{"id":106734,"date":"2016-09-14T17:42:24","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T01:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=106734"},"modified":"2016-09-15T11:02:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T19:02:32","slug":"how-two-guys-on-twitter-pranked-the-clinton-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=106734","title":{"rendered":"How Two Guys on Twitter Pranked the Clinton Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Olivia Nuzzi and her former boss Anthony Weiner.<\/em><\/p>\n

Steve Sailer<\/a>: From The Daily Caller:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Here\u2019s How Two Twitter Pranksters Convinced The World That Pepe The Frog Meme Is Just A Front For White Nationalism<\/a><\/p>\n

by JONAH BENNETT<\/p>\n

National Security\/Foreign Policy Reporter
\n4:43 PM 09\/14\/2016<\/p>\n

Pepe the green frog meme\u2019s unmitigated rise into pop culture came amid hysteria that the Internet cartoon is little more than a stand-in for white nationalism. But it turns out the original story that prompted the panic is more or less a complete troll job.<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast\u2019s<\/em> Olivia Nuzzi wrote a piece in May<\/a> striving to describe and trace the genesis of Pepe in the alt-right scene, a nascent, illiberal political movement focused on preserving white identity and Western civilization. In the process, Nuzzi just ended up repeating various made-up stories from the only two people she interviewed from \u201cFrog Twitter\u201d: Paul Town (@PaulTown_) and Jared Taylor Swift (@JaredTSwift). …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Since then, Pepe as white nationalist has become a meme of its own sort, circulated through liberal circles, cable networks and think pieces. Rounding out this tidal wave of whinery, Pepe made an appearance on Hillary Clinton\u2019s own campaign site<\/a> as part of an effort by the campaign to try to associate Donald Trump Jr. with white supremacy.<\/p>\n

The explainer on Clinton\u2019s site features a direct quote from Jared Taylor Swift, one of the two accounts Nuzzi interview for her story.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I]n recent months, Pepe\u2019s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the \u2018alt-right.\u2019 They\u2019ve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-Semitism and white supremacy,\u201d Hillary Clinton\u2019s explainer notes, quoting \u201cprominent white supremacist\u201d Swift from Nuzzi\u2019s article: \u201cWe basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association.\u201d<\/p>\n

Months after flippantly giving that quote to Nuzzi, Swift is still having a good laugh about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the most ridiculous thing is that a random guy on the internet who trolled a journalist once is now a \u2018prominent white supremacist.\u2019 …<\/p>\n

Swift, this apparently prominent white supremacist, created his Twitter account in November 2015. His Twitter name is a tribute to Jared Taylor, a leading intellectual influence on the alt-right and founder of the magazine American Renaissance. Paul Town created his account in January 2016.<\/p>\n

The troll consisted of Town and Swift feeding an outrageous narrative to Nuzzi in the hopes she would scoop it up and feature as many quotes as possible, which is a fairly common practice among various alt-right groups to gain in-group status.<\/p>\n

For example, comedian Sam Hyde during a June interview with Forbes was able to slip in a reference to his \u201cwife\u2019s son,\u201d which in context is a subtle reference to cuckoldry\u2014again, another in-group joke used to mock people for some combination of either being in an open relationship or sacrificing one\u2019s own interests for the sake of some illusory, fake moral ideal.<\/p>\n

Private conversations between Frog Twitter and Olivia Nuzzi provided to TheDCNF show the extent of the troll, which started after she began the Swift interview with, \u201cCan I ask you some stupid questions?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuzzi quoted Paul Town describing how Frog Twitter met for drinks in 2015 to plot appropriating the Pepe meme for white nationalism. Frog Twitter then supposedly coordinated a group effort to seed the meme on various imageboards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no \u2018plot\u2019 to take a cartoon frog and make it a symbol of white supremacy,\u201d Paul Town told TheDCNF. \u201cThat\u2019s absurd on the face of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t get much better from there for Nuzzi\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n

There was no Frog Twitter meetup \u2014 they did not meet for drinks to discuss green frogs. They did not plot in 2015. There was no group experiment. They did not coordinate efforts on \/r9k\/ or \/pol\/, two imageboards on 4chan and 8chan, where memes are born and subsequently end up in the public. Jared Taylor Swift says he isn\u2019t actually 19. He doesn\u2019t live on the West Coast. They didn\u2019t turn Taylor Swift, the pop singer, into an \u201cAryan Goddess.\u201d<\/p>\n

And most importantly, it\u2019s just not true that the biggest online supporters of Donald Trump are \u201cwhite nationalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, I interspersed various nuggets of truth and exaggerated a lot of things, and sometimes outright lied \u2014 in the interest of making a journalist believe that online Trump supporters are largely a group of meme-jihadis who use a cartoon frog to push Nazi propaganda. Because this was funny to me,\u201d Swift told TheDCNF. …<\/p>\n

Swift started Olivia\u2019s interview with a hilarious, nonsensical and over-the-top description of Pepe, namely that \u201cMost memes are ephemeral by nature, but Pepe is not. He\u2019s a reflection of our souls, to most of us. It\u2019s disgusting to see people (\u2018normies,\u2019 if you will) use him so trivially. He belongs to us. And we\u2019ll make him toxic if we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swift provided the quote to Olivia just to see if she would print it. She did. …<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the interview, Swift passed Olivia to Paul for him to pump more inside details of the \u201cplot\u201d behind Pepe. …<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, imagine, some unknown high school twitter troll lying about the origins of a cartoon frog meme somehow made it onto a presidential campaign\u2019s official website as a \u2018prominent white supremacist.\u2019 That\u2019s insane,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

TheDCNF reached out to Nuzzi for comment, she provided none by press time<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One pattern you should be noticing a lot lately is all the projection by the Clinton Foundation types of conspiracies onto the high school kids on the Internet who are making fun of them. Jared Taylor Swift couldn’t meet for drinks with Paul Town because he would be carded, but to the Clintonistas, of course it had to have been an organized conspiracy with meetings in dark bars to plot strategy. That’s how they do it.<\/p>\n

COMMENTS AT STEVE SAILER<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* I like the panic coming out of the corporate media and Hillary regarding everything and anything the alt-right does, including silly little cartoon trolls. It\u2019s the kind of panic that a high school queen bee and her retinue of followers have when a new girl comes into the school and is effortlessly hotter and cooler than the reigning queen bee, and gets a group of girls around her who laugh at queen bee and co.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, queen bee\u2019s followers are insecure and panic, worried that, instead of being part of the in-crowd, they are really the lowest of the low on the h.s. coolness totem pole. And queen bee goes absolutely crazy with any attack she can muster\u2014\u201dher shoes are weird! Her ears are slightly too small! Her notebooks have bad drawings in them!\u201d\u2014because losing her place at the top of the school hierarchy is devastating, as its the only thing she has ever wanted.<\/p>\n

* Pepe was also the most popular meme on Tumblr (not exactly a right wing site) as recently as 2015. Also treating him as a white nationalist symbol assumes that all the Trump people using said meme are actually white nationalists, which isn\u2019t true. Most Pepe images even on the alt right aren\u2019t more inflammatory than Trump himself(shown next to a border fence, with Trump hair, etc.) and of course the media cherrypicks the one with the oven to show off as proof of Pepe\u2019s evil. If Pepe is a white nationalist symbol simply because alt-righters on Twitter like him, then you\u2019d also have to treat Taylor Swift, Harambe, and anime schoolgirls as white nationalist symbols. Declaring Pepe as exclusively a white nationalist symbol is classic leftist goalpost shifting to declare anything they don\u2019t like as \u201coffensive\u201d and therefore unacceptable.<\/p>\n

* If Hillary\u2019s campaign is kill-joy school marms, Trump\u2019s at least understands humor. Many of Trump\u2019s more controversial statements\u2013\u201dshe had blood coming out of her\u2026,\u201d the request for Putin to tell him what was in Hillary\u2019s emails, comments about the size of his penis, were all rather funny\u2013and probably purposefully so. Hillary\u2019s campaign is only funny by accident.<\/p>\n

* The continuous juxtaposition of Pepe and\/or Trump with Alt-Right martyr Harambe makes me wonder when we will see the campaign bumper stickers: \u201cD*cks out for the Donald!\u201d<\/p>\n

* …and then the big bad crooked wolf got the electric chair, and America lived Greatly ever after. Sleep tight, Pepe, Daddy D loves you.<\/p>\n

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Olivia Nuzzi and her former boss Anthony Weiner. Steve Sailer: From The Daily Caller: Here\u2019s How Two Twitter Pranksters Convinced The World That Pepe The Frog Meme Is Just A Front For White Nationalism by JONAH BENNETT National Security\/Foreign Policy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42720,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right","category-hillary-clinton"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t