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while normally how a mansplainer gets his water, “well, actually” will explore the different angles of an argument or conversation & favor celebrating nuance & complexity over the short-term satisfaction of “hot take culture”

🤖 gay son, bot daughter

It’s possible that, if you are a healthy individual with the ability to simply stop scrolling and therefore are not Chronically Online™, or if you have reached peak enlightenment and have completely extricated yourself from social media platforms at all¹, you either:

a) don’t know the latest “scandal” involving Chappell Roan, or
b) don’t know who TF Chappell Roan is at all

While I do love me some Joan of Arc drag and all who celebrate, I wish (at least this week? month?) that I was like you.

For the rest of us who are, in fact, Painfully Online™, you’ve likely seen the exciting new discourse about Chappell Roan, mainly that some one-name guy who plays football (the foot kind), married to someone who had a kid with Jude Law², and that kid really loves (loved?) Chappell Roan. So much so that this elementary-aged child and her mom went to go check out a recent Chappell concert, but then had an unfortunate run-in with “a member of Chappell’s team.”

Basically, the kid saw Chappell Roan in the restaurant and got up to get a closer look to verify - not to bug her, but to simply confirm that it was, indeed, her. Supposedly, a member of Chappell’s team came over and read this little girl for filth, telling her to mind her own business. Girl is heartbroken, does not go see concert. Mom tells Football Stepdad, who uses his considerable platform to go online and put Chappell Roan on blast with his audience. Mom follows up with a post of her own saying that she doesn’t actually know whether or not the person was on Chappell’s team (he wasn’t), but that Chappell should do something about it, if so. Chappell Roan makes an apology video swearing she had no idea and she didn’t hate kids. The internet goes crazy. Everyone, in an effort to make sure that facts don’t get in the way of a good story, takes to the internet to hate Chappell Roan.

It’s almost a cycle you can set your watch to at this point, so we all should have seen it coming that now, there is speculation that all the Internet Anger is actually a “coordinated bot attack”³ against Chappell Roan.

How novel.

Now I’m not gonna get into the whole “are famous people allowed privacy?”⁴ bit; I want to talk instead about how inevitable it was to hear that this was supposedly a “coordinated bot attack.” We’ve seen this exact cycle several times now⁵, between Amber Heard facing her trial with Johnny Depp, Blake Lively accusing Justin Baldoni of untoward behavior, and Taylor Swift maybe being a Nazi who wants to repopulate the world with miniature Travis Kelces (please, god, kill me if it comes to that.)

The problem I have here (which may surprise you) is not that these famous women with power and money and influence all were the victims of “coordinated bot attacks.” It’s that there’s zero REAL proof⁶ that “coordinated bot attacks” are actually happening.

I know that some of you may take issue with me saying that. You will point to the press releases and whitepapers and mountains of “evidence” of these coordinated bot attacks, to include this absolutely atrociously written whitepaper⁷ covering such alleged attacks on Taylor Swift. Here’s the rub: There’s literally no proof of these attacks beyond an increase of online activity around the celebrity’s name, and that the activity follows a pattern that the authors never want to define specifically.

While it IS helpful to look at patterns like cadence, timing, post volume, etc. to determine bot activity, it’s not a foolproof science. For one, things like vernacular are constantly changing - the internet shapes ours as much as we shape it. Second, bots are becoming more and more sophisticated, so as soon as a reliable “identification pattern” is determined, it’s basically outdated and no longer reliable.

But my biggest issue is this phrase: “coordinated attack.” It suggests deep nefariousness, calling to mind someone in a dark basement sweatshop of computer monitors, lighting one cigarette off the last, uttering, “release the hounds” in an unmistakably evil and deadpan tone. At the very least, it suggests that someone is being paid to unleash fury on the victim, and that the activity is manufactured, and we are all fools for believing it.

That’s like, not really how this works.

The whole Occam’s Razor of it all is far less likely that it is someone picking up the phone saying, “Do it. I’ll pay whatever it takes,” and far MORE likely that, if there IS a substantial increase in bot activity…it’s the most boring (and ultimately even more awful) reason: Social platforms monetize engagement. Bot (or bad actor account operated by a human) drops the rage-bait, the audience takes the bait and organically contributes to the rage traffic, chaos ensues, cash register noises abound, fat stacks o’cash made.

Which is a lot less “coordinated” and a lot more, “oh so this is why we maybe should have re-thought that whole ‘let’s pay everyone for high-engaging content’ directive oops our bad.”

The other issue with jumping to this “coordinated bot attack” is that it pushes us deeper into the “uncanny valley” you keep hearing me talk about. The thought process transitions with light speed to “No one who is mad about this is real,” -> “Almost all the people I know feel the same way I do,” -> “No one who disagrees with me about this is real,” -> “Therefore I have no reason to examine my thoughts or approach, or do anything except confirm my own bias, because the alternative is simply a coordinated malicious play.” This thought process basically negates the REALITY that people think differently than we do. It’s wild, it’s hard to believe, and yet!⁸

The even harsher reality: Sexism is so much more real than we give it credit for when we assume these to be coordinated, directed attacks. Now, as someone who had to take a lil social media break when the most recent CNN investigation was released, I understand deeply the difficulty in facing the reality about sexism. It’s one of those things where you can’t look at its whole face because it would just absolutely fucking destroy you with how awful and insidious it is. Except we also know that society just really does NOT like a successful woman.

We see the arc of female success follow this peak and valley pattern so much more often than we see with male success. This isn’t happenstance - it’s the byproduct of a virulently sexist culture and society. And when we pretend like it’s all just bots, we ignore the water getting warmer until it’s at its boiling point. Worse still is that whether the bots are “coordinated” or not, the results are still REALLY bad: They continue to normalize sexism at a time where we should SUPER be paying attention to the bright red waving flags of it all around us. When rates of sexism are on steep rise among men and women, it’s time to call it what it is: Even if it IS a bot, it’s a big-ass problem we can’t afford to ignore or dismiss.

So what do we do? First, remember who profits off your engagement (hint: it’s not you). Then remember that if they keep profiting, it means it’s working, so they’ll keep doing the bad thing. Where you can (and if you are a person who is demented like me and therefore so inclined to engage people in conversation on social media), force more thoughtful discourse and longer, more nuanced engagement with accounts pushing rage-bait or rage-responses. Even if that account doesn’t change their mind, someone else may see it and it may impact them.

Finally, for both society and for your nervous system, practice withholding judgment in either direction, whether you like the celebrity or not. One of our issues in society is that we seem to attach our value and worth to the opinions we have or the people we like - babe, detach that parasocial umbilical cord, you don’t even KNOW these people. You do not have to defend them or even contribute to the conversation ABOUT them; they will not notice. Zoom out, look at the bigger issue, and focus your energy on highlighting that.

Good luck, babe.

¹what is it like to know peace?
²who, thanks to the internet discourse, caught some strays & now we know that Jude Law is basically Nick Cannon?
³it should be noted that these same people put out the absolute shit-trash whitepaper suggesting the same happened to Taylor Swift. Please know: They’re selling social listening software. They are NOT scientific researchers. They are actually outrageously bad at that part.
⁴omg they are can we be done with this discourse
⁵unless, of course, you know peace
⁶remember: the research was REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD
⁷did i mention how bad the “research” was
⁸have you looked at the federal government these days? ELECTED, they were!

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