There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED： Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing a coordinated disinfo attack

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00:00:55.400 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:01:04.060 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

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00:01:19.460 I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:01:26.780 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:01:32.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,

00:01:38.200 and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

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00:01:54.740 You're listening to Disinformed, a miniseries from There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:59.680 I'm Bridget Todd.

00:02:04.780 Today we are putting out a special emergency episode because if you were online at all last week,

00:02:09.500 you probably saw Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez use Instagram Live to give a

00:02:14.360 harrowing account of what she experienced from inside the Capitol complex during the insurrection

00:02:18.560 on the Capitol. In this account, she also shared that, like so many of us, she is a survivor of

00:02:23.820 sexual violence. Now, this triggered a real-time tsunami of disinformation. Right-wing figures

00:02:30.720 like Representative Nancy Mace and Jack Posabiak and others falsely accused AOC of not really being

00:02:37.240 at the Capitol at all or exaggerating her claims. So it's true, while she was not in the main domed

00:02:43.400 Capitol building, that building that you think of when you picture the Capitol in your head,

00:02:47.260 when rioters breached it, she also never claimed to be. She accurately said that she was in the

00:02:52.760 Cannon House office building, which is part of the Capitol complex and is connected to the main

00:02:56.720 building by tunnels. Here's what she said on Instagram. I hide back in, in the bathroom behind

00:03:05.780 the door. And then I just start to hear these yells of, where is she? Where is she? And

00:03:17.060 I just thought to myself, they got inside. It felt like

00:03:23.300 my brain was able to have so many thoughts in that moment.

00:03:31.180 So AOC never said that rioters were in her hallway.

00:03:34.740 That's a claim she never made. 1.00

00:03:36.280 But that didn't stop Nancy Mace from tweeting,

00:03:38.680 I'm two doors down from AOC and no insurrection has stormed our hallway.

00:03:42.640 Even though AOC never said they did.

00:03:44.860 Now in AOC's Instagram Live, she recounted hearing somebody bang on her office door,

00:03:49.380 come into her office and say, where is she?

00:03:51.940 At the time, she was afraid that rioters had found her.

00:03:54.620 But she later realized this person was a Capitol Police officer who was there to help her.

00:03:59.480 Now, after this, we saw really ugly trends on Twitter like hashtag AOC lied and hashtag Alexandria Ocasio Smollett comparing her to Jussie Smollett to suggest that she was making up her account, despite it being corroborated by multiple people like Representative Katie Porter and Bernie Sanders aide Ari Rabin.

00:04:16.700 So this is actually a really good example of how disinformation works in real time.

00:04:21.440 This complete distortion of what AOC said has become part of the public dialogue, despite it being based on lies.

00:04:27.940 After this, AOC tweeted,

00:04:29.740 the sad thing about disinformation is that once the truth comes out,

00:04:32.800 the damage has already been done.

00:04:34.580 People have already been misled, radicalized,

00:04:36.980 and believed lies to the point where their hatred has brewed to violence.

00:04:40.200 That's what led to the Six, and that's what's happening now.

00:04:43.140 And you know what? She's right.

00:04:45.560 After she bravely shared her story of what happened at the Capitol

00:04:48.440 and connected it to being a survivor of sexual assault,

00:04:51.340 she faced a coordinated public disinformation campaign.

00:04:54.640 And sadly, this is not an isolated thing for women of color in the public political eye.

00:04:59.680 Leslie Mack is a prominent digital activist and organizer who I work with at Ultraviolet,

00:05:03.540 where we create resources to curb sexist, racist disinformation,

00:05:07.160 like our media guide that you can find in the show description.

00:05:09.900 And sadly, Leslie really knows what it's like to face these kinds of attacks online.

00:05:14.680 You're a longtime digital organizer, activist, someone who spends a lot of time

00:05:19.660 making the world a better place via the internet.

00:05:22.140 How did you get into this work?

00:05:23.460 Tell me about your role in this work. Yeah, my role in this work started in the digital space

00:05:28.000 in 2014. I started organizing faith spaces online after I joined Twitter, although I had been in

00:05:38.040 Twitter for like 2008 or something, which seems like ages ago. And I had started doing some

00:05:45.920 legislative organizing that way. We were working in New Jersey to ban the box and also some bail

00:05:51.680 reform initiatives. And so a lot of that, my initial digital organizing work was around

00:05:58.780 legislative work, which was really interesting. And at the time, a little cutting edge. Not a lot

00:06:04.960 of folks were doing it, but we kind of dipped our toes in and started organizing folks online.

00:06:11.380 And then after Mike Brown was murdered, Feminista Jones had kind of put this call out

00:06:19.520 on from Twitter to say, hey, would you be interested in hosting a vigil in your city

00:06:25.220 this week? And I was like, sure, I could do one in Philly. And I call that the, you know,

00:06:31.280 the moment that the full digital organizer that is Leslie Mack was born. So that's where I started

00:06:38.260 out was organizing that first vigil in Philadelphia, the national moment of silence. And I guess I

00:06:45.880 liked it because I just kept on going. Yeah. You're kind of a prolific digital

00:06:50.180 organizer. You're someone who I feel is one, it was one of the sort of, when I think about some

00:06:55.220 of the foundational black feminists who were showing up online, I definitely think about you 1.00

00:06:59.500 and, you know, full disclosure, you and I worked together at Ultraviolet. And so yesterday was kind

00:07:06.260 of a long wild day for folks who are online and in feminist spaces online, because we saw AOC

00:07:14.120 really being at the center of this coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign against her

00:07:21.700 after she really bravely shared her story about what happened in the insurrection on January 6th

00:07:27.540 and her own personal story as a survivor of sexual violence.

00:07:30.780 And so my first question for you is, how do you see disinformation and abuse being linked?

00:07:37.400 Well, they're linked on two levels.

00:07:39.880 And I was talking about this with you yesterday, which is one is at the personal level, which

00:07:45.980 is that abusers in our real lives, our personal lives, use disinformation against us, right?

00:07:52.120 So they'll tell us lies about ourselves, about the world, that nobody will love us.

00:07:57.120 And that's a tool that they utilize at the personal level.

00:08:00.160 And what we're watching is public abusers, right?

00:08:04.400 People that are abusing the system, people that are abusing people within it, using

00:08:09.800 disinformation for that same purpose, which is to degrade, denigrate and deny the experiences,

00:08:16.460 real life experiences of marginalized people. So we're watching that play out with AOC. You know,

00:08:21.560 she bravely not only shared her story, but she went personally one to one to the people, which

00:08:27.080 I think this is such a digital story in and of itself that she took to IG Live to have this

00:08:33.040 hour long conversation. And the way I saw it play out, I didn't know she was live until I saw on

00:08:39.040 Twitter, people were tweeting about it. And they were like, wow, AOC is doing XYZ. And I said,

00:08:44.440 let me go over to IG and watch her. So I was watching her. And while that was happening,

00:08:52.500 somebody was starting a clubhouse room to talk about it, to debrief it. Shout out to Tracy

00:08:57.920 Corder. And then as I was watching it, it said, oh, Katie Porter is going to be talking about this

00:09:02.300 IG Live on MSNBC shortly. So it was this moment of like, whoa, all of this digital stuff was

00:09:08.800 happening. It was pinging and creating waves all over the place. And then subsequently,

00:09:16.180 that's what we watched, was the abusers that AOC was naming in her IG Live, namely

00:09:22.520 folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and really all the insurrectionists and seditionists

00:09:29.000 electives that supported the coup on January 6th. And they've subsequently now tried to

00:09:38.620 discount her personal experience in this harrowing moment. And it's been wild to watch people just

00:09:45.260 blatantly lie. You know, one of her fellow Congress people said, oh, I'm two doors down

00:09:53.680 from her. And there was nobody in the hallway. And then we find out that the person evacuated

00:09:58.000 before anything happened. So the level of disinformation is really disturbing to watch in

00:10:03.420 real time. Yeah, it is completely like a coordinated attack. So you're talking about

00:10:07.420 Nancy Mace from South Carolina. So she tweeted yesterday, I'm two doors down from AOC and no

00:10:11.620 insurrectionist stormed our hallway. But that day, she herself tweeted on January 6th that

00:10:16.660 she was being evacuated because of this threat. She described it as, quote, a nearby threat.

00:10:23.180 She later did an interview, I think on Good Morning America, where she said that she was

00:10:26.800 so frightened by what happened that she stayed overnight in her office. Her motherly instincts

00:10:33.980 kicked in, and that she was so afraid for her life that she was thinking about bringing a gun

00:10:38.960 with her to Capitol Hill from now on because she was so afraid. And so that's how she talked about

00:10:43.580 it right after it happened. And so it's very telling that now, weeks later, after AOC essentially

00:10:49.920 says the same thing, that I was afraid for my life, somebody knocked on the door and I was

00:10:54.180 afraid for my life, she's saying that didn't happen. And I think it's really interesting how

00:10:58.840 you see the way that this is coordinated. You know, we saw another big account on the right

00:11:04.480 tweeting a map with arrows trying to indicate that AOC was not, you know, not in the Capitol

00:11:10.900 when folks stormed. And AOC herself replied and said, your arrows are wrong. And AOC had a really

00:11:16.560 good tweet where she talked about the fact that disinformation, one of the ways that it plays out

00:11:21.440 is that once it's out there in the public narrative, it doesn't matter if it's not based

00:11:27.520 in reality, or if it's an outright fabrication, that becomes part of the narrative for so many

00:11:32.700 people in a way that you can almost never kind of correct. Yeah, you never can pull it back once

00:11:37.500 the cat's out of the bag with disinformation. And it also gets spread in such innocuous ways.

00:11:44.140 It just becomes fact, and it happens so quickly. It's really an impossible thing to corral back in.

00:11:50.940 One other thing I'd mention is that even, you know, AOC herself never said insurrectionists

00:11:56.060 stormed that hallway. What she said was somebody was walking down there and she was afraid of who

00:12:01.260 it was. So even in the disinformation, they were already twisting the things that AOC said and

00:12:08.480 saying things that she never said at all. And so the levels of lies, right, start to compound

00:12:14.700 themselves. They've misinterpreted what AOC said at the start. Then they're calling her a liar

00:12:20.260 erroneously. And now we have these ridiculous hashtags that are attempting to discredit 0.98

00:12:28.580 Alexandria and the real obvious pain that she was in. And it's interesting because nobody's

00:12:37.520 discounting Katie Porter's account, though she also gave a very similar account, talked about

00:12:43.460 when Alexandria was in her office and what happened in there.

00:12:48.000 She was opening up doors and I was like, can I help you?

00:12:52.200 Like, what are you looking for?

00:12:54.120 And she said, I'm looking for where I'm going to hide.

00:12:57.060 And the thing that will always stay with me was when she said, I just hope I get to be

00:13:02.280 a mom.

00:13:02.760 I hope I don't die today.

00:13:04.400 It's fascinating to watch that two people can talk about an incident.

00:13:09.260 Their stories match up exactly the same, but only one is targeted.

00:13:13.460 for disinformation. That's what tells me it's coordinated, it's deliberate, and it's supposed

00:13:20.120 to be specific to individuals. It's not happenstance. Absolutely. I mean, that jives with

00:13:25.580 everything that we know from the research. We know disinformation is worse for women of color

00:13:29.520 in politics. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue reveals that women of color

00:13:36.360 candidates and political officials are targeted on the right on social media at alarming rates.

00:13:42.680 So this report found that women of color were particularly likely to be targeted.

00:13:47.460 Ilhan Omar received the highest proportion, 39 percent, of abusive messages of all the candidates in their studies.

00:13:53.360 And AOC received the highest ratio of abusive comments on Facebook.

00:13:57.080 So, you know, we know, you know, it completely jives with this research that Katie Porter, her testimony, her sharing her story,

00:14:05.080 would not be picked apart and sort of targeted for this kind of coordinated disinformation

00:14:10.280 campaign in the same way that someone like AOC would be. 0.99

00:14:13.620 So one question I have for you is, why do you think that women of color are such bigger 0.91

00:14:17.880 targets for this kind of disinformation online?

00:14:21.240 Yeah, I mean, I think we're bigger targets in general, and especially for our elected 1.00

00:14:24.880 women of color, because we get shit done. 0.97

00:14:27.760 And we really are there to stand in the gap for those that are marginalized, right, in 0.99

00:14:32.860 ways that our white counterparts are not. So off the bat, we're already facing some pushback to the

00:14:42.760 work that we want to do in the world, and whether that's in political spaces or wherever. The other

00:14:47.400 side of that is that we're easy targets, which means that somebody attacking Katie Porter

00:14:53.380 is going to be seen as mean. They're going to be seen as not nice. But somebody attacking a woman

00:15:01.740 of color, it becomes something so, it's so okay. And then the pylon occurs and people are just 1.00

00:15:08.280 waiting for opportunities to attack women of color. And this is something that, you know,

00:15:12.440 you and I have been dealing with in digital spaces for, you know, a decade plus now. So it's not

00:15:17.840 news, but I think those two things are why we become such lightning rods. I mean, the goal is

00:15:23.040 to silence us. The goal is to get us out of positions of power. The goal is to make the

00:15:29.040 kinds of changes that we are collectively and individually pushed for, not reality. And so

00:15:34.400 starting with attacking women of color, that's like the, that's the front line of that, of that

00:15:39.520 pushback. What you just said completely jives with what you know about disinformation, right? Like

00:15:44.440 one of the points of disinformation is, is to silence people, right? So I think that

00:15:50.100 disinformers, they don't want women of color to be putting their ideas out into the world, 0.99

00:15:55.800 to be creating the kind of changes that they want to be responsible for in the world. 1.00

00:15:59.660 And so these kinds of really scary coordinated disinformation attacks are meant to have a

00:16:05.880 chilling effect on their targets. 0.89

00:16:08.060 And so they're meant to make AOC and women who aspire to be like her, other women of 0.97

00:16:12.480 color who might want to be activists, might want to be involved in politics, or might 0.99

00:16:16.140 just want to put their ideas about these things into the world via Twitter or social media.

00:16:20.620 it's meant to make these people feel so afraid and be so fearful that this kind of thing is

00:16:26.640 going to happen to them that they just stop. They don't put their opinions out into the world.

00:16:30.720 They don't try to shape the world. They stop with their activism online. And I think when we have

00:16:37.520 conversations about disinformation, they often turn into conversations about free speech. And

00:16:42.500 we need to be talking about the ways that this is an attempt to shut down free speech and to make

00:16:47.560 it so that people don't feel comfortable engaging in public discourse absolutely and it's so you

00:16:54.620 know the thing that has been hitting me so much is is how normalized you know these types of attacks

00:17:01.120 against women of color elected officials have become um you know i was listening to rashida

00:17:07.180 to leave from the floor last night um in the hearing around uh stripping marjorie taylor 0.73

00:17:12.040 green's um committee assignments and she said i wanted to go last because i knew it was going to

00:17:16.880 be hard for me to talk about it. And she talked about the fact that her first day on Capitol Hill,

00:17:21.480 she hadn't even been sworn in yet. And there was already a death threat against her, serious enough

00:17:26.780 that the FBI had to come and pull her aside. It was her first one. Not even sworn in yet, first

00:17:31.560 day in DC. And she said she was paralyzed and everyone after that paralyzed. One mentioned her

00:17:37.600 son. She really talked about the trauma of it and how her team had to decide to kind of shield her

00:17:42.840 from it moving forward because they recognize how it paralyzed her. And she said when she saw what

00:17:48.280 was happening on January 6th, the first thing she thought was, thank God, thank Allah, I'm not,

00:17:52.040 I'm not there. Because she knew that she would be a direct target as well. And so when we think

00:17:59.520 about, you know, so many, so much work that's been going into getting more women of color to run for

00:18:05.040 office, getting more women of color elected, the flip side of that is we do not have systems set 0.64

00:18:11.200 up to actually hold the space that women of color that serve in that way, to hold them in the trauma

00:18:20.980 that is sure to follow. And the other thing I want to bring to attention is that our decades

00:18:27.180 of ignoring this kind of violence in digital spaces is why we're seeing it accepted in real

00:18:33.100 world spaces. There's a direct correlation between all of the work that we have been doing in digital

00:18:40.100 spaces to throwing up these red flags for so, so long. I know you had Shireen on the podcast a

00:18:46.180 couple of weeks ago, and she's amazing. And her groundbreaking work to just point out that, nope,

00:18:54.080 this is not just general harassment. It's very specific. It's very targeted, and it's meant to 0.99

00:18:59.620 silence women of color. All of that is now in the real world. And it became normalized in digital 0.98

00:19:08.400 spaces. And that's the danger. When things become normalized in digital spaces, it means they're

00:19:13.740 going to be acceptable outside of digital spaces. There's no barrier between the two. We are living

00:19:19.760 beyond the digital age. There's a complete melding of digital life and quote unquote real life that

00:19:25.880 means that anything we find acceptable or treat as acceptable online become the same in real world

00:19:33.620 a very short time.

00:19:35.920 Let's take a quick break.

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00:19:56.320 And will you finish episode eight

00:19:57.740 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

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00:20:44.300 If your bookshelf and your For You page

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00:20:48.700 welcome home.

00:20:50.220 This is Prose Society,

00:20:52.320 the weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:20:54.600 part group chat for thought daughters,

00:20:56.660 pop culture obsessives,

00:20:57.980 and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice

00:20:59.660 and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:21:02.380 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

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00:21:42.340 See you between the pages.

00:21:44.440 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:21:50.220 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:21:56.780 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:22:00.380 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:22:05.820 shut up, don't say anything.

00:22:08.580 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:22:13.000 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:22:17.440 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed,

00:22:22.200 and I just started screaming.

00:22:24.520 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:22:28.980 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:22:32.420 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:22:36.060 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:22:48.980 And we're back.

00:22:49.980 one thing that I wish that people understood is that what happens digitally and what happens in

00:22:55.620 the real world those two things are not distinct and I think for so long and I think we're starting

00:23:00.220 to see that you know the insurrection was one way that I think that folks who were unwilling to see

00:23:05.080 this maybe are like oh I think that perhaps what happens online does have real world impact but

00:23:09.300 for so long when it was a lot of women and women of color and black women online who were saying

00:23:14.000 hey we're being harassed hey this is happening to us and no one was listening I think one of the

00:23:18.700 reasons why that was minimized is because it was happening, quote unquote, just online. And the

00:23:24.800 perception that you could just step away from your computer or turn off your computer or get off

00:23:28.220 social media, and it wouldn't be happening anymore, completely divorced from the reality that

00:23:33.860 if it's out there in the ether happening online, it's out there in the real world, right? These

00:23:38.160 worlds are not so distinct and so separate. Yeah. And if you think of disinfo at some

00:23:44.420 point is an unsharpened pencil, right? Just a thing. Can't do very much, but it is a tool.

00:23:50.900 I would say that what happened was it was sharpened against women of color. It was sharpened 0.64

00:23:57.540 against, I just think back to some of the early moments of disinfo that I remember,

00:24:03.560 like Gamergate, that entire thing started with disinfo. And so the tool of disinformation was

00:24:10.500 sharpened on all of our pain and all of the attacks that came against us. It was sharpened,

00:24:15.520 it was sharpened, and it was perfected. And so now that it's being used to great effect

00:24:20.200 across the board, not just directed at us, but directed at government, generally speaking,

00:24:26.700 directed at misinformation in elections, disinformation in so many sectors, even around

00:24:32.860 COVID-19, it's wild because, you know, we are, I wrote an article a couple of, for BYP 100,

00:24:40.140 like two years ago. And I think I called it something like Black women always playing, 1.00

00:24:46.980 always cast in the role of Cassandra. And the piece was really just like, we're really tired of 0.96

00:24:53.100 not, of being able to see the future, telling you what's going to happen and nobody listening to us.

00:24:59.260 It gets exhausting, right? I do feel like we have this narrative of trust Black women,

00:25:05.860 listen to Black women. And I have a shirt that says that. Obviously, I agree with that. But

00:25:10.460 we also have to have a very real conversation about what happens when you're expected to

00:25:14.620 be the person who can see in the crystal ball and warn everybody time and time and time again.

00:25:20.000 And I think you and I had a good conversation about this moment regarding AOC, but also

00:25:26.160 disinformation kind of writ large. And I do think this is a moment where we can have a reckoning or

00:25:32.140 a hard reset and say, no, we're not going to do this again, where we, after the fact, say, oh, 0.96

00:25:37.040 we should have listened to Black women. This is an opportunity to really get it right. And that's

00:25:40.900 what I would love to see. I would love to not just see this be another time where in six months,

00:25:46.280 we all say, oh, well, we should have listened to these Black women activists or Black women

00:25:51.060 social media users or Black women researchers who saw this coming, but we actually say, oh,

00:25:56.320 people warned us and we did something. We took meaningful action.

00:26:00.560 Yeah, absolutely. And even in the after acknowledgments, it never goes as far as what

00:26:06.140 you just said. It's always an acknowledgement like, oh, we should have known this, right? We

00:26:10.540 should have known this, or we should have known from this more recent thing. And what I'd like,

00:26:16.240 folks, the acknowledgement needs to go way further back. It needs to acknowledge the fact that the

00:26:20.800 entire ecosystem collectively decided not to listen to women of color and especially black 0.73

00:26:25.860 women in digital spaces as we were shouting from the rooftops about how abuse was being weaponized, 0.94

00:26:31.300 how it was being coordinated, you know, in small ways and large ways and how every single platform 1.00

00:26:38.120 has ways in which we can be targeted for harassment that they refuse to close the loop on.

00:26:44.400 I'll use an example, Twitter lists, great lists. It's a great function. You can make a list of

00:26:49.580 people that like to talk about a specific thing. But there's no setting that allows me to stop

00:26:55.140 anyone from putting me on a list. So once a month, I go through the list that I'm on. And invariably,

00:27:00.500 I find four or five that are horrible, that say things that are terrible, and have put me on a

00:27:05.440 list with, you know, a bunch of, you know, great people, but the name of the list is something,

00:27:10.460 you know, really egregious, and clearly meant for people to target me and anybody else on the list

00:27:17.180 as well. And so I have to remove myself by blocking the person. They don't even let you

00:27:21.400 remove yourself from the list, by the way. These are small functional things within a system,

00:27:25.580 right? Within a platform that enable abuse that are very easy to correct and yet doesn't happen.

00:27:33.420 Articles have been written about this. People have pointed it out. Every month I go live and

00:27:37.320 I just screenshot the list that I'm on and it's horrible. And I can tell. I can tell when I start

00:27:43.140 getting attacks, I'm like, oh shit, I'm on a list somewhere. Like I can, I just know it. I can feel 0.99

00:27:48.740 it. Like why this tweet is innocuous. Why are so many trolls jumping on it? Ah, okay. You know,

00:27:54.760 and it's, it's, um, I think that you're right, that, that it needs to be a much more proactive

00:28:01.360 approach now that all of this data exists. Like you can't say you don't know. You can't say you

00:28:06.420 don't have, we don't have the data to back it up. You can't say that we're not seeing the very real

00:28:11.540 dangerous implications and repercussions from unchecked digital harassment. And that's the

00:28:18.680 part that I think we need to get to. You're someone who is a prominent, visible Black woman 0.97

00:28:24.480 activist in digital spaces, right? And so that sounds phenomenal. You have a blue checkmark.

00:28:31.700 I see people who are like, oh, that must mean you're rich or very powerful. But with that

00:28:36.980 visibility, it's like a double-edged sword where you also deal with this oversized, you know,

00:28:44.260 oversized abusive reaction online. Like people, I see people pile on you all the time. You'll say

00:28:51.840 something innocuous and people, it's like people were waiting in the rafters to attack you. And

00:28:58.160 I think that we really have to acknowledge the toll that can take. You know, there are people

00:29:03.500 out there who are probably like, Oh, if you have a zillion followers on Twitter and a blue check

00:29:07.060 mark, you must be having the best time on social media. I wish I had that. But with that kind of

00:29:12.300 visibility and that with that kind of platform comes a lot of this abuse and that all of this

00:29:18.020 nonsense that makes your experiences online, when you're just trying to put your opinions out there

00:29:21.720 difficult, and we have these platforms really doing nothing about it and enabling it.

00:29:26.980 absolutely it definitely is one of those weird things of um realizing that you have become

00:29:35.260 not a real person in digital spaces to a lot of folks and it take it takes some it for me it took

00:29:41.980 some getting used to just like oh like let i'll put i'm putting air quotes up y'all can't see me

00:29:46.980 but leslie mac it's not actually a person to people um it's it's this you know it's an entity

00:29:55.140 or it's, it's a thing. And I'm like, I'm, I'm just a 45 year old black woman and I'm a real

00:30:00.840 person. I have feelings. I have a family. I have, uh, I have, you know, mental health struggles.

00:30:07.100 I have, I'm just a regular person. And yeah, I think a lot of the mechanisms in digital spaces

00:30:12.820 actually dehumanize us. Some of these things that are meant to like, you know, amplify us or elevate

00:30:18.220 us, um, like a blue check or like a lot of followers. Um, for me as like Greeks, I'm able

00:30:23.560 to do more work and deeper work and have my work reach wider. But the price that you have to pay

00:30:29.960 for that is so large. You know, I've left Twitter multiple times because of those pile on moments.

00:30:36.020 And you're right, it does feel like folks were just like sitting with a bag of shit to throw at 0.98

00:30:40.820 me and waiting for whatever moment when it was deemed okay to do that, right? Because it's clear 0.99

00:30:47.400 you can't do it anytime. You can't just do it out of the blue. It has to be when there's a mass of

00:30:54.680 it happening. And I think that that speaks to the connection again between abuse and disinformation

00:31:00.460 because we're watching bullies coordinate themselves to attack. And this is exactly

00:31:06.240 how abusers act. And disinformation works the same way. People with the same mindset pick up

00:31:14.300 on disinformation and they decide that's what they're going to push out as the truth. And as

00:31:19.480 AOC said, once it's out there, it's impossible to refute it. Anything you say will be just

00:31:25.580 dismissed. Oh, you're just saying that because X, Y, Z. And there isn't a, I don't know what

00:31:32.580 the solution is, but I do know we've got to make some strides because every week I talk to more

00:31:39.400 and more, you know, Black women in particular in digital spaces that are just like, I'm just ready 1.00

00:31:44.280 to leave. I'm just ready to stop because it's interfering with the pros of the reach are not 1.00

00:31:53.160 weighing out with the cons of how this is affecting me. And, you know, we are so disposable as Black 1.00

00:32:01.340 women that there's no consequences and also no empathy when we are feeling and dealing with

00:32:08.440 these moments besides from each other. And it just really has to stop. It really makes me reflect on

00:32:14.320 my own use of social media, which is actually quite guarded. AOC was so vulnerable. She really

00:32:19.500 showed up as her full self in this way that I really often don't. I almost never talk about

00:32:23.980 my personal life or my romantic life because I see the way that people will use it to target

00:32:28.720 women of color online who do. Yeah, it's definitely true. I think, you know, I share a lot of my 1.00

00:32:34.240 personal life, because that's how I built my following and my, you know, my platform. So I

00:32:40.040 still, I still share, you know, especially about my dogs, and I share about, you know, whatever

00:32:43.600 other things I'm doing or working on. But I, the thing that has stopped my interactions more is

00:32:50.180 like, I have way less interactions with strangers than I used to. I definitely used to like, I didn't

00:32:58.520 need to know what your, you know, I didn't need to, I would rarely even go look at someone's

00:33:02.760 platform before engaging with them around just innocuous topics. And now I, if I don't know you,

00:33:08.220 like I'm not talking to you anymore because I don't have, I don't know you, you could be

00:33:13.060 suspicious and the time and effort it takes to, you know, vet you is not, is not some time that

00:33:20.000 I'm willing to spend. And so it's definitely changed the way that I can interact with people.

00:33:24.860 And it's sad to me because I met a lot of amazing people in those earlier days where I was able to

00:33:30.060 interact with strangers and be like, oh, this person seems cool. Like what other stuff are

00:33:34.480 you doing? And getting to know them more and meeting them and talking with them and having

00:33:38.640 them on my own podcast when I had one. And a lot of that has just stopped and I've just become,

00:33:44.920 yeah, a little bit walled off in the context of I'll share what I want, but I'm really not

00:33:50.080 interested in as much interaction. Or one of the tactics that I employ is that I have specific

00:33:58.780 posts that are meant to be interactive or conversational. And I usually do one or two a

00:34:03.880 week just to have a conversation with folks. But I've had to systemize it because it can't be

00:34:10.040 organic for me anymore. The risk is too great. And it is sad. It's made, I would say, my interactions

00:34:18.140 with strangers a little less authentic in that I'm trying to craft a moment to talk with them

00:34:22.740 versus organic conversations happening.

00:34:26.240 And, you know, some of that is just the way

00:34:30.100 that digital spaces have evolved,

00:34:31.900 but a lot of it is just me having to make different choices

00:34:35.080 because of the harassment.

00:34:37.500 More after a quick break.

00:34:46.400 Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches,

00:34:49.160 there's a lot of suspense.

00:34:50.600 Will they finally eat the veggies?

00:34:51.800 Will the pesto survive the first bite?

00:34:54.180 Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

00:34:58.220 And will you finish Episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

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00:35:45.760 when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent

00:35:53.620 my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart

00:35:59.640 and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying

00:36:07.300 shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable

00:36:14.780 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. 0.89

00:36:19.240 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:36:26.860 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:36:30.780 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:36:34.220 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:36:37.340 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:36:46.300 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:36:52.220 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:37:04.680 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

00:37:08.400 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:37:11.820 I'm going to have to look up this story.

00:37:13.700 I'm obsessed.

00:37:14.440 So obsessed.

00:37:15.400 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators

00:37:18.020 to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:37:21.340 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters,

00:37:27.340 then that is a Trojan horse.

00:37:29.220 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations,

00:37:32.840 or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:37:38.420 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:37:44.360 See you between the pages.

00:37:50.980 Let's get right back into it.

00:37:52.840 Wouldn't it be something if you didn't have to spend your time and your energy and your capacity

00:37:58.320 and your brain space, systematizing these things because of these abusive platforms,

00:38:03.000 wouldn't it be great if these platforms, you know, especially simple things like the Twitter

00:38:06.920 list, you know, wouldn't it be great if these platforms listened to their users and said,

00:38:10.540 these are the things that you are, that you are, these are the things that you are doing

00:38:15.020 to enable abuse.

00:38:16.080 If you, if you, it will be very easy to fix, to stop it.

00:38:19.260 It wouldn't it be great if you did not have to individually dedicate brain space to managing

00:38:24.640 how you were going to deal with this just to show up and do your job, live your life the way that

00:38:30.340 you want to live it online? Yeah, I mean, it would be amazing. I mean, we have protocols in our house

00:38:35.920 when the attacks really get bad. My phone gets taken away from me. Everybody knows to text my

00:38:42.860 husband if they need me because I won't have it on me anymore. I mean, these are coping mechanisms

00:38:48.300 just to protect my own mental health when these things happen. And I know, I mean, the reason why

00:38:54.460 I have those protocols because I learned them from other black women who were like, OK, here's how you can deal with it. 0.99

00:38:59.620 Or here's, you know, when I step away. And yeah, I mean, that's the insidiousness of white supremacy. 0.99

00:39:05.440 Right. Is that the onus is on those of us that are under its boot to create situations or to create systems just to help us survive.

00:39:15.460 And our white counterparts just don't have to deal with that. 0.61

00:39:20.120 They do not have to reckon with the possibility of simply speaking your truth, meaning you're going to have to deal with a whole list of stuff that have nothing to do with your initial purpose for interacting online. 0.51

00:39:36.600 And, you know, we do a lot of our work in digital spaces, so it's not a place that I can step away from.

00:39:42.140 I also, you know, center a lot of my work around direct giving and I move a lot of money

00:39:46.820 directly, especially to black women and femmes through social media. 0.88

00:39:50.960 So for me, it's not a place that I'm really willing to leave because the resources are

00:39:54.960 there and it works.

00:39:58.080 So I don't have a position of like, I'm going to step away.

00:40:02.360 I just have had to take a position of protecting myself as best I can, sharing that knowledge

00:40:07.100 with other people and then pushing with folks like you to create actual real change in digital

00:40:12.100 spaces. We need people like you. Yeah, you've been individually responsible for funding so

00:40:19.540 many Black women and femmes, direct aid to them into their pockets. You are so important in this 1.00

00:40:26.000 work. And so I'm glad that you have steps in place where you can stay in this work because

00:40:31.600 god knows we need you but it's hard like we need to acknowledge that you know you're not a superwoman 0.94

00:40:37.500 you're a person a real person and that you know it sucks sometimes it's just really it sucks

00:40:42.940 sometimes it really does uh you know i started doing these tiktok threads on sunday on my twitter

00:40:48.920 and i did the first one because i really was just like i need to put something up that's fun i need

00:40:56.680 to put something up that is not going to be a lightning rod for anything where I can just

00:41:02.500 interact with people in a fun way and bring some joy. It has changed my entire countenance

00:41:11.060 because now people look forward to the thread every Sunday and it's injected in a strange way,

00:41:19.140 just a buffer around me. And I know I have a little bit of time in digital space every Sunday

00:41:24.360 that's joyful and peaceful and fun. And I had lost that. I really had lost that feeling of

00:41:31.360 enjoying interacting with strangers online, which, you know, is such a big part of digital

00:41:37.520 organizing. And I needed to figure out a way to bring that back into my platform and into the

00:41:43.600 ways that I interact naturally. And this ended up working. I had tried some other things before

00:41:50.600 that weren't as successful. And this seems to be working quite well for that purpose.

00:41:55.660 And it kind of, this sounds strange, but it's sort of like if the temperature has been rising

00:42:00.300 on the stove around negative reactions to me all week, that Sunday thread, it's like

00:42:08.340 throwing water on a fire. It just puts it out completely. So I sort of have a reset every week

00:42:13.660 now because now it looks silly that you're like arguing in someone's mentions when people are

00:42:18.280 like talking about dogs or like you seem weird. So, um, yeah, I mean, those are just like little

00:42:25.220 tricks that I've started to pick up just to kind of be like, okay, how can I continue to exist in

00:42:29.820 this space and not have it, um, be so toxic to me that I have to like build all of these different

00:42:37.560 systems. And this trick has seemed to work so far. Um, I'm hoping it will continue because

00:42:42.640 it's been really nice to be able to bring that, that part of digital interaction back

00:42:46.800 in a safe way. That's a great tip. I hope people out there, I'm going to use it. That's a great

00:42:53.520 tip. And again, it sucks that you have to do these things, but I'm happy that you have systems

00:42:58.520 in place that just protect your health, protect your wellness, and continue to give you that

00:43:02.820 outlet to do that community building and engaging that I know that you're so good at and that you

00:43:07.860 love so much. So I'm thankful for that. Leslie, where can folks keep up with you online? You're

00:43:13.100 doing amazing stuff all over the internet where can folks keep up with you you can just find me

00:43:17.760 leslie mac mac you can search that up that's my handle on uh twitter uh if you just search it in

00:43:23.980 google you'll see my all the things facebook and um my website leslie mac.com you can find me there

00:43:29.540 as well yeah i i want to i just want to thank you too bridget for for um calling this uh extra

00:43:35.360 episode and and thank you for all of your podcasts but especially for this um series you've been

00:43:40.120 doing around disinformation, because I think it's really allowed a lot of folks to put into context

00:43:45.300 the long, you know, trail of this work against disinformation. You know, we've watched it in

00:43:52.020 this election cycle in a way that I think has woken people up to the realities and dangers of

00:43:56.560 it. But it's really important to put it into the context that we've been screaming about this for

00:44:02.880 almost a decade, more than a decade. And so, yeah, I mean, y'all could have just listened

00:44:09.620 to Black Women from the first place and you can start doing that now and we can avoid things 0.95

00:44:15.900 like 45 and Marjorie Taylor Greene and all the other, you know, horrible things that have stemmed

00:44:23.340 from digital spaces because frankly, somebody like MTG, the only way that they've built a

00:44:29.140 platformers through digital space. Oh, absolutely. I was just talking about this, how the problem

00:44:34.240 really is, is that we have, for people like her, we have made it politically advantageous to do

00:44:39.580 things like this online. It's not, you know, it's not like, oh, she sounds wild, like get her out 0.95

00:44:44.940 of here. It's, oh, she sounds wild, amplify her. Amplify her, yes. And, you know, as Bridget just

00:44:52.960 closed, we both work at Ultraviolet, but, you know, one of the great things about the media

00:44:56.080 guide is that it really has specific ways for people to not share disinformation. And one of

00:45:03.860 the biggest culprits is the media. They share disinformation inadvertently and deliberately

00:45:09.460 in covering it. And it's wild that they have not seen the light and understood their role

00:45:16.740 in spreading it. Because if you're considered fake news, quote unquote, by a portion of the

00:45:23.380 population, and then you write, you report on disinformation in a, in a specific way,

00:45:28.280 you legitimize it really specifically with a specific audience. And I, I don't know what the

00:45:36.780 answer is, but I'll say this when I was in journalism school, clearly I did not become

00:45:40.780 a journalist because I actually saw one when I was in J school, I saw this as the future of

00:45:45.440 journalism and it really scared me. Um, I went to Northwestern University and this is in the,

00:45:50.440 you know, the mid to late nineties. And I, I really, I remember saying to my mom, I can't be

00:45:55.620 in this industry. This, this, the track that this is on is, is leading in a really dangerous and

00:46:01.940 scary place. And I don't think it's something that I could do for my, my career. I don't think

00:46:06.640 it's something I could do. She was not thrilled. It was a lot of money anyway. But yeah, I just

00:46:13.180 remember, and it's, it's silly now. I talk about this all the time and certainly age myself, but

00:46:17.100 you know, you go to the computer lab to write your, you know, your stories and stuff or the

00:46:20.360 paper. And, you know, people would bring magnets into the computer lab to like swipe people's

00:46:26.420 floppy disks so that their stories couldn't get it on time so that they could get the byline the

00:46:31.520 next day. And like, I remember just being like, this is, these are, these will be my colleagues.

00:46:36.380 Yeah, I, this is not, it's not going to be for me. And it's been a while sitting back outside of

00:46:42.680 journalism and watching everything that I felt as a 19-year-old come to pass. Every single thing,

00:46:50.400 I was like, this is going really south. The idea of ethics were so loosey-goosey and not at all

00:46:59.920 ethical. And I just was like, this is one of the best journalism schools in the country. And

00:47:06.200 these are the people they've matriculated. And this is the attitude that they have towards

00:47:10.700 women towards, Black people towards, marginalized folks towards, poor people. I just, yeah,

00:47:17.440 the reckoning has been long coming. And I think that the digital space has only added to that.

00:47:24.180 Absolutely. And I think we see it in the way that folks are reporting about the AOC situation.

00:47:28.920 I was really disgusted to see it sort of framed as almost like a catfight or a spat between two

00:47:34.500 female members of Congress, as opposed to a wider coordinated disinformation campaign that AOC is at

00:47:41.540 the heart of. This is not two women beefing over a man or something, right? This is people making

00:47:48.780 up lies about someone in a coordinated way to smear them for sharing their story. I was really

00:47:55.000 dismayed to see it kind of framed as like a she said, she said kind of thing, as opposed to

00:47:59.920 disinformation. But that becomes a question, right? Why did anybody feel the need to discount

00:48:06.980 AOC's account of what happened to her personally? That's the ultimate question, is why was that

00:48:14.020 something you felt you needed to do? And at the heart of that is that we go back to silencing

00:48:20.460 of women of color, and especially progressive, radical women of color. And that's the ultimate 0.97

00:48:26.140 goal, and people will pay any price to do that. So true. And I think, like, what do you think it

00:48:33.320 tells people who are survivors of abuse, sexual violence, when they see the way that the wagon

00:48:39.380 circled to smear AOC for sharing her story? What do you think that the response is, you know, like

00:48:44.900 someone who would speak up but sees what happened to AOC? What do you think that what do you think

00:48:49.820 that's going to do to them? You know, it's going to further tell them that they shouldn't speak

00:48:55.620 out. It's going to let them know that there will be negative consequences to them speaking out.

00:49:00.940 And I think it's why it's so important for us to show support for AOC and for all survivors,

00:49:07.160 because there is a survivor listening right now that's contemplating and she's at a crossroads

00:49:12.940 of speaking her truth or burying it and having to deal with it in 10, 15, 20 years. And the more

00:49:20.860 that we can show support for survivors and for moments like this where AOC is so transparent,

00:49:26.340 not only in speaking about her experience as a sexual assault survivor, but also linking the

00:49:33.640 trauma of that moment to January 6th, where she was also feeling under attack. And, you know,

00:49:40.940 I'm just put in mind, you know, Katie Porter, it was interesting listening to AOC's account and

00:49:46.880 then Katie talking about it on a Lawrence O'Donnell show, because Katie mentioned some

00:49:51.340 details that, that Alexandria didn't share.

00:49:53.460 And she said, you know, uh, she, she said to AOC, you know, I'm a mom, I've got everything,

00:49:59.040 you know, covered here.

00:50:00.180 Don't worry.

00:50:00.660 I'm calm.

00:50:01.220 And AOC looked at her and said, I hope I get to be a mom.

00:50:05.300 And I just, I want people to hear that this is a young woman who has

00:50:12.380 a huge platform. She takes it very seriously. She does diligent and amazing work, but she's

00:50:22.980 still a young woman who shouldn't be made to feel like this just for doing her job.

00:50:28.740 And I don't know what it's going to take. And I think that's what's really been scaring me the

00:50:35.100 most in this last few years is that I have a sinking suspicion that it's going to take something

00:50:43.300 so violent that, yeah, I'm just really actually afraid for the physical safety of so many of

00:50:54.040 these elected officials right now. And I don't know what to do with that fear. I can only imagine

00:51:01.840 how they are all feeling um this has been just a like I'm reaching out to you know my St. Louis

00:51:08.800 crew like what who's watching Corey like I'm obsessed about it literally I I find myself

00:51:14.280 just constantly being concerned um some of them I don't worry about because like Ayanna I know

00:51:19.960 she's she's she's got a very strong uh you know um protective system around her but I just worry

00:51:27.140 I just worry as we're watching, continuing to watch these conspiracy theorists and white supremacists continue to take up space, continue to not be challenged.

00:51:41.300 It was really disturbing to watch the hearing yesterday.

00:51:43.940 I was so triggered to hear the GOP representatives one after the other get up and make equivocation for MTG's behavior and these false equivalencies that they kept throwing up.

00:51:59.980 But I was really buoyed by the Democrats that got up and really were specific about the harms that were done, about who these were targeted against and why we can't stand for it any longer.

00:52:12.680 I have not heard the Democrats speak in such large collective voice about this yet.

00:52:18.600 And it's sad that it took someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene to get them to do it, because

00:52:25.760 had they been doing this all along, perhaps there wouldn't be a Marjorie Taylor Greene

00:52:29.920 in Congress right now.

00:52:31.720 I'm hopeful that in this moment, people can see this is this is real stuff, really serious

00:52:38.040 and has very real consequences.

00:52:40.300 Absolutely.

00:52:40.780 Absolutely. And and it needs to be said that these moments always come at the expense of women of color.

00:52:50.600 And I think that it plays into our disposability and in this notion that, well, we can just take it and this notion that we're really just here to serve as an example for other people to to learn from.

00:53:10.780 And that's a hard reality that we actually live with every single day, that our lives themselves

00:53:17.080 are an example. We really just want to live. I say this all the time. I don't know an organizer

00:53:25.080 that would not rather be doing something else. We are organizers because we are called and because

00:53:31.420 we have to be. I'd love to just go to Paris and go to pastry school and bake all day if I had a

00:53:40.580 choice. But that's not the world that I live in. And it demands more of me because I want my nieces

00:53:47.320 to have a better world. And I want my nephews to not be raised in a world that would have them

00:53:53.540 become misogynist. And I feel called to support people that are in need. And so the ways in which

00:54:03.820 we are dehumanized in digital spaces, that we become these two-dimensional, flattened

00:54:10.560 out personalities in ways that our white counterparts are always seen as three-dimensional.

00:54:15.980 It's always about the nuance of their experience. And for us, everything is black and white. And

00:54:22.460 it's a while to watch your sisters just become a lesson for people to learn, their pain be a

00:54:33.520 lesson for people to learn from. And I want that to stop as well. I want better for us all.

00:54:39.780 I almost have tears in my eyes.

00:54:41.800 I want better for us.

00:54:42.920 I want you to be able to go to pastry school

00:54:45.780 and not feel like you have to be in this fight

00:54:51.060 that flattens us so cruelly.

00:54:54.180 I want better for all of us.

00:54:57.060 Sames.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - February 06, 2021

DISINFORMED： Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing a coordinated disinfo attack

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