very long overdue links, #1:

[thene]

Your omg-you-have-to-read-this of the [indeterminate unit of time] is from Mother Jones, about solitary confinement in Iran and in California. At this point it's been so long since I tabdumped that everything that still survives is at must-read status in some respect, but this is the real deal, all-time-importantest list. Especially if you live in America and/or care about the people that your government has repeatedly told you not to ever care about.

Two others related to the above, here's a Slog post about why pot needs to be legal, and here is chickadoggy talking about corresponding with death row & life imprisonment inmates. In capslock, because she was typing on a tiny phone interface at the time. This is the most srs capslocking you are going to see all day I promise.

Mail Order Conservatism from The Baffler does what it says on the tin; the connexion between right-wing conspiracy theories and multi-level marketing and other marketing scams. Long but fascinating and a definite 'a-HA' for me because I've seen so much of this behaviour and heard of more (notably how Mike Warnke invented the Satanic Panic to make money; sadly I can't find the full text online right now).

Clay Shirky on what the internet is going to do to higher education. One for anyone who has any interest in either a) formal education and the debt bubble therein or b) watching the internet break things economically. I tried some free online learning last year and was hampered by my brainfail when it comes to focusing on video, but the potential of it is just so amazing.

One for anyone else who has pure TWS for all things Munchausen's: Cienna Madrid's story about Munchausen's via Internet on Tumblr is wonderful, and like most of the best stories that have ever been told about the internet, it's all true. Except for the parts that are dramatically found to be not true. (I am figuring anyone who cares has already seen the Deadspin expose of Manti Te'o's Munchausen's-by-sockpuppeted-proxy-with-the-aid-of-the-entirety-of-American-sports-media; I am treasuring it because I don't recall a celeb Munchausen wank ever happening before.)

While we're on the topic; I feel like it's been obvious for some time now that Munchausen's-via-Social Justice is a thing that exists, and here is the ONTD_P post that pithily confirmed as much: "Thus she was removed from her responsibilities as a moderator for not being real." It's the comments that I found fascinating, but there's pages and pages of it, so, only for people who have both time and a serious eboner for Munchausenry.

From Daisy, Color Fear - a lengthy interview quote about the relationship between racism, the unemployment rate and the crime rate.

On social media: Twitter has all the heads of state and no teenagers? The original article linked there is also pretty great.

Comments

[auronlu]

I don't have time for all the links, but the ones I read are close to my heart. In one case, close to a scar, since when you've been on the internet for nearly 25 years you're going to get punked with a Munchausen sooner or later. I had two for the price of one -- the married couple that I thought were good friends turned out to be generated by the same troubled young lady. I still mourn the husband who died of a brain tumor, even though he never existed, because I quite liked him -- even more than the wife -- and I'm still a bit bemused that he never existed. But of course, I'd run into and NOT been fooled by others who were abusing the freedom of constructed identity (which, to me, is like the power of writing itself, not inherently bad but like any powerful tool capable of doing great harm if misused).

On another subject -- I am one block over from the MLM snake oil crowd, enough to be very interested in the "Mail Order Conservatism" piece. Remember what I said about the power of words? There is an art called search engine optimization, where you learn how to craft online writing so that search engines can parse it, figure out what search terms is relevant for and (hopefully) send people who would find your page imteresting and/or useful. But of course, search engines are not perfect, and may sometimes be fooled into sending people to a page whose content stinks, but whose author very deliberately crafted it to seem like it's relevant to certain popular searches. Search engines and the black hat Search Engine Optimizatioh industry have been fighting an arms race for years. Online MLM and other kinds of get-rich--quick scams use black hat SEO as a weapon.

And once again, so does the Mormon Church. Remember all those "And I'm a Mormon" videos featured on YouTube? That's the tip of the iceberg. See this article on The church of Latter-Day SEO for their complete, and impressive, strategy to hijack popular searches on the web.

It's a good thing the Romney team didn't have the LDS church putting all its tools and web savvy at his disposal.

[thene]

Oh no shit. My embroilment in sockpuppet/pseuicide wank was very early on in my internet history, before I knew how to be wary of that abuse of constructed identity; it had just never occurred to me before until it happened, and there's that baffling element to it; why do they do it? It never occurs to a normal person that it's possible, because it's an act of senseless social violation, so my brain failed to predict it or comprehend it. Losing someone who never existed in the first place was (still kinda is) too weird an experience to discuss out loud (one phrase I used at the time was 'throwing good emotions after bad' - that kind of bad investment in someone), so I literally spent most of a week curled up in a kind of silent stupor, trying to figure out wtf it all meant. (spoiler: nada). It's informed everything I've done on the internet since, but mostly in a positive way - I seek to establish that I am for real and to ascertain that everyone else is too, and I engage with people with the basis that I already know the worst that could happen and anyone I spend time with on the internet must therefore be totally worth it. Real life is short enough, fake ones are mayflies.

Thanks for the link! 0__0 SEO is another thing I find fascinating - I've even been trying to write some cyberpunk OF about it.