In which the Captain explains a change of course.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;

A veteran sailing man knows from experience how to read the seas which he sails and is alert for signals that it is time to change course. The past month or so has not been much fun. This battle with Louise Mensch has taken its toll on the Captain. When it started out, my goal was to merely raise awareness of what the hell was going on. As I got deeper into the fight and I learned more about what was really happening, the Bogwench became my Moby Dick. More recently, the crew and I have taken on the task of attempting to protect the people who this band of thugs are targeting. We are trying to run a full scale counter-intelligence operation on Twitter staffed entirely by a motley crew of well-meaning volunteers. Personally, I feel we've done a good job but everyone is feeling a little burnt out and stressed. No one is really having any fun anymore.

Long time followers will remember that I love to have fun; the surest way to get a follow back is to make Steve laugh. I also know that I've reached the limits of what I have to offer in terms of being one of the more outspoken critics of the Bogwench. There are tons of other people in the fight now and I would not be stepping back if I didn't think they are capable of picking up the slack. I'd like to get back to focusing on the other things I care about, both here on the blog and on Twitter. I am proud of what we've accomplished together and one of the real shames of the current situation is that I can't personally call out all the great people who have been helping behind the scenes for fear that they will be targeted. Think about how fucked up that is for a second.


While there hasn't been much fun lately, there have also been a lot of good things. I have met a bunch of fantastic, smart, decent, and capable people. Despite all the ugliness on the other side, I may be coming out of this experience with a renewed sense of hope. The experience of setting up this blog and trying to get stuff out of my head and out there onto the internet would never have happened without the motivation from this fight. I've got a lot of ideas about other non-Mensch related stuff and I feel now that I have a small but high quality audience willing to listen to me. The blog isn't going to be focused exclusively on the #ScoobyGang any more and most of you are probably as relieved as I am about that. It will be more like my Twitter feed was back before Trump's inauguration. Before we move the Bogwench to the back burner though, there's a few questions that I have been hearing over the past week or so that I want to address.

What in the hell is going here?

Sigh, Ok, well you asked, so I am going to lay out what I think is going on. Hang on, because it's going to be a bit of a bumpy ride and I surely am going to lose some of you along the way because, to be quite honest, it sounds pretty fucking crazy. I haven't figured out every aspect of this situation and I am going to admit up front that this just my understanding with the limited information that I have managed to gather over the past six months or so. However, you should know that I am not a conspiracy guy at all; in fact, maybe the easiest way to get me to cock an eyebrow and doubt your sanity is to start talking conspiracy theories at me. A lot of thing have changed over the past year and if the July 2016 version of me was magically transported forward to the present, he would be aghast at what I am about to write.

Louise Mensch and her little gang of goblins are running a 21st century social media disinformation campaign to disrupt Twitter as a platform for the anti-Trump resistance. I don't know who exactly is behind this effort but I am certain there is much more to it than most people realize. The main suspects are pretty obvious but some of the people that I believe are involved would probably be a surprise to most of you. I realize that this sounds pretty insane, so I'll give you a bit of insight into how my own thinking evolved to this point. Until the past month or two, I clung doggedly to the same theory that I am sure most of you hold:  a damaged but highly intelligent and ruthless fame whore is manipulating a large crowd of gullible dupes for financial gain, possibly with an eye towards a book contract or a sweet TV gig. That theory fits well with what is known about Mensch's long and notorious history. 

However, recent events have forced me to take a much closer look at what is going on deep within the bowels of the #ScoobyGang kingdom. I had a pretty cynical view of what was going on over there before I started looking more closely and even I was shocked by what I've found. Those of you lucky enough to have avoid looking as closely are probably rolling your eyes at this point. Bear with me and think about what you do know about what has been going on recently. Vicious attacks by Mensch and her allies upon large accounts associated with the anti-Trump resistance: doxxings, off- and online threats, threats of lawsuits, accusations of treason cast against media figures and respected academics. And now, just yesterday, this roll out of several enormous blocklists that Mensch has unconvincingly denied that she has anything to do with. None of this is consistent at all with the idea that the Bogwench is in this just to raise her own profile. She is clearly interested is sowing chaos but to what end?

The Captain may lack formal academic credentials but he reads widely and one of the many areas that has drawn his interest in recent years has been the sad story of Putin and Russia's descent from fledgling democracy into oligarchy. Anyone with any familiarity with the way Putin has attained and maintained power in Russia over the past two decades will instantly recognize the tactics in play here. I am not going to start tossing around Russia terms as if I have a PhD in this stuff like some people I could mention here. I would merely like to introduce you to Vladislav Surkov, the man often describe as Putin's Karl Rove. If you are already familiar with this fellow, you will have noticed some eeirly familiar parallels. If not, you really must go read the article. I understand that you don't want to tear yourself away from this blog, but I really can't stress how important it is to get up to speed on this stuff.

The TL;DR of the article is that Putin maintains power in Russia by utilizing the strategies devised by this evil genius Surkov. The article does a great job outlining the various strategies employed including: funding various pro- AND anti-Putin groups on both the far left and far right, a systematic undermining of the non-Putin controlled institutions in Russia including the press and the universities, and crippling of the internet as a reliable new source or tool for organizing by sowing chaos. The overall strategy is foster an atmosphere of chaos and confusion, in which the ordinary citizen just eventually becomes overwhelmed by trying to sort through it all and gives up, sinking into a resigned state of apolitical apathy. Any of this starting to sound familiar to you?

Louise Mensch and her #ScoobyGang goblins are running a Russian-style disinformation operation powered by a weird little cult of personality. They have built a small army of deluded fools who think they are working against Trump but are in fact being used to weaken the Resistance. That is what is going on here, in my honest opinion. If your big objection to this idea is "That doesn't make any sense, she is vehemently anti-Trump!" please go back up two paragraphs and go read the article from The Atlantic linked there RIGHT NOW.

Wow, this is completely fucked - should I just log out and stay the hell away from Twitter, Captain?

In my opinion, yes, you should. Social media, in its present form, is putting our democracy at risk. It's not just this nonsense with Mensch here on Twitter, it's the alt-right, it's Google results being manipulated, it's the proliferation of Fake News, it's the enormous amounts of data Facebook has collected on most of us...you know all this. Below is a short thread I wrote a while back on the problems.

More and more convinced that the entire social media infrastructure (Twitter, Facebook, Google) is fatally exposed to harmful manipulation.

— Steve Zissou (@SteveZiss0u) June 14, 2017

(See, I am really interested in issues besides Louise Mensch.)

Of course, none of you are really going to abandon social media, especially on the recommendation of some pseudonymous weirdo with a tiny blog. However, we are going to have to deal with this problem as a society or we aren't going to have a functioning democracy for very much longer. I don't know what the answer is (hey, even the Captain can't solve every problem) but the #ScoobyGang is just one of example of the very real threats we need to defend ourselves against. That why this is important to me and it should be to all of us.

I'm going to cut this off here for tonight and will be back tomorrow with more, including some advice for how to defend yourself in this dangerous new environment.