The Thread was so serious about anonymity that he hired a different voice actor every episode. People had found some of the actors, and every one had been contacted and paid anonymously. He didn’t turn on ads, and there was no way to send him money, so, legally, The Thread didn’t even exist. The Thread understood how fame worked and had run with it.
It was also genius marketing because it felt so mysterious. Like, was this person famous? Was he wealthy? Was he someone I’d met? But it was also something I understood all too well. I was attacked all the time for being a professional manipulator of public opinion, and that makes sense. I’d made a video a few months after the warehouse about how kindness was important and people on the internet were too cruel to each other. I maybe went a little bit overboard with the criticism, and the response was . . . a lot.
Turns out, there are lots of people who are unkind not just because it’s fun, but because they believe it’s the right strategy. And getting on those people’s bad side is unpleasant because of how they believe very strongly that being a dick is a vital part of making the world a better place. And hell, who knows, maybe they’re right.
“Yeah, I mean, he’s probably a white dude,” Jason replied.
“But you’re right that he’s able to say things he wouldn’t otherwise be able to say by removing his identity. It’s fascinating and also a little terrifying.”
“And also already being copied,” Jason said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, there’s a channel called Common Dissent that has the exact same MO. All animated, anonymous host, no ads. He doesn’t respond to anything The Thread says directly, but he’s gathering steam the same way, and in a different direction. It’s grown a lot in the last few weeks.”
“I guess we’re at the point in history where being a person has become a liability. Better to just be a disembodied jumble of ideas.”
“And then you just walk away and let other people argue on your behalf.”
“‘Other’ people or computer programs pretending to be other people.”
It was true, The Thread had paid for an analysis that had proved that a lot of arguments happening in the comments of his videos and other video essays were being had by combination human/AI content farms . . . and then he made a video about it. The battle for hearts and minds was being waged, in part, by beings without hearts or minds.
Daniel Judson
@DetachedNihilist1
Is death just god moderating the comments section? I know it’s not PC to say, but I for one am enjoying April May’s shadowban. Too Soon? Lol
2.4K replies 894 retweets 6.3K likes
CARSON COMMUNICATIONS OUTAGES CONTINUE
If your internet service has been spotty the last couple weeks, you’re not alone. Internet outages have been rippling across South Jersey for weeks now, with Vineland and surrounding areas being the most affected, but complaints being registered as far north as Cherry Hill.
“Part of the value we provide customers is high-speed internet,” said Derek Housen, owner of Wolton’s Dream Bean Café. “We haven’t had stable internet in six weeks. I’m paying my bill, but I’m not getting service. I’ve taken to setting up a hotspot with my phone, but the data charges are out of hand.”
Carson Communications, the company most affected, has been in communication with customers, but service remains inconsistent and slow. “We have had technicians in the field every day for over a month now,” said a spokesperson for Carson. “We are aware that we are not providing the level of service we aspire to.”
Though representatives did not confirm this, several Carson customers told us that they have been receiving partial refunds for periods of significant outage.
MAYA
My hands are huge and made of metal, and they’re scraping away at the scraps of a collapsed building. I am giant and joyous in my strength. My invincible fingers dig into the brick and steel, and it feels like digging through balls in a McDonald’s ball pit. I am unstoppable. And then I look down and see that the dust and wood and crumbling bits of brick are wet with blood. I lean down to look and see April’s eyes and snap awake.
I used to puke when I had that dream. It had been coming less often now, and I’d been more able to handle the fallout. But I still shook, sweat coating my skin. I pulled the sheets off of my body and then wrapped myself around them, to feel like I was holding something. Or maybe just to feel like there was something else in the world besides the emptiness of failure. There was no way I was going back to sleep.
Here was my working theory that I had gleaned from conversations on the Som.
Cable internet slows down when more users are on the system, but this shouldn’t be system-wide. Basically, cable internet is like a giant underground tree with branches that are sometimes physical, sometimes coded into the frequencies being used in the signal. Multiple customers use the same frequencies and the same branches, but if one branch is over capacity, all the other branches are completely unaffected.
But in South Jersey, all of the branches were being affected, turning on and off at random like a string of Christmas lights. My theory was that, if this had something to do with Carl, which every other conspiracy theorist on the Som also believed, there would be some pattern that might lead us to where or how all that extra bandwidth was being used.
I figured if I could follow some vans around for a couple weeks and map out where the problem spots were, maybe I could find some kind of pattern.
My first day of this was a learning experience. I had thought that I would go to their dispatch office and maybe follow vans from there, but I actually spotted one before I even got there. I did a quick U-turn and
