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podcast friday
Mar. 10th, 2023 07:27 am This was another week where it's a toss-up as to which podcast I'll post about. I have really been enjoying the 6-part (!!!!) Illuminati series on Bastards, but I haven't listened to yesterday's finale yet. So you're getting something older and shorter.
Internet Hate Machine is an excellent podcast by Bridget Todd that looks at the way internet attacks against marginalized people, particularly Black women, are the template upon which our present political hellscape is designed. It's insightful, brilliantly researched, and sometimes funny when it isn't busy being fucking horrifying. My podcast rotation is pretty heavy so I'm slowly going through it in chronological order.
The episode I'm highlighting today is "Leslie Jones: How Milo Yiannopoulous Weaponized a Ghostbusters Remake." It features Prop (yay!) and talks about how the criticism of a silly comedy about ghosts turned into a targeted assault against comedian Leslie Jones, fundamentally altering Twitter discourse and mobilizing angry white men to vote for Trump.
This is one of those stories that I feel is recent and is actually from the Before Times, when we didn't realize how bad everything was going to get. But then, I feel like Sad Puppies and GamerGate were also recent and both were awhile ago too. Milo has since fallen victim to the face-eating leopards of his movement in a stunning reenactment of Night of the Long Knives, so. Oh well. But alas, the hatred that he spawned lives on.
I remember at the time watching that harassment unfold in real time and seeing a continuity from Sad Puppies to GamerGate to Ghostbusters and realizing that, "oh fuck oh fuck, this is going to be a problem." And guess what, it was! The harassment of Black women in online spaces is a primary organizing tool for the far right. It's easy to trivialize, and I'm guilty of that reaction myself. I am an adult woman; I shouldn't have to know or care about things like Ghostbusters or video games because those are entertainment for children, but it's that very triviality that makes these these situations so dangerous. Serious people who care about material conditions have a tendency to ignore online culture war bullshit until it's too late.
This podcast is from November so it's pre-Hogwarts Legacy, but it's worth listening to and extending the pattern to the way children's media has been once again weaponized by the far right, this time as propaganda and harassment against trans people and Jews. Again, everything I've learned about the stupid wizard game has been against my will, but it's a good example of how the template established by misogynoir gets extended to other groups (including, in this case, my own). The point that Bridget makes so cogently in this episode and throughout the podcast is that we ignore the targeting of Black women at our own peril.
Internet Hate Machine is an excellent podcast by Bridget Todd that looks at the way internet attacks against marginalized people, particularly Black women, are the template upon which our present political hellscape is designed. It's insightful, brilliantly researched, and sometimes funny when it isn't busy being fucking horrifying. My podcast rotation is pretty heavy so I'm slowly going through it in chronological order.
The episode I'm highlighting today is "Leslie Jones: How Milo Yiannopoulous Weaponized a Ghostbusters Remake." It features Prop (yay!) and talks about how the criticism of a silly comedy about ghosts turned into a targeted assault against comedian Leslie Jones, fundamentally altering Twitter discourse and mobilizing angry white men to vote for Trump.
This is one of those stories that I feel is recent and is actually from the Before Times, when we didn't realize how bad everything was going to get. But then, I feel like Sad Puppies and GamerGate were also recent and both were awhile ago too. Milo has since fallen victim to the face-eating leopards of his movement in a stunning reenactment of Night of the Long Knives, so. Oh well. But alas, the hatred that he spawned lives on.
I remember at the time watching that harassment unfold in real time and seeing a continuity from Sad Puppies to GamerGate to Ghostbusters and realizing that, "oh fuck oh fuck, this is going to be a problem." And guess what, it was! The harassment of Black women in online spaces is a primary organizing tool for the far right. It's easy to trivialize, and I'm guilty of that reaction myself. I am an adult woman; I shouldn't have to know or care about things like Ghostbusters or video games because those are entertainment for children, but it's that very triviality that makes these these situations so dangerous. Serious people who care about material conditions have a tendency to ignore online culture war bullshit until it's too late.
This podcast is from November so it's pre-Hogwarts Legacy, but it's worth listening to and extending the pattern to the way children's media has been once again weaponized by the far right, this time as propaganda and harassment against trans people and Jews. Again, everything I've learned about the stupid wizard game has been against my will, but it's a good example of how the template established by misogynoir gets extended to other groups (including, in this case, my own). The point that Bridget makes so cogently in this episode and throughout the podcast is that we ignore the targeting of Black women at our own peril.
