So a lot of people have been retweeting this post lately, and while my first impression was just to scoff at people for falling for obvious bait, I started doing some digging and found a weird and fascinating rabbit hole, follow me for a sec: https://twitter.com/UnbiasedKatie/status/1284192777253904392

A quick look at this profile says, yeah, okay, obvious troll posing as a trans SJW Games journalist whatever, a joke straight out of 2015. But what's that banner? JLGBT+?

A quick scroll through their recent feed shows they've retweeted some other accounts that seem to be related to them somehow, first this JamieB(JamieCinch), with a "viral" petition to give free games to LGBT and POCs (we'll come back to the 2nd one later)

Looking at her profile, we see that same "JLGBT+" banner again, and a link to the website she is "editor in chief" of, http://cinchnews.com  (also notice who's in the suggested bar on the side)

A cursory look and we see a decently well put together (if criminally unfunny) satirical news page, with articles about culture, games, BLM protests, typical stuff /pol/ kids and gamergaters love to rag on. But if you click on that Twitter link...

We come to our main hub, "Friends of Journalism", the twitter account for " http://JLGBT.com ". All of the mentioned accounts and ones to come link back here in some way. But what's up here? Another website?

So here we have the homepage for "JournalistEW", or "Journalist Excellence Worldwide", or "JEW" for short. Links here redirect to, among other things, a Facebook page, discord server, subreddit (dead), and if you scroll down, Instagram, Email, and "Friends"?

The "Friends" page redirects to a twitter list of users that all make up the broader network of bad, alt right "satire" pages. Here the web goes deeper and deeper, and you can explore at your leisure, but here are some highlights:

The various accounts here all have links to a staggering number of decently put together, and again, very unfunny satire sites, including "Beezfud", "Inclusive Gamers", and "SisThis" (Hey, it's our old friend Katie!), where the articles are all wordpress default Themes

So it's a broad network of trolls right? Kinda, but they all continue to link back to that one "JournalistEW" hub, they're all part of that family, so who actually runs that? Well, most of the sites' Youtube links redirect to 1 place:

"Boston Antifa", a 5k subscriber account with regular 1-2 hour livestreams where the hosts pretend to be journalists mad at PewdiePie, Games, Trump, and more comedically dead topics. A look at the "most popular" vids show consistent uploads for going on 3 years now!!!

So, the big question is, why do this? Why go to all the effort (and money!) of running a half-dozen websites, dozens of twitter accounts, a subreddit, instagram, discord, all to feed into a fake network of SJW "satire" appreciated by only a couple thousand people at most?

All done for 9 Patrons on Patreon. A network of fake accounts and sites that could reasonably be used to swing an election has inspired fans who donate, at most, $45 a month. This is maybe the single most dedicated grift I have ever seen, years of work, from a guy making nothing.

Wow.