Weekly Scroll: Chappell of the Holy Post
Chappell Roan self-destructs, marathon drama, and bans from Twitter
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Weekly Scroll. This week Chappell Roan self-destructed, we saw some incredibly niche hobby drama, and Elon once again doing ‘free speech’.
But before we jump in - I recorded a podcast on self-driving cars with Timothy Lee! I don’t always crosslink the work from my day job, but I thought this one might be of interest.
Chappell of the Holy Post
Pop sensation Chappell Roan got into hot water with her fans last week.
Roan, the stage name for Kayleigh Amstutz, is a 26-year-old singer from Missouri who’s taken pop culture by storm with hits like ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ and ‘HOT TO GO!’. In an interview with The Guardian last Friday, Roan said that she would not be endorsing Kamala Harris because she believes there are ‘problems on both sides’. Her fanbase - which is young, often queer, and highly liberal - did not take it well. Roan then posted a TikTok explaining her views which was also received poorly, prompting a second TikTok to even further explain what she meant. She did begrudgingly say in her third attempt that she would vote for, but not endorse, Harris, while continuing to blame ‘both sides’.
Jeremiah’s School of Remedial PR Strategy: If you’ve reached the point of posting a second clarifying video to explain your previous clarifying video, you should maybe stop and reconsider what you’re saying. The whole episode is fascinating purely as an exercise in failing to read the public mood. But beyond that, it also shows us something valuable about the intersection of celebrity and politics in the age of social media.
Roan radiates frustration in her explanatory TikToks. She is visibly agitated, gesticulating forcefully. Take a look:
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Her frustration comes from an inability to clearly articulate her thoughts in a way that her fans will sympathize with. And without being rude, it’s because she simply doesn’t know very much about politics. She doesn’t even pronounce Kamala Harris’s name correctly1. That’s perfectly fine! She’s spent her career becoming a pop star, not a political science professor. Not everyone is obligated to be a hyper-online political sicko.
Watching Roan speak, you get the sense that the extent of her knowledge is having scrolled through several Instagram graphics and TikTok explainers. In her interview with the Guardian and in both TikTok posts she references trans rights, which appear to be her number one issue. She claims there are ‘transphobic views’ on the left but is unable to give any detail about what they are. It’s an odd claim to make about the US election, given that the Democratic Party is almost universally pro-trans-rights and is one of the most pro-trans political parties anywhere in the world.
The real issue behind Roan’s posts is a common sin on social media - she’s using politics as a means of self-expression rather than as a means of change. We’ve covered in Activism is Not a Social Club how some people use politics to communicate their feelings rather than to accomplish anything in particular. This is especially true on social media, especially true for young people, and it seems to be true for Roan. She can’t connect with her audience because she’s communicating a generalized vibe of disapproval while they just want to win an election.
And given Roan’s lack of detailed policy chops, she’s reduced to word salad about how both parties are bad - a cheat code for simultaneously claiming the moral high ground while admitting you don’t actually know very much. You think both parties are bad? What a trenchant observation! Nobody’s ever said such an original thing before!
Roan, in the wake of the controversy, pulled out of planned festival appearances citing her mental health. So I don’t want to be too harsh on her - it’s not entirely her fault. She’s only doing what she’s seen thousands of others doing before her. And we, the very online political crowd, expect too much from celebrities. These are people who almost by definition have not spent much time analyzing policy details, because they’ve been busy mastering their craft of acting, singing, etc. But it’s important to notice when political statements are about self-expression rather than making a real difference in the world, and it’s worth pointing out that there’s a better way.2
Ultra-Marathon Wikipedia Drama
One of my favorite kinds of stories around these parts: A tale of people acting insane in niche communities I’d never heard of before. And we’ve got a great one this week from the world of ultra-marathons. Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about the world of ultra-marathons, but I’m assuming your brain has to be at least a little bit broken to run hundreds of miles in just a few days. If you told me that half the people involved were psychopaths I wouldn’t bat an eye.3
Camille Herron is one of the all-time great women’s very long distance runners. She’s got all kinds of records and is legitimately a star. But she’s not well liked. She’s referred to as an egomaniac by running blogs, she’s falsely accused other competitors of cheating, and has lodged official protests when other runners broke her records on trivial grounds such as ‘they didn’t fill out the pre-race paperwork correctly’. If I were a 1940s wisecracking movie character I’d call her a real piece of work.
Be that as it may, the ultramarathon world largely put up with Herron’s antics for years. But this week, the magazine Canadian Running released a piece showing that Herron has spent years editing her own Wikipedia page along with her rivals’ pages. She added an incredible amount of fluff to her own page (see below) while removing positive language from competitor’s pages.
One of the most contentious actions involved repeatedly removing statements like “widely regarded as one of the best trail runners ever” from Jornet and Dauwalter’s pages, with the justification of “removing puffery.” However, Herron simultaneously added a similar statement to her own page, describing herself as “widely regarded as one of the greatest ultramarathon runners of all time.”
I cannot fathom the level of competitive psychopath it takes to not only run and win ultramarathon races, but also spend all their free time on Wikipedia negging the people you raced against.
The long distance running community seems to have been waiting for an excuse to pounce. Here’s Global Organization of Multi-day Marathoners (GOMU) president Trishul Cherns:
“In my forty-six years of ultrarunning, I’ve never seen anyone as talented as Camille, who is so dedicated to creating division and animosity within the ultrarunning community. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia story is part of a pattern of interference. This couple has a history of trying to disrupt athletes, their reputations, races, and performances by citing World Athletics rules that do not apply to ultrarunning and multi-day running. I was appalled by Camille’s criticism directed at athletes challenging “her” records and her efforts to discredit them. This unsportsmanlike behavior is bullying and mean-spirited and has no place in the larger ultrarunning community.”
That is, uh, not the kind of statement that leaves a lot of wiggle room for forgiveness.
Herron subsequently lost her sponsorship with LuluLemon, has deleted all her social media accounts, and may end up quasi-banished from the sport. It’s yet another instance of Posting Is the Most Powerful Force in the World, and yet another person blowing up their life because they couldn’t help but post (on Wikipedia?!).
Somehow, WordPress Drama?
Continuing the niche drama theme - did you know WordPress is more than just the home of the angsty blog I wrote in the early 2000s? It’s actually a whole system of managing websites, and it even has a whole non-profit foundation and everything! News to me! But apparently Matt Mullenweg, who is something like the father/developer/Original Main Dude of the whole open source WordPress system, is in legal trouble for trying to extort something called ‘WP Engine’.
The whole thing is deeply confusing as an outsider, but here’s what seems to be happening. Mullenweg, the father/founder/etc of the whole ecosystem, runs a company called Automattic which is a very popular for-profit WordPress implementation. But he also functionally controls the WordPress foundation, which is the non-profit that manages the open source WordPress systems and protocols.
Automattic is rivals with for-profit WP Engine, and apparently Mullenweg is using his power at the non-profit to cut WP Engine off. The official WordPress foundation even stopped WP Engine from accessing their tools, breaking a bunch of websites built on the service. He did this by threatening them with a deadline to pay tens of millions of dollars and then going on a public tirade when they didn’t. Mullenweg claims the issue is that WP Engine violates the WordPress copyright by using the letters ‘WP’, but WP is countersuing and claiming the letters are fair use.
The real kicker, the funniest part of the drama, is that Mullenweg’s method of extortion was text messages. His demands for payment or else were sent via text! Kids, don’t do crimes via easily savable text messages.4
Yet Again, Elon and ‘Free Speech’
Journalist/raconteur Ken Klippenstein became the first person willing to publish the JD Vance dossier this week, and was subsequently banned from Twitter by Elon Musk. Any link to Ken’s blog or link to the document was also banned.
Earlier this month I went on a bit of a rant about how Musk’s supposed ‘free speech’ principles only seem to benefit one side of the political spectrum , in relation to his stand against Brazil:
I’m relatively pro-free speech. I actually do think the judge’s decisions in this case sets a dangerous precedent - other than a few narrow categories like terrorism or CSAM, I don’t think governments should get to say who posts on which websites. But at the same time, I’m tired of Musk’s song and dance. Independent reporting shows that Twitter actually does comply with the vast majority of takedown requests, including large numbers of requests from ideologically motivated governments in India and Turkey. But India and Turkey have right-wing governments, while Brazil has a left-wing government. It’s not a surprise that Musk is only throwing a shitfit about free speech in Brazil.
Musk caved and gave the Brazilian government what they wanted, but the issue of his ‘free speech’ principles are yet again on full display.
The supposed issue in the dossier is ‘doxxing’, but that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It has a few digits of Vance’s Social Security number, but redacts the rest.5 It has Vance’s address, which is available on his public websites and easily Googleable. That’s really all the dossier is - a bunch of stuff people were able to Google that Vance said. It’s not even that interesting, frankly.
But nobody can stand with a straight face and say that if this was a dossier on Kamala Harris posted by a right wing account that it would be banned from Twitter. We know this is true because an official ‘X’ company account has shared leaked documents from Brazil with the Brazilian equivalent of SSNs visible.
In other news, Twitter eliminated the ‘block’ - blocked users can now see your posts, even if they can’t interact with them. And they released their first transparency report under Musk, which showed a >99% decrease in accounts suspended for hateful conduct. The site continues to slowly degrade while we all hang on for lack of a real alternative.
Links
Everyone’s mad at tech reviewer/influencer Marques Brownlee for releasing an iPhone wallpaper app that costs $50. My question: who in their right mind is still paying for JPGs in the year 2024? Apparently in addition to being a stupid waste of money, the wallpapers are just sitting in a public bucket anyone with a web connection can access.
Telegram’s policy of ‘never ever ever responding to government requests for data’ lasted about a month after their founder was arrested for, you know, not ever responding to French government requests for data. Telegram now says they will provide user data to governments.
Both Snapchat and Meta debuted Augmented Reality glasses this week - the Snap Spectacles and Meta’s Orion glasses. I get this for Meta - they pivoted so hard to the metaverse they renamed the company - but I’m confused why Snapchat wants to be a hardware company?
Celebrities are now falling for Instagram chain letters like it’s 2014 Facebook.
Wake up babe, there’s a new Willy Wonka Experience Disaster but it’s Bridgerton with strippers this time.
Posts
comma-la, not kuh-ma-luh
Thankfully the tide may be turning. Climate Defiance, a group typically known for disruptive, flashy stunts like harassing public officials and interrupting baseball games to gain attention, endorsed Harris this week. Despite disagreeing with many of Harris’s positions, they recognize she’s preferable to Trump and say so clearly. They tweeted “A vote is not a valentine. It is a chess move”, and I couldn’t agree more. Kudos!
I’ve actually heard this group has a reputation for being very mutually supportive, but something’s gotta be off to if you run 300 miles in a week.
I mean, ideally don’t do crimes at all, but if you’re gonna extort someone do it off the record, jeez
Musk is also banning links to redacted versions of the document that have no ‘doxxing’ information
Not to be dramatic but Chappell Roan exemplifies everything I hate about Zoomers. Politics-as-identity-expression, hiding behind queer aesthetics while producing the most artistically boring cookie cutter pop. Canceling performances a day before because people are mad at you on Twitter. The lack of ability to cope with fame that she sought out herself. I hope she finds a better therapist and PR team stat
I *nearly* picked up a pair of the Meta Ray-Bans over the summer precisely because they look pretty close to normal Ray-Bans, but i thought the little cameras in the corners might freak people out, even if I wasn't recording at the time.
This new crop is creeping back towards 'dorky' again.