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Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Links - 30th May 2023 (2 - US Media: Taylor Lorenz/Felicia Sonmez)

Meme bibo @biboofficial: "people like taylor lorenz and adam22 have used this story to get thousands of likes and clicks on their pages and articles without once acknowledging @kittylixox or plugging her socials. Her name isn't "Onlyfans Creator" and she deserves proper recognition. This is her job."
Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz: "OnlyFans creator says when her IG account got deleted she started stalking down FB employees on LinkedIn and having sex with them until one finally gave her her account back. She also reveals what she learned about the IG ban review process from some of the guys"

WITCH HUNTER: NYT's resident inquisitor asks audience to give her dirt to cancel YouTube and TikTok influencers - "Taylor Lorenz, a journalist from The New York Times, took to Twitter on Sunday to ask her followers to provide her information on online influencers who "deserve to be reported on."...   Lorenz, who reports on culture and technology for the Times, rewrote the Tweet because she "forgot to limit the replies." The original tweet allowed anyone to respond. Lorenz has received a great deal of criticism for her reporting in the past, having a track record of making false and misleading public statements about people she has reported on. In one incident, she accused the tech entrepreneur Marc Andreesen of using the "r-slur," referring to the term "retard," in a chat on the social media app Clubhouse which she was spying on. Multiple people in the room, however, confirmed that Andreesen did no such thing... Only a week later, Lorenz accused Andreesen of bashing her in another Clubhouse chat room, an allegation which also turned out to be false.  Lorenz has often accused those who criticize her of harassment, and at one point shuttered her Twitter account to the public in order to avoid criticism."

Meme - Katie Herzog @kittypurrzog: "Online harassment is terrible and should never be tolerated unless it comes to my enemies in which case it's"
Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz: "I know ur joking, but doxxing, stalking, trying to hurt and smear ppl's loves ones, threatening them, it's not ok in any situation. Ppl on here who constantly stoke these politicized outrage campaigns want to dismiss it, but it shouldn't be dismissed. Has very real consequences"
Taylor Lorenz: WaPo Journalist Under Fire for Trying to 'Expose' Woman Behind 'Libs of TikTok' Account Weeks After Tearful Interview Over Online Harassment - ""Hi Christina, I'm a tech reporter at the Washington Post," the email read. "We are running a story exposing the woman behind the "Libs of TikTok" account... Lorenz reportedly showed up at the homes of family members of the woman behind the "Libs of Tiktok" account... Lorenz broke down in an MSNBC interviewaimed at detailing brutal harassment faced by female journalists. During the interview, she claimed she suffered "severe PTSD" from being a journalist after being on the receiving end of mean tweets... "It takes a special kind of psychopath to cry on television over internet harassment and then dox the woman behind an anonymous Twitter account less than two weeks later," tweeted Greg Price, a political digital strategist."
Taylor Lorenz on Twitter - "If your segment or story on “online harassment” leads to even worse online harassment for your subjects, you fucked up royally and should learn how to cover these things properly before ever talking about them again."
Emma-Jo Morris on Twitter - "Taylor Lorenz is a 43 year old woman who has a byline at one of the most powerful outlets in media — which she uses to dox private people on twitter — and then cries on MSNBC about her self-proclaimed victim status."
Journalists are very sanctimonious about the "harassment" of journalists. But since that's their job description they shouldn't be upset at getting a small taste of their own medicine (since they get upset when they're criticised, then go on to doxx others)

Internet Archive Appears To Exclude Twitter Page For Taylor Lorenz, Who Revealed Identity Of Libs Of TikTok, From Their Search Results - "as of November 10, 2020, Lorenz had shared more than 16,800 tweets but only has 3,500 on her Twitter page, which could indicate she deleted the majority of her old posts. Internet Archive’s stated mission is to “provide universal access to all knowledge.” The site also says people “can send an email request for us to review to info@archive.org with the URL (web address) in the text of your message” to be excluded from the site. It’s unclear if Lorenz took those actions to have her Twitter omitted from the archive."

It ‘Isn’t Journalism, It’s Pure Intimidation’: Babylon Bee CEO Torches Libs Of TikTok ‘Expose’ — Then Reveals He’s Offered Her A Job

The🐰FOO on Twitter - "If you don’t like @libsoftiktok posting your insanely awful videos then maybe stop recording and sharing insanely awful videos. She isn’t making you look stupid, you’re doing that all on your own."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "This is wrong One of the most important journalistic ethics is to minimize harm The story is not served by exposing a name, the story is served by explaining their background and motives Based on the responses to the story you can see the true motivation was to cause harm"

Why they loathe Libs of TikTok - "For more than a year, the Washington Post pretty much ignored the explosive story about the son of the president of the United States dumbly leaving his laptop, packed with dodgy images and information, in a repair shop in Delaware. But fret not, the Post has finally found a scandal it can sink its Watergate-sharpened teeth into – the existence of a woke-mocking online phenomenon called Libs of TikTok.   Yes, who cares about Hunter Biden’s laptop – and other proper stories – when there’s an anti-PC Twitter account to rant and rage against. If you haven’t heard of Libs of TikTok, you need to rectify that. It is a brilliant social-media account that finds the batshit-craziest videos on TikTok and puts them on Twitter and Instagram for us grown-ups to gnash our teeth over. You have no idea how far down the path of lunacy wokeness has gone until you peruse this account.  It’s like a virtual Bedlam. We have recently been treated to the sight of a hyper-woke pastor explaining that God is queer, non-binary and autistic. And a green-haired young woman saying she refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because she’s a socialist witch. And a preschool teacher in Florida – also with green hair! – boasting that she has informed her infant pupils that she’s a non-binary witch. There are a lot of witches on TikTok – and in schools, it seems. Libs of TikTok also features ‘throuples’ who raise their kids gender-neutrally, men who identify as women complaining about period pain (those phantom vaginas, eh?), and a trans-species activist who identifies as a werewolf. Then there are the pronouns. So many pronouns. My favourite is the earnest if slightly bleak TikToker whose pronouns are ‘death / death’s / deathself’. So you would say, ‘That’s death’s jacket’ and ‘Death went to the Prom all by deathself’. Cheery bunch, these turbo-woke loons.   The most alarming thing is the narcissism. Obsessive self-regard seems to be all the rage in youthful online cults. In the videos highlighted by Libs of TikTok, people talk endlessly about themselves and their neurodivergency, their sexual inclinations, their gender orientation. And they bark, constantly, at the faceless audience lapping up their vids, warning them to never use the wrong pronouns, or to question ‘my identification as a deminonbinary agender person’, or to step outside of one’s own cultural lane. I just felt sad watching a young woman (blue hair, blue eyebrows) wondering if her use of black music in her TikTok videos is an example of ‘digital blackface’. The biggest talking point has been the schoolteachers featured on Libs of TikTok. There seem to be a fair few teachers in the US who see it as their job to infuse the next generation with woke nonsense and gender ideology...  what interests me is the question of why Libs of TikTok has so rattled sections of the media establishment and Twitterati. To me, it seems pretty clear – it’s because this account has shone a light, and a harsh one at that, on the highly narcissistic and deeply destructive ideologies that young people are being exposed to every single day... This account drags into the daylight the kind of thing that us mere adults, us old-ish squares, are not meant to see. That is, the belief systems that are being foisted on to the next generation; the hang-ups that have been inflicted on the young; the fears and confusions that identity politics has inculcated in under-18s. This is all supposed to happen out of sight, in classroom chats that parents are told not to get too het up about, in popular culture that oldies don’t watch, and in online zones like TikTok where youngish adults are free to indoctrinate youthful users in the ways and beliefs of genderfluidity, pronoun-use, racial correctness and all the rest of it. The greatest sin committed by Libs of TikTok is that it has thrown open the doors of these new political cults and allowed rational outsiders to peer inside, to see how far things have gone. There are some who would prefer to keep the woke indoctrination of the young, so giddily facilitated by Silicon Valley, shrouded from external concern and criticism"

Taylor Lorenz Trolled With Times Square Billboard Calling Her Out After She ‘Doxxed’ Libs Of TikTok

Teacher targeted by Libs of TikTok sent death threats and lost his job - "all of the information identifying Raichik as the creator of Libs of TikTok seems to have been publicly available... While conservatives rush to defend Raichik, echoing her claims of “doxxing”, Libs of TikTok itself prompted real-world consequences for its targets, who are often LGBT+ people or teachers."
Liberal logic - publishing liberals' public videos is wrong, but digging up non-liberals' information is evil. At some level they know there's something wrong with their ideology, which is why they don't like attention being drawn to it

Taylor Lorenz's weaponized doxxing campaign against Libs of TikTok has doubled LoTT's followers to 1.2 million in just 10 days - "a mere 10 days later, she's at just under 1.2 million"

Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "Please, @ChuckTodd and @MorganRadford, do a segment on the horrific threats and endless violent abuse this journalist in the field is getting. He's ready to come forward.Michael Tracey didn't go to Swiss boarding schools or an Ivy League college and doesn't work for one of the giant liberal media corporations, so the online abuse and threats he gets doesn't count in liberal culture. Concern is exclusively for the country's top elites. Sorry."

Glenn Greenwald on Twitter - "Amazing: @TaylorLorenz continues her harassment campaign against 20-year-old freelancer of color @Ravarora1, but what she tells him here is key: you better not criticize us if you want work. This is how they keep young journalists in line & never dissenting or critiquing them"

Matt Welch on Twitter - "Beginning to think we shouldn’t have given middle schoolers cell phones, and we shouldn’t have given journalists Twitter."

Washington Post fires Felicia Sonmez following days of tweetstorms attacking paper, colleagues - "The Washington Post terminated its reporter Felicia Sonmez on Thursday after she waged war against the paper and her colleagues with tweetstorms for nearly an entire week... Sonmez took a flamethrower to fellow staffers in another lengthy series of tweets, attacking those who had posted recent, strikingly similar messages of support for their paper.   "I don’t know who the colleagues anonymously disparaging me in media reports are. But I do know that the reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other," Sonmez wrote during a lengthy Twitter thread. "They are all white - They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color - They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media," Sonmez tweeted. "Of course the Washington Post is a great workplace. It is a great workplace *for them.* The system is working *for them.* What about for everyone else? The General Assignment team? The Morning Mix team? The newsletter researchers?"... Sonmez also said she was once punished "after I told my editors I needed to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story," claimed "other colleagues have been punished for their trauma far more recently," declared the paper's actions are discouraging staffers from seeking "help they need," said "the Post is a place where many of us fear our trauma will be used against us, based on the company’s past actions" and declared "long-standing problems at the company" have caused "employee retention problems." As a result of recent infighting, Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee issued a memo to staff this week urging them to "treat each other with respect and kindness," which apparently fell on deaf ears. Sonmez continued her barrage of attacks on Post reporter Jose Del Real as well as her editors, accusing them of selectively enforcing social media policies... "We also do not tolerate violations of our Policy Prohibiting Workplace Harassment and our Policy on Prohibition of Discrimination, which further set forth our expectations for employees and are designed to create an inclusive environment where all Post employees can perform their best work."... In addition to her colleagues, Sonmez also ripped onlookers who have been wryly critical of her onslaught."
Of course, she calls those who criticise her "fragile" when she can't even read a story without taking a walk around the block - yet more proof of the projection of liberals' accusations of fragility
The joke wasn't even anything

NYT boss to journalists: Don't use Twitter to 'vet grievances' - "Joe Kahn, the New York Times executive editor who took over the Gray Lady’s top job on Tuesday, thinks journalists should not use Twitter to “vet grievances.”  Kahn, who succeeds Dean Baquet at the helm of the influential broadsheet, also lamented that journalists were avoiding “lightning-rod type” stories due to fear of a backlash they would receive from readers on social media... Kahn said he supported his predecessor’s policy encouraging staffers to spend less time on Twitter.  In April, Baquet circulated a memo to Times reporters and editors, telling them that maintaining a Twitter account is “purely optional” after staffers reportedly raised concerns over being targeted by internet trolls. Twitter has become a forum for the public to criticize journalists as well as one in which reporters criticize each other as well as their bosses. Last week, the Washington Post fired political reporter Felicia Sonmez after she blasted her colleagues and the paper’s leadership.  Sonmez, who had been at the paper for a decade, made headlines the week before when she blasted fellow political reporter Dave Weigel for retweeting a sexist joke.   Weigel subsequently apologized and was suspended without pay for a month.    Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee warned reporters to maintain a “collegial” workplace and refrain from attacking colleagues on Twitter.   But Sonmez took to the social media platform several times to blast Washington Post reporters who sent out tweets praising the Jeff Bezos-owned paper as a “collegial” workplace and “downplaying the Post’s workplace issues.”... Baquet’s memo from April barred Times reporters from posting tweets or subtweets “that attack, criticize or undermine the work of your colleagues.”  The new policy was panned by former Times staffer Taylor Lorenz, the social media beat reporter who moved on to the Washington Post after a high-profile departure from the Gray Lady.  Lorenz, who told MSNBC she contemplated suicide after being harassed and bullied on social media, said Times editors “consistently buy into bad faith attacks online and punish their journalists when they’re subject to … smear campaigns.”"
Accountability is only for other people - expecting journalists to be accountable is attacking the press and undermining democracy

Felicia Sonmez’s Firing Highlights the Limits of Progress For Women In Newsrooms - "because she spoke openly about her status as a survivor, The Post prevented Sonmez from covering sexual assault cases. It was an egregious decision that spoke volumes about just how deep the roots of sexism remain... a male journalist was reportedly suspended without pay for one month after retweeting a sexist joke while a female journalist was fired for pointing out that sexism in a way that displeased colleagues"
If you don't let women do everything they want, that's sexism and misogyny
I remember when journalists were not supposed to make themselves the story. Apparently conflicts of interest don't exist if you're a journalist (of course, this publication neglects to mention that a judge threw out her discrimination lawsuit)
Apparently journalists should be fired when they violate a liberal shibboleth once in a minor way, but they can't be fired if they repeatedly attack their employer and colleagues for a week (at least if liberals approve of the reason); it only counts as "harassment" if liberals don't like it

MSNBC avoids reporting on Washington Post turmoil that dominated Twitter - "The Washington Post was plagued with controversies that dominated the conversation on Twitter, but MSNBC made no mention of the viral drama that even liberal journalists were tweeting about.   In the past two weeks, The Post was hit with bad press, from being forced to issue an editor's note on its infamous 2018 op-ed from Amber Heard that was found by a jury to be defamatory towards Johnny Depp, to the erroneous reporting from Taylor Lorenz that led to the paper being caught stealth editing and issuing multiple corrections, to the open warfare Post colleagues were launching against each other on social media, which led to the firing of Felicia Sonmez.   But despite how often MSNBC hails the reporting of the Washington Post, the Peacock network kept its viewers in the dark on the chaos that has erupted at the "Democracy Dies in Darkness" paper... Like MSNBC, CNN largely avoided on-air coverage of the Washington Post drama except for a brief segment on "Reliable Sources." The Post's week from Hell began at the conclusion of the explosive Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial where a jury found that Heard's piece published in the paper in 2018, at the center of Depp's defamation suit against his ex-wife, was defamatory as it alleged without saying his name that he was a domestic abuser. The Post then had to update the op-ed with a lengthy editor's note acknowledging Depp's legal victory.   Then a column written by Taylor Lorenz claimed she had reached out to two YouTubers who were among the online influencers who thrived during the Depp-Heard trial, except the YouTubers called out the "internet culture" columnist for never attempting to contact them in the first place. That led to The Post stealth-editing Lorenz's report to remove the erroneous statement. After Fox News drew attention to the error, The Post issued multiple corrections and Lorenz went on a tweetstorm blaming her editor for including that falsehood in her story to begin with."

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on Twitter - "Lessons from the WaPo meltdown:
-The heart of wokeness is envy.
-The domain of wokeness is [intra]-elite competition.
-The incentives of wokeness lead the privileged to adopt victim identities.
-The results of wokeness are personal neuroticism and institutional dysfunction.
Sonmez is a Harvard grad who, despite pedigree and expectation, failed to become a "star." So she adopted woke psychodrama as a career strategy, ruining a colleague with a dubious MeToo allegation, filing a baseless lawsuit against her employer, and casting blame at "white men."
Her problem is one of proportion. She overestimated her intersectional identity ("white woman") and miscalculated by publicly embarrassing her superiors (faux pas in elite institutions). If she had simply been more subtle, she'd still be at the Post.
The question now is whether WaPo management sees wokeness as a problem of kind or a problem of degree. Almost certainly the latter. The paper will continue to be a snake pit of identity politics, but will draw the line at public reputational damage. Taylor Lorenz beware.
The interesting phenomenon here is the shift within elite institutions from rewarding archetypal masculine power strategies (direct bullying) to rewarding archetypal feminine power strategies (social-emotional manipulation). Sonmez's male ally exhibits this tendency perfectly."

Meme- "Felicia Sonmez Retweeted: Nina Zafar @nina_zafar: "As Felicia's colleague, I'm glad she calls out misogyny instead of catering to men's fragile feelings and lack of empathy""
Matt Orfalea on Twitter - "So typical: WP reporter @feliciasonmez  is now on her 3rd straight day of publicly bashing her own colleagues. She pressured the Post to publicly malign @daveweigel  as "reprehensible", forced him to repeatedly apologize, now is attacking another WP reporter for politely objecting."
"WaPo staff condemns sharing corny jokes about gender stereotypes while humorlessly repeating the gender stereotype that all men lack empathy."
Reply: "Newsrooms, in my own experience, are quite pretentious  and censorious places. Less freedom of speech there than say, an accounting office. Loved being a journalist when I was, but I don’t miss the office culture, the miserableness of which all can see on Twitter these days."

Meme - Felicia Sonmez: "NYT should not have fired Lauren @Wolfe321, especially when other journos at the paper have done far worse recently and kept their jobs. Knee-jerk firings in response to online harassment campaigns only further embolden harassers - and put ALL journalists at risk. Most news orgs are still struggling with their social media policies, letting many bad tweets go unpunished while cracking down hard on others in response to targeted harassment campaigns. It's wrong and needs to stop. Policies should be applied fairly, and...
...if a tweet truly crosses the line, it should lead to a discussion with editors, not a scramble to fire the writer due to fear. The person most harmed in this case, obviously, is @Wolfe321. But every time a news org caves to an online harassment campaign, we're all less safe."
Just a year before she started her own online harassment campaign over a retweet of a tweet which didn't even cross the line. Of course, what she originally meant was that only people she liked shouldn't be fired

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