#why is a hipster blog following me

[panfritoo]

Yearning for 2014

It’s 2014. All my family is gathered at the restaurant to debut my becoming a woman. ‘My new monthly doom’, I think bending over by first-period cramps. I know for a fact that none of my sisters have been through this pseudo-tradition but, as the youngest family member, the older relatives rejoice in the mockery of this dinner and speak to me teasingly, knowing that whatever

I'm going through, they've already been through it all. Caught in the awkwardness, angst, and general anhedonia of puberty we reach dessert and I’m praying my bleeding uterus hasn't stained the chair's lining. That was the same year Lana Del Rey released her third album Ultraviolence, a time when her music served as a rite of passage. Her dreamy melancholic voice and lyrics on older men and drug use had to be consumed with a cautious warning, as they had cathartic effects on my already moody state.

I didn’t think there was any cultural significance at the time, but trends from 2014 have resurfaced on Instagram and TikTok, prompting discussions that contribute to the internet's fixation on that year. In the fashion industry, the emergence of an indie-sleaze revival marks a departure from the polished "clean girl aesthetic" that had dominated online platforms for years. This shift towards combat boots, distressed leather, and a deliberately messy look resonates with the unfiltered style of the early 2010s. Similarly, the film industry's wave of reboots and revivals including iconic shows like "Gossip Girl," "Sex and the City," and "Friends," taps into the comfort of familiar characters which says something about the generalized state of nostalgia. Moreover, the popularity of ‘POV: it's 2014’ videos on social media showcasing various ephemera and pop culture references that defined that year such as ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ and ‘Eos lip balm’ confirms there is cultural yearning for 2014.

But why are people obsessing over 2014?

Every generation makes the point that old times were better. Generation Z, me included, we're now at an age where we can start feeling nostalgic for the first time, as we've reached the threshold of adulthood. Our seemingly world-ending problems from when we were younger—like high school crushes and acne—now seem trivial in comparison to the complexities of adult life.

During my early teens, I was eager to grow up, idealizing all kinds of freedoms. But as I've grown older, I realize that many of the key milestones of life are out of my generation's reach. The dream of finding a fulfilling job, owning a home, and living life on my terms feels like a scam.

Adulthood is a fraud.

Social media also amplifies our crushed expectations, because while in our reality we are constantly facing struggles to make a living, in social media everyone seems to fucking have it together. The internet has become increasingly commodified and exploited for its business possibilities. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are no longer ‘social’ but a form of consumption. I can't even remember the days before doom-scrolling addiction wasn't a thing.

I yearn for when the internet was once a refuge for connection and exploration. In 2014 Instagram was still in its infancy, Facebook was still popular, but the ultimate platform was Tumblr. It's difficult to explain the significance of Tumblr. Is it a social media platform? Yes. Where you can share images and longer fragments of text? Yes. But it was also more, you had to be there to understand it. Tumblr was a world of its own, Tumblr funded URL counterculture materialized through music and fashion.

Unlike social media now, Tumblr was not based on followers or likes, users were highly anonymous creating a safe haven for teenage girls to blog and post images freely. The aesthetics movement, which became a substitute for subcultures, also originated on Tumblr. Within this ecosystem, individuals self-prescribe to an aesthetic such as grunge, pastel grunge, or hipster. "That's so Tumblr" was also an aesthetic of its own. Posting “aesthetically” pleasing featuring grainy black and white edits of Lana del Rey, knee-high socks, Doctor Martens, chokers, galaxy prints, vinyl records from The 1975 and Arctic Monkeys was a way to combat the ugliness in real life. Having this beautifully curated blog was a form of reinvention. However, not everything about Tumblr was pretty, images of anorexia, depression and self-harm circulated on the platform romanticizing mental health issues.

Life was simpler in 2014 because we were younger but also life just seems to have gotten complicated after 2015. Ebola, Brexit, Trump winning elections, the War in Ukraine and Gaza, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Lots of us feel that COVID robbed us of our youth and by the time we got out of isolation we were on the cusp of adulthood.

The longing for 2014 reflects more than just a desire for a bygone era; it symbolizes a yearning for a time when life seemed less daunting, and the future felt more hopeful. We cling to the memories of our youth as a form of escapism from the present. But this is not a way of living, as Andy Bernard character from the office said, "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days...".

[saibug1022]

Sanders Sides Masterlist

It has been a while since I wrote for Sanders Sides but I still love it and the stuff I wrote for it so here it is! A lot of it was for prompts, in which case I'll put the prompt instead of a title.

Prinxiety

"Have you ever kissed anyone before?"

Fluff

Summary: The story of two theater dorks and their first kiss.

Logince

Flowers

Fluff, with a hint of hurt/comfort

Summary: Logan is a very gay disaster and completely in love. His boyfriend knew the first part, but he wasn’t supposed to know the second. Not yet. Maybe Logan should pay more attention to his surroundings.

Sunrise

Fluff

Summary: Roman is pining, plain and simple, and he is trying so incredibly hard to get something, anything, out of Logan. It happens eventually just not at all how Logan was suspecting.

Dukeceit

“You could never ruin anything.” “Your comfort and happiness is more important to me than some stupid dinner.”

Hurt/Comfort

Summary: Janus is so excited for his anniversary dinner with Remus. Well, okay, excited may not be the right word, but he was happy to go out with Remus and make fun of all the rich people and dress up. Until his period reared its ugly head and triggered his dysphoria. Shit.

Roceit

One Day

Hurt/Comfort

Summary: The aftermath of Putting Others First when you're in a secret relationship...

Loceit

Allies/Friends/Lovers

Fluff

Summary: Logan prided himself on knowing many, many things. What he did not know was why on Earth Janus Schwartz insisted on following him around.

Dukexiety

Impromptu Ice Cream Dates

Fluff

Summary: Remus wants to flirt, Virgil wants to do his homework, and his email apparently wants to give him a panic attack.

Remile

Kissing on the sofa, foreheads pressed together, breathy, soft, tender. “God I love your face.”

Fluff

Summary: Remy wasn’t one for sappy hipster blog quotes but he did have one that he liked: “I loved you so much I forgot what hating myself felt like.”

“I love you, but I need you to go away because you’re really bloody distracting and I have to pass this test tomorrow.”

Fluff

Summary: Of course, the one time Remy tried to Study

[notthatangry]

I was bored :)

1.Favourite Slipknot era?

vol3 subliminal verses and self titled

2.Favourite song/s?

The virus of life The shape prosthetics the nameless me inside iowa scissors purity Everything ends spit it out diluited

3. Have you ever seen them live? If so what was your experience like?

It was brutal literally I almost die and im 99% sure that corey saw me throw up

4. If you could spend a day with any band member who would it be and why?

Corey bc im almost 100% sure the we would love each other or hate each other no in between and i wanna know

5. Favourite lyric/s?

-SUCK DEEZZ NUTZZ

-I am not a dog but im the one you’re dogging

-You won’t bother me if you let me bother you

-Keep in mind, I watch you Never leave my side, never leave me, fucker

6.When and how did you discover the band?

When i was like 9/10 I downloaded a song and had the all hope is gone album cover and i was so curious about it i look it up and they where Slipknot i loved the masks and I found it kinda halloweenish what i loved but until 13 I didn’t actually hear their music

7.A song that means a lot to you?

Everything ends helped me to accept my rage and actually let me be mad at things

8.Favourite album/s?

Self titled ofc

9.Out of every mask each member has had which one do you like the best and which one do you like the least?

I love mick jim and joey masks those are top tier i like craig and corey masks too i like almost all of them my least fav is that bandage clown mask

10. Favourite Paul Gray photo/s?

11. Favourite music video?

Duality and psychosocial classics

12. If you could choose any artist/band to

collaborate with Slipknot, who would you

choose?

Man idk MGK lmaooo nah mmm chino moreno

13. Ever been to Knotfest?

yes again brutal i loved it

14. How do you feel about the newest members?

They’re good I don’t like to compare, very different vibes tho

15. Favourite group picture?

16. If you could make the world listen to one Slipknot song which one would it be?

Dead memories or snuff bc those are pretty chill

17. Favourite gif?

18. Do you have any band merch? If so what?

I have like an obsession with band shirts so yea

19. What do your friends/family think of the band?

That they scream a lot and my mom says that she likes the “jason masks”

20.What's your dream setlist?

Purity,Scissors ,The virus of life,The nameless,Vermillion ,Prosthetics,Me inside,Nero forte,Everything ends,Disasterpiece,Get this,(Sic),Eyeless,Liberate,Snuff,Gehenna,Killpop,Spit it out,Yen ,The shape,Metabolic

21. Tag your favourite Slipknot blogs

If i follow you you’re my fav

22. Name a song that gets you pumped

Nero forte get this people = shit

23. Favourite Corey Taylor quote?

“I can’t take full credit but i will”

“Pay attention to ME!”

“Lust gets me in trouble so wrath”

24. If you could be any band member for a day who would you be?

Sid bc I would jump everywhere like crazy (i have both feet fucked up too) or mick i like how scary he looks

25. Favourite song that's been performed live?

(Sic) the blister exists purity

26. Use one word to describe Jim's beard

HIPSTER

27. Any songs that have helped you through tough times?

Everything ends snuff

28. First impression of the band?

HALLOWEEN BOIS

29. What do you think of the newest album?

Good but the old vibes is on top always

30. Ever heard of the tribute band Knotslip? If so what do you think?

They r better than Slipknot lmao

31.Did you discover any other bands through

Slipknot? If so which ones?

Stone sour murderdolls

32. You're feeling angry which song do you put on?

People = shit nero forte everything ends

33. You're feeling happy which song do you put on?

Me inside the shape vermillion spit it out custer killpop yen

34.Have you met any band members?

Sadly no hopefully corey someday

35. What song would you love to hear Slipknot

cover?

The summoning by sleep token if you know what i mean ;)

36. Got any Slipknot related tattoos?

No but i want the knot

37. First song you heard?

Psychosocial

38. Vermillion part 1 or Vermillion part 2?

Part 1 aghh

39. Got any cool pictures you've personally taken of the band that you'd like to share?

40. Your chance to say anything you want about the band.

Sometimes I would like to have been born earlier or they would have been born a few years before me ;(

[vixies-grimoire]

So awhile back I had this idea on the backburner of doing a camp camp timeskip (5 years in the future in a timeline where david & gwen adopt max, 5yl for short), originally I intended to create an askblog but as of right now I don't have the time or energy to maintain something like that, so instead I'm simply going to be sharing pieces of this story at my own pace. I started with Max because he's my favorite and I had the most ideas with which direction to pull his character - David & Gwen will come next. Realistically not every character from the show cast is involved in the mains' lives anymore so not everybody will get a design, but the main five all will.

VV Details abt 5yl max beneath the cut VV

So I see a lot of people give Max something of a goth/punk aesthetic with things like chokers and excess piercings, and while I can certainly see why that happens, I personally could never picture him going that route. I think it's possibly because he reminds me a lot of my brothers all of whom tend to have a more hipster or casual aesthetic (for a long time I gave Max a beanie and I still think he'd wear one).

Along with that though, Max just never struck me as the type to overly commit to an aesthetic - he'd care abt how he looks ofc but I definitely think he'd prioritize comfort over appearance. I also hc Max with some sensory issues so things like facial piercings or choker collars would probably be irritating to him (this is me projecting my own sensory issues lol. punks you're so cool but I could never.)

So I mostly kept his aesthetic the same and focused on adding more interest to the design - as this was intended to be an ask blog I added details people would want to ask about.

The glasses are another thing that came from one of my brothers - I've never seen anyone give Max glasses (in general unless they're a nerd people just don't think to add stuff like glasses I think), and now I really like them. He gets them when he's around 14 and I haven't yet decided what visual impairment he has. I'm thinking maybe farsighted?

The long hair was something I chose on a picrew on a whim and immediately loved. I came up with this cute story plot where Max has always wanted long hair, but could never properly get it to grow out because he was never taught how to take care of his hair. He also hated going to salons bc they didn't know how to treat his hair. Then Gwen starts giving him tips and offers to do his hair for him - an offer he's extremely apprehensive about bc his experience with people doing his hair has never been good, but she does really well. She explains that she was just taught by people in her family who knew how to deal with different hair types.

Admittedly too the long hair was a decision I stuck with bc I loathe the idea that transmascs can't have or want long hair (and yes, Max is transmasc in 5yl. David is too). At this point I've created so much hair lore I could write an essay on that alone.

As for the bear pin and the bear skull on his shirt, I wanted to give Max a hyperfixation of some kind, and I just went with bears (Ik lots of children have teddy bears and it doesn't mean they particularly love bears but it's what I had to work with lol). It's the one nature thing David managed to make him genuinely like. Funnily enough I followed a few bear-themed accounts so I could write someone w a bear hyperfixation accurately, and in doing so gave myself a bear hyperfixation for awhile.

Some other details abt 5yl Max are that he loves guns and has studied them and really wants to learn to shoot, he's properly taken up knitting and he once punched somebody for calling David an ableist slur <3

(there's a lot I've put into this but it's hard to find the words to explain when it doesn't come up naturally, so I'll share plenty more abt this au when I'm ready.)

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Drawn in MediBang Paint Pro

Camp Camp is a Rooster Teeth original series.

Copyright© 2022 Vixiefoxwitch. All rights reserved.

[hackedxy0x]

I posted 1,328 times in 2022

That's 1,184 more posts than 2021!

79 posts created (6%)

1,249 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@botanicallyinclinednerd

@will80sbyers

@hipster-rapunzel

@buggachat

Top tags

#byler - 64 posts

#merthur - 13 posts

#boreo - 10 posts

#merlin - 9 posts

#bbc merlin - 8 posts

#boris pavlikovsky - 7 posts

#the goldfinch - 7 posts

#dasey - 7 posts

#stranger things - 7 posts

#will byers - 6 posts

Longest Tag: 116 characters

#every hero in every piece of fiction had that doubting destiny moment where they try to fight it but not merlin nope

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Cupping the back of someone's neck is very romantic, actually.

584 notes - Posted September 19, 2022

#4

So I'm a Stranger Things newbie and I've just finished season 3 (spoiled myself some season 4 - worth it) and I knew byler was a thing so I payed attention to Mike (because we already know Will is gay for sure) and I was thinking that, objectively, it could go either way with him. Until his goodbye to Eleven, that is.

There is absolutely no explanation for that.

I mean, first we get to see Jonathan and Nancy (who have been in a relationship for as long as Mike and Eleven have) say goodbye to each other. We see them sharing an emotional moment, Nancy asking Jonathan not to go. The two of them kissing and clinging to each other.

And then we get a Mike and Eleven goodbye. Eleven turning back and saying how she heard Mike say that he loves her and her saying that she loves him too. It was the PERFECT opportunity for a tender, romantic moment between the two. Instead, we got to see a really awkwardly one-sided kiss featuring Mike just standing there like he's not sure what to do with himself. And then Eleven leaves and he's still just standing there. We see the slight shock and then a frown. I could practically see his thoughts going from "Eleven told me she loves me" to "That doesn't feel satisfying. Why doesn't it feel satisfying?"

Mike was standing there contemplating why his girlfriend loving him didn't make his heart race as it should have. The answer: he loves Eleven, but not romantically. And he's finally beginning to see that. (I would also like to note that he was standing in front if a literal open closet.)

"Okay, so that would mean he doesn't actually love El. But how does that mean he's queer?"

Hopper's letter was a major clue. When we got to the part where Hopper is talking about not wanting to grow up, the camera is following Mike and what he's doing. Not Will who was struggling with that this season. It was following Mike.

We all know that Will is actually gay and that he didn't want to grow up mostly because growing up meant liking girls and he just didn't. And now Mike was referred to as the one who didn't want to grow up. Mike who was telling Will to grow up like the rest of them. And by the end of it, he was the one stuck. He was fine with growing up, until he realize that maybe he doesn't love El as he should.

764 notes - Posted June 29, 2022

#3

I find it hilarious that we were fooled into thinking that Eleanor was gonna apologize after Gabbi called her out for being a dick to Drea.

She was literally like:

1,683 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

#2

Fanfiction is canon because it's literally just the content the original writers were too scared to post themselves.

1,831 notes - Posted July 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I just realized that you can see if someone is open minded from the way they look at pairings they don't ship.

There are people who are going to say "I don't personally ship this pairing, but I can understand the potential appeal of it" and there are people who're going to say "Ugh, I don't understand how anyone can ship this. It's obviously wrong".

Now apply this to any other topic.

It's kind of like art. You may not like a painting, but you should still keep in mind that it was put in a museum for a reason. It was a masterpiece to someone else.

2,832 notes - Posted February 5, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[projecthipster]

This is England

"Listen to me. He's a young lad. He's had a fucking bad week. So we bring him in with us to show him a bloody good time and you've just friggin backhanded him round his head. I’m disappointed, mate!"

It had to happen eventually. I followed the lists at last to a movie I’ve never heard of once in my life. In fairness, I’m about as far away within the 21st-century Anglosphere as one can get from this fairly uncomfortable watch of a competently made if unflashy 2006 movie. This isn’t, for one thing. England, I mean. This is a moderately large Canadian city where I write very very very very occasional blog posts about things considered Hipster. This certainly isn’t a sprawl of anonymous crumbling brick industrial yards and townhomes in an unspecified bit of working-class early ‘80s England, which is where this movie takes place. Before any characters even show up onscreen, we’re treated to a scene-setting montage which features Margaret Thatcher in a backhoe for some reason. This is a movie that uses the goddam Falklands War as a plot point. In other words it takes some background research to watch in an informed way for anyone born a decade after it takes place, across an ocean. The most part of that is that I know absolutely nothing about skinheads. I honestly thought it was a term mainly reserved for shaved mob-boss goons and neo-Nazis. Fortunately the movie itself serves as an introduction to that most obscure and since presumably largely extirpated breed of the working-class hipster, and how it became associated with its worst elements in the most ignorant of public eyes (mine.) Well, sort of. One of the flaws in an otherwise pretty good movie is that it doesn’t really go so deep into the why and how racism crept into a proto-punk-ish scene, so much as just showing that it did and mining that for character drama and shock value.

Our hero in this tale of suspenders and yellowing drywall is Shaun, a mouth-breathing, crooked-eyed thirteen-year-old who swears at his mum, so that’s a great start. But for being a brat most of the time, it’s still easy to have protagonist sympathy for a bullied kid with a dad killed in the Falklands (see?) Or at least you can convince yourself it’s worth trying. At first.

The plot goes more or less how you’d expect it to, to the point that I’m simultaneously not wanting to spoil it and thinking it’d be pretty hard to do that. I guess framing it as a question is the way to go: after this slack-jawed little lad falls in with first some high schoolers who buy him a plaid shirt and take him along to smash sinks in foreclosed houses, and then with an ethno-nationalist ex-con, will his need for acceptance overcome his moral sense and rag him into the worst aspects of the culture? The answer would decide whether the story is a full-on tragedy. Well, apparently there are around five sequels, so.

The drama is compelling enough, I guess. The nonchalantness with which Shaun drifts into abusing an immigrant shopkeeper and shouting slurs makes you question whether this was ever a character worth cheering for improving, but the suitably brutal climax resolves that, while nonetheless being a little too forgiving to the fascists for my taste.

Most of what This is England seems to want to be is an education into what the skinhead subculture actually is. Or the ways it can be something. The tack the movie seems to take tracks with what I discovered from, basically, Wikipedia, using different character to represent the movement passing through generations. The oldest skinhead character, Combo, who’s also more or less the villain of the movie, has a soliloquy about remembering the first wave of the movement, taking to Jamaican music as a celebration of life in the face of hardships. White people taking joy in Black music is nothing new and nothing bad. That’s why the word “hipster” originally meant, in the context of white jazz fans. All but one of the characters are white, by the way. That comes into play big. In the actual present of the plot, Combo comes back from a jail term as a white nationalist. No explanation for this contradiction of a Black-music-based subculture turning so racist is given, but unfortunately such contradictions do go unexplained in real life often enough. Woody is the leader of the main gang, the next generation taking up the mantle, with Shaun set to be the next to carry the torch. Lol, Woody’s girlfriend, has bangs, heavy eyes, and a kind smile, so immediately crushworthy. There’s friendly Jamaican-born Milky, the aforementioned only non-white skinhead. Then there’s Smell, the classic older girl crush. She’s new wave, meaning even in casual scenes of just hanging out she looks like she should be singing backup for The Cure. The plot, as such, is a schism within the gang prompted by Combo coming in like a storm front and just racisting the whole thing up.

I don’t know if I loved this movie. I enjoyed it alright. The gang of older kids – the ones who aren’t racist – are the most charming part, even if I still think shaved heads look worse than my generation of hipster’s preference for a good classic undercut or tied-back long hair. So I can see why the director would want to return to the characters for what I assume is a less intense story as it rolls into the ‘90s. It’s also just so, so British.

I give this hipster movie an aright bruv out of jolly good show.

Project Hipster is a futile and disorganized attempt to dive into the world of things that the internet has at some point claimed "are hipster," mostly through ListChallenges search results.

This review comes from the fifteenth list, Films Your Hipster Friend Has Made You Watch

Untrue for the record. I am more hipster than most of my friends at this point. You can also tell this is a British-made list secondly because they said "films" and firstly because this was on it.

Up next: a music movie most likely.

Stay deck.

[voskhozhdeniye]

Hm, thinking about that Fuck Buttons show has me thinking about other shows.

How about we talk about my first Swans show...

I was terrified to see them. At the time, I was on a NIN fan forum. Everyone who had went to see them talked about just how loud they were. I had constant ear infections as a child, so I have hearing problems. I was told to bring earplugs. The week before was that GY!BE show that my back fucked up before the opener finished. I was more afraid of my back fucking up than my hearing after that.

(Before I started typing this I searched the blog to see if I've written this before. Nothing came up, but I remember telling this part of the story on here before, maybe in a tag.)

I do not drive in the city often, and at that point in time I hadn't learned my way around yet. I didn't start that until the next year. My sister drove me up, we ate at a trendy hipster burger spot in a super gentrified area of the city. The burger spot was gone within a year or so.

At the restaurant, there was this LOUD group of, I was going to say 20somethings, but I was too at the time so.... My sister went and did her thing. The group followed me to the show.

Where they were loud as shit also. A Hawk and a Hacksaw opened, I don't remember much of their set. I thought it was interesting and said I'd check them out further, but never have.

In between sets, I put the ear plugs in.

This was the tour for The Seer, but the set was already To Be Kind heavy.

About halfway through To Be Kind I realized oh, this is going to build until it explodes. That first blast felt like a brick to the face. In a curiosity tempting the cat moment, I took the earplugs out. I never put them back in. Swans are loud, but it's the physical force of it.

The first half of the live version of Avatar is completely different. The ending is like what's on the album but is extended with heavy percussion. At the end, when they hit that outro, it felt like someone threw hot water on me. I cannot stress how much you physically feel it. I checked out mentally after that. I have no memory of She Loves Us at all. Which is wild, because I love the live version and hate the studio recording.

I barely remember Coward. I was deeply in love with that song at the time.......and was glad that was the lone older song that got a place in the set. I think after that tour anything before The Seer was dropped.

.......They did Helpless Child on the tour before and I didn't go because I wasn't really into them like that. Pray for me, I'm going to look up what that tour's DC show set was....Beautiful Child but no Helpless Child.

I vaguely remember The Seer. I don't remember if it was that The Seer/Bring The Sun/Toussaint L'Ouverture version like what's on Not Here/Not Now. If it was, that's why I don't remember. That shit is amazing.

I don't remember Nathalie Neal at all.

The Apostate I remember. Before they started, Gira proposed everyone take off their cloths and dance.

As the show went on, the people who rushed to be near the front of the stage slowly moved back away from the stage, leaving no one front and center. I mean an entire large circle of empty space in front of Gira.

So I went up there and stared into Norm Westberg's soul. He attempted to do the same to me, but I was not in my right mind, and he had to look away.

That group of friends attempted to talk during the set. They quickly realized that wasn't happening. I think they left.

My first two Swans shows were at the Black Cat. Their main stage is on a second floor. There's a bar, a games room and a smaller second stage downstairs. I saw Dawn of Midi downstairs.

Because you're not on a ground floor, you feel every vibration. I have fibromyalgia, leaving out of those shows felt like I had gotten a full body massage.

Since this is just going on and on....

I talked about Gira and the rape allegation in my end of year list the year that happened, 2016 I think. I believe I said I was disappointed but not surprised, and pointed to the abuse you hear him putting Jarboe through on You See Through Me. I always say about that song that while I appreciate the honesty, goddamn you.

I deleted all of Kanye's music off my hard drives last year. A few of the CDs are still here somewhere, but I'd have to dig to find them. 20 years ago he was the most important musician in my life. Him and Lupe were rappers who looked like me and shared common interests. Kanye was out here sampling Aphex and Can HELLO! That was really important at a time when I needed it.

Today is Michael Brown's birthday. Before Ferguson, I was going down a similar path of anti-blackness as Kanye. I don't know what it is for him, but for myself. To be the Black kid who gets othered by other Black kids means you'll go looking for friends anywhere. Even the white kids who call themselves your friend, but treat you like shit. Anything is better than being alone. After years of that you hate yourself, everyone treats you like you're inferior. All the hardships of being Black in America, but not considered Black enough for your peers. You realize the common denominator is your your skin color, so what do you attack? My sister is 51, when she was in high school, she had a classmate who tried to bleach his skin with household bleach. He gave himself chemical burns.

Autumn 2014 almost killed me. The week before Michael's death, a family member who I worked with died. Our working together made him the closest family member I had. Then the Ferguson protests sparked up. Then a lot of white people started explaining to me what is and isn't racism. The same way a lot of people nowadays are explaining to me what is and isn't genocide. I realized that a lot of the white people I was devaluing myself for didn't even see me as human.

I almost killed myself that autumn. I deleted the old blog and everything. I decided. I had my plan and everything. In the week leading up, I started to get sick. I lost 10 pounds in 6 days. The cognitive dissonance that people are going through right now with Gaza I was going through in 2014.

Ferguson killed that anti-blackness path quickly. The emotions from the neglect from that time in my life will always be here. In fact, it pops up in new and interesting ways every year. But the anti-blackness path it was leading me down revealed the dead-end. I hate that Michael Brown's death is what introduced me to what structural racism is. Just like how Gaza is illuminating colonialism for me. In both cases I knew beforehand, but seeing just how interconnected they are to what's considered normalcy is.........................

I say all of this so I can circle back around.

For almost a decade now, I have been trying to distance myself from Gira and his music. While I have succeeded to a degree, I've had major upheaval in my taste of music within the last three years. Gira's art is still important to me.

Sometimes I wonder what that says about me.

I never listened to last year's album. Covid might stop me from ever going to any show ever again.

Have A Nice Life are coming in July.

I'd like to shake Dan's hand and tell him thank you for giving me the courage to buy a synth. I doubt I'll go.

[s4rfoo]

W2 - Problem Exploration and Team Formation

Forming a Team

In the previous week, our instructor assigned us several tests, including the MBTI personality test, the CrackMyCode test, and the Innovation Mindset test. The MBTI personality test results are particularly crucial, as they serve as the main basis for determining which teammates we should collaborate with. My MBTI result is ISFJ-T. Interestingly, our instructor was surprised by the overall outcomes in our section, as the majority of us turned out to be introverted.

This poses a challenge in forming teams, as it is challenging to create balanced teams when most members share similar introverted traits. The instructor emphasized the necessity of having at least one extrovert in each team, given their natural inclination to take on leadership or spokesperson roles. Given the prevalence of introverts in our section, we were left with no choice but to form teams within our own ranks.

In this case, I have found teammates, and essentially, my teammates are my close friends, namely Spencer So, Gregie Alcantara, and Ailyn May Tongol. (Further in this blog, you will find out about our roles in the team.)

During the team formation process, individuals had to adjust and be willing to take on leadership or spokesperson roles, even if it went against their natural tendencies. This requirement aims to ensure a diverse and balanced dynamic within each team.

Roles of the Team

Our instructor granted us the freedom to choose our teammates and form either a 3-member or a 4-member team. Each team member was assigned one of four specific roles: Hustler, Handler, Hacker, or Hipster. The roles were carefully designed to complement each other and contribute to the team's overall success.

The role of the Hustler involves leading the team with confidence and proficiency in pitching ideas. This role is particularly well-suited for individuals who are extroverted, which is why our instructor mandated that at least one team member must be an extrovert to fill this role.

Next is the Hacker, responsible for excelling in software development. The Handler, on the other hand, is adept at managing projects efficiently. Finally, the Hipster specializes in creating GUI designs and ensuring a positive user experience.

Given these distinct roles, each team member's strengths and expertise contribute to the team's collective abilities, fostering a well-rounded and effective collaboration.

Roles Assignment

During this phase, choosing a suitable role for myself and my teammates proves challenging, especially considering we are three introverts with one extrovert in our team. As mentioned earlier, there are four types of roles in a team. When assigning roles, we convened for a meeting via Google Meet to discuss which roles should be assigned to each of us.

In the course of our discussion, my teammate Spencer voluntarily took on the role of Hipster, leveraging his proficiency in designing graphical UI/UX. While I am also skilled in this area, I had no choice as he claimed the role first. Now, three team roles remained, and it was amusing to note that none of us were inclined to take the Hustler role.

Despite Ailyn May having an extroverted MBTI result, she expressed no interest in the Hustler role. Consequently, Gregie stepped forward to assume the Hustler role. Even though he, like me, is introverted, I sensed a hidden ability in him to effectively communicate and interact with people. Following this, Ailyn assumed the Handler role, leveraging her organizational skills, while I took on the Hacker role, acknowledging my proficiency in programming despite not being an expert, as I preferred avoiding the role of being a hustler. 😂

The team roles are now filled,

Spencer So as the HIPSTER, Gregie Alcantara as the HUSTLER, Ailyn May Tongol as the HANDLER, and myself as the HACKER.

Problem Exploration

During problem exploration, each of us searches for problems by conducting interviews with at least five loved ones, family members, or friends to identify the top three issues. In the first interview, the instructor instructs us to focus on people we know. Following the interviews, we formulate a problem based on the findings and propose potential solutions. In class, we collectively brainstorm our identified problems and select the top three, as decided by the group.

On pitch day, Gregie presents our findings and proposed solutions. Following the presentation, we gain numerous realizations.

MY INSIGHTS

I understand why our instructor forms our team based on MBTI results. As an extrovert known to be a team leader and the best communicator in a team, introverts will not take this role as personality is not for that role. Let's break that misconception that introverts will not take the leader role or the communicator role in a team. Many introverts out there are the best communicators and good storytellers and mostly successful people, like Bill Gates.

Even though I am assigned such a role, it doesn't define me that my capability or skills are just right like that. It is just that I am not confident or haven't even tried. But I know to myself that I have something to offer, and I can do things like being a good communicator or taking a role as a Hustler.

In problem exploration, it is hard to search for problems, especially if the problem encountered by the interviewee is very common. As an interviewer, you have to be patient and strive to find problems that exist without solutions or have solutions, but you propose something innovative. When thinking about the solution to a problem, it is important to engage in critical thinking. You have to consider many factors, ensuring the solution is ideal and realistic, even when initially considering it ridiculously. Searching for a problem and its solution is challenging, but it can be done with perseverance and creativity.

[mariacallous]

In 2019, the Moscow authorities created a nonprofit organization called Dialog, which they billed as a means of facilitating better communication between citizens and the government. The project was so successful that it was soon extended to other regions of Russia. The following year, Dialog and its regional subsidiary became a crucial element in the Russian authorities’ campaign to amend the Constitution and “reset” Putin’s term clock. Two years later, when the Kremlin found its full-scale invasion of Ukraine lasting longer than expected, Dialog once again proved itself as a critical part of the government’s toolkit: the organization now uses a vast network of popular Telegram channels and more than 100,000 social media pages to spread fictitious stories aimed at discrediting Ukraine. In a new investigation, journalists from Meduza, iStories, and The Bell dig into Dialog’s background and the team of ‘pseudo-hipsters’ behind its wartime disinformation campaign.

The English-language version of this story has been edited for both clarity and length. You can read the full investigation in Russian here.

On February 24, 2022, journalist Yulia Eidel went out onto the balcony of her fifth-story apartment in Dnipro and heard explosions in the distance: the Russian army was shelling a nearby airport. Inside, Eidel’s three children — aged five, seven, and 17 — were asleep.

At first, Eidel remembers, she had no idea what to do. Eventually, she decided to take her kids to stay with some family friends in the countryside, figuring things would be calmer there. Back then, she says, many Ukrainians still believed that “this whole shitshow” could be stopped if “a critical mass of sane people in Russia” simply applied enough effort. Eidel decided to look for people who might fit the bill in the Telegram chat group for her classmates from Moscow State University’s journalism department, which she graduated from in 2008.

After arriving in a quiet village, two days after the start of the war, she wrote in the chat: “Guys, you probably know, though you may have forgotten, that I’m originally from Ukraine. All of this is happening to me right now.” She added links to news stories from the Ukrainian media to her message. What she meant to do was simply to say: “This is me. You know me well. This is what’s happening. Let’s try to come up with a solution together. What the fuck are you so silent for?”

Some of Eidel’s classmates responded with messages of sympathy, but four people wrote that “the situation isn’t that simple,” and one woman asked her not to “turn the chat into a war-centric group.”

Later, another one of Eidel’s classmates, a man named Vladimir Tabak, came online and wrote just two words: “Good evening.” Someone else responded: “Well, here we go.” Eidel got the feeling that “the wolf had shown up in the fairy tale.”

She sent a private message to one of her classmates, asking her why others were responding that way to Tabak. “Oh, but he’s one of the people who monitor social media groups and pages and report who should be shut down and who should receive support,” the woman replied.

The barnacle

Vladimir Tabak, a registered journalist in Russia and the head of the pro-Kremlin “autonomous nonprofit organization” (ANO) Dialog, first gained public attention in 2010, with the release of a calendar featuring photographs of former and current female Moscow State University (MSU) journalism students in lingerie. The novelty item was created in honor of then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 58th birthday.

The calendar’s release was announced on the blog of propagandist Kristina Potupchik, then serving as the press secretary of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the calendar “this lady’s initiative,” referring to Potupchik, but it soon became clear that it had been the brainchild of her close friend Vladimir Tabak, a recent graduate of MSU’s journalism program who was also leading a “creative group aimed at creating Internet projects under the presidential administration.” (What activities this group ultimately engaged in and how long it existed is unclear.)

Several of Tabak’s former classmates who spoke to the authors of this story referred to him as a “rich kid” and a “slacker.” One of them, journalist and feminist activist Nastya Krasilnikova, described him as a “slippery character”:

For the entire five years that Tabak and I studied together in the journalism department, he was very noticeable. He had a striking appearance, always wearing flashy clothing, but he didn’t participate in many department activities.

To this day, I still remember the disgust I felt when the calendar with the female students came out. It struck me as very strange that so many women agreed to be a part of it, but the fact that Tabak was behind it didn’t surprise me at all.

As a student, Tabak spent a lot of time at nightclubs, his classmates said. “The students he photographed for the calendar were the girls who surrounded him. He was always into that stuff: cars, cocktails, parties at Pacha that lasted all night, all of that,” said one person who remembers him from the university.

Tabak bragged that he had been the one to sell the idea of an erotic calendar to Vladimir Surkov, who served as the deputy head of Russia’s presidential administration at the time. Surkov, who was also the mind behind “Nashi,” had been introduced to Tabak by Kristina Potupchik.

“Vladimir had no reservations about his calendar for the [Putin] administration. He didn’t give two shits about the journalism department — he understood that there wouldn’t be any consequences from them. Then the calendar came out, and [MSU Journalism Dean Elena] Vartanova was horrified, but she couldn’t do anything about it — her hands were tied,” one of Tabak’s former classmates said.

In Tabak’s view, the key to a successful career was to find a “big fish” and “cling to them,” barnacle-style. A source who worked with him in the past said that the first “big fish” he clung to was Vladimir Surkov. Next came Sergey Kiriyenko, who currently serves as the first deputy chief of staff of the Putin administration. As “one of Surkov’s people,” the source explained, Tabak was “inherited by Kiriyenko, and made his career under him.”

Something for everyone

Vladimir Tabak’s career under Kiriyenko began in 2019, when he became the deputy director of Dialog, a nonprofit led at the time by Alexey Goreslavsky, the former deputy director of the presidential administration’s public projects team. Put simply, Goreslavsky served as the Kremlin’s Internet curator. Two years after Tabak’s appointment, Goreslavsky left Dialog to head up the Internet Development Institute, and Tabak took his place.

When Dialog was first created, it was billed as a way for the Moscow authorities to use the Internet to communicate more effectively with citizens. Before long, the organization began opening analogous agencies throughout the country, each of which was referred to as a “regional governance center” (RGC). In reality, according to sources who spoke to the investigative outlet Proekt, Dialog’s initial purpose was to spread propaganda in favor of Russia’s constitutional amendments in the summer of 2020.

Just a few months after Dialog was established, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, and the Russian authorities found a new use for the organization. Before long, the project found itself responsible for keeping citizens informed about the public health situation, and the site StopCoronavirus.rf, launched by Dialog (though the organization itself denies this), became the public’s primary source of COVID-19 infection data. In addition to public health information, Dialog also published original content, including comics, memes, and TikTok videos.

At the height of the pandemic, the authorities decided to go through with the referendum on amendments to the Constitution. Dialog immediately began spreading the message that people shouldn’t fear the coronavirus and that they had a duty to vote. “The Constitution campaign involved several different narratives. One was that voting would be safe: there would be seven days to cast your ballot so that there wouldn’t be crowds. They also pushed the idea that this was real patriotism and that the aim was to consolidate society,” said a former Dialog employee.

One source who works for a major anonymous news account on Telegram recounted how, before the start of the election, he was approached by Dialog employee Pavel Popereshnichenko, who offered him cash in exchange for publishing a series of video clips advertising the amendments as a “necessary measure” for defeating COVID-19. The source declined the offer, but he soon began seeing similar clips on other Telegram channels, as well as on YouTube and regional social media pages (the outlet Mediazona has previously reported on these clips).

According to internal Dialog documents obtained by the authors of this report, the organization also used targeted ads to spread messages in favor of the proposed amendments. For users who were “concerned about the elections’ legitimacy,” for example, there were posts about how the voting would be overseen by election monitors. Pet owners and animal advocates were served ads highlighting the fact that you could bring dogs to the polls. And for religious voters, there was an ad proclaiming that “With divine help, God will return to the Constitution!” The post noted that the nuns of the Alekseyev-Akatov Convent in Voronezh had already voted.

The vote was held on July 1. According to official figures, more than 78 percent of voters (with a 65 percent turnout rate) voted in favor of the amendments — and, by extension, for a “reset” of Putin’s presidential term clock. To celebrate the end of the successful media campaign, Sergey Kiriyenko himself paid a visit to the Dialog office.

A beautiful system

In the summer of 2020, Dialog split into two entities. The “main” organization remained under the supervision of the Moscow city government’s IT department, while a separate subsidiary was established to work with Russia’s regions. As of 2022, more than 2,500 people worked for Dialog Regions, which received more 6.5 billion rubles (more than $67 million) from the Ministry of Digital Development. (For comparison, the parent organization received just 1.8 billion rubles, or around $18.7 million, in 2022). By 2024, the Russian authorities plan to allocate around 24 billion rubles ($249 million) to Dialog Regions.

Officially, Dialog Regions has two purposes. The first is to oversee the official social media pages of Russian governors, city governments, regional ministries, schools, and other public entities and government structures. Employees of the organization teach regional civil servants and politicians how to create social media accounts, gain followers, and respond to comments, in addition to telling them what kind of content to publish. As of the end of 2022, according to the Digital Development Ministry, Russia had 130,000 “state social media pages.” Tabak has said that 50 percent of Russian Internet users read these pages.

The authors of this story studied Dialog’s recommendations for running official school social media pages. They advise administrators to ensure that “content is based on regular news updates about school operations that are significant and relevant to the target audience” while also cautioning “not to forget about the federal agenda.” At the same time, according to the guide, the school pages should post news about decisions made by the president and the government, the work of the region’s governor, Russia’s achievements in science and sporting events, and “patriotic events.”

The pseudo-hipsters

Describing the second area of Dialog’s operations, the deputy governor in one of Russia’s regions said that its task is to “monitor all social networks for cases of public outrage,”

when a fence isn’t painted, a tree is covering someone’s window, roads aren’t getting repaired, someone’s having problems getting medicine, and so on. They look into whether the issue can be addressed or not, send requests to the relevant ministries, and work with the authorities to set deadlines for solving the problem.

The politician, who spoke to the authors of this report on condition of anonymity, praised Dialog’s work: “In my view,” he said, “it’s a godsend, it’s extremely effective.”

Kudos to them for creating this system. These things increase the public’s trust in the authorities by at least 30 percent. When a person is living in squalor, nothing’s happening around him, and nobody around him gives a damn about him, he feels a certain annoyance towards the authorities. If the government starts responding to his requests, taking action and solving his problems, the person will start thinking more highly of the authorities.

An employee of a large Russian company that has worked with Dialog agreed that “regional governance centers” have a positive role:

At some point, the presidential administration realized they needed to start working properly in the regions, and that everything would go down the drain otherwise. And they did a pretty important thing: now, if somebody craps in your apartment stairwell, you can send a complaint to the governor through an RGC. And the RGC will give the governor a thrashing if he doesn’t make the shit go away.

This goes a long way to keep people satisfied in the regions and to keep the authorities’ approval ratings up. I mean, look at [Moscow Mayor Sergey] Sobyanin: you might hate him, but you can’t deny that things in Moscow have improved. And this concept, that if you clean up the shit and make things nice for residents, then they won’t ask for things like freedom and democracy — it works. Kiriyenko is well aware of this.

According to a source who knows multiple Dialog employees, Kiriyenko has praised the organization in closed meetings, observing that while complaints to the RGCs used to take two hours to address, “now it’s just 17 minutes.” (According to Dialog’s official data, it actually takes RGCs up to three hours on average to process complaints.)

The system does have its shortcomings, however. Among other things, it’s likely not reaching older citizens, many of whom don’t use social media. “They wanted to launch a print publication for the 50+ audience so that they could send their complaints directly to the newspaper,” said a source close to one of the RGCs. “But nothing came of that, because the atmosphere at Dialog is more ‘creative’; in other words, everyone there is pretty laid-back. Eventually the idea was abandoned.”

A source close to the St. Petersburg government painted a similar picture of Dialog’s employees: “They’re pseudo-hipsters — and so is Tabak. The typical RGC employee looks like this: a beard, a vape, and white sneakers. Deadbeats.”

Nonetheless, a source from the Putin administration said that the “bearded hipsters in the white sneakers” remain useful to the authorities, adding that they can “amplify any conflict on their social media pages.” In August, for example, a Dialog-run Telegram channel called Signal pilloried Khakassia Governor Valentin Konovalov, a member of the Communist Party, after he angered the Kremlin by beating a candidate from the ruling United Russia party.

As of the end of 2022, Dialog had RGCs in 93 regions and federal districts. The records reviewed by the authors of this report did not mention Ukraine’s occupied territories, but a Dialog employee said that Dialog representatives have visited them multiple times, including trips to Donetsk and to the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

A government resolution regarding the rules of providing subsidies to the RGCs says that the offices should monitor complaints and appeals in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics,” the Zaporizhzhia region, and the Kherson region. Additionally, Dialog itself has reported training civil servants in the occupation administration in Mariupol to run government social media accounts.

Kiriyenko’s favorite toy

One of the main jobs of Dialog’s RGCs, according to a source close to the Putin administration, is to promote information favorable to the government in the traditional media, on social networks, and on Telegram. This entails creating new Telegram channels as well as buying existing ones, a former Dialog employee said.

Dialog also shares pro-government posts on Odnoklassniki, or “Classmates,” the social media service most popular among older Russians. The authors of this story managed to find posts from Dialog, for example, in a Krasnodar group called “Advice for you.” The group has approximately 50,000 members and consists primarily of housekeeping tips such as how to combine paint colors in one’s home or how to save money at bargain stores. In addition, the group often sees posts about Sergey Kiriyenko and his various useful activities: how, for example, Putin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff personally checks food prices in Ukraine’s occupied territories or how he helps make children’s New Year’s wishes come true.

The page also appeared on a list of accounts that helped spread “news” about Ukraine allegedly using banned weapons against the Russian army. The list contains nearly 400 groups on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Telegram.

Dialog also serves as a polling agency. “Why? To show that not only can we put together media campaigns, but we can also track their results,” an employee explained.

Right now, the agency is conducting an Internet survey of “businessmen from the Donetsk People’s Republic.” The results of these surveys are distorted: responses can be submitted by anyone through links that are posted on government websites and social media pages.

Despite this, the polls are in high demand, not only among the various government ministries that work with Dialog, but also from the Kremlin. “This is Kinder’s favorite toy — alternative data for the president,” said a high-ranking regional official, referring to Kiriyenko by his nickname “Kinder” (short for “Kinder Surprise”), which has stuck to him ever since he became prime minister at the age of 36.

According to the speaker, Dialog conducts surveys on a wide variety of topics, including faith and religion, NATO, Russia’s government institutions, and relations between Russia and Ukraine.

After Moscow launched its invasion, Dialog started compiling briefs on the state of the “information realm around the topic of the special military operation,” analyzing how Russian Internet users were responding to war-related news. One of the updates reviewed by the authors of this story reported an increase in users’ confidence in General Sergey Surovikin, noting the “importance of the image of Surovikin as a speaker on the topic of the special military operation.”

The organization also went beyond informational reports, providing recommendations (though specifically to whom is unclear). One, for example read: “A rapid and firm response from the Defense Ministry’s command is needed for high-profile shortages of ammunition and provisions for draftees in the special military operation zone (with accountability for those responsibile for the situation).”

No basis in fact

In the summer of 2022, pro-Russian “war correspondent” Alexander Kots wrote on Telegram: “Received from subscribers in Kharkiv: these are announcements, in various parts of the city, from local public utilities offices. They’re asking residents to leave their apartments unlocked, so that territorial defense fighters can set up firing positions inside if necessary.” Similar messages were posted in multiple other pro-war Telegram channels.

A month later, these posts were included on one of Dialogue’s regular reports to the Putin administration on effectively distributed disinformation. (The authors of this story reviewed several such reports.) The story about the announcements was marked as a “successful operation”: the Kharkiv authorities had made a public statement refuting it, which meant it had spread among Ukrainian users. “In reality, the doors [shown in the picture] were in a Moscow apartment building,” said a source who worked with Dialog.

Another fake news story spread by the organization purported that Muslims in Germany were putting up flyers demanding that Ukrainian refugees leave the country. A picture of the flyers, which were actually put up by Dialog employees on the windows of a business center near the organization’s office in Moscow, was sent to more than 300,000 followers by a Telegram channel called Ukraina.ru. The only source mentioned alongside that information was “We’re told.”

Dialog’s newest area of focus — generating disinformation about Ukraine and Ukrainians — took shape several months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “We were instructed to start finding ways to respond to news stories. And everyone started pitching ideas, proposing stories, brainstorming… And somehow this idea came up: creating fake news stories,” said a source who attended the brainstorming sessions.

According to Dialog’s records obtained by the authors of this report, the organization was responsible for creating fake news stories about

Ukrainian servicemen selling their military awards on eBay;

high-ranking Ukrainian officials acquiring elite real estate in Switzerland;

Ukrainian refugees being offered demeaning jobs like “animal masturbator” in Poland;

the Ukrainian government drafting women;

Ukrainian soldiers taking pills that increase aggression.

At least 60 people were involved in creating fake news stories at Dialog. “The thinking was: the Ukrainian side is capable of fighting an information war, so why shouldn’t we? I don’t know if that’s a justification or not,” said one employee.

In the war’s initial months, the procedure for creating disinformation worked as follows. Every evening, the employees would compile a list of news items that, in their view, needed a response. Vladimir Tabak would personally approve the selection. The list would then be forwarded to Dialog’s various departments as well as to numerous Telegram channels working with the organization. The next morning, Dialog employees and Telegram admins would brainstorm and pitch ideas, finally choosing the one that would go public that day.

Telegram was central to Dialogue’s campaigns since 2020, when its youthful staff convinced their boss Alexey Goreslavsky that this would be the most effective platform for engaging the audience, as recalled by the administrator of a large anonymous news channel. Dialog has been using Telegram to put out disinformation ever since.

Attendees at Dialog’s meetings have included, for example, representatives of the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Readovka, which took an ardent pro-war stance shortly after it began, according to one Dialog employee. Another employee said that representatives of Mash, one of the largest “tabloid” Telegram channels, were also known to take part in the meetings. (Neither Readovka editor-in-chief Alexey Kostylev nor Mash editor-in-chief Maxim Iksanov responded to questions from the authors of this investigation.)

The blogger Katrusya, who runs the Telegram channel Signal, has also attended meetings at Dialog, representing a “network” of channels owned by propagandist Kristina Potupchik, a friend of Vladimir Tabak.

“No matter when you go to Potupchik’s office, there’s Potupchik, Potupchik’s dog, and Vladimir Tabak,” said one of Potupchik’s former employees. “Potupchik would hand out envelopes of money to [employees], right in front of Tabak. As far as I understand, they even had a shared accountant. At the very least, I overheard them discussing accounting details. Potupchik had 40 or so writers who would write posts for the network — including posts on the topics that Tabak assigned.”

Kristina Potupchik did not respond to questions related to this story. Nonetheless, the authors of this investigation determined that in 2022, Dialog Regions sent more than 50 million rubles (more than $500,000) to a company called Rokk Media that belongs to Yelena Berdova, the mother of Potupchik’s ex-husband Anton Berdov. The Telegram channel Baza previously discovered that Berdov and Potupchik own a house in Spain that’s worth about 500,000 euros.

Dialog also found ways to spread disinformation without having to pay. According to one employee, the organization would often send “tips” to large Telegram news channels, posing as eyewitnesses to fictitious events. Often, the channels would publish these stories without verifying them.

By the end of the year, however, many major Telegram channels seemed to have wised up to Dialog’s strategy and stopped sharing fake news uncritically.

“The strategy stopped working,” one Dialog employee explained. “And the channels increasingly stopped accepting our fake stories. Because they noticed that there was a large wave of them, and it was unclear what was going on and who was behind it.”

This crisis is well-illustrated by an internal presentation from Dialog that the authors of this story managed to obtain. According to the document, the “international media space is seeing a large number of creative initiatives launched in support of Ukraine” that “increase the world’s positive perception of Ukraine.” In response, the organization decided to “adapt” these initiatives for the Russian media space to “strengthen patriotic sentiments” and “develop positive perceptions of the special military operation.”

Fighting ‘fakes’ with fakes

Over the course of the war, Dialog has increasingly devoted itself to providing media support to the Russian Defense Ministry. This is no coincidence: in the future, Vladimir Tabak hopes to get involved in “more than just media” and to take a high-ranking position in the presidential administration, according to two sources close to the Putin administration.

“Vladimir Tabak has complained that in the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Defense Ministry put out information in an incompetent and untimely manner,” an acquaintance of the Dialog head said. “And perhaps after several weeks, they managed to agree that the presidential administration would work on the Defense Ministry’s communications. But now, ‘everything is under control,’ of course.”

At the start of the war, Dialog created a website and a parallel Telegram channel, both called Tribunal, which it presented as a Russian version of Myrotvorets, an online Ukrainian database that contains information about people accused of colluding with Russia or participating in separatist movements. Tribunal compiles dossiers on Ukrainian “war criminals” and publishes articles on the “crimes of the Azov Nazis.” “When Azovstal was captured and the Azov fighters were awaiting their so-called trial, Tribunal was the platform that explained [to the public] why they had to be prosecuted,” a former Dialog employee said.

Later, Tabak’s organizations became responsible for distributing critical posts about Yevgeny Prigozhin.

According to one former employee, Dialog’s partnership with the Defense Ministry was managed by Tikhon Makarov, one of Tabak’s deputies.

“We laughed at him, because it was clear to everyone that the Defense Ministry was talking nonsense. But he was sincerely on the Defense Ministry’s side,” the source said.

Makarov is also in charge of the popular Telegram channel War on Fakes, according to a source who has partnered with Dialog. The channel was created at the very start of the war and currently has more than 600,000 followers.

The website of War on Fakes claims that the channel is run by anonymous “owners and administrators of several apolitical Telegram channels” who “provide objective information about events in Ukraine and the Donbas territories.” It bills itself as a platform that “exposes fake news” while itself spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda narratives.

The Russian Defense Ministry is the “main beneficiary of this channel,” the source who has worked with Dialog emphasized. In one of the last posts about Russia’s missile strike on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk, which killed 12 civilians, including children, War on Fakes referred to the attack as a strike on a “foreign mercenary deployment site.” A post about a missile strike on a residential building that killed 46 people in Dnipro last winter said the incident was a gas explosion caused by Ukrainian air defenses.

The authors of this story have obtained an instruction manual from Dialog about how to “debunk fake news” in situations where there’s no factual basis for doing so. The document suggests discrediting the source of the information, pointing out when there’s no photo or video confirming a report or when it relies on anonymous reports. Another recommendation is to mention who might be benefited by the news, saying things like “Ukraine wants to demoralize Russian citizens.”

[outside-lookingin]

The end of tumblr

Back in 2018, tumblr got caught with their pants down and bums exposed when it made the news, the BIG NEWS one of their blogs posted child porn. All the higher up execs and staff panicked, risk of losing their place on every platform avail, they banned nudity and pornography from this site in an attempt they were ‘doing something’ about it. Tumblr has always been a place where anything goes. Well, ALMOST anything. Despite tumblr’s community guidelines we all agreed to, blogs were breaking rules daily and if you trotted off into the dark side of tumblr, you found hideous things. Scary things. You found things you’ve never seen before or wanted to see. To this day some images have stuck with me. Some images so unbelievably gruesome and disturbing, I wish I could forget. Some blogs that posted certain nonsense were deleted. Or a post was simply removed. Then some blogs weren’t and by some magic twist of fate slipped under the radar basically forever and got away with murder. Then some other blogs were deleted with no warning or no good reason.

Then a light at the end of the tunnel? As of this year, tumblr has reinstated nudity. This unfortunately has not saved their site. The good blogs that left after the great ‘females presenting nipples ban of 2018’ didn’t come back. The posters that post haven’t been posting as much. It’s been too little too late. Oh, now you’re sorry?! Four years later?!! Nice. The blogs that were labeled ‘explicit’ stayed explicit and weren’t given the option to be rebirthed to have a site again. If you’re an explicit blog, you’re dead to tumblr. You don’t even exist.

I’m sorry to say after all that tumblr has done to try to save their site, they are hanging on by a very short thread. In an attempt to regal feelings of old, this site gets goofy, but in the most pretentious way. As a feeling of a stale corn flake that no longer serves it’s purpose. We had the click for frogs thing for no reason which was stupid. Or an old windows 95 desktop blocking half of the damn page. To keep it all hip and cute for the kiddies, now we have a tumblr store selling random, useless and stupid items. What? Nonsense. And as a cherry on the shit sundae, there is now tumblr live. What in the hell is tumblr live? Well, it is nothing more then a bunch of random and i mean RANDOM yo-yo’s who have no idea what tumblr is or who don’t even like tumblr who are streaming for no good reason whatsoever. Oh, so that’s what that is. And every week after you snooze the annoying banner of icons of the most hipster jerks you’ve ever seen in your life, tumblr live turns on again for you and it appears like some horrible thing. So you go back in your settings and have to turn it off again. You have to turn it off every week so you don’t have to look at the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen in your life: Other people. Ewwwwwwwww. What? We don’t want to see other people. We want to see what we like to see. Which is whatever we want why we’re here! Art! Old time hollywood! Movie gifs! Other shit! What the fuck does live streaming nobodys have to do with tumblr! You know how tumblr’s Q&A is basically Q&A with people you’ve never even heard of in your entire life? Same thing except much worse.

Even after all these changes, additions and ‘improvements’, would you believe that child porn blogs still exist on this site? You’re kidding? Nope, I am not. You might be asking yourself, how do you know such things? Well, I happened to have followed the wrong blog which I no longer follow which reblogged garbage. I also became aware of another blog I followed that also posted and reblogged garbage and from there saw who they reblogged garbage from and so forth and so forth. Tumblr cannot possibly handle this. Or can they? How many blogs are on this damn thing anyways? Well, after an extensive google search which was literally 3 seconds, over 500 millions blogs exist on tumblr. But how many REAL blogs is that? 500 million blogs nearing 600 million? This counts blank blogs, spam blogs and blogs that haven’t posted for ten or more years. So now how many blogs does that leave? Would you say 100 million or less actual users?

I still can’t help but feel tho with so much to oversea, there is still a right way and a wrong to handle this. What would be hard about having a special ‘team’ separate from the regular tumblr team to seep out the garbage? SO, you’re just going to keep letting pedophiles post trash?

After me reporting dozens of these blogs and even an e-mail to the CEO, these blogs are being erased one little bit at a time and some not at all? Why would tumblr have time to get rid of trash when they have to worry about designing stupid stickers or cashing in so hipsters can buy 20 checkmarks that mean NOTHING. Tumblr’s priorities are in the wrong place. You need a solid foundation first before you go off bullshitting and fucking around. And to make a functional foundation you need A: Having a functional site. B: Have it run fast. C: Fix your damn bugs. D: Make sure you’re not having a whole host of the wrong blogs. And ‘speaking’ of the wrong blogs, for a site that doesn’t allow porn there sure is a lot of it I come across. Not only porn gifs from random blogs, but full on porn blogs that reblog nothing but porn. Well, imagine that. I remember the welcome back e-mail from CEO Matt Mullenweg, who told us that now we can not think of nipples as a bad thing anymore, but allowing porn on a blog site basically doesn’t work. It SEEMS to be working pretty good for some peeps? Tumblr can’t seem to weed out it’s own troth of minions violating it’s community guidelines. How do you fix this? We don’t need a tumblr filter again. We remember what a disaster that was. Liars. You would appeal a post that had nothing to do with adult content at all and a promise it would be reviewed by a real human, only to receive an e-mail a half a second later informing you your post IS adult content and will not be restored. BOY, those tumblr staff real humans sure are quick, aren’t they? But why regal the things of old. The point is, this site is dying and not as exciting as it used to be.

Some blogs that suffered a cruel fate or having their blog labeled explicit or deleted and started a new blog found they were being targeted on the new blog and still being punished by having their archive wiped out or random posts disappear. What is that about?

Knowing there is a whole community of sick blogs that got tumblr in trouble in the first place and that got us punished means nothing has changed other then a four year gap where nakedidity (it’s a word) meant your ass. The fact that it took as long as it did for word to get out this site has blogs that post illegal crap is incredible it took that long. And now at this point we find that there are still illegal posts that a four year hiatus on tits did NOTHING.

[historyhermann]

Find a Grave - It's About Time

I know this post is from back in March, but this an effort which everyone should support. Find A Grave should change their name!

Reprinted from my History Hermann WordPress blog and Wayback Machine. This was originally posted on August 13, 2020.

© 2020-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

The Hipster Historian [original post from there is here]

Find A Grave.

What a site. It landed on the genealogy scene in 1995 when Salt Lake City resident Jim Timpton built a genealogical database with his hobby of visiting celebrity gravestones. Since then, it has grown into a global database for many of the millions of dead from around the world.

Anna N Daniloff — Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Members and non-members alike can sift through the multitudes of data and find information on their ancestors and view their finals resting places. Due to the interest in genealogy, per the increase in awareness of family history through companies like Ancestry and 23 & Me, more and more people are getting interested in their past and finding their ancestors.

With this increase in popularity, there are some parts of the genealogy world that haven’t moved into the future.

I’ve always loved Find a Grave, I’ve used it since my earliest days in researching my family as a teen, and have appreciated the community base of genealogists who dedicate their time to photographing not just their families, but thousands of others as well.

But there is one thing that has always bothered me about the site, it’s acronymic name that genealogists commonly use, FAG.

FAG

It may not be quickly apparent to some, but the word fag is one of a turbulent history in the LGBTQIA community. It has been used to harass, threaten, abuse and in many cases murder.

In the past few years, genealogy and the research into one’s family history have blossomed significantly with companies like Ancestry, 23 and Ancestry putting out genetic genealogy test commercials for the general public to see. With this, we as a community have introduced a great variety of people to our much loved and passionate field.

As we continue to evolve and change into an inclusive community of genealogists and death positive folks that range to your Great-Aunt Mary and your Harley-riding younger brother Zac — we all love this field.

Note: As of today, I received a comment on my blog that said the following

“There is a new RAOGK -Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness that was started and we will not tolerate the use of that acronym. We have a photo of the National archives building The old Please if you could make that distinction in the post, so the new group doesn’t get lambasted. “

The problem is, there are some that are refusing to acknowledge this issue. Earlier this week, noted genetic genealogist Blaine Bettinger asked the Facebook genealogy group RAOGK (Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness) to stop using the term as shorthand. This one post has garnered over 247 comments and 8 shares.

I even posted something in the group this morning and it was swiftly deleted and within minutes of it being deleted, a member of the group ‘reached out’ (I use this word with several grains of salt) to me with the following:

This individual then proceeded to tell me that gay people aren’t offended by this acronym (hey, so, I’m gay, and I am) and that “It’s not being used in a derogatory way so I just don’t understand why it’s such an issue,” followed by “I think you’re a wee too sensitive.”

I’m just going to put it out there — that is privilege speaking. The term fag is a loaded term that comes with decades of violence, ignorance, and harassment. But, if I have to drag y’all kicking and screaming into the future — I will. This needs to change now.

Since we love so much, don’t you think we should take care of it? Include all the members of the community, no matter how different we are? So here is my proposal, let’s call it Find a Memorial (FAM). Why FAM?

#1: It is not an offensive acronym or term and solves that problem hands down

#2: It incorporates family (FAM) into the term, which what this is all about

#3: Memorial is a much more applicable term as by definition, the graveyard has been used specifically for those graveyards near churches or as the definition of it says: “a burial ground, especially one beside a church.”Using the word memorial will incorporate not only graveyards and cemeteries but can also incorporate more non-traditional memorials such as cremations, at sea burials, etc.

If you support me, sign below with your name (i.e. Becky K., 34, Bellingham, WA) below and tweet at @FindAGrave and @Ancestry to make this happen.

---

We, the undersigned petition Ancestry (the parent company to Find a Grave) to change the name of Find a Grave to Find a Memorial for the following reasons:

The acronym represents our field in a much more appropriate way

The new acronym and name represents all types of departures from this earth, not just graves (cremations, scattered ashes, etc.)

Find a Grave has always been a community-centered database and we all contribute from all the corners of the world. People of every gender, color, background, religion, sexuality, and type. Why not keep everyone together on this journey with a more inclusive name.

Names of Signatories

Becky K., 34 – Bellingham, Washington, USA

Stephany B. – Georgia, USA

Chris F. –  New Hampshire, USA

Kirsten Beyer – Illinois, USA

Hazel Scullin –  Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Elizabeth Ludwig – Utah, USA

Miranda Carter – Utah, USA

Megan Fincher – California, USA

Mary Rohrer Dexter

Linda Dupuy

Laura Napl

Tawna L. – Meridian, Idaho, USA

Betty Dees, 62 –  Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA

Kelly Bembry –  Midura, Virginia, USA

Casey F. – Long Beach, California, USA

Diane B.

Linda Fradelis –  Chesapeake, Virginia, USA

Carolynn ni Lochlainn

Jenifer Kahn –  Bakkala, Massachusetts

Jan Pennington – England

Leslie Rieger –  Montana

Brenda Leyndyke – Battle Creek, Michigan, USA

Anna C. Matthews –  Rockville Centre, New York, USA

Arlene F. – Michigan, USA

Deb

Sue J.

Erica Millar –  Ontario, Canada

Geoff Mulholland

Robin G.

Anna

Raymond R Hawkins

Rich M., 62,  – Medford, Oregon, USA

Charlotte N. – Utah, USA

Leah M. – Washington, USA

Dena R. –  Visalia, California, USA

Jordan MacVay – Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Victoria Kolakowski – Oakland, California, USA

Rebecca Campbell –  Dallas, Texas

Miriam Robbins – Spokane, Washington, USA (Note left: User of FindAGrave for 18.5 yrs.)

Millicent Parsons – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Holly B. — Carnation, Washington, USA

Susan S.

Teresa Eckford – Sunshine Coast, Canada

Zoe Krainik – USA

Sarah Potter – Naperville, Illinois, USA

Kat Kellermeyer – Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Joey De Luna – Bellingham, Washington, USA

Cindy Badger  – Osan Air Base, S. Korea

Kolby LaBree – Bellingham, Washington, USA

Trish Riederer –  California, USA

Heidi Pomerleau – Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Valorie Cowan Zimmerman

Audra Searcy – Latrobe, Pennsylvania, USA

Emily Schroeder – Solon, Ohio, USA

Brooke W., 49 – Sydney, NSW, Australia

Chelsy Parrish, 28 –  Mesa, Arizona, USA

Kassidy Price, 24 – St. George, Utah, USA

Diane Willey – Ontario, Canada

Andrea Weigel – Templeton, California, USA

[lesbian-shiny-eevee]

Yeah idk if I'd recommend tumblr

I mean, it is nice getting a dash that's only the people you follow, and not having to rely on algorithm, and instead just having a system where users share other users posts through reblogs which they can do as many times as they want, as well as tags where people can find the things you post

It's a pretty nice app for privacy too, from what I know tumblr doesn't really sell their users information to advertisers as much as they do on others (it's part of why the ads you might get here can seem very weird and unrelated to you), in fact I've heard when you do click on ads it's literally hard for advertisers to tell which customers come from tumblr because of how much tumblr is designed for privacy

People here also incurage privacy in general better then most places I feel, like on most social media you're expected to have an icon of your face, to post videos and photos of yourself and to not be anonymous at all really, but on tumblr not only could having an icon of yourself make you look like a bot, it's pretty incuraged to be as anonymous as you please compared to others,

there are a few exceptions, like people here who share their ages on their blogs, but you don't have to do that it's perfectly fine to keep it to yourself, the main thing I'd say that gets pretty close to pressuring people to share too much are posts that incurage you to reblog and answer a question in the tags, they can be quite fun but it is good to keep in mind how much you're sharing in those

The humor can be good here too, granted it can be a bit NSFW at times depending on who you follow but I'm sure if those kind of jokes bother you you can find the people who don't reblog that kind of stuff

That's one of the nice things about tumblr as well, it's a pretty good app for setting up your dash to be the kind of things you want to see and keep the things you don't want to see away from yourself, if you find someone you follow posts about something you don't like too much you can unfollow and not have to see it again, to take it a step further you can also block tags to make it even mroe easier to avoid seeing things you don't like (these can also count towards a down side though, it can be very easy to put yourself in an echo chamber where you're convinced most of tumblr (or even most people in general) are one way just because thats the part of tumblr you stick to, its important to consider that there's probably parts of tumblr you don't really see because you don't go there)

But, there's also a huge pornbot problem here, if you go through a popular tag it's bound to be filled with unrelated and malicious crap, and that's just the current version of it, bots can attempt to follow you, send you dms, there was a time where they would go to your askbox and send a porn video straight to you without your consent (thankfully by the time one did this to me tumblr had the function where it blurs videos amd images people send automatically so i didnt have to see it)

And the staff of tumblr, while they are currently trying to please the user base more from what I hear (like the fact they're getting rid of tumblr live thank god) they are a bit bad at keeping the users happy, maybe you could blame it on a hard to please crowd but still

As for the culture, eh I geuss it depends on what crowd you end up in but it can be a bit iffy, from my experience there's a lot of moral guilt tripping to convince you to reblog things, people will tell others to kill themselves if they don't like them (depends, there are also those on tumblr who really hate using that against anyone), misinformation can be a problem here but there's also the people who will tell you when something is a lie (to be fair misinformation is something to worry about on the internet in general)

This is a neutral statement, but tumblr culture in general I would say tends to be kind of, hipster? Is that the word? Anti pop culture that's the best way to put it, once again this could just be the part of tumblr I ended up on but the part I'm on deffinitly is full of people that are kind of the black sheep of the herd I would say, maybe you'll end up on a different part, maybe you won't, I have no idea if this sounds good to you but if it does then welcome

Idk if I covered all that could be considered bad and good about interacting with the tumblr user base, but I feel like anything else I could think of could apply to any socail media and for the most part, I tried my best to list things that specifically apply to tumblr, but I will admit my view may be a bit biased because I'm not really on any other social media other then tumblr and anything I know about other apps is from other people

In general I think that's about all I can say about tumblr, in some ways it's pretty great, I get why the users here prefer it to any other social media app, the fact it doesn't really need an algorithm is a pretty rare thing to find in a social media app these days, there's also a lot less censoring, which while that can mean people can say awful crap easier it also means you don't have to constantly censor yourself, you can say any swear word, death kill murder, things related to sex and you don't get in trouble for it, it's a nice bit of freedom compared to tiktok where the people on there expect you to say unalive, and its a decent place to find other people like yourself as well

thx

[nooskadraws]

the Modern AU Barovia Crew! Featuring @bickzy’s bard, @keiserkreature‘s gunslinger/artificer, and my warlock! 

[t00thpasteface]

why are folks so steamed about tumblr noobs not reblogging or following tag etiquette or whatever? they're noobs. give them time. when i made my very first blog in 2011 i swore up and down it was just for liking and lurking, and i didn't know jack shit about this site's culture... and look at me now, i'm a veteran.

literally relax and let the tiktok expats ease themselves in at their own pace. if you really care about tumblr creators you shouldn't be threatening bodily harm to their potential audience for (checks notes) not immediately going balls to the wall on an unfamiliar site with an infamously hostile userbase.

lording your hellsite seniority/expertise over the "peasants and hipsters" has been nothing but pointless circlejerking since the days of flashing galaxy gifs and equilateral triangles.

[psshaw]

I keep getting followed by empty blogs, and I keep seeing those posts about how this influx of kids is using Tumblr wrong. Which, fair. Personally I think most people are using tumblr wrong, but that’s because I’m an art hipster and I don’t laugh at most shitposts.

BUT. I read recently that zoomers are starting to withdraw from the “hey hey look at me” game and value privacy more. They still hang out on finsta (or fiktok? is that a thing?) but overall have seen too many downsides to the internet semi-celebrity panopticon to chase the dragon. And good for them!

So from that perspective, sure, what’s the point in doing anything but lurking. Why make your house a home if you’re not looking to entertain guests.

And don’t get me wrong, zoomers are horrible. They categorize every article of clothing into an ”aesthetic”. But if buying a shady YouTuber-sponsored VPN now leads to the end of monetizing your joys and fears, well… that’s pretty coolcore.

[mad-hare]

This popped up as a recommendation to me and I gotta say, it is a really eye opening read. We often ascribe veganism as a “white rich kid” thing when it really is not. There are some things in here I don’t agree with (I don’t think there’s any real science behind “alkaline” diets), overall it’s a good message. It’s definitely true that calling things like dairy products a “dietary staple” is racist because lactose intolerance is pretty high in a majority of the world.

Food is political, and that is especially true for Black Americans. A lack of access to healthy food is a problem that disproportionately affects Black and Latino communities — a condition that the U.S. Department of Agriculture formally describes as a “food desert,” though the food justice activist Karen Washington prefers the more apt term “food apartheid” — which are defined in large part by the nearly century-long legacy of redlining.  

Decades of U.S. agricultural policies that overwhelmingly favor meat, dairy, and corn have caused many Americans to load up on a diet rich in fatty, processed, and refined foods, but the ill effects of the standard American diet (appropriately also called the SAD diet) are heightened for racial and ethnic minorities. Systemic racism within the dietetics industry has kept Black dietitians out of the field — their number has fallen by nearly 20 percent over the last two decades — while the resulting Eurocentric view of diet and nutrition has severely constrained its approach to non-Western cuisines and cultures. Not only is there a lack of knowledge about the nutritional foundation of many traditional diets, but people from non-Western cultures are pushed toward Westernized views of health and wellness even though, for instance, people of color are generally less able to process dairy products.

What was really interesting for myself, was the division between reclaiming southern soul food as a part of culture to be proud of, versus rejecting it as a recognition that is a large factor in why issues like diabetes (and amputations from it), disproportionately affect black individuals, who have less access to preventative medicine. Obviously as a white person I have no say in this argument but it’s something I wasn’t aware of before reading this.

There’s a passage in Jenné Claiborne’s 2018 cookbook Sweet Potato Soul that beautifully captures the historical thread of plant-based eating in Black culture: When Claiborne was asked by friends if it’s difficult to be a vegan from Atlanta, she reminded them that “my great-grandparents from the South — and my ancestors from West Africa — ate mostly plant-based diets.”

Bryant Terry addresses this — along with the misconception that plant-based eating started with white hipsters, wealthy Goopsters, and animal-rights activists — in Afro-Vegan, where he writes that “for thousands of years, traditional West and Central African diets were predominantly vegetarian — centered around staple foods like millet, rice, field peas, okra, hot peppers, and yams.” Before captivity, as documented in detail in the culinary historian Michael Twitty’s searching volume on African-American foodways, The Cooking Gene, the West African communities of the Igbo and Mande cooked largely with grains, legumes, leafy greens, herbs, and onions. Meat was consumed sparingly, only during harvest time or as a seasoning for vegetables.

New Black Americans saw valuable nutrients stripped from their diet. Many plantation owners fed enslaved people little more than cornmeal and salt pork, the lowliest pieces of the hog, in an effort to save money. “Pigs were so easy to grow, and there were so many other parts that wealthy people discarded; that made it very easy for enslaved people to take those parts and come up with delicacies,” Opie told me over the phone. That paved the way for the dominance of pork — especially chitterlings, hog maws, and pig’s feet — in Southern cooking.

Really recommend anyone agriculturally minded read this, and consider to stop calling veganism a “white person” thing when we speak in western context. Anyone who followed this blog for more than a minute knows I’m not going to say everyone needs to become a vegan to fix the world, but goodness, the western diet is bullshit, people are dying, and black people who are able to empower themselves through veganism to reject another part of the system they’ve been born into is amazing.

Today, there are estimated to be more than a million Black vegetarians and vegans in the United States, with Black people representing the fastest-growing vegan demographic in the country.