Read on Twitter
attaching "disinformation" to "participatory" nullifies the power of the insight https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1333791131771969537
yes. it is about the pleasure of participation. and about seeing one's own efforts acknowledged by senpai https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1333795005110968325
its demand-driven. it fulfills a need for interaction and fun. its like every other aspect of media culture in the 21st century. that it concerns something we find abhorrent is not the point
i am insisting, doggedly and obstinately, on a principle of symmetry here because once you do it changes a lot about how you view the problem
for example, this paper is exceptionally good because it talks about how bots on twitter and facebook are actually 'model users' https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/publications/growing-bot-security-ecological-view-bot-agency
the bots are perceived as human not because they have clever tricks or advanced AI, but rather because the way their environment works makes it easy for them to play social roles users have
likewise, if Trump election conspiracies are a kind of political fiction, then social media MAGAsters that come up with elaborate narratives decoding the plot which are then highlighted by content creators is little different from LOST or Westworld fan boards
the efforts, to be clear, are *harmful* in a way that LOST or Westworld fan theorizing isn't.
but as noted here, highlighting the participatory dimension is to also highlight the *voluntary* and *active* element, that people *want* to do this rather than being *fooled* into it https://twitter.com/RSButner/status/1331657076909645827
and not only do they *want* to do it, but a lot of what they get out of it has little to do with politics. they *want* to do it for many of the same reasons that people *want* to engage in other forms of participatory culture https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1333914645531389952
the *harm* is a function of the outcome of the activity, which is the *intended outcome* conceived by its political ringleaders.
one thing we get from this is a better understanding of what we are dealing with, and skepticism towards the default "ban/control" toolset often advocated to deal with them.
but another, i think, is more importantly caution towards what we think as positive manifestations of the same participatory political behaviors.
we are moving towards the normalization of a political model built on a feedback loop between fans that engage in parasocial participation with politicians and receive symbolic and psychological rewards in return
we have not even remotely started to think about what this could do to our democracy, in large part because there is a reluctance to talk frankly about the dysfunctional behaviors of fan cultures journalists like (such as kpop stans)
the worst case scenario is a kind of galaxy brain wonderland dystopia future that mashes up the older traditions of political mobs and mass man with the obsessive, zergling-like swarms of social media fan "armies"
a place where "we have no choice but to stan" is not a self-effacing joke but a literal, cold, description of how the system works
there is still time to stop this future -- or something that incrementally starts to approximate movement towards it -- from happening.
but to stop it we have to move away from thinking that belief -- and especially whether the beliefs are right or wrong -- is the most important aspect of it. the participation is
and we have to actually be brutally frank about the similarities between this and activities we see as benign and harmless https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1333921953846079488
we can create a political model that is responsive to the needs of citizens WITHOUT a flat architecture similar to the celebrity-follower system of Instagram influencers
a place in which citizens know that they deserve consideration of their concerns but DO NOT deserve to have politicians as personal friends
