First thing I wanted to talk about, which is something I noticed on my Twitter about five days ago. I first noticed I was getting a lot of pictures of David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. Never really liked the Rolling Stones. Really loved David Bowie from the age of about eight onwards. And that got me thinking, why am I getting this stuff on Twitter?

And then I realized, ah, for some reason, I had cut off images. There was a setting in Twitter which I used as part of my incoming troll radar to block images. And so I would never see images on my Twitter feed, just text. And suddenly that disappeared. And then I looked for the setting and the setting had disappeared. And then I Googled it and I discovered two days before I worked this out, because I was wondering why am I, what is different about this experience? And what is different is I’m getting two channels of information and I’m used to only getting one channel of information on Twitter, which is just text.

I would click sometimes on images to look at them if I wanted. But basically, it was my only way of controlling what was going into my mind, into my brain. And they got rid of the setting inside the app which is obviously very annoying because clearly there’s an intelligence behind this and what the intelligence behind this is trying to do is involuntarily feed us with visual memes which can have a greater impact on imprinting on our mind and printing archetypes on our mind. And so obviously that’s very annoying that I as the consumer who actually pay because it’s my main medium for initial writing.

And the algorithm trolls me and I troll it and it inspires it. I’ve trained the algorithm so that it hits me with my for you feed is, every now and again there’s a bit of a change but it’s basically exactly how I, I’m pretty happy with it the way it is especially if I can cut out the images. And because of that, I pay for it. And it’s extremely annoying to have my experience determined in this way. That’s one thing, because I think of it as a violation of my right as a consumer or to have the experience that I want. And then I think also, what’s behind it? Why is the intelligence behind the algorithm trying to feed me images which I don’t want to see. It should be no skin off their nose. And it’s very annoying.

So I worked out a solution for this, which I now have. I have quite a few different types of browsers on my phone, which I use for different applications. I use the DuckDuckGo browser now for YouTube stuff. It’s particularly well optimized for that and it doesn’t keep any of the cookies and I generally don’t have to sign in. And so, for instance, I was watching the great Chuck Pfarrer and Alan Brewer today on YouTube through DuckDuckGo.

But now for Twitter, I am fighting my instinct, which is to always go for the app, but I now go for the, it’s on Firefox, and that cuts out the images. Unfortunately, it still has video, but it’s easy for me to scan through there. And I’ve been doing this now for about five days. So I just say that in the context of incoming troll radar, how do I control the information coming into my brain, coming into my mind, because we’re all dealing with so much of it. And the visual, the image element of it is something I can do without because I work in text mostly. I always add images to my writing and I consider myself mainly a writer, but I do use different forms of media. So I just suggest that if other people have found this lack of a setting, that’s my practical solution to it. And so far it’s working quite well.

China and Russia: Territorial Ambitions

I noticed a tweet by Jay and Keeve the other day where he, Jay was referring to this. We’re seeing this story appearing more and more about the China coming in to take a bite out of China, taking a bite out of Russia. And I think it was actually mentioned on Times Radio today, which generally I don’t listen to, but I have started. They were interviewing William Taylor, who was the US ambassador to Ukraine in the late 90s and then the charge d’affaires after an acting ambassador after Donald and Lev Parnas and co got rid of Maria Jovanovich who I met in Dnipro once and who was really amazing really engaged with the granular aspect of what was going on in Ukraine. And so I listened to that interview. And even on that, which is quite mainstream, they’re referring to this idea that China is now talking about taking parts of Russia.

And I think maybe it was even Genesis Man raised it today on their show about how there’s a game, there’s actually a game now in China developed, which is, you know, which part of Russia do you want? So I can really get behind that. But Jay and Keeve made a point which I agreed with because when I first heard about this latest round of scary stories about China, not scary from our perspective, but scary for the Russians taking parts of Russia in this latest round. It was about two months ago by Constantine inside Russia. And as some of you will know, I have a slightly love-hate relationship with him because I am suspicious of him. Despite that I found I find him engaging some of the time and and and a good source of information and again going back to the incoming troll radar and one of the algorithm one of the parts of my algorithm which which I work on is if I find myself wondering about the authenticity of some account then the fact of me wondering about the authenticity, I now use as an indicator that probably I should be ultra careful with them.

And so I’m very careful about Constantine in Russia, inside Russia. However, he, about two months ago, he featured as one of his news stories on his show about how the Chinese media was running these stories about China getting ready to take parts of Russia. And I thought to myself, because I am slightly suspicious for a number of reasons, and we can talk about that again. Because of that, I was wondering, why is he telling us this? And what is the perspective? And my hypothesis was, this is a Russian operation attempting to scare us with the idea that China’s going to come in and take a bite out of Russia. So this is Russia trying to put itself in the place of the West and basically say, you know, we’re protecting, we’re keeping parts of China inside the white supremacist European envelope.

And we’re doing you all a service. And if you don’t give us what we want, then China’s going to come and take in a bite of Russia. Now, of course, and Jay and Keev, seem to come to this conclusion as well. Now, if it is true that there is this game which is approved in China, and any of us who know Russia very well and Russians very well understand they are, it is their primordial fear is of China, not of Europe. And so it’s completely plausible that China itself is generating some of these stories. But it’s equally plausible that Russia, in their madness, think that they’re going to somehow scare us into sacrificing Ukraine because we don’t want China to take Yakutia. And so I just wanted to raise, yeah, so I suppose I start from the, I want to avoid being automatically manipulated, having my manner pulated, moved up and down in such a way that I can’t control it.

Mental Hygiene and Visual Images

Visual images have such a powerful impact on our consciousness that there’s many things you can’t unsee. And so if anyone writes trigger warning or they say, oh, this is awful, and then they kind of show it to you, like if I scan in the text and I see that I never click, you know, click on it. I remember, for instance, when the Christchurch shooting, that shooter in Christchurch, I remember I was working in Dnipro and going to a meeting in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with a colleague, a Turkish colleague, Turkish Canadian colleague, and all the way there, he was watching this first-person shooter video. And then I had another Kazakh colleague who, when we got back to the office, he said, oh, yeah, I was watching it as well. And then the next day, my Kazakh colleague said, I’m being haunted by this imagery of this thing, and I was watching it. And I was like, why did you watch it?

And so obviously that’s a more extreme case than a lot of the stuff that’s coming across our feed. I don’t need to see it to understand that someone else has seen it, like Chuck Pfarrer, for instance. I’m pretty sure he watches a lot of this stuff. I know, for instance, Denys Davidof, who I find to be a good source. I go through stages with him. He watches all of the videos. And I trust his judgment on the granular, the tactical level. If he says to me, this group of Russians were unalived, as he nicely puts it, I don’t need to see this imagery myself.

So it’s about mental hygiene and and it’s an intrinsic part of the Disinfolklore analytical method. And the code of positive trolls is this idea which I have to try and, if we’re operating in this space, as all of us are, we’ve made an active choice to remain with Twitter despite everything. And I’m sure not a week goes by when we don’t think, why am I doing this to myself?

But since we have chosen to dance with the devil, that doesn’t mean that we have to take everything on board. And I just found cutting out the images didn’t affect my Twitter experience in any negative way. And it was a good shorthand way of modulating what was going into my mind and moderating what was going into my mind. And when I was googling it I saw that it was a big thing when this was brought in to get rid of media previews in 2013 and then somehow so it’s been there for like 12 years and now suddenly it just disappears, which is very very annoying.

I just raise it here because, as I say, your incoming troll radar, whether it’s from your best friend sharing imagery from the Gaza Strip or Instagram or indeed from Ukraine, because obviously one of the reasons Russia does these horrific attacks ...

Podcast & Pensées 127: Russia’s Antisemitic Agitprop. Mental Hygiene and Visual Images.