I just. I donât like this view of âmillennials vs Gen Zâ. This is NOT supposed to be a competition of who got fucked over the most and whoâs âactually fighting backâ.
Millennials are fighting back just by surviving in a job market where the minimum wage doesnât cover the living cost. Millennials are awesome at âkillingâ the diamond, golfing and napkins industries. Millennials are using the internet to make sure things that corporations want to keep in the dark are exposed. Theyâre open LGBTQIA-friendly business, theyâre supporting each other with online donations so everyone can survive this shitty economy.
And the Gen Z kids? The Gen Z kids are rad. I remember a post about something like the millennials making a collective promise to never become a disenchanted generation that only criticizes the next one and I want to point out that this âmillennials vs gen zâ trend is trying to do exactly that: split us apart. Prevent millennials from being the older siblings that teach the younger siblings to throw a good punch and turn them into the annoyed adult complaining about âthose kidsâ on their lawn. We are the two groups that grew in a connected world of information. We are two very unique generations.
I think that itâs our duty for us millennials, as a disrespected, underpaid, very angry generation to stand up by our younger siblings, and fight together the oppressive systems that brought us all to this point.
Theyâre trying very hard to pit Millennials and Gen Z against each other because I honestly think theyâre terrified of what the two will accomplish together.
GenX, circa 1990: Shit, organizing is hard work. My parents just want me to study and âget a good jobâ like they did, and I canât get my message out beyond these zines I keep leaving at the coffee shop. 300 people at a protest is a big deal. *studies developing tech, starts building communication and information exchange platforms, settles down to a day job but doesnât stop trying to change the world, takes up blogging. Eventually figures out self-care*
Millennials, circa 2001: OK, thereâs got to be a better way to communicate and network to organise. Emailing everyone is just so damned tedious, and I canât really share blogs . I try to talk to my family about whatâs important, and theyâre busy with their own shit. *works on developing social media, builds more collaborative communities, gets into encrypted apps and communication platforms. Canât get day jobs in field, so ends up in high-turnover employment like teaching*
GenZ: This shit canât stand. OK, everyone, put the word out on social media that weâre walking out of class to protest. Start making videos and putting them out there. We have shit to say.
Millenials respond: We have spent the last decade becoming strong and active voices for justice and activism. Now we have millions of followers and weâll amplify you and support you.
GenX responds: A lot of us are your parents. We raised you on a steady diet of hero and heroine stories about faith and perseverance, and many of us never gave up our quiet rage. Weâll pack you a lunch, make sure youâre wearing good shoes for the protest, and remind you to wear sunscreen and not to use swears in news interviews.
Thereâs not a contest between the generations for who the âreal activistsâ and the âreal voices for justiceâ are.
Weâve been waiting for you, kids. Not to save us. To join us. ]
I searched every username on the list and I found three posts (reblog chains, really) I reblogged from Russian accounts. Along the way, I found Russia-Tumblr truthers. So thatâs fuuuuun.
Of course you donât. Free college might hinder the school-to-prison pipeline your  prison owning donors depend on
???????????????
welp;
Actual quote, in context:
âI believe that we should make community college free. We should have debt-free college if you got to a public college or university. You should not have to borrow a dime to pay tuition⊠I disagree with free college for everybody. I donât think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trumpâs kids to college.âÂ
Donât spread misinformation just to fit a narrative, Clinton is advocating for there to be a cap on who gets free college so that the government doesnât have to subsidize the education of people with enough disposable income to pay for it themselves. The plan sheâs proposing would have a better chance of being passed, is more cost-effective, and still opens up higher education to low-income individuals who previously couldnât afford it.Â
the op lagonegirl literally ended up being a russian psyop im losing my mind
This whole debacle is making me lose what tiny shred of faith I had in tumblr social justice bloggers. Peopleâs response to tumblr reacting to the revelation that fake news was being spread on this site (a fact which had already been exposed over a month ago) is incredibly sobering to me, but I shouldnât be surprised.
People are either falsely claiming that the Russian governmentâs fake news op on here is a conspiracy to censor real, progressive bloggers OR, like you, are pivoting the issue to complain about tumblrâs failure to police problematic blogs on here, while framing the issue of fake news as less important. I literally saw someone say that porn bots were a bigger problem than fake news/interference in our democracy and tumblr staff was incompetent for tackling fake news but not prioritizing porn bots! Of all things!Â
As my friend kafkinated stated, propaganda doesnât have to persuade you of anything. It can also âexhaust, distract and demobilizeâ you from other issues or changes going on by playing into your âpre-existing worldviews.â Misinformation can even lull you into a sense of security that doesnât exist. Whatever you want to believe or not, the fact remains the same: thousands of people working on behalf of the Russian government impersonated progressive bloggers on tumblr, many of them impersonated Black bloggers. They purposefully disrupted conversation and discourse on this site to sow distraction and exhaustion and appropriated Black suffering and issues to help elect a white supremacist president.
That people donât care MORE about fake news and these threats is very sobering to me. The fact people want to either sweep what happened under the rug, create some conspiracy theory to explain it away, or downplay its importance is also disturbing. The more people act this way, the more victories you hand to Russiaâs fake news campaign. It seems Russia hardly needed even put so much effort into misleading and distracting people when, through your own cognitive dissonance, youâre doing it to yourselves.
If posting facts and realities of police brutality can be compared to insighting naziism and white nationalism (Russian âbotsâ or not) then you are pretending like these issues are opposite ends of a balance; where center is what exactly???
How did these bots undermine of the election system if, from what I have seen of their posts so far, they are basically echoing actual Americans/non-bot bloggers who have these opinions and concerns about our government?
What/where is the misinformation they spread? How did these bots exhaust and distract? Were there really only bots in the âsocial justice/BLMâ section of Tumblr?
Why canât there be transparency about the posts by these blogs so we can observe whether there was misinformation? Do we get to know how they specifically found and purged these bots? When are they purging this site of people and bloggers promoting hate and Nazi ideology as well?
I think itâs fair to say this leaves a lot of unanswered questions and lack of transparency. Not sure how these concerns are a cognitive dissonance as they are critical thinking.
Look.
All the questions you pose here are justifiable, but they arenât unanswered at all? Theyâve pretty much all been addressed and are easy to Google. Tumblr staff worked with the Justice Department and found the blogs by tracking their IP addresses back to known Russian troll farms, as well as talking to Americans the Russians had recruited (the Americans did not know they were communicating with Russians) â here is some information on that. This is the same thing that was done on all other social media outlets that were found to have had this problem. Here is the report from the DOJ, with a link to the actual indictment at the bottom of the page.Â
The blogs exhausted and distracted by the same means all heavily circulated media does â by being highly and repeatedly visible. This⊠is not new information? We see stuff constantly, we absorb it. Consciously or not, we absorb it. Everything from psychology to marketing has confirmed this. Itâs literally what the entire advertising industry is built on. As for the specific misinformation they spread, they took quotes and pictures completely out of context to fuel an anti-Clinton narrative among progressives. Hereâs an example.
And no, there were not only bots in the social justice/BLM section of Tumblr. You can find the list of the bots, and there are some like âguns4l1feâ that were clearly geared toward a more conservative/right-wing audience. This was a widespread campaign â again, not new information. None of this is an indictment on BLM or progressive efforts in general. And frankly Iâve yet to see a single person actually claim that BLM itself was a Russian operation. Iâve only seen people bending over backwards to deny the Russian campaign existed on Tumblr, and using that as a rationalization to ignore the evidence.
Listen, I got the email. That means I reblogged some of this shit. I get that itâs unpleasant and uncomfortable to realize you got played, but we did. Because this was masterfully done. They undermined the system by being thoroughly convincing. These blogs were very well designed to look legitimate, partly by not being only political â they peppered humor, popular culture references, etc. into the political posts. They knew how to imitate Americans and American political/ideological concerns, gain followers, and get traction. And the fact that a lot of what they posted was true added to the effectiveness of the campaign. If it had all been obviously fake, we would not be here.Â
This is not a smear tactic for progressive bloggers or causes. Itâs a crucial acknowledgement of what happened during the 2016 election, and even more to the point itâs an acknowledgement of an ongoing threat.Russiaâs stilldoingthis, and itâs another election year. And these mental gymnastics to avoid facing something that could very well affect us again in November are disingenuous and irresponsible.Â
living in the god tier of swing states, i would be surprised if i HADN’T been affected by the russian interference.
