume strikes the right balance of cute and quirky, strategic, and put-downable. I can neglect my cats with no consequences, and I can peek in on them when it’s convenient. It is the ideal game for the neoliberal consumer looking to fill the pages of a catalogue and identify what commodities will yield the most desirable results. Combine these ideological underpinnings with our love of adorable cats, and it’s easy to see why this game is so popular.

Perfect review is perfect

Britney is on Twitter.

Nearly a month after the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge began, Oregon State Police and the FBI arrested several members of the armed militia group led by Ammon Bundy. Lavoy Finicum, the group’s spokesperson, was killed by law enforcement in the incident. Details on the confrontation are spare at this time; militia members say Finicum was complying with the officers and surrendering, while officials say he was resisting. But the wildlife refuge and the strip of highway where the confrontation occurred are not the only battlegrounds in this war. Another fight has broken out between the militia’s supporters and critics—the Amazon review page for Finicum’s novel Only by Blood and Suffering.

The novel tells the story of a family living in the western US in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. The Bonham family has, fortunately, prepared for this sort of catastrophe; they’re well-armed, well-stocked, and have the skills necessary for surviving the collapse of society—skills such as defending themselves from neighbors clamoring for supplies and government agents trying to impinge upon their freedoms. The story ends with a devastating shootout (spoiler alert: the patriarch of the Bonham family wins). It’s the kind of narrative that perfectly reflects the fears of many anti-government militias in the US. Weak national policy will make us victims of foreign aggression, the government will disarm the populace, once beloved neighbors and communities will rise up against each other, and so on.

Finicum, or “tarp man” as he was dubbed after media outlets showed images of him under a blue tarp, was by no means a well-known author before the occupation, but his book has good reviews on Amazon. Currently it’s at 4.2 stars, but its rating is in flux as critics and defenders alike flood the page with reviews. Before the occupation reviews were largely very positive. Out of 17 1 star reviews, only two are pre-occupation. None are verified purchases. A recent review reads: “Red neck garbage rant. Lucky for us readers ‘tarpman’ will no longer torture us with this junk.” 7 out of 12 people found this review helpful.

It’s safe to assume that at least some, if not many, of these reviewers—positive or negative—have not read the book and are reviewing purely to express a political opinion. But why? Why the hell are people doing this? Why, of all the ways to voice an opinion on the Bundy occupation and 2^nd amendment rights and bad writing and cowboy culture, would people choose Amazon reviews? It happens more often than you might think. Todd Miller, author of Border Patrol Nation, also received a deluge of “troll” reviews for his book on immigration policing of the US/Mexico border. As with Only by Blood, the vast majority of Miller’s 1 star reviews are not verified purchases. The primary complaint against the book is that it presents a biased, anti-border patrol perspective.

Miller told me that the backlash happened shortly after the book was published and reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, and that it seemed to be part of a coordinated effort. I’m inclined to agree—the negative reviews read as if a group of people got together for a book club discussion and had all the same things to say about it. It’s hard to know the effects this effort had on book sales, but they can’t be good. “I have wondered since then if it has affected how people perceive the book—particularly folks who are simply doing random searches on Amazon … Because of the trolling, of course, there is a low star rating, which is the first thing that people see if they are looking over titles,” Miller told me. When Miller reached out to Amazon about the seemingly coordinated effort to lower his book’s ratings, he was told that Amazon does not vet reviews. So, tough luck.

Something the two books have in common is the way reviewers are acknowledging the disingenuous nature of negative reviews based not on the substance, but on the political views of the authors. In the case of Only by Blood, many positive reviewers accuse critics of being “paid trolls,” though whom they might be paid by is a mystery. Some reviewers are even explicit about their ignorance of the book’s content. One three-star review reads:

No, I have not read the book. But how important is that now ? How sad that a man must die, exacerbated by leaving 11 children fatherless, for what? A deluded sense of self-importance, fed by a heartless right wing media that cares naught for its viewers, only for the quick bucks it makes from spreading irrational fear and hate.

It reads like a comment someone might leave on NPR’s Facebook post about Finicum’s death, not something you’d write on a site selling a fictional book.

Reviews are, without a doubt, broken. Most of us have probably looked up a café on Yelp with middling reviews and, when checking out the worst ratings, see someone complaining that the host was rude, or they ran out of caesar dressing, or there isn’t enough parking. Sure, these are inconveniences, but they don’t merit a 2-star rating. Similarly, someone who’s owned an electric shaver for a grand total of three days can leave a 5-star Amazon review having used it exactly once and with no idea of how it will function in a month. These are problems with reviews generally, as a system. But what is happening in these two examples is altogether different. These reviews aren’t just broken—people are actively breaking them.

So I ask again: why?  I think the answer is twofold. First, reviews are easily quantifiable. 5 stars or 1 star—love it or hate it. It’s a great medium for expressing extreme opinions. Combined with the narrative element, its an appealing way to make a point. You get to explain yourself while being easily categorized into one camp or another, grouping yourself with like-minded people and setting yourself at odds with your rhetorical opponent. Imagine if Facebook let us rank posts. We’d hate it at first, we’d write think pieces about how awful it is, and then we’d promptly start using it in every flame war we saw. Don’t get any ideas, Zuckerberg.

Second, posting a Facebook comment on an NPR post can feel a bit like screaming into the abyss—or, more accurately, whispering in a crowded room full of crying babies. But with reviews, you can actually see the numbers changing. You can see the percentages of ratings from 5 to 1 shrinking or growing. And, if you believe that reviews are an important tool for helping people decide what purchases to make, it follows that by altering the rating you are having a direct effect on both the author and the discourse surrounding the topic. A “liberal, biased” account of immigration is seemingly undermined by its 3-star rating, and a “patriotic freedom fighter’s” fictional piece is all the more insightful if it has 4.5 stars. It’s the lowest of the low-hanging fruit of political engagement. It’s easy, anonymous, and requires little to no time investment.

Still, there is something about this explanation that feels a bit hollow. Even if it isn’t a terribly time consuming task, people are going out of their way to publish a review of a book they haven’t read, on a page that not many will see, all so they can shift the book’s rating a few decimal points. To complicate this even further, many of the most recent 5-star reviews are jokes at Finicum’s expense. For example, Amazon user Lucky Thoreau writes:

A truly new American voice in literature. Sadly silenced forever. It’s my only hope he read my gift of Mary Renault’s “The Persian Boy,” which I included in my survival box to the Patriots of Oregon along with the five bottles of Paris Hilton’s, “Just Me,” spray cologne for men, powdered Lobster Newburg Sauce (just add butter and milk) and an eight track copy of “Doug Clark and his Hot Nuts,” greatest hits.

There are others like this—5-star reviews obviously mocking Finicum or parodying the patriotic/cowboy persona of both his characters and his life. It’s callous and mean spirited, but also playful and bizarre. Much like the giant dildos many sent to the militia members, it’s hard to wrap your head around. So thanks, Amazon, for making politics weirder every day.

Britney is on Twitter.

Rachel Monroe recently published a fascinating essay on Jared Rutledge, the pickup artist whose Asheville, NC community turned against him after discovering his dehumanizing and degrading comments online. Rutledge’s comments were quite similar to what you might find in much of the manosphere if you go looking—lashing out at women who won’t have sex with him, saying women are only valuable if they are beautiful and submissive, tallying the number of women he has slept with, and going so far as to give them scores.

Rutledge expressed a great deal of remorse for his actions, even trying to make amends by donating to a local rape crisis center (which was rejected). For the story, he told Monroe about his past, and what had drawn him to pickup artistry and the manosphere—anger, bitterness, insecurity, and a feeling that he couldn’t make sense of the world around him. In my own research on manosphere discourse, and what men say about the current state of dating and masculinity, Rutledge is far from alone. Many men turn to these communities to try to make sense of their role in a society that looks very different from their fathers’; the decline of the industrial economy, the end of “The Greatest Generation,” and of course the decades of feminist movement and LGBT activism that have dramatically changed the landscape of gender and sexuality.

The work of author and journalist Susan Faludi has been foundational for my own thinking on the topic, and her account of this problem can shed light on what brings men to the manosphere in the first place. In her 1999 book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, she writes:

It’s often been observed that the economic transition from industry to service, or from production to consumption, is symbolically a move from the traditional masculine to the traditional feminine. But in gender terms, the transition is far more than a simple sex change and, so, more traumatic for men than we realize. A society of utility, for all the indisputable ways that it exploited men’s health and labor, and in an industrial context broke the backs and spirits of factory workers and destroyed the lungs of miners, had one saving grace: it defined manhood by character, by the inner qualities of stoicism, integrity, reliability, the ability to shoulder burdens, the willingness to put others first, the desire to protect and provide and sacrifice. These are the same qualities, recoded as masculine, that society has long recognized in women as the essence of motherhood. Men were publicly useful insofar as they mastered skills associated with the private realm of maternal femininity. Like mothers tending selflessly to their babes, men were not only to take care of their families but also their society without complaint; that was, in fact, what made them men.

…

In a culture of ornament, by contrast, manhood is defined by appearance, by youth and attractiveness, by the curled lip and petulant sulk and flexed biceps, by the glamour of the cover boy, and by the market-bartered ‘individuality’ that sets one astronaut or athlete or gangster above another. These are the same traits that have long been designated as the essence of feminine vanity, the public face of the feminine as opposed to the private caring, maternal one. The aspects of this public ‘femininity’—objectification, passivity, infantilization, pedestal-perching, and mirror-gazing—are the very ones that women have in modern times denounced as trivializing and humiliating qualities imposed on them by a misogynist culture. No wonder men are in such agony. Not only are they losing the society they were once essential to, they are ‘gaining’ the very world women so recently shucked off as demeaning and dehumanizing. [pp. 38-39]

Britney is on Twitter.

“Are you a human?”

I asked this question when answering the phone in a bar the other day. Someone else in the bar did a double take. After I hung up, they asked “Did you just ask someone if they are human?”

“Well, no. I asked a robocall if they were human.” This is what I do when I suspect I’m getting a robocall. As a former telemarketer, I try not to hang up on sales calls and I’m polite to telemarketers so that, when I ask them to take me off their call list, they actually do it. But robots? Even better. No hurt feelings, no nastiness. Just “Are you a human?” Click.

So I wonder how people are responding to the new robocalls in Iowa urging them to support Donald Trump. I imagine for folks in early-voting states—people who are courted so amorously during presidential elections that it must be both flattering and exhausting—that they have one of two reactions: immediately hang up, or listen intently to see if this message will help them to decide who to vote for. And I wonder how Iowans felt about the message itself, which boils down to: I’m a white nationalist and I support Donald Trump. If you are also a racist, you should too.

It’s not the first time Trump’s gotten a white supremacist endorsement. In August, former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke expressed enthusiasm about Trump’s popularity. Trump responded that he neither wanted nor needed Duke’s support, but as white nationalist Jared Taylor told The New Yorker, “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me, but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.” White nationalists love Trump, whether he wants them to or not.

If this is even a problem for the Trump campaign—and I’m not convinced that it is—it is a problem of his own making. He kicked off his campaign by accusing Mexican immigrants of being rapists, has threatened to ban all Muslims from entering the country, and has made it downright acceptable for his supporters to beat the hell out of black protestors at his events. Politicians often use various degrees of dog whistle racism, but Trump has no whistle. He doused the whistle in gasoline, set it on fire, and chucked it into a ravenous audience of supporters who pummeled it to death.

But Trump knows how far this obvious racism can go, and blatant white nationalism is one toe over the line. It’s an icky label, not palatable to those who consider themselves less racist than practical. It’s not unlike the Reddit phenomenon wherein, given the right circumstances and context, Stormfront copypasta gets massively upvoted for spreading racist pseudoscience and bad statistics that suit the more subtle racist arguments endemic to the site. It’s maybe a little embarrassing when it’s revealed to originate from a super duper racist source, but it confirms something that cultural studies scholars and sociologists have known all along—these hegemonic, oppressive, and dangerous ideologies are always bubbling just below the surface of “respectable” discourse. It was always already there. It’s only the label that we don’t like.

Research suggests that robocalls don’t work. But these things are difficult to measure—you can’t exactly create a controlled environment in which to evaluate their effects, and elections are so incredibly complicated that knowing what tactics will sway a voter base is largely guesswork. In fact, robocalls might just annoy potential voters to the point that they’re dissuaded. But, they’re cheap. They’re easy. They’re legal. So we keep using them.

But how effective can these calls possibly be when they’re so brazenly white supremacist? How many white nationalists can there really be? Probably more than you think. It’s hard to track for obvious reasons. As organizations like the KKK have become less socially acceptable, many hate groups have gone underground. The internet allows hate groups to operate anonymously, which means that individuals can spout whatever hateful ideas they want without fear of criticism or consequence. For all you know, your polite neighbor who brought you Christmas cookies last month may be the editor of a holocaust-denying newsletter.

One of the leading white nationalists websites Stormfront has nearly 300,000 registered users, but that doesn’t count all of the visitors who never register. Formerly “out” white nationalist groups have changed their names to more innocuous-sounding titles, like the Council of Conservative Citizens, formerly the collection of White Citizens Councils. The white supremacist robocalls supporting Trump are paid for by The American National Super PAC, a name that could refer to literally anything in American politics. Other words like “patriot” or “liberty” often serve as code words for “racist,” allowing some groups to operate publicly without immediately being pegged as a hate group.

Pinning Trump to his white supremacist supporters could go one of two ways: fans may distance themselves from him, or they may like him even more. I lean towards the latter for two reasons. First, condemning Trump for this association falls directly in line with the right’s critique that liberals will blow anything out of proportion to attack conservatives. Their argument will go: Trump can’t control who endorses him, and he’s obviously not a racist. He’s a “realist.” Conservatives love when the left attacks their leaders, and these attacks mostly shore up support. Second, it’s highly likely that many Trump supporters are already closeted white nationalists. They may not even know it, or at least they may not have a name for it. It’s even possible that these endorsements will draw Trump supporters to white nationalist groups. In all likelihood, white nationalist leaders know this too.

I said earlier that robocalls don’t seem to work, but that research analyzes the effects of robocalls on elections. And maybe they don’t sway election results, but what if, in this case, they serve a different purpose? Maybe the question isn’t “Do they work?” but “For whom do they work?”

Is The American National Super PAC interested in getting voters to support Trump? Sure. But I think a much more fundamental agenda for these robocalls is increasing their own support. It’s about branding. It’s about seizing on a politically opportune moment to spread your own message, tying your horse to the right cart and settling in for the ride. Therein lies the danger of Trump’s rhetoric; it opens the floodgates, ups the threshold of acceptable racist discourse, and draws more people into movements that they may have only heard of thanks to the buzz he creates. White nationalists aren’t supporting Trump for Trump’s sake—they’re supporting him for their own.

Britney is on Twitter.

2015 was full of trends that we loved to hate: the dress, minions, vaping, hoverboards… it has been a veritable cornucopia of listicles and memes bemoaning the sad state of popular culture. But one stands out to me as particularly partisan, capable of tearing families apart, more controversial than the pumpkin spice lattes or Crocks of years past. That’s right—I’m talking about the man bun.

It started with Jared Leto, the original poster boy for man buns. Leto could probably shave Donald Trump’s face into the side of his head and make it look sexy, so it’s no surprise that he looks great in a man bun. And much of the criticism of man bun popularity is that not everyone can “pull it off,” something most of us have said to ourselves at one time or another. For femme folks, it might be cherry red lipstick or high-wasted cut off shorts. For masculine people, maybe it’s suspenders or brightly patterned ties. But by far, most of the hate directed at the man bun stems from one perception: it’s girly.

In a survey conducted by the noted polling outlet West Coast Shaving 62% of women say they dislike or hate man buns. When asked what adjective first comes to mind when seeing a man with a bun, the top response was “feminine.” Most women also replied that they would not date a man who wears his hair in a bun. Men’s Fitness also did an informal poll on man buns, and out of 100 women they asked 74 said they did not like them. Women responded with concerns about hair tie sharing, praise that buns expressed confidence in one’s masculinity, and the very straightforward belief that buns are for women only.

Another criticism of man buns is that they’re hipster, but I would argue that this is also tied to modern complications of masculinity. The jokes about male hipster aesthetics are typically that they’re too sensitive, their jeans are too tight, their beards and hair too well coiffed. I won’t get into all of the more substantive critiques of hipsters like gentrification and appropriation of black, working class, and Native American culture, though they are many. My point here is that drawing a distinction between the gender-policing and hipster-hating response to man buns is dubious.

So where does all of this leave men who complicate or push the boundaries of gender conformity? In her work on gender and performativity, Judith Butler defines gender as the “stylized repetition of acts” that contribute to the perpetuation of the “compulsory heterosexual matrix”—all of those systems and cultural norms that demarcate who is accepted and who is considered dangerous to the societal status quo. LGBTQ individuals have faced discrimination and violence throughout history for violating these norms and for challenging the heterosexual matrix, though slow progress on that front will hopefully continue to mitigate that discrimination. Perhaps the most dangerous of all to this system are transgender people, who not only challenge codified gender behavior and sexual desire, but the very concepts of biological sex that are deeply entrenched in the most basic institutions of our society.

So, here is my argument: man buns are dangerous. I don’t mean to overstate the issue, but challenges to masculine norms by those perceived to be otherwise very masculine throw the institution of sex and gender into disarray. Varieties of identity that draw on both masculine and feminine traits are particularly confusing. Male cheerleaders are explained away as wanting to touch their peers’ butts (or being gay), drag performers are considered safe and entertaining only when onstage and in a controlled environment, and bisexual women are “going through a phase” while bisexual men are erased altogether. Queering the line between masculine and feminine, or erasing it altogether for gender non-conforming individuals, is not only provocative—it threatens to dismantle the compulsory heterosexual matrix altogether. And it puts individuals’ lives at stake. It inspires outrage and fear, but also progress and better understanding of the complex spectrum of human behavior.

Are man buns revolutionary? Probably not. Will they single-handedly disrupt or deconstruct the compulsory heterosexual matrix? No. But they might tell us something about the limits of masculine femininity. Who can and can’t “get away with” a man bun tells us who can transgress those norms and who can’t. Handsome movie stars are celebrated for sporting a bun, while effeminate hipsters, those deemed conventionally unattractive, or those who otherwise do not project confidence in their masculinity can’t pull it off.

Why do we hate the man bun? What is the heart of a critique that says men shouldn’t wear their hair in a way typically reserved for women? We can dismiss the whole affair as more backlash against something trendy, and certainly that’s at play. We love hating things that are popular. But I think there’s something else too. I think we’re a little afraid of the man bun. It’s one more chip in the already fragile set of cultural mores that tells us how to categorize one another, how to box ourselves into male and female compartments. But don’t be scared. It’s just a bun.

Britney is on Twitter.

If you were a little girl at some point in the last century, the odds are good that you played with paper dolls. They’ve been around for a long time—from 9^th Century Japanese origami figurines and pre-Christian Balinese puppets to the more familiar 18^th Century European varieties that feature a paper cut out of a female figure and various clothing items and accessories to place upon the body. This type of paper doll has remained popular throughout the 20^th and 21^st Centuries. In some ways, paper dolls democratized play for girls from families of little means; they’re cheap, and while doll play had been reserved for upper class children for centuries, once paper dolls could be mass produced they became widely available. In other ways, they stifle girls’ play by reinforcing limited tropes of femininity.

1950s Paper Doll, image credit Joe Haupt

Today there are also digital versions of paper doll games, geared toward both children and adults. They follow the same form as traditional paper dolls—a baseline figurine and a variety of clothing and accessories to place on the doll. Digital versions have many more options, and offer a variety of scenes or prompts that guide the player’s choices. For the last six weeks I’ve been playing one of these games, an app called Covet Fashion in which players enter challenges and style a look based on a scenario—fairy godmother, ice princess, brunch with the girls, that sort of thing. Users vote on looks, and high scores earn prizes like high quality designer replica handbags, dresses, shoes, and currency (diamonds) to spend in the game. It is, like most apps these days, a free game that allows in-app purchases, which inevitably means that players who spend money in the game receive higher scores, enter more challenges, and have more options for clothing and accessories.

My take on “Queen of the Evening Star.” Score: 3.25 out of 5

Top looks for “Queen of the Evening Star.” Note that the dress these models are wearing costs $3,400 in-game. Which is a lot. The dress I wore for the challenge is $495.

One of the first things I noticed about Covet is how white it is. Almost everyone is white. The models that pose for the challenge photo covers, the looks users create, and above all, the “top” looks that receive the most votes and likes, are by and large white. In the six weeks that I’ve been playing the game, I have checked the “top looks” for all 38 challenges I’ve entered. Out of hundreds of top looks, only one challenge featured a notable measure of diversity, with several darker models. This was also one of the few challenges for which the cover photo model was black. Of all the challenges I entered, I was unable to find a single black model who made it into the top looks.

Top looks for three different challenges. Galactic Senator was more diverse than any other I encountered.

After a few days of playing the game, I decided to crunch the numbers. I wanted to see how well black models fared against white models. I collected two types of quantitative data for this analysis. First, I documented my scores on each look I submitted, alternating between black models and white models. There are five skin tones to choose from, and I stuck with the 2^nd lightest and the very darkest, as they best reflected what I consider to be normative conceptions of white and black skin. I then averaged the scores for all of my looks, my black looks, and my white looks.

The second type of data collection examined voting. Each time a light skinned model was paired against a dark skinned model I noted the winner, which the game reveals after you vote. For this analysis I did not distinguish among the three light skin shades or the two dark skin shades—voting occurs too quickly, and it was difficult to distinguish among the five shades. Where there was a significant visible difference between them, I recorded the winner. Ties were omitted for the sake of simplicity in data collection and analysis.

Voting for the best golden rare mermaid.

Here are the results. The average score for my 38 challenges was 3.55. This is where I’ll note that I am apparently not great at fashion and should stick to my day job. For the 19 looks that featured white models, scores averaged 3.75. Black models averaged 3.36. When it came to head-to-head voting, I documented a total of 86 votes. White models won 55 times, and black models 31 times. That’s a 64% win rate for white models—nearly double the rate of black models. Paired with that fact that the top looks for each challenge were almost exclusively white, the conclusion of this data analysis is pretty straightforward. If you want to do well, win more prizes, and level up faster, go with white models.

These results resonate with at least three social forces that work to uphold racism and hegemony: racism in the fashion industry, implicit bias, and voting. Racism in the fashion industry is well documented. Minority (especially black) models are dramatically underrepresented, and designers even more so—just 2.7% of major international fashion designers are black. Prominent black models like Iman, Naomi Campbell, and Nykhor Paul have been outspoken about racism in the fashion world; nonetheless, little has changed over the last few decades. There were more prominent black fashion designers in the 1970s than there are today. In some cases, the percentage of white models at high-profile fashion events is growing.

With regards to the results of my analysis above, implicit bias likely plays an important role. Implicit bias is the sum of unconscious value judgments we make about certain populations. These may be associated with gender, sexual preference, body size, and of course race. Everyone has some degree of implicit bias—it’s a means of simplifying the world around us, allowing us to quickly evaluate people based on physical traits according to deeply engrained stereotypes. Implicit bias isn’t just limited to dominant groups: both black and white people tend to have implicit bias favoring white people, though the degree to which bias exists is stronger within the dominant group. And implicit bias may have dire consequences. For example, black boys as young as ten are perceived as older and less innocent than white boys of the same age, a factor which undoubtedly contributes to trends like the higher explusion rates for black students and, of course, increased likelihood for police violence and arrest.

Both factors are at play in Covet’s racist ranking outcomes, and when combined with the user voting system the results are compounded. As David Banks has noted, sites that rely on voting to produce content “will remain structurally incapable of producing non-hegemonic content because the ‘crowd’ is still subject to structural oppression.” In other words, the majority population tends to vote for things that reflect dominant discourses. As a result, whether we’re talking about a fashion app or the much more significant structures of governmental representation, minority populations do not hold as much sway over voting outcomes.

To covet is to yearn for something, to have a profound desire for some object. In the Bible it’s a sin, but under capitalism it is a key driver of consumerism and neoliberal identity maintenance. What do Covet users covet? Maybe it’s digital handbags or mini skirts, more diamonds to buy them with, and the awesome level 17 updo that seems to win every formal gown challenge. Maybe it’s recognition that you have style, that you’re fashionable, that given an enormous closet and enough diamonds you can craft a look that, if only in a digital world, other people recognize as desirable. But in order to obtain that which you covet, you must conform to the demands of white femininity perpetuated by so many industries, fashion included.

What causes someone to turn to radical ideology and violence? It’s an important question, and one that has occupied the pages of many a newspaper, magazine, and blog as of late. In the case of ISIS, blame gets directed at many targets—the “backwardness” of Islamic beliefs, decades of military actions in the Middle East, global warming, Western-backed corrupt governments in the region, and of course, the internet. As Kashmir Hill notes in this excellent essay:

“Technology and the internet are being invoked in fearful terms because it is easier to point the finger there than unpack the multifold and complicated reasons behind these acts—the growth of hateful ideologies, racial and ethnic tensions, the ease of buying semi-automatic weapons, the long-term effects of an ongoing war waged by drones, and twisted minds that embrace violence.”

And just as the internet is often blamed for violent extremism, it was praised as the catalyst for sweeping revolutions that took place earlier this decade. From Tunisia to Iceland, Egypt to Occupy, analysts, commentators, and scholars one by one fell into three categories: it was because of the internet, it was not because of the internet, or it was kind of because of the internet. As Nathan Jurgenson has argued, these so-called Twitter and Facebook revolutions were the product of “augmented revolution,” a concept related to his work on augmented reality and the faulty notion of digital dualism, the categorical separation of online and offline, virtual vs. real. Jurgenson’s augmented revolution offers a more nuanced perspective on the causes of these movements, and their reliance on both digital information networks and the embodied occupation of space.

Zeynep Tufecki has also argued for a more balanced approach to understanding the role of communication technologies in revolutionary movements. Using the Aristotelian schema of causation—material, formal, efficient, and final—Tufecki convincingly argues that social media tools, along with many other factors like the existing repressive regimes and immediate social networks of family and friends, are but one element of causation, and that breaking causation down into a typology can provide a more complete understanding of these movements. She writes:

“To say that social-media was a key part of the revolution does not necessarily mean that people used GPS-enabled phones to coordinate demonstrations… What it means is that the people acted in a world where they had more means of expressing themselves to each other and the world…”

This last point is, I believe, key to understanding not only these revolutionary movements, but also other brands of radicalism. There is a strong affective component, as Manuel Castells has argued in Networks of Outrage and Hope. Surveying several case studies from Iceland to the indignadas in Spain and the Arab Spring, Castells proposes four components of these revolution: online networked space, offline urban space, feelings of outrage, and hope for meaningful change. He asserts that, as physical space has become increasingly privatized and surveilled, hybrids of digital and urban spaces come to constitute “spaces of autonomy” in which the two key affects of revolution—outrage at the status quo and hope that change is possible—can be cultivated.

These points can also be used to understand radicalization. Radical is a tricky word, and the distinctions between Islamic terrorists, white terrorists, right wing terrorists, so-called “lone wolfs,” and so forth have been hashed out enough times that I’ll set them aside for now to talk more generally about “radicals.” A radical approach to politics challenges and seeks to fundamentally alter the political system. Radicalization, then, is the process by which one becomes convinced that the complete overturning of a political system is necessary; here I use political system in the broad sense, from gender and sexual norms to state government and economic systems. I’ll note that what constitutes “good” or “bad” radicalism depends on whose side you’re on, though below I discuss what we often think of as “bad” radicalism.

So what exactly pushes someone over the edge, so to speak? As Tufecki and Castells argue, it’s got to start at the affective level. Things have to be bad—real bad—for large numbers of people to be willing to put their bodily safety on the line. But you also have to believe in the possibility that your sacrifice will result in significant change to the current system. The Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter called himself a “warrior for the babies.” He believed that his actions would result in fewer abortions, and was willing not only to kill people to effect this change, but to risk his own life and liberty. While the motivations of ISIS are not always clearly understood in the West, their supporters cite the fulfillment of prophecy and the realization of the apocalypse as their main goal. While it may seem incomprehensible to a Western military mindset, a suicide bomber who only kills a few people, or a single person who stabs someone in broad daylight is, to their mind, accomplishing something worth while—a tiny step in the long road toward the end times, and martyrdom in return for their sacrifice. As for Castells’ space of autonomy, ISIS relies on both communication technologies to spread its message and the military occupation of territory, not to mention the physical space necessary to conduct attacks.

I don’t mean to be flippant, but we can certainly learn a thing or two from this body of work to understand the meteoric rise of Donald Trump. Outrage? Check. Hope? I’d say “Make America Great Again” is a big check. Occupation of physical space? Most definitely: the crowds at his campaign events are pretty big (though he is prone to exaggerating them). And, of course, the harnessing of both offline and online spaces to generate outrage and hope.

To fully understand the Trumpization of large numbers of Americans, go to the cause of their support: their outrage and their hope. What are they outraged about? We don’t win anymore, our borders are weak, there are terrorists who want to attack us, and our foreign and economic policy is broken.

What is less easily articulated by Trump supporters, and by Trump himself, is the very concrete ways in which the economy, especially perceptions of it, generate a great deal of this outrage. One of the most dangerous characteristics of this outrage is that most people feel powerless to actually shape the economy. Part of this is free market ideology itself; markets just do things according to all sorts of laws, and governments tend to get in the way. Because of this feeling of powerlessness, we turn to a single figure that promises to both understand the laws of the economy by being a fantastic, beautiful business man and excellent negotiator, and to be decisive and powerful enough to make sure his ideas are implemented, to be a perfect leader. Economic downturns have historically paved the way for charismatic, fascistic leaders to gain massive support, which is key to the context of Trump’s popularity.

Understanding the motivations of radical movements—what outrages them, what they hope for—is key to undermining their efforts. If Trump supporters are enraged by the economy (and rightfully so) then we have to understand why Trump’s message appeals to them. I’ve argued that it’s Trump’s Tweetability, but I think there’s a few other factors at play. After all, the same conditions that are drumming up support for Trump are also working in favor of Bernie Sanders. The difference is, Sanders’ message does not resonate with Trump supporters, particularly the older demographic who grew up during the Cold War and Red Scare, and for whom the mere mention of socialism is terrifying.

The difference between Trump and Sanders supporters is not so much their outrage, but their hopes, the ways they believe they can make meaningful change through the democratic process. Sanders supporters want the expansion of social services, tougher reforms and breaking up the banking oligarchy. Trump supporters want a straight-talking free-market warrior who can play ball with Putin, make Mexico build a wall, and win. The “causes”; a la Aristotle, Tufecki, and Castells; of both movements are, to a point, quite similar—digital communication technologies, physical spaces to generate and express outrage, Castells’ autonomous spaces. But if you want to really understand the soaring popularity of Trump, it’s hope you need to understand. That’s why his is the message that, as of now, is winning.

Donald Trump’s press release last night, on the heels of President Obama’s speech on the San Bernadino shooting, announced a policy proposal that perfectly sums up his bid for president. It’s terrifying, fascist, misguided, hateful. And it’s oh-so tweetable.

Trump proposes to restrict any and all immigration by Muslims into the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” It’s almost unprecedented; while the US has a long history of restricting immigration from “undesirables,” Trump’s proposal harkens back to the 19^th Century Chinese Exclusion Act, which even our own House of Representatives regrets. The proposal is also so vague that it could be satire. Until they figure out what is going on? What does that mean? But, in a time when policy proposals to address terrorism are often too complex or insubstantial to satisfy American xenophobia, Trump sets forth a plan that can, to some degree, quell these fears in a way that is easy to understand. Just keep them out.

One of the things that people like about Trump—and arguably a major contributor to his campaign’s success thus far—is how plain spoken he is. He’s “folksy” in the way Sarah Palin is, but more unflappable. He gives speeches off the cuff, makes up stuff and boldly defends it no matter how obviously untrue. He’s a bullshitter in the philosophical sense of the term, as Maria Hartwig explains in a recent interview with On the Media. While a liar must know the truth in order to better conceal it, a bullshitter’s only goal is to obscure facts for personal advancement. And one of the best things about bullshit? It spreads like wildfire. It often feels true, and it’s hard to debunk. And it’s super tweetable.

Trump has a huge twitter presence; while his closest competition in the GOP presidential bid Ted Cruz has 625 thousand followers, Trump has 5.12 million. His tweets also see an enormous amount of engagement. He often gets thousands of retweets and likes, on par with the engagement on President Obama’s account, which has more than 10 times as many followers. Trump twitter followers are also incredibly responsive. They make image macros, use dozens of hashtags, and express their adoration for him in volumes that would make Justin Bieber jealous.

This tweetability is in many ways the exact opposite of Obama’s policy proposals. While Obama often makes dense, nuanced arguments to the point of alienating people, Trump cuts straight to the point. While Obama uses carefully crafted rhetoric that deftly avoids clear and easy solutions to complicated problems, Trump leaves little to no grey area. On the US military campaigns in the Middle East, Obama opposes a ground war, lays out in detail the need for diplomacy and coalitions, and calls for unity among all Americans. Trump sticks to straight forward proposals like smashing ISIS, winning, and of course, Making America Great Again. For voters exhausted by what they perceive as Obama’s elitism, Trump is a breath of fresh air. Rhetorically, Trump is the anti-Obama. Or, if you prefer, BizzarObama.

Obama was also a very tweetable candidate—his social media ground game was excellent and he had plenty of concise and resonating sound bites. But Candidate Obama and President Obama have very different media presences, and while Obama used social media primarily to appeal to young people, the internet has changed since then. In 2008, only 7% of people 65 and over were on the internet. Last year, that number was up to 49%. This leaves the door open for different sorts of messages to resonate online, and as Trump’s supporters skew older there is a very different dynamic between Obama’s social media presence in 2008 and Trump’s in 2016.

Tweetability is key in political campaigns. Speech writers carefully insert short, poignant statements into speeches that can be easily circulated and that will resonate even when removed from their context. This strategy long predates social media, but it has arguably become even more necessary in a media-saturated world. I think it’s one of John Kasich’s biggest weakness—he’s got the chops to compete in a national election, but he’s too long-winded and, frankly, boring to appeal to the base. Trump on the other hand is the most media savvy candidate the US has ever seen. He answers the question he wanted you to ask, he’s attention grabbing and deferential to his fans, and stirs up enough controversy to get covered by everyone all the time.

You might have had the experience of getting into a debate on Twitter that the medium just can’t afford—the points you want to make are too nuanced and require more characters and references than are possible. “This is not a conversation for Twitter,” someone will often say at some point. But this is what’s great about Trump—if a debate is too complex for Twitter, he just doesn’t engage. The Twitter-debate metric can be used for all of Trump’s disagreements: interviews, presidential debates, journalists. If you try to pin him down on a point he talks past you. He repeats the same point again and again until his opponent just gives up from exhaustion or frustration. He insults you or has you kicked out. Going through his Twitter followers’ replies shows just how much this rhetorical style filters down. Arguments among his respondents tend to follow a simple formula: detractors call him a bigot and tell him to shut up, and supporters tell him they love him and ask him to make America great again.

In some ways, Trump tweets a bit like your grandpa might (no offense to grandpas). He uses ALL CAPS a lot, ends most of his sentences in exclamation points, and does whatever this weird thing is when he wants to retweet someone:

But the beauty of Trump’s tweetability is that his fans don’t really care if he’s manicured or carefully crafted—it’s what they love about him. His tweets read just like his speeches sound. They’re off the cuff, natural, and engaging. It’s almost as if he’s sitting in his private jet, channel surfing and barking whatever comes into his head at his media handler. It’s also the thing that’s most dangerous about his horrifying political agenda. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Ted Cruz wouldn’t love to close the border to all Muslims; he just doesn’t have the charisma to pull off that kind of bombastic rhetoric. His policy proposals look more like this. Not very tweetable. If Trump were simply a hateful, bigoted politician with fascistic designs he wouldn’t actually be that different from many other elected representatives in the US. It’s the packaging of his messages, and his ability to say simply and explicitly what people want to hear, that makes him different. And what makes him dangerous.

Britney is on Twitter.

Maybe you’ve noticed Twitter’s new analytics feature. Maybe you haven’t. I kind of wished I hadn’t. It gives you a break down of how many “impressions” and “engagements” your tweets have garnered; impressions refers to views, and engagements include how many people clicked the tweet to see details, how many liked or retweeted, how many checked out your profile, etc. Each individual tweet gets its own breakdown, and you can go to analytics.twitter.com to see a general survey of your activity, from overall “impressions” to profile visits, mentions, and followers.

This feature has made me feel woefully inadequate. I’m a pretty self-conscious person generally; every time I write a post for Cyborgology I dutifully check the stats, who’s linking to it, what comments I’m getting. If a well-known person links to my essay, I’m overjoyed. If it’s a bust, I’m absolutely convinced that I should never write again. Once someone on Facebook linked to my Feels Bad Man essay and I couldn’t see the post—presumably it was private. It drove a large number of visitors to the essay. But not being able to see what people were saying drove me up a wall. Did they like it? Hate it? I had no way of knowing. And this is how Twitter analytics makes me feel. Feels bad man.

I tweeted this about the experience, and watched the analytics in real time.

Out of 120 people who saw my (very witty) tweet, 11 clicked to see details, 4 people liked it, and 1 replied. And 104 went on about their day.

The experience made me think about all of the tweets I see and like but don’t “engage” with, and I can’t really explain why I interact with some tweets and not others. It’s a bit overdetermined, based on countless things like my mood, the amount I’ve been tweeting lately, who the user is, the subject matter, and on and on. And I know that just because I didn’t expand, like, or retweet a tweet doesn’t mean that it was bad, or that I don’t value that user’s contribution, or that I don’t care. I just… didn’t interact.

But Twitter knows that we care and, frankly, it’s preying on that fact. If you scroll to the bottom of a tweet’s analytics you find an advertisement for Twitter “promotions.” If you follow the prompts it eventually asks for credit card info, but doesn’t explain how much a promotion costs. Twitter doesn’t make it easy to see how pricing plays out in terms of actual cost; in fact, I wasn’t able to find a straightforward breakdown of costs anywhere, but estimates ranged in the thousands for promoted tweets, accounts, and trends.

Of course, advertisements, and industries more broadly, depend on your insecurity for their survival. 5 ways to remove belly fat. Deodorant that makes you irresistible to women. Chips that make your husband’s friends think you’re cool. Eyeliner that makes you look like Jennifer Lawrence. Capitalism cannot exist unless you feel bad about yourself and need to fill the gaping hole inside you with products. And Twitter analytics promises just that. Promote your tweet and more people will be “impressed.”

And for all the mental anguish that Twitter analytics puts you through—if you’re as self-conscious as me, anyway—what exactly does it give back? Not much, really. The analytics don’t teach you how to tweet better, how to reach a broader audience, or how to make a bigger impact. For example, last month the tweet on my account that got the most impressions also had zero engagement. People saw it and breezed by, not even clicking on it. And, of course, Twitter isn’t interested in making you a better tweeter, it’s interested in selling you promotional services.

Obviously, Twitter is a business and it needs to support itself. But what is the cost to users? Analytics like Twitters are exploitative—they prey on our insecurities and desires and fears; and, as Sarah Wanenchak has noted, those with compulsive disorders can face serious health risks when the option to track certain behaviors is unavoidable. With something like Twitter analytics, which can’t be turned off or hidden, users with various wellness concerns like social anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, or a variety of other conditions can add Twitter to a long list of digital services that force us to quantify social relationships in ways that are often unhealthy. Yet another way that capital has evolved to exploit us far beyond our physical labor and into the realm of affect. In other words, Twitter is feasting on your feels. Which is kind of gross.

You can ignore Britney’s tweets here.

Edit: Thanks to Candice Lanius for inspiring this post when she too lamented Twitter analytics last week.