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Had a feeling this would happen so let's go through why, no, the downvoting of @starwars official videos promoting The High Republic is not just "toxic/disgruntled fans." This is a political attack&can be tied back to organized alt right networks who do this kind of thing a lot
Now this should already be clear since Krystina Arielle has been a target of the alt right leader responsible for pushing the pizzagate conspiracy that led to Qanon, but let's illustrate this further with an example from a completely different industry: emerging technology.
Last year, Microsoft dropped an ad for the HoloLens, an augmented reality headset currently targeted at enterprise & developers. The ad featured artist Marina Abramovic and her experience utilizing AR tech to bring her art to life. The ad was bombed w/ 24k dislikes & was removed.
The downvoting was politically motivated by a conspiracy that Marina is some satanist who is connected to -- you guessed it -- those same politicians who drink children's blood in popular Qanon conspiracies and can also be traced back to pizzagate. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/microsoft-deletes-marina-abramovic-campaign-satanism-1202683987/
And at the time when I was putting together a press briefing for this incident while working for one of MSFT's competitors, who was the top person pushing the success of the political attack against this ad?
This freaking guy.
This freaking guy.
I was critical of MSFT's decision to pull the ad at the time & I still am: Not assessing when you're being politically attacked strengthens the ability for these attackers to, well, do it again (let alone the affects these attacks can take on your bottom line).
I understand this is new for cos. I have the unique experience of being Very Online paying attention to how the alt right has evolved over 10+ yrs while working in high tech assessing the impact of tech on society. I can say, there's little dialogue happening around this topic.
And this isn't just on Lucasfilm, MSFT, etc to deal w/.This is something that all of us need to understand for what it is, especially people who talk about it in publications or podcasts: These are not "toxic fans." They are political instigators w/ clear, harmful agendas.