I've spent much of the past 5 years thinking and writing about the worst people on the internet, because they reveal something important, if terrifying, about our new attentional economy. Even I never imagined that Laura Loomer—Laura Loomer!—could win a Congressional primary.

I spent dozens of hours with Loomer, mostly in 2017 and 2018. She gave me a ride from DC to NY, ranting the whole way about various Islamophobic conspiracy theories. (We also stopped for a sandwich.) I visited her at her apt while she recovered from a nose job. (Her idea.) Etc.

She brags about being "the most banned woman on the internet," and it's true that she's now banned from most platforms. But before they banned her, they gave her a huge opportunity - to use the mechanics of ragebait and engagement to gain a real foothold, to get close to power.

The people who stand to benefit from our new attentional economy -- conspiracy entrepreneurs like Loomer, and tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg -- talk about all this in terms of such lofty abstractions as "free speech," but none of this was inevitable. It was a choice.

Every once in a while they ban someone, but it's too little too late. the basic structural problems are still with us. Just as our industrial economy has driven us into a climate crisis, the social-media economy is helping to drive an informational and political crisis.

The good news is that, because none of this was inevitable, it doesn't have to be like this. We were not fated to have a Congress full of Matt Gaetzes and Laura Loomers (to say nothing of the White House). It's not a natural byproduct of free speech. This could all go away.

The bad news is that it's a really hard problem to solve, and solving it would require lots of coordinated and at times selfless actions, and...we don't appear to be very good at that. But it is important to remember that it's possible. Anyway, piece about all this coming soon.