Another great point. This reminds me of at time at my previous job when we were implementing a new CRM system which sent data back and forth between two other systems. It was constantly breaking down/in constant need of repair. Everyone was extremely frustrated by the constant maintenance needed to sustain the system, but when you're moving large amounts of data between multiple systems I think breakdown is inevitable and should have been anticipated.

As an example, breakdown and repair are constant with iOS updates. Without consistent repair our devices breakdown.

This has me thinking of the ways we're trying to repair the world right now and the types of innovation and creativity coming out of it, from those who are repurposing materials to make N95 masks to those who are finding new ways to keep their small businesses afloat (such as restaurants turning into take-out and delivery spots).

I think this is a really good point – innovation depends on breakdown.

Azure's website continues to market itself as promoting sustainability and boasts having achieved carbon neutrality in 2012 - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/

I'm curious who the significant players are. Does this include Microsoft?

I'm curious to know if this community in Virginia was led to believe otherwise by Microsoft, or if they somehow assumed otherwise. Either way, it seems like there was something misleading happening since Microsoft must have been aware of the returns the community expected given the incentives offered.

This also has me thinking of a story I saw last year about a tweet a celebrity, Chrissy Teigen, made about her mom's use of airpods. She wrote, "my mom treats her air pods like they're disposable. buys a few a month. she says they would be easier to not lose if they had....a cord"

The tweet received so much backlash from people about it being tone deaf and calling out her elitism/privilege for treating an expensive digital device as if it were trash.

I think she makes an important point here. The "zero waste" movement has gotten a lot of attention in recent years but using the word zero almost assumes defeat from the start since some amount of waste is inevitable.

Has me thinking about my own collection of stored but discarded electronics. I've held onto a 15-year-old Macbook Pro because it has all of my old files from undergrad on it. I keep a couple of broken record players in a closet thinking that I'll fix them at some point. Not to mention the bin in the basement that houses old phones and iPods.

This makes me think of Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects

History of phishing

Early example of doxing?

Defending against spam produced more spam.

Reminiscent of Trump mocking 17-year-old Greta Thunberg - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/us/politics/greta-thunberg-trump.html

This chapter gives us a really good baseline for how things became polarized long before the influence of the internet/social media/fake news/etc. Interested now to see their analysis of how the media has layered on top of that to affect it further.

Again, I think we see this play out all the time. We're always focused on "fighting against" the other side as opposed to focusing on fighting for the policies we align with. But at the same time, they've become one and the same since both sides are so polarized.

These are striking statistics to illustrate just how divided we've become.

This section is suggesting that people choose their political affiliations first (usually at a young age/from social or family influence) and then align their stances to that of the party, as opposed to first defining their positions on issues and then choosing the party that aligns best with their view. They suggest then that that gives the power to shape the ideologies and identity of the parties to those in charge/at the top.

There is disagreement about whether the political elites shape the polarization and leave little choice for the public or if the political elites reflect the growing polarization of the public.

I think this makes sense and we hear this a lot from Republicans who are not aligned with the far right/Trump and moderate Democrats who are terrified of a Bernie presidency.

Republicans value ideological purity while Democrats value the interests of their constituents.

The three pillars = white identity, evangelical Christians, organized business

Summary of the DW-NOMINATE study of Congress partisanship over time:

• From 1900-1968 Republicans in Congress shifted toward more centrist views.
• Northern Democrats began to move from center to left beginning with WWI (1914) to the mid-1950s. Since then, their voting patterns have remained ideologically consistent.
• Before WWI, Southern Democrats were the most partisan but after WWI and The New Deal (1933), they became more centrist and began voting with Republicans. This pattern continued through 1968.
• From 1968, and especially between 1977-2000, Republicans became increasingly conservative, eventually becoming more conservative than Democrats were liberal.
• Eventually, the only Southern Democrats that did not move to the Republican party were from majority-minority districts and aligned with the Northern Democrats.

Evangelical Christians who opposed the women's movement added to the switch of Southern Democrats becoming Republicans.

Essentially, after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, a lot of Southern Democrats who opposed it switched over to the Republican party. Between then and 1980 there was a resorting of Congress as they shifted between the democratic and republican parties.

I really appreciate this visual representation of the patterns they go on to describe. I imagine the years leading up to 2020 would appear even more divided than 2011.

But where do we go from here? I assume Zuckerberg isn't advocating for using the same rhetorical "tricks" that TRP uses, and so what happens if we attempt to counteract their use of the Classics through feminist interpretation when TRP members aren't interested in feminist perspectives or the truth to begin with?

Tolentino discusses this (she is a graduate of UVA and was writing for Jezebel at the time) in her essay "We Come From Old Virginia" – also part of the Trick Mirror collection.

I understand one of Zuckerberg's arguments is that by exposing and understanding the rhetorical strategies used by TRP we can be better equipped to confront them in online spaces, but I'm still not sure how this plays out in practice. When people are committed to strategies such as those described here it still seems impossible to reason with.

This critique of universities reminds me of the controversy at UArts last year (when I was still working there) where students protested the public lecture given by faculty member Camille Paglia. The administration refused to cancel the lecture, a move that was praised by alt-right factions of the internet. The protesters were harassed by online trolls and administrative offices even received random emails making derogatory comments about the protestors and praising the decision made by President Yager.

• https://www.inquirer.com/news/camille-paglia-u-arts-professor-philadelphia-protest-petition-transgender-survivors-sexual-assault-david-yager-20190415.html
• https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/camille-paglia-uarts-left-deplatform/587125/
• https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/04/16/uarts-students-call-for-camille-paglias-firing-over-transgenderism-stance-metoo-movement/

What is Valizadeh's version of "living in natural harmony with women"?

So it's been around for about eight years. I'm curious, given that these groups of people existed on the internet for decades, what was it about this particular online space that the community latched onto?

I just think it's interesting that all of the deliberating that went on for whether or not to toad Mr. Bungle was essentially in vain given that he could circumvent the toading by getting a new account. Was it that no one in the MOO community had considered the possibility or was it that it was beside the point and ultimately didn't matter?

I wonder how exactly the transformation happened. Was it just that he'd spent enough time in the MOO or was it the intensity of the situation with Mr. Bungle/Dr. Jest that tipped him over the line?

How do you really define success when you're putting things out there for public consumption? Mowry was criticized after his initial video and then when he posted a more cheerful video he was criticized for being fake in his first. What would a "successful" outcome of posting this type of video look like?

I hadn't heard of this before. I wonder what shapes these assignments took.

Interesting to consider what role the mainstream news plays and what their responsibilities are when they choose to report on these types of issues.

I agree that the video should not necessarily be viewed as a suicide note and that it does document her will to live as she starts her post with "I'm struggling to stay in this world" and ends with "I'm still here, aren't I?" However, I do still think it can be viewed as a cry for help, especially in her post when she offers "I'd rather hurt myself then someone else."

Brock makes a good point here and the beginning of this paragraph reminds me of Tolentino's essay where she discusses online performance and identity.

This made me think of something I saw over the weekend. A random celebrity article popped up in my Facebook news feed and I clicked on the comments. All of the (hundreds of) comments were people trolling the article by posting pictures of their pets and babies with random captions like "this is my cat she likes to scratch things." I thought this spamming of the comments section with these photos was an interesting commentary on how meaningless celebrity articles are.