3 As with birds, that behavior does not necessarily have to be rational. In 2016, the games company “Cards against Humanity” launched a crowdfunding site that invited people to donate their hard-earned cash to pay for a backhoe that was digging a hole in a field—for absolutely no reason at all. They livestreamed the digger excavating the pointless hole somewhere in America, explaining that “as long as money keeps coming in, we’ll keep digging,” In the end, they raised more than $100,000. See Laura Wagner, “People Knowingly Donated $100,000 to Dig a Big, Pointless Hole in the Ground,” The Guardian, November 27, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/28/cards-against-humanity-hole.
4 Sara Brin Rosenthal et al., “Revealing the Hidden Networks of Interaction in Mobile Animal Groups Allows Prediction of Complex Behavioral Contagion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 15 (2015): 4690–4695, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1420068112.
5 Naomi Forman-Katz and Katerina Eva Matsa, “News Platform Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, September 20, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet.
6 David Shor, “One Needle to Predict Them All: Does the New York Times Needle Really Need to Exist?” (interview by Mike Pesca, The Gist [podcast], January 5, 2021), https://slate.com/podcasts/the-gist/2021/01/new-york-times-polling-and-georgia.
7 David Shor (@davidshor), “Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share…,” Twitter, May 28, 2020, https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1265998625836019712.
8 Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon), “So we’re really concern trolling for the purposes of increasing democratic turnout. Tell you what, go to Minneapolis…,” Twitter, May 28, 2020, https://twitter.com/BenjaminPDixon/status/1266119727665029120.
9 Ari Trujillo Wesler (@TheReFTW), “Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share…,” Twitter, https://twitter.com/TheReFTW/status/1266146619805728768.
10 Eric Levitz, “David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics,” Intelligencer, July 17, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html.
11 Yascha Mounk, “Stop Firing the Innocent,” The Atlantic, June 27, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615.
12 Jonathan Chait, “The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age,” Intelligencer, June 11, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html.
13 Jonathan Chait, “An Elite Progressive LISTSERV Melts Down over a Bogus Racism Charge,” Intelligencer, June 23, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html.
14 Matthew Yglesias, “The Real Stakes in the David Shor Saga,” Vox, July 29, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow-speech.
15 Renée DiResta, “Mediating Consent,” The Feed, Ribbonfarm, December 17, 2019, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/12/17/mediating-consent.
16 For a full examination of the means by which the internet transformed advocacy and organizing, see David Karpf, The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy, Oxford Studies in Digital Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
17 Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), introduction.
18 Stephan Lewandowsky, Ronald E. Robertson, and Renée DiResta, “Challenges in Understanding Human-Algorithm Entanglement During Online Information Consumption,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, July 10, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231180809.
19 Sinan Aral, The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—and How We Must Adapt (New York: Currency, 2020), 194–197.
20 Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (1960; reis., New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 29.
21 Renée DiResta, “Crowds and Technology,” Ribbonfarm, September 15, 2016, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/09/15/crowds-and-technology.
22 Renée DiResta, “Elon Musk Is Fighting for Attention, Not Free Speech,” The Atlantic, April 14, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/elon-musk-buy-twitter-free-speech/629571.
23 I’ve chosen to use Wikipedia for some citations on controversial topics, including this one, because of the “negotiated facts” and consensus process that results in the creation of Wikipedia’s articles. See “Gamergate (Harassment Campaign),” Wikipedia, last modified August 12, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign).
