#content articles

[chasingfictions]

yellowjackets + reductress

#yellowjackets #yellowjacketsedit #yjtxt #IT'S ME MAKING CONTENT DAY EVERYONE GATHER ROUND #this is mostly shauna i realized i think bc her whole life is a reductress article

[atzupdates]

[240330] ATEEZ Incheon Airport departure for HONG KONG

#ateez #m: all #type: photo #content: airport #type: article #era: towards the light : will to power

[charlesoberonn]

This right-wing hack of a writer is just being disingenuous but I wish Bob Iger actually said that because it's hilarious.

#not sure if I should post the content of the article #I think it's funnier like this

[northern-passage]

i know AI isn't going anywhere and i also know there's nothing i can do to prevent someone from stealing my work; that's an accepted risk with sharing it publicly. i'm not going to stop - my issue with AI has always been with the surveillance, the environmental impact, and the exploitation of workers.

if you really want to have a conversation about AI, these are the things we need to be educating ourselves on and talking about. Emily Bender wrote it best in one of her #AIHype take-down threads:

When automated systems are being used, who is being left without recourse to challenge decisions? Whose data is being stolen? Whose labor is being exploited? How is mass surveillance being extended and normalized? What are the impacts to the natural environment and information ecosystem?

#openAI/chatgpt specifically is known for outsourcing labor and horrific working conditions #there are multiple articles on the abuse of kenyan workers for content moderation #so. just something to think about

[wheredidalltheusersgo]

Dudes when they're sooooo sleepy

#bedhead tyler is my everything #he's so silly #Geoff on his way to snatch an article of clothing from the wardrobe of everyone he cuddles with #he'll wear them regardless of what size they may be #the world needs more tyleoff and I'm going to provide that content #they are eepy sleeby #total drama #td geoff #td tyler #tyleoff #tygeoff #td tyleoff #td tygeoff #my art #posing is hard #Geoff's stupid floral-patterned boxers

[kindahoping4forever]

📸: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for iHeartRadio

#why it took Billboard 2 weeks to write an article about this concert idk but hey new old content 😌 #5sos #5 seconds of summer #luke hemmings #luke #alter ego 2024 #kh4f post

[blamemma]

Daniel Ricciardo on his F1 comeback, the moment he decided to race again, and how he wants his career to end.

#daniel ricciardo #dr #article #happy for him #he seems content #feels like hes recharged and is ready to go #good for him #and the last quote #could cry

[etirabys]

// this post is meanders a lot, and culminates in a rec for a New Yorker article that has object-level nothing to do with my starting point.

I know a lot of romantically lonely men, and my explanation for this is that they (1) are outliers on a distribution where their part of the tail end doesn't contain that many women (i.e. they have the kind of autism that makes you a programmer), (2) would be a lot happier dating women who are also in that part of the distribution.

(I am somewhat this exact guy who happens to be a Kinsey 1 female, and I think this is one of the luckiest spots you can be in vis a vis dating)

(If I were the same person I am but only attracted to women, I would give up on dating. I like dating very much, but I also think I could have a happy life being single, and the market skew would shred me psychologically.)

Since there are about as many women as there are men in the country (actually, there are more women!), it occurred to me today to ask what these men's counterpart is. Naively you'd expect it to be women who are on the tail end of a distribution that does not contain very many men. But distribution on what axis? The first guess my brain generated was "allosexual women who are so in fandom, whose sexuality is so fandom-y/textual, that they will find the sexuality of most men alien or disgusting". I certainly feel like most of my male partners' lack of interest in slow burn erotica is an impediment to our sexual compatibility, one I couldn't overcome if I didn't have physical/nontextual libido.

I wondered out loud about this to 81k, who said that Scott Alexander had asked the same question years ago and had come up with the answer of "low income black women, some women in very rural areas who can't move out, and maybe nurses". We couldn't find the post, but he pointed me at a New Yorker article about that first group.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230206160659/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/08/18/the-marriage-cure

I liked it a lot.

#(content note: article does the thing where it's compensating for reader bias by focusing on poor people are Valid and Helpable) #rambl #sampl

[ansonmountdaily]

Anson Mount for Instyle Magazine

Promoting Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Anson did an interview and a photoshoot for Instyle, titled "Anson Mount Is Leading With Heart", written by Christopher Luu, June 14 2023. He talks about Star Trek, his past roles, personal life, hobbies and favourites. Read full article here.

Photography by Mark Elzey.

Source: Instyle article (includes video interview!) + Instagram

#anson mount #star trek strange new worlds #strange new worlds #star trek #captain pike #christopher pike #marvelcastedit #marveldaily #*edit #OMG #an incredible article and video!! #they've asked him really good questions #so much new content to digest! <3<3 #he looks amazing in the photos #and behind the scenes video #<3<3<3

[atzupdates]

[240402] ATEEZ Incheon Airport departure to Los Angeles California

#ateez #m: all #type: photo #content: airport #type: article #era: towards the light : will to power

[jarchaeology]

THE SCANNER SERIES [BOP Magazine November 1998]

#the scanner series #the scanner series: 1998 #pls read what they wrote in the table of contents for this jensen's friends are tops! article #chef's kiss #also that california pizza kitchen info is so funny but mostly because i remember being in socal in 1998 #people were really into that bbq chicken pizza like idk it was fancy for 98 mall life 😂

[arowitharrows]

Yes, finally! I've been waiting!! Translation from the coalition agreement:

We will introduce the institution of "community of responsibility" and thus enable two or more adults to take legal responsibility for each other, outside of romantic relationships or marriage."

There are still things I'm angry about with this proposal, mainly in how they're constantly trying to appease people that it won't "encroach on the institute of marriage" (meaning no tax benefits or inheritance, that's a privilege only for married people for some reason). But I still think it's good, and I hope I will find people to do this with.

#mai rambles #german stuff #i remember the csu was fear mongering about this being ''the start of legalizing polyamory'' #like sure‚ let people struggle alone just to make sure the evil evil polyamory doesn't get a foot in the door (sarcasm) #anyway #aromantic #also cw for anti polyamory content in the article

[aronarchy]

Introduction

In April 2023, a concerning trend emerged on TikTok called “gnome hunting.” While at face value, the trend depicted users harmlessly pretending to hunt for gnomes, the trend was steeped in antisemitism. In this context, gnomes served as coded references to Jewish people, and gnome hunting referred to hunting for Jews. Gnome hunting followed other contemporary trends of online antisemitic dog whistles such as #thenoticing and the echo. The coded meaning of gnome hunting allowed for its rapid growth, due to participation from TikTok users who were unaware of its violent, antisemitic connotations. We identified gnome hunting TikToks with over 1.7 million views, indicating that this hateful trend reached an audience far beyond niche extremist communities.

It is not unusual for TikTok users to collectively participate in an absurdist meme of the month. Millions of users partook in the “Woodchuck Revolution” trend in 2021, which manifested complicated plotlines and even accompanying musical compositions. In late 2022, the app was inundated with memes describing a made-up economic system using a currency called “doubloons.” Given this context, it is unsurprising that TikTok users jumped at the chance to participate in the gnome hunting meme without understanding its hateful message. Some creators have since removed their original gnome hunting videos and apologised for unwittingly participating in a hateful trend.

This Insight will explain how far-right groups adopt dog whistles to avoid content moderation efforts and obscure harmful meanings to both moderators and wider users. TikTok’s gnome hunting trend will serve as a case study for this tactic while demonstrating how seemingly benign trends may be based on virulently antisemitic and extremist ideologies.

Dog Whistles and Violent Extremist Content

A dog whistle is coded or suggestive language that is understood by a particular in-group while its meaning(s) remain opaque to the out-group. Dog whistles often build on or reference pre-existing ideological tenets that individuals in the in-group would understand. In October 2022, 4chan users utilised and popularised the #thenoticing hashtag, an antisemitic dog whistle, on Twitter. “The noticing” refers to the instance in which individuals allegedly “notice” the presence of a machiavellian Jewish conspiracy. Similarly, in 2014, online antisemites began using the “echo” or parentheses around Jewish names, for example “(((George Soros)))),” as a way to subtly whisper their antisemitic beliefs to other antisemites.

While dog whistles are useful for extremist attempts to evade content moderation efforts, with time, their true meaning often becomes known, as was the case with the echo parentheses, the noticing, and gnome hunting. As a result, different dog whistles and other examples of coded language are in a constant state of fluctuation online.

The Rise of TikTok’s Gnome Hunting

Although some instances of TikTok gnome hunting acted as coded antisemitic dog whistles, other gnome hunting content was overtly neo-Nazi and antisemitic in nature. Additionally, gnome hunting is a continuation of recent references to gnomes in extremist spaces on Telegram and TikTok. Prior manifestations of this gnome fascination include the “gnomecore” and “gnomepill” trends which utilise gnomes as coded references to extremist narratives that wish to return to or embrace tradition. Although this content originally emphasised a desire to “find the gnomes,” portrayed as benevolent creatures and symbols of pre-modern Europe, the current gnome hunting trend shows that gnomes have since been reconfigured as adversarial actors—specifically Jewish people. In this section, we will provide an overview of the most prominent antisemitic indicators identified in this trend, including the phrase “millions wear the hats,” far-right insignia, and antisemitic and neo-Nazi hashtags.

“Millions wear the hats”

The most prominent of these indicators is the frequent use of the phrase “millions wear the hats,” displayed either in the TikTok video or its caption. This phrase serves as a coded reference to yarmulkes traditionally worn by some Jewish people by highlighting the pointy caps most often donned by garden gnome statues. “Millions” refers to the global Jewish population and the perception of a global Jewish conspiracy of world domination involving millions of people. Other captions expand on the consequences of this conspiracy, stating “billions deny, trillions will suffer” and “billions must die,” conveying that genocidal violence will be levelled toward Jewish people as retribution for the conspiracy.

Neo-Nazi Insignia

Figure 1. TikToks showing users wearing Sonnenrads, skull masks, and two emoji lightning bolts, or the double Sig/Sowilo rune, communicating sympathies towards the Nazi SS

Other extremist indicators demonstrated by both gnome hunting focused TikToks and participating users include Sonnenrads, skull masks, and two emoji lightning bolts, or the double Sig/Sowilo rune, communicating sympathies towards the Nazi SS (Fig. 1). These symbols frequently appear in neo-fascist, eco-fascist, and militant accelerationist milieus to convey adherence to extremist ideologies while evading content moderation efforts. Similarly, the presence of pine tree emojis, often used to convey an allegiance to violent eco-fascist ideology, further illustrates the conflation of the gnome hunting meme with extremist trends.

Hashtags

Numerous gnome hunting TikToks were posted alongside overtly antisemitic and neo-Nazi hashtags, such as rhetoric about an “Aryan” race, nods to Adolf Hitler as an “artist,” or the names of other notable members of the Nazi party. The videos also featured notable Nazi villains from popular culture such as Hans Landa, the fictional SS officer in the film Inglorious Basterds and Karl Ruprect Kroenen, the fictional supervillain from the Hellboy comic series (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Tiktok videos showing Nazi villains from popular culture such as Hans Landa, the fictional SS officer in the film Inglorious Basterds and Karl Ruprect Kroenen, the fictional supervillain from the Hellboy comic series.

Audio

The audios layered underneath gnome hunting videos on TikTok further demonstrate the trend’s antisemitic nature. We discovered TikToks set to recordings of Adolf Hitler’s speeches and containing imagery of Nazi Germany, such as German athletes lighting the Olympic Torch at the 1936 Olympics (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. The above TikTok screenshot shows Nazi imagery, and gnome hunting phrases. The audio paired with this footage was from a speech given by Adolf Hitler.

Other gnome hunting TikToks are overlaid with original songs created by overtly fascist users, identifiable through the use of double lightning bolts emojis or terms in their usernames (Fig. 4), and with titles such as “Third Strike.” Notably, a prior title for the song was “Third Rike,” reflecting other patterns in content moderation evasion tactics. The song is now not available to use on the platform.

Figure 4. User-created sound frequently used in gnome hunting TikToks, created by an overtly fascist user.

Schizowave

Gnome hunting has ties to other extremist social media trends on TikTok, including the “schizowave” aesthetic. In addition to antisemitic hashtags, gnome hunting TikToks were frequently posted alongside references to schizowave and schizoposting, a defined trend on social media whereby users hyperbolically or ironically assert that they are “insane” or “hearing voices.” The schizowave aesthetic is based on a false depiction of schizophrenia as a mood disorder that inherently valorises and leads to violence. As a result, schizoposting and schizowave content depicts an imagined experience of disconnecting from reality. On TikTok, this content typically features strobe lights, rapid cuts, and techno music. It is designed to convey chaos and incomprehensibility while being gripping and shareable. This aesthetic has been tied to previous instances of mass violence, including the July 2022 Highland Park shooting. While not all schizo-related content is violent or extremist in nature, its popularity on TikTok is still notable. The hashtag “schizoposting” alone has over 1 billion views. These hashtags signal a convergence of the two trends and the communities that utilise them.

Conclusion

The gnome hunting meme is a pertinent example of how subtle dog whistles can lead to widespread participation in hateful messaging, regardless of the participant’s intent. The gnome hunting trend is associated with overt hate symbols, such as SS bolts and skull masks, and should never have been allowed to spread as far as it has. Social media companies like TikTok should be aware of emerging trends in violent rhetoric on their platforms and prioritise the mitigation of these trends before they become mainstream.

—————

*note: I’ve seen many people who actually have schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, mainly on more left-leaning sites like Tumblr, use “schizoposting” as a hashtag to discuss their experience with their disorder or to advocate against saneism. Context matters; avoid assuming that it’s always appropriative or a bigoted dogwhistle unless that’s what’s actually going on.

#repost of someone else’s content #article #dogwhistles #antisemitism #Nazism #saneism

[catdadeddie]

If EW doesn't stop trying to capitalize off the buddie fandom, I may scream. This is getting fucking ridiculous.

#make one article #with a bunch of content #like a normal site #and stop teasing buddie in the promotion of the article when theres nothing to do with buddie in it

[burstingsunrise]

luke for dork magazine | 📸 sarah louise bennett

#luke hemmings #pics #boy #these are so beautiful #the article is behind a paywall rn but the quotes coming through are DEVASTATING #i'm so deeply in love with him but anyway #he really looks like this #this mesh shirt #sooooo many thoughts #too much neck content

[riddlerosehearts]

i very strongly headcanon idia as nonbinary and my reasoning--not that i need a reason for a silly little headcanon, but in this case i do have one--is that in EN, lilia literally switches between they/them and he/him pronouns for gloomurai in his suitor suit vignette:

and i guess you could say he just isn't sure of his online friend's pronouns--but then in book 6 of the main story we learn that they've been chatting and gaming together for the past 2 years (and i'm pretty sure idia only ever uses he/him for muscle red). and in book 7 lilia once again uses they/them while clearly talking about gloomurai!

so yeah, i'm sure this is just a weird translation choice that EN made for some reason, but in my mind idia is a nonbinary guy who likes using he/they. i imagine that he generally doesn't bother telling people about his gender or pronouns because he's comfortable enough with he/him and doesn't wanna go through the annoying social interaction of explaining it, but one day he decided to silently put he/they on his discord bio or whatever equivalent he and muscle red chat through and lilia eventually noticed and started using both sets of pronouns!

#twisted wonderland #idia shroud #lilia vanrouge #i also think the people who like. follow gloomurai for his gaming content #(it's mentioned that gloomurai is famous in gaming circles and has fans who post articles about his cool gear sets and stuff) #might know they're nb because maybe idia casually mentions it on their blog #but they're not out to people at school because they literally just cannot be bothered #which honestly is basically the same way i am so maybe i'm projecting but who cares #okay sorry for blabbing in the tags of my own post lol i'll be quiet now