The Bluestocking, vol 343
the world of mystical labor
Happy Friday!
Congratulations to my British followers for surviving the heatwave.
Helen
The Handle Hijackers (Insider)
“On a balmy Thursday in March 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic upended the world, a 911 call came into the Palo Alto Police Department. The caller told the dispatcher he had killed his girlfriend. He had barricaded himself inside his home in a quiet, affluent neighborhood on the eastern edge of Palo Alto. Before hanging up, he threatened to shoot any officers who got too close to the house.
The police quickly traced the 415 number and determined that it belonged to Chris Eberle, a midlevel Netflix executive. When calls to the number went unanswered, the police descended in force. Armed officers surrounded the midcentury bungalow on Moreno Avenue, a sleepy side street. A nearby elementary school was ordered into lockdown. Kids were rushed in from recess and bolted in their classrooms, window blinds drawn.
But when officers stormed the house, they found only a terrified — and bewildered — family of four inside. Eberle, it turned out, was the former tenant. He had moved out seven years ago. The puzzled officers apologized to the rattled family and headed back to the station house in downtown Palo Alto.
A short while later, a tall, ruddy man with a shock of red hair and a beard to match walked into the police station. His name was Chris Eberle, he told the officer on desk duty. He thought he knew what was going on.
It was all because of his Instagram account.”
Horrifying story about the people harassed for having short or interesting Instagram and Twitter handles: the guy mentioned above was @ginger.
I remember the first time I heard about this type of harassment, way back in 2014, when Anita Sarkeesian released a series of videos about sexism in games. She told me she was bombarded with pizzas she hadn’t ordered.
What’s scary about this harassment is how lo-fi it is. All you need is the target’s address—from the electoral roll—and the existence of restaurants which are prepared to accept cash on delivery. Then you can not only let someone know you know where they live, but also bombard them at home, meaning they can never relax. The nuclear version of this is SWATting, described above—unleashing a squad of armed police on them. (That sounds very American, but it has happened in Britain—to Justine Roberts of Mumsnet.)
One of the few consolations in this story is that police and the FBI appear at last to be getting equipped to deal with this. Back in 2014, they were often useless: disbelieving, patronising, not technologically savvy enough to even understand the complaint.
PS. If you hit the Insider paywall, and you’re on a phone, try tapping the “reader mode” icon at the left of your browser bar.
Psychics and Tarot Readers Are Under Siege By Instagram Scammers and Online Fatigue (Vice)
Impersonation is becoming one of the hottest issues in the world of mystical labor, because it’s simply so pervasive; one tarot reader told Motherboard they’ve been impersonated at least 15 times. The scammers typically copy all of their target’s photos and captions, create a new Instagram account that mirrors theirs as much as possible, and then start following and messaging people who follow the target. The impersonators—who often address the follower as “beloved” or “dear”—say they felt irresistibly compelled to reach out, that they need to urgently tell them something from their spirit guides, and offer to give the follower a reading, always for a price.
The dead-straight reporting of this piece only makes lines like “impersonation is becoming one of the hottest issues in the world of mystical labor” more enjoyable.
Also, as many people on Twitter have pointed out, you’d have think the psychics would have seen these problems coming.
PS. Nowhere in this Vice piece does the author Anna Merlan say . . . you know . . . tarot is bullshit. Or rather, if she didn’t want to insult her interviewees, “there is no scientific evidence that the time and date you were born influences your life chances, or that we can communicate with the spirit world.”
As it happens, I subscribe to the Jane Goldman thesis, outlined in one of her great books on The X Files—that fortune-tellers etc often do help people, because they are cheaper and less stigmatised than going to a therapist, and what lots of people really need is someone to unload their worries to, and someone to listen to them and pay attention to them as a person having a human experience.
But that’s not the same as staying quiet on how astrology is woo. It seems particularly odd coming from a leftwing outlet, when the left positions itself against climate change denial and election misinformation. But then there is also this countervailing tendency on the modern left that you mustn’t contradict anyone else’s self-perception. (Freddie deBoer had a nice piece saying that he was too hard on New Atheism for being full of pompous dudes, when it was an important sceptical force in a credulous age.)
From the postbag: Bluestockinger Lewis recommended this piece on one man’s quest to watch Michael Flatley’s spy thriller Blackbird. (The Fence)
That led me to this even greater piece, one which I have been meaning to write for ages (dammit), talking to people with unfortunate names: “I have never met anyone called Adolf, although I did find a ‘George Hitler’ on LinkedIn. He lives in Ohio and works as a digital product manager for Victoria’s Secret. (Hitler declined to be interviewed for this article.)”
Quick Links
“Thirdly, they say that WhatsApp is encrypted at both ends and therefore protects you from all those Chinese hackers who want to know what time you’re meeting the lads on Sunday. Politicians like it for that reason. It is supposed to be secure and confidential. But whenever the newspapers get hold of incriminating messages from disloyal MPs or racist policemen, what platform are they harvested from? It is invariably WhatsApp.” I love WhatsApp. This man does not. (Substack)
“You're not trying to sell your script. You're using your script to gain access to a closed system.” Tony Tost’s advice on breaking Hollywood, which is illustrated with a WOWZER picture.
“In 2016, 24-year-old Nicholas Perry wanted to be big online. He started uploading videos to his YouTube channel in which he pursued his passion—playing the violin—and extolled the virtues of veganism. He went largely unnoticed. A year later, he abandoned veganism, citing health concerns. Now free to eat whatever he wanted, he began uploading mukbang videos of himself consuming various dishes while talking to the camera, as if having dinner with a friend.” This is one of those pieces which helps you understand a fundamental property of the internet: The Perils of Audience Capture. The pictures of Perry before and after becoming a professional eater are really something.
The Thinking Path: how walking aids creativity (Adjacent Possible).
“No one knows for sure how many Japanese are cult members today, but a figure of 10-20% has been estimated. The fundamental problem, one Japan expert tells me, is that “Japan has no real religion”.” Some background to the anti-Moonie-inspired assassination of Shinzo Abe (Unherd).
“No Surprises” played on a cat piano (TikTok)
“In a speech, her son Eric, 38, described his mother as the embodiment of the American dream, something like a mix of Joan Rivers and Claudia Schiffer, he said. ‘She had brains, she had beauty, and she had grit,’ he said, going on to assert that she had won the ‘hearts and minds of every single person in the U.S. on the Home Shopping Network and QVC.’ He added: ‘She still holds every single sales record. People adored Ivana.’ ” Ivana Trump’s funeral was very on-brand (NYT).
Oscar Jenkyn-Jones was in a sketch group with future stars include Jamie Demetriou of Stath Lets Flats. Why did he disappear and become a therapist? (Guardian)
See you next time!
I don’t know when Jane Goldman wrote her book, but that’s exactly what I found to be true 25 years ago: I needed help after a bad break-up but couldn’t afford therapy, so I went to see a highly recommended tarot reader, despite my firm belief it was all hokum.She made me feel much better and indeed most of what she saw in the cards has come true.