The internet has turned us into zombies



The internet spreads out like a virus. As it becomes ubiquitous, so are its influences. The same slang is shared in all fifty states through the influence of social media, the same arguments are repeated online by people in disparate corners of faraway states, and gradually, the same manner of dress is adopted almost universally. The internet is a force of widespread cultural homogenization much in the same way that the spread of the English language via the British Empire was, only the internet is way more powerful.

As the recent years of lockdowns have proven, we exist in an environment where you can work, eat, sleep, be entertained, and socialize without leaving your home. As the phone swallowed paper maps, calculators, cameras, and more, the internet has consumed ever greater portions of previously physical components of human life. Social media is used by many not to supplement but to replace physical social interactions. Amazon is soon to complete the bludgeoning death of brick-and-mortar retail. What human shape is being molded by a life lived in the frame of the internet?

You will find plenty of differences between various subcultures on the internet. Political factions and subcultures online distinguish themselves by using niche memes to create exclusivity and barriers to entry. The USSR-enthusiast side of X does not use the same memes as the traditional Catholic side of X. However, this seeming uniqueness is deceiving as it rarely indicates genuine individual thought but rather represents conformity to a subset of culture. The very structure of online spaces promotes conformity of thought by identical mechanisms no matter which non-territory one belongs to.

Striving for likes

Say you have an X account. There is instant feedback of “likes” for posts, reflecting what others want to see and hear. Posts are not made in a vacuum; unlike a novelist writing quietly in the confines of his room, the X poster receives immediate reactions to his works. Every “like'' affirms his social worth and encourages similarly structured messages. He wants to chase that feeling, that little “zap” of pleasure upon seeing another notification. In seeking to repeat earlier successes, he posts similar content in a similar format, almost necessarily derived from identical thought patterns.

As social beings, the drive to pursue approval from others is nothing new; however, the pervasive, incessant presence of the internet as a social reality is new. People are socially engaged and thus alter their thoughts in response to social pressures, even in the restroom, at red lights, sitting alone in bed, etc. Solitude is a receding territory, like a tectonic plate slowly chewed by the earth into magma, replaced by a panopticon we opt into.

With originality comes risk and often a disappointment. More idiosyncratic beliefs are less likely to receive high praise from a great many people, as they are less likely to be relatable and shared. Cycles of affirmation compel the perpetuation of similar speech and opinion. To combat cognitive dissonance, the mind adopts the beliefs expressed in the public sphere as genuine. These pressures exist in nearly every conscious moment of the slouch-backed social media addict, an increasingly common human type.

As the online world takes up more room in social space, the importance of conformity grows. Approval from others online becomes more critical to psychological well-being as social interaction is relegated to online spaces. Facebook, X, and Instagram become outlets for a stream of consciousness cultivated by the compulsion to be liked. Dependence on approval from your online peers restricts possibilities of thought. Political influencers, like the trite conservative pundits or the shrill overbearing liberal pundits, would risk their livelihoods by changing their opinions in fundamental ways. The average person is increasingly under pressure, similar to the pundit class.

Regular users of social media risk losing acceptance in their online communities, however niche, by straying too far from what is considered acceptable opinion in their spaces. This is the construction of human psychological hives, the reduction of human beings to bees all too content to trade individual thought for community acceptance. This is due to incentive structures created by an online social world with instant feedback loops of rejection and approval. Not only is the hive ever-present, but the signals are instantaneous, which makes for quick training. Pavlov trained dogs to salivate upon ringing a bell by pairing that stimulus with food presentation and fitting the notification symbol across nearly all social media platforms to be shaped like a bell.

Negative comments, praise, likes, and all of this feedback are available the second it happens, making for more effective cognitive training. The “bell” rings exactly when one receives social feedback. This makes for powerful psychological associations that change one’s thinking, one’s cognitive behavior. Beliefs expressed for the underlying purpose of obtaining approval come to be genuinely held, and little joy comes from questioning beliefs required for acceptance within a community. Consequently, there is an adoption of a particular frame of thought that is not of your own making. This environment is increasingly replacing the physical world in terms of where the majority of social interaction takes place, and this has dire consequences for the stability of people’s relationships with others and themselves.

Digital community

shironosov/Getty

It used to be that a community was located in a physical place composed of a patchwork of people belonging to a particular setting. The social environments in which pre-internet people grew up were rooted in commonalities that extended, root-like into the earth, beyond a shared interest in a product line, a fetish, or ideological commitments. You were from a place, and that place mattered because all of the people you talked to, hung out with, fought with, or dated were also from that same place. In such physical spaces, one’s history with others matters in a way that doesn’t exist online. The memories of time spent with people in physical spaces are tangible to the mind; such memories evoke the senses and possess more feeling, so one’s history and reputation in an actual community are not so fragile as one wrong opinion away from being shattered. The story is different today.

In the modern context, there is little stable foundation for community acceptance and moral certainty. Mainstream views held by many in 2000 (for example, that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman) become deadly to even touch in a matter of a few years. The foundations of online social and moral acceptance are built of sand. People must update their opinions consistently to maintain their standing within their online communities. With each revision of belief, there is less resistance to further alteration; convictions risk becoming scribbles on an Etch A Sketch that are liable to be erased at a moment’s notice. Histories and prior interactions with others matter less for maintaining one’s reputation in the face of controversy because online interactions still lack the impression of reality despite how dramatically they shape us. One does not think about the little profile picture spouting his opinions in written format in the same way that one does a human being in the flesh.

Also, unlike in an actual community, one’s actions, temperament, and all the inexpressible traits that make a person's substance are largely irrelevant. What is real is what is posted online, primarily just selective expression. It’s not what you do; it's what you say that matters in the modern “community.” Acceptance, then, in an online world, to a great extent, means agreement. The spread of sycophancy is like a virus. And you’re trained to love it as a drone in a hive.

The stupidity of online discourse



There’s an online game I find myself playing way too much of, and I hate it. I would love to never play this game again, but its existence is a consequence of the deep structure of social media, so if I’m going to argue about things on the internet, then playing it is unavoidable.

I call this game, “Where Is the Discourse?” It goes something like this:

  1. Alice opens with a few examples of an argument (or point of view, or sentiment, or whatever) that she doesn’t think much of and would like to refute.
  2. Bob counters that nobody who matters is making that argument and that Alice’s examples are cherry-picked (or “nutpicked” to use the old “blogosphere” term from the mid-2000s).
  3. Alice responds to Bob by highlighting the credentials of the people behind a few of her examples. Maybe they have large social media followings or notable institutional affiliations. Or maybe the person is a total rando, but the tweet or screen-cap or Forbes article with the person's byline on it has tons of shares.
  4. Bob then works his way through Alice’s response by picking apart, in detail, the qualifications and standing of each of the people she has put forth.
  5. (Optional step): Alice rebuts Bob with a defense of each individual’s standing as a qualified participant in the Discourse, and both parties drift further into the weeds of credentials, metrics, and bona fides.

By the time they get to move #4 in this game, the debate has shifted entirely from a fight over the merits of the argument Alice sought to refute to a squabble over whether or not this specific list of individuals is representative of any larger group, movement, or way of thinking.

In other words, Alice and Bob are now fighting over the location of the Discourse. Where is it? Who is and is not a participant in it? Which bylines, institutional affiliations, follower counts, or engagement metrics qualify an individual as a bona fide participant in the Discourse?

Back in the bad old days of media monopolies, everyone knew where the Discourse was. If you had a local monopoly on one or more scarce channels of distribution — a slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, newsstand, library shelf space, or print facilities plus a fleet of delivery vehicles — then you were definitionally a site of the Discourse and could gatekeep who participated and who did not.

But now that everyone with smartphone access has the ability to publish text, images, sound, and video instantly for the entire planet to see, our society has collectively lost track of the location of the Discourse in the space of about a decade and a half. No new discursive Schelling point has emerged to replace the now-dead radio, TV, and print monopolies. We are adrift.

Perhaps the most corrosive effect of “Where Is the Discourse?” on our collective intellectual life is the way it reduces even the loftiest issues down to petty fights over credentials.

I’m reminded of the adage, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” The discourse game, then, is a powerful mechanism for turning every discussion of ideas into a discussion of people, thereby shrinking the mind of each player by two sizes.

Long before TikTok, social media drove  mental health fears



With a potential TikTok ban upon us, the negative impacts of internet culture on young people’s mental health have been making the news again. I’ve noticed something weird about the discourse, though. Commenters almost always treat it like an emergent phenomenon. The way people frame it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that TikTok and Instagram are the first time we’ve witnessed a fraught relationship between mental health and kids’ internet usage.

As the Bible tells us, there is nothing new under the sun. The internet has always been tied to mental health. We’ve been through this many times before.

Emo was, in so many ways, the blueprint for what youth culture would become.

Some of the earliest virtual communities, such as the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (better known as the WELL), quickly became places for people to vent about their personal lives, as Carmen Hermosillo described in her essay, “Pandora’s Vox.”

In “Life on the Screen,” an exploration of multi-user dungeons, a type of text-based online multiplayer role-playing game that was popular in the 1980s and ’90s, sociologist Sherry Turkle discussed how the MUDs had become “more real than real” for some users. Not only did they function as a “social laboratory” for people to experiment with everything from their personality to gender identity, but some role-playing games were straightforwardly therapeutic, with people working out issues as complicated as troubled parental relationships.

People who suffered from the controversial dissociative identity disorder, then known as multiple personality disorder, connected on bulletin board systems and Usenet newsgroups, planting the seeds of today’s “DID community,” which has grown on both Tumblr and TikTok. In the 1990s and 2000s, the world was introduced to “pro-anorexia,” a community of anorexics who did not wish to recover.

By the mid-2000s, the community and its perceived potential to spread sociogenic anorexia was so well known that it had already been covered by outlets like Salon and received its very own Oprah episode. And this is to say nothing of the newsgroup alt.suicide.holiday, which was heavily slammed for encouraging self-harm and suicide as opposed to acting as a support group for distressed users.

Digital teen angst

But no early digital community had an impact on kids’ and young adults’ mental health, both in the media and in the physical world, as emo did.

The popularization of emo — not the Rites of Spring or Sunny Day Real Estate variety, but the “rawr xDDD” type that found its home on MySpace and in Hot Topic — was a watershed moment in the history of youth culture. Emo was, in so many ways, the blueprint for what youth culture would become.

Emo was part music fandom, part outlet for experimenting with your sexuality and gender presentation, and part goth subculture that valued emotionality and self-expression above everything else. It was the first time a mainstream, commercialized, real-world subculture was influenced by social media and its ability to help kids share emotions and build identities online.

There’s a long history of emo and its development — enough to fill several books. But suffice to say, the Zoomer Internet wouldn’t be what it is without the Millennial internet, and the Millennial internet wouldn't be without emo.

Emo gained its foothold on websites LiveJournal, MySpace, and Tumblr (in that order) between 2003 and 2011, peaking in 2005.

What was remarkable about these websites at the time was how they empowered young people’s creative expression. Not only were they highly customizable, but they also provided a place for people to share their thoughts, and they usually shared them pseudonymously. While this wasn’t the first time people could do this, it was the first time middle- and high-schoolers did it en masse.

Imagine if you could somehow concretize your teen angst or get what today we know as “clout” from your inner, very teenage world. This wasn’t your grandmother’s teen angst: it was teen angst for sale at Hot Topic and going 100 mph on the information superhighway.

For example, sharing stories about self-harm became a significant part of the emo culture, as did — perhaps less concerningly — conversations about depression. It didn’t matter whether you were genuinely depressed or self-harmed or not. Talking about it and even flirting with actions like cutting yourself was a sign of “authenticity,” a sign that you belonged.

A study of emo social networking groups by Carla Zdanow and Bianca Wright revealed “a glorification, normalization, and acceptance of suicidal behaviors.” But it was this weird thing: It was still teen angst. It was still a group of kids who were looking for belonging.

Anecdotally, a lot of kids who talked about depression or cutting, like other kids who might have said naughty words in class to be edgy, were clearly performing. Some kids were attracted to the subculture because they were already depressed, and it provided a safe space for them to act out as they needed to.

But some kids were just angsty — neither “edgelords” nor genuinely clinically depressed — and medicalized the normal ups and downs of adolescence. Some would grow out of it; some wouldn’t because they were trapped in an awful feedback loop.

Blaming social media for societal ills

As the subculture grew, its association with depression went from a joke (or not so much of a joke) among insiders to a moral panic among parents. The moral panic surrounding emo, fueled by media outlets and concerned parents who painted the subculture as a threat to young people's well-being, thrust the issue of youth mental health into the forefront of public discourse.

It wasn’t the kooky hair or tight pants that parents were worried about; it was depression. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened (heavy metal fans might remember experiencing something similar), but it was the first time the internet was there to help muddy the waters.

After 13-year-old Hannah Bond committed suicide in the United Kingdom, the Daily Mail reported that it was the result of her obsession with “emo music.” The paper went on to describe the subculture as a “suicide cult” that encouraged self-hatred and self-harm, further reinforcing that emo kids were victims on multiple fronts: The mainstream didn’t understand them and misrepresented them; they were (allegedly) at a higher risk of suicide; and they were eternal outcasts.

For a time, emo kids were the ultimate victims, both in a real and imagined sense.

There really was an international “war on emos,” which, at least in Iraq, led to the deaths of dozens of young men who were perceived as gay because of their interest in emo. (It’s worth noting, even stateside, emo was linked with homosexuality.) Emo kids were also bullied and were the first group to bring attention to a new term: “cyberbullying.”

But the subculture was designed to attract misfits and outcasts looking for belonging while simultaneously reinforcing young people’s ideas that they were misfits and outcasts. It didn’t help that bands and stores provided a soundtrack and “merch” to help people express both.

This all culminated in heightened feelings of persecution that were taken quite seriously by several well-meaning adults, including emo bands themselves. To Write Love on Her Arms emerged as a nonprofit that spread awareness about self-harm and depression. It would ultimately help set the scene for other nonprofits, such as Dan Savage’s It Gets Better.

Of course, the irony of the way mental health and emo were discussed was that it probably didn’t prevent or mitigate any of the problems that the subculture was perceived as creating.

If anything, it’s likely that made the situation worse.

On the one hand, you had large numbers of the population medicalizing their teen angst, but on the other, because the emo persecution complex was so well known, people who were authentically suffering had their pain minimized as “attention-seeking” if they were from a more skeptical community.

It was a mess, and it’s a mess that’s still with us today in other forms.

Country star Travis Tritt sends reality check to Jason Aldean over leftist attempt to silence new song: 'D**n the social media torpedoes'



Country singer Travis Tritt offered Jason Aldean valuable perspective on Wednesday about the leftist campaign to silence his new song, "Try That in a Small Town."

Without explanation, Country Music Television pulled from its airwaves the new music video for the song. Critics of the song, according to Aldean, say it is "pro-lynching," an accusation Aldean denied.

The outrage centered on two points. First, the video was filmed outside a Tennessee courthouse that was the site where 18-year-old Henry Choate, a black man, was lynched in 1927. Second, the song, according to its critics, glorifies guns. Anti-gun activist Shannon Watts, for example, has celebrated her role in getting CMT to pull Aldean's music video.

What did Tritt say?

The 60-year-old country singer reminded Aldean on Wednesday that social media does not represent reality, urging him not to cave to pressure from the outrage mob.

"I would also like to remind my friend, @Jason_Aldean that Twitter and social media in general is not a real place. The views shared by many accounts on this platform are not actually representative of the vast majority of the population of this country," Tritt said.

"Say what you want to say and be who you want to be," he added. "Damn the social media torpedoes."

— (@)

Tritt explained that he "love[s]" Aldean's song and rejected claims that it promotes violence.

On the contrary, Tritt said he believes the song expresses a view that many Americans hold: that activist violence "would not be tolerated by many people in many places across the USA."

What is happening now?

While CMT representatives have not said why they yanked the video, the controversy is bringing more attention to Aldean's song than it probably would have generated otherwise. The song has, in fact, already shot up to #1 on iTunes.

Meanwhile, TackleBox Films, the production company behind the music video, spoke out on Wednesday and explained the location for the shoot was chosen not based on its history, but because it is a "popular filming location outside of Nashville."

"Any alternative narrative suggesting the music video’s location decision is false," the company said.

TackleBox Films also clarified that Aldean did not select the location.

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Small Texas police department stands up to social media mob over deputy's selfie with Kyle Rittenhouse



A small town police department in Texas has refused to back down despite the social media firestorm that resulted from a selfie one of its deputies took with Kyle Rittenhouse.

On Thursday, the Facebook account of the Thrall Police Department in Williamson County, Texas, posted a picture of an unidentified deputy with Kyle Rittenhouse, the 19-year-old who last November, was acquitted of all charges in the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the shooting of Gaige Grosskreutz during the Kenosha riots of 2020.

The initial Facebook post featured a picture of Rittenhouse with the officer and read: "Make those stops, you never know who you might meet. Today it was Kyle Rittenhouse, welcome to Texas."

A swarm of critical comments then ensued. However, rather than back down and cater to the mob's outrage, the police department doubled down and added the following message to the original post: "I must have missed something, I believed that this young man was arrested, charged, indicted and then found not guilty by a jury of his peers. Is this not how our country works anymore? The hate in these comments is terrible, if you have information that is contrary to that I would honestly love to hear it."



The post remains active and has garnered over 12k likes, 1.8k shares, and 1.7k comments as of Monday afternoon.

Rittenhouse was just 17 when he travelled from Illinois to Kenosha to protect area businesses which had been looted and damaged during the riots that came in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, who is black, during a domestic dispute in the summer of 2020. Blake admitted he had a knife in his possession at the time of the incident.

Fox Business reported that the riots that occurred as a result of the shooting caused an estimated $50 million in property damages in the Kenosha area.

It is unclear how the unnamed Thrall deputy and Rittenhouse met. Rittenhouse is allegedly studying at Blinn College, a junior college outside of Austin. He may also have aspirations of transferring to Texas A&M some day. He had plans to study nursing at Arizona State University, but reconsidered after his trial.

Washington Post reporter taken to the woodshed for doxxing anonymous Libs of TikTok creator, prompting outlet to stealth-edit the report



Social media came for Washington Post technology reporter Taylor Lorenz in full force after she was accused of doxxing the anonymous creator of the popular Twitter account Libs of TikTok.

The outlet then appears to have stealth-edited the report to remove the woman's personal information.

Lorenz made headlines earlier in April after bursting into tears during an MSNBC hit recounting online harassment to which she said she was subjected, which reportedly prompted her to contemplate suicide.

What are the details?

According to reports, Lorenz sparked fury after she doxxed the anonymous woman in a Tuesday report for the Post, sharing a link to the woman's real estate license, which showed her address.

A portion of the report accused the social media user of nefariously trying to shape right-wing media and thus public policy.

"Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage," the report said. "Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right."

"The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching," Lorenz warned. "Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community."

On Monday, the Libs of TikTok account shared an image of Lorenz outside of a family's home. She captioned the photo, "Which of my relatives did you enjoy harassing the most at their homes yesterday?"

At the time of this reporting, the tweet has received more than 65,000 likes and has generated a firestorm of comments accusing Lorenz of hypocrisy.

Hi @TaylorLorenz! Which of my relatives did you enjoy harassing the most at their homes yesterday?pic.twitter.com/QehkBSgcmG
— Libs of Tik Tok (@Libs of Tik Tok) 1650373837

What else is there to know about this?

Lorenz tweeted in her defense, writing, "Reporters make phone calls, send messages, show up places, and knock on doors when reporting out a story."

She aded, "I reported this story out extensively, using every tool I had, to ensure I had the correct woman."

Reporters make phone calls, send messages, show up places, and knock on doors when reporting out a story. I reported this story out extensively, using every tool I had, to ensure I had the correct womanhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/19/libs-of-tiktok-right-wing-media/\u00a0\u2026
— Taylor Lorenz (@Taylor Lorenz) 1650374814

She also insisted that the woman's identity should not necessarily remain private, because she "isn't just some average woman with a social media account" and is, instead, a "powerful influencer operating a massively impactful right wing media shaping discourse around LGBTQ+ rights."

The backlash

Thousands of comments castigating Lorenz for what they said was a hit piece on the Twitter user began flooding the site beginning Tuesday morning.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at Lorenz after the Libs of TikTok photo went viral and tweeted, "The same people who — just 2 weeks ago — were insisting that criticizing Taylor Lorenz is wrong because it generates ‘harassment’ toward her are now cheering as she shows up at the homes of the relatives of Twitter users to dox them.”

The same people who - just 2 weeks ago - were insisting that criticizing Taylor Lorenz is wrong because it generates "harassment" toward her are now cheering as she shows up at the homes of the relatives of Twitter users to dox them.\n\nJournalists at the top of the caste order.
— Glenn Greenwald (@Glenn Greenwald) 1650375383

Greg Price, a senior digital strategist for X Strategies, wrote, "The Washington Post put more effort into exposing @libsoftiktok's name and address than they did investigating Hunter Biden's laptop."

The Washington Post put more effort into exposing @libsoftiktok's name and address than they did investigating Hunter Biden's laptop
— Greg Price (@Greg Price) 1650387271

Matt Walsh, author and Daily Wire contributor, added, "Libs of TikTok reposts content from TikTok. This is important work because that's the site millions of kids use. The Left is mad at her because they don't want us to know what our kids are being exposed to. We're not supposed to see that stuff. Only our kids are."

Libs of TikTok reposts content from TikTok. This is important work because that\u2019s the site millions of kids use. The Left is mad at her because they don\u2019t want us to know what our kids are being exposed to. We\u2019re not supposed to see that stuff. Only our kids are.
— Dr. Matt Walsh, Women\u2019s Studies Scholar (@Dr. Matt Walsh, Women\u2019s Studies Scholar) 1650388080

Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance wrote, "Bezos's mouthpiece (the Washington Post) doxxing Libs of Tik Tok is further evidence that the purpose of the corporate media is industrial scale harassment. Time for defamation reform for the media, and to break up their Big Tech enablers."

Bezos's mouthpiece (the Washington Post) doxxing Libs of Tik Tok is further evidence that the purpose of the corporate media is industrial scale harassment. \n\nTime for defamation reform for the media, and to break up their Big Tech enablers.
— J.D. Vance (@J.D. Vance) 1650373016

Journalist Avi Yemini tweeted, "This was Taylor Lorenz a couple of weeks ago. She was crying victim of 'harassment.' Today she tracked down and harassed family members of the @libsoftiktok account for an article she’s working on. It turns out Taylor’s the perpetrator, not victim."

This was Taylor Lorenz a couple of weeks ago.\n\nShe was crying victim of "harassment\u201d.\n\nToday she tracked down and harassed family members of the @libsoftiktok account for an article she\u2019s working on.\n\nIt turns out Taylor\u2019s the perpetrator, not victim.pic.twitter.com/CifXGvASCV
— Avi Yemini (@Avi Yemini) 1650332637

The comments continue to roll in at the time of this reporting.

Seattle elementary school students forced to eat outdoors during COVID-19 — and some say it's child abuse



A Seattle-area elementary school is making headlines after a policy regarding outdoor lunch periods due to the COVID-19 pandemic circulated on the internet.

What are the details?

According to a Tuesday report from PJ Media, administrators at Queen Anne Elementary school have decided that their students will be eating outdoors during the winter months amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Seattle-area radio host Ari Hoffman tweeted the school's newest policy and captioned it, "Queen Anne Elementary in Seattle is forcing kids to eat lunch outside in freezing temperatures. Sadly, that's nothing new. What is new is when they go inside because it is too wet/cold they: have their own 'eating spots,' slide their mask on & off between bites, 'eat silently'[.]"

A majority of people commenting on Hoffman's tweet railed against the practice and said it was nothing short of child abuse.

Queen Anne Elementary in Seattle is forcing kids to eat lunch outside in freezing temperatures. Sadly, that's nothing new.\nWhat is new is when they go inside because it is too wet/cold they: \n-have their own 'eating spots'\n-slide their mask on & off between bites\n- 'eat silently'pic.twitter.com/IfkoTDZ6bd
— Ari Hoffman (@Ari Hoffman) 1641830401

What else?

A portion of the guidelines states that all students "will continue to eat outside whenever possible to ensure everyone's health and safety."

"We are continuously refining our processes in partnership with staff and families," the guidelines continue. "Thank you to parent volunteers who are helping with lunch, children are bringing yoga mats and towels to sit on, and staff and I have marked off 6 ft. distances so students know their 'spots.'"

During sunny days, students are permitted to eat on the school's basketball court, while during rainy days, students are allowed to sit under covered areas such as "outdoor alcoves" and the school's "covered gym entrance."

Students are ultimately allowed to eat inside — but only if rain is coming down "sideways" during a torrential downpour — and so long as their parents sign a virtual permission slip allowing their children to eat indoors.

The form states:

For health and safety reasons, SPS elementary schools are holding lunches outdoors in 2021-22 for the foreseeable future. We eat outdoors rain or shine, and we make the best of it as we practice our flexibility and resiliency. QAE is fortunate to have several covered outdoor eating areas which accommodate all students in each lunch cohort. (K-1, 2-3, and 4-5). All areas are supervised by adults.In the rare event that an extreme weather occurance (ex. torrential downpour), students whose parents have given permission to do so may be offered the option of eating inside the cafeteria if weather conditions are so severe that it prohibits them from eating their lunch. This determination is made by administration. Eating in the cafeteria would require students to sit separately, silently unmask as they take each bite and re-mask in between bites. Students would be expected to eat quickly and silently, remask and then go to a supervised location on site. Cafeteria would be supervised by administration. Even with parental permission, if a student chooses to wait a few minutes to eat their lunch until a covered area becomes available, their choice will be honored and supported.

Jon Stewart says he was 'surprised at the pushback' to his lab-leak theory comments



Comedian Jon Stewart said in a newly published interview that he was surprised at the pushback to jokes he made mocking people who don't believe COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab.

In June, the former "Daily Show" host outraged his progressive fans when he sounded off on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" about how it seems like more than just coincidence that the coronavirus pandemic's first major outbreak happened in Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies coronaviruses.

"The disease is the same name as the lab!" Stewart exclaimed on the show.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter about his return to television with his upcoming Apple TV+ show, "The Problem with Jon Stewart," the comic reflected on his comments to Stephen Colbert while discussing the power of social media.

"It's democratized connection and also democratized destruction," Stewart said, talking about Twitter. "Not to quote MC Hammer, but you can't take the measure without considering the measurer. It's kind of the point I was making on Colbert that everybody got mad about, which was, 'These are just tools, we're the ones that f*** them up.'"

"You're referencing your June appearance on 'The Late Show' where you went all in on the theory that the coronavirus originated from a lab in China. I couldn't tell if Colbert was entertained by your bit or maybe a little nervous," reporter Lacey Rose observed.

"I don't think he was nervous," Stewart replied. "It's not like he doesn't know what I'm going to say. Listen, how it got to be that if it was a scientific accident, it's conservative, and if it came from a wet market, it's liberal, I don't know — I'm just not sure how that got politicized. But it was an inelegant way to get to a bit that I've done for years, which is our good-intentioned brilliance will more than likely be our demise. The bit is about the last words that man ever utters, which are, 'Hey, it worked.' I guess I was a little surprised at the pushback."

After Stewart jokingly compared the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan to a "chocolate outbreak" in Hershey, Pennsylvania, an outraged social media mob condemned him for pushing a "conspiracy theory" about the origins of COVID-19.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology's role in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic is a controversial topic. While most scientists maintain that the most likely origin for COVID-19 is natural spillover from an animal, there are others who question whether the lab's work with coronaviruses had something to do with the outbreak. The State Department raised concerns with the lab's security in late 2017, and reports indicate that 2019 researchers at the lab became ill with COVID-like symptoms before the outbreak in Wuhan was identified.

Initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory by public health experts and scientists who had ties to the Wuhan lab, the lab-leak theory has gained mainstream credibility in recent months thanks to the work of media and nonprofit organizations filing FOIA requests, as well as the decentralized research conducted by DRASTIC internet sleuths.

An intelligence community review of the pandemic's origins ordered by President Joe Biden published a report last month that, while inconclusive, said both the natural origins and lab-leak theories were plausible.

The New Republic gets roasted on social media over 'sexist' tweet politicizing alleged abuse by GOP senator's ex-husband



The New Republic faced fierce criticism on Thursday over a tweet comparing the alleged abuse from an ex-husband of a Republican senator to the policies of President Donald Trump.

"Joni Ernst survived an abusive husband. Her Senate career may not survive an abusive president," read the later deleted tweet.

The wildly inappropriate comparison drew sharp responses from critics on social media.

"This is trash. This is sexist. This is gutter journalism at its worst," replied Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

Hawley demanded that Joe Biden apologize for the tweet.

The publication deleted the tweet and reposted with a much less controversial description of the article.

The content of the article continued to compare the allegedly physical abuse from Ernst's former husband to her political relationship with the president, however. At the end of the piece, the comparison is openly presented to the reader:

There is, for instance, the feeling of deliverance that follows a bad relationship, the sense that finally, one is free to move unencumbered, to stop mopping the mess that follows in the wake of an embarrassing, needy, careless, abusive narcissist. "I wouldn't have to make excuses for my inappropriate husband anymore!" she writes of her divorce, a moment when it must have been possible to forget that she was heading toward an election year, a rush of relief before she recalled she would spend it making excuses for another man entirely.

"Retract this slander"

Republican Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri called the article a "sexist smear" against Ernst and demand a retraction.

"A hard working mom who balanced her career with her military service and giving back to the community does not deserve this type of hit job," tweeted Wagner. "This would never be written about a male senator, and @newrepublic should have the stones to admit that and retract this slander."

"I'm disgusted," tweeted Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally. "This attack on my fellow survivor and combat veteran is appalling. The author should be embarrassed to have her name on this garbage, and let's all be honest: This would have never happened if Joni was a Democrat."

"This is shameful, disgusting, embarrassing sexist smearing of a United States Senator, veteran, mother, and domestic abuse survivor. This writer isn't fit to lick her combat boots!" replied Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

Ernst herself responded by tweeting links to organizations that help abused women.

"I'm used to vile partisan attacks, it comes with the job," said Ernst. "I'm saddened that this article may silence or shame other survivors."

Here's more about Ernst's allegedly abusive ex-husband:

Sen. Joni Ernst speaks about ex-husband's alleged abusewww.youtube.com

Transgender activists are outraged at J.K Rowling's new book about a cross-dressing serial killer



Transgender activists are outraged at the newest book by J.K. Rowling, the famed "Harry Potter" creator, because they say it will create more antagonism and anger against the transgender community.

Rowling has been embroiled in a very heated public feud with transgender activists over her comments defending "natal girls and women," a phrase intended to refer to people who were born female, as opposed to transgender women.

Activists are accusing her of injecting transphobia into her newest mystery book titled, "Troubled Blood," which features a serial killer who dresses up as a woman in order to ensnare his victims.

"JK Rowling's new book is about a cis woman investigating a cis male serial killer who dresses as a woman to kill his cis female victims," tweeted transgender journalist Serene Daniari.

JK Rowling's new book is about a cis woman investigating a cis male serial killer who dresses as a woman to kill hi… https://t.co/gudjj89GiD
— Serena Daniari (@Serena Daniari)1600105338.0

"Like...how much more blatantly does Rowling have to out herself as a transphobe for y'all to stop buying her books and publishers to drop her?" Daniari asked.

Other trans activists and supporters of the movement took to Twitter to excoriate the popular author.

"F*** you, @jk_rowling. To use a platform like yours to send a message like this, in 2020," tweeted songwriter Simon Curtis. "History will not remember you kindly."

"If I could go back in time, I'd do my best to stop the holocaust and stuff but also I'd tell everyone what an a**hole JK Rowling turned out to be," replied songwriter Grey DeLisle-Griffin.

Feminism or phobia

Rowling has been attacked as a "TERF," an acronym that transgender activists use to insult women who argue that some transgender rights will make women less safe. It stands for "transgender exclusionary radical feminists."

In June, Rowling defended her position in an essay titled, "TERF wars."

"Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they're most likely to be killed by sexual partners," she wrote in the essay.

"So I want trans women to be safe," Rowling wrote. "At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he's a woman – and, as I've said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside."

Activists were not receptive to her argument at that time either.

"J.K. Rowling's essay is dangerous hogwash that will only hurt trans people and reinforce a gender binary that oppresses women but go off, I guess," said one critic.

Here's more about Rowling's feud with the transgender lobby:

J.K. Rowling defends comments about transgender peoplewww.youtube.com