Weekly Scroll: Filming in the Name Of
ICE content, X's algorithm, Netflix podcasts, and a very good TikTok series
Welcome to the Weekly Scroll! This week we’re talking about how conservative content creation and real world ICE abuses are linked, about the internal changes to the X algorithm that are causing the site’s decline, Netflix podcasts, age verification problems, and much more!
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ICE shootings are content now
Where to even start here?
I have a fairly steady personality. It’s part of the reason I don’t mind being an internet persona, I don’t mind getting involved in the occasional dumb slapfight online, and I don’t mind writing a blog about online content. If you’re measuring emotional state on a scale from 1-10, it’s very hard to move me above a 6 or below a 4. I’m just not very bothered by most things, it’s very hard to shake me. In most cases, I can write about all sorts of horrible things or controversial topics and go about my day.
Nevertheless, ICE’s killing of Renee Good has shaken me this week. It sucks to think about and especially to write about, but it’s by far the biggest story right now. I wrote in detail for The Dispatch about the killing, which exhausted most of my energy for several days. So if what follows is a little haphazard, please forgive me, because there’s more to talk about but I’m weary as hell.
One of the things that’s really hit me in the past few days is how seamlessly the online conservative content machine has melded together official government functions. We’ve talked about the very well funded, very vibrant conservative outrage machine several times, but now that machine is slowly merging with the government itself. Ryan Broderick reports from Minneapolis:
During a showdown with protestors at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, I watched as one ICE officer fist-bumped a pro-Trump content creator once he learned he was there to support them. I also watched as a gang of groyper livestreamers, led by January 6th insurrectionist Jake Lang, rile up a crowd of protestors, creating the perfect pretext for ICE agents to fire pepper spray balls and tear gas at the crowd. To say nothing of the other right-wing media networks like OAN, NewsNation, and The Daily Wire, that sent video crews to the city, all of them running their own version of Libs Of TikTok. Singling out protestors and ridiculing them on social media. Olivia Reingold, one of Weiss’ Substack squad, spent the weekend on a state-sanctioned ride-along with ICE agents, posting selfies to her Instagram Stories…
But the most egregious example I saw of how tightly connected these two worlds are happened on Saturday morning. As a convoy of vehicles driven by ICE agents arrived at the federal building, a woman punched the window of one of the cars. Close to two dozen agents jumped out of the convoy and tackled her and her friend to the ground. Immediately following them, coming out of the same car as the agents, was Fox News national correspondent Matt Finn, who filmed the whole altercation with a massive shit-eating grin on his face.
But the merger goes deeper than just ride-alongs and fist bumps. We have video directly from ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s perspective because while he was killing Renee Good with one hand, he was holding up a smartphone and filming the encounter with the other. And that’s because the purpose of ICE is not just to track down illegal immigrants, it’s to create content and build a culture of fear.
