I refuse to eliminate my Starbucks intake to save my Twitter reputation, but I thought you were our friend. — Dear Elon, When I opened Twitter first thing after my morning Starbucks run, I was shocked to see your plan as Chief Twit to switch Twitter verification into a subscription model. “$20 a month?!” I gasped, flustered and too nauseous then to take a sip of my $7 pumpkin cream cold brew. …

Circumstances beyond a writer’s control may factor into a decision to use the 100 Followers Challenge. — I am a voracious reading hobbyist, consuming anything from election statistics to blog posts that review a video game’s accessibility to disabled players. Today, I read around 30 Medium stories. Six of them criticized the “Follow 4 Follow” (F4F) challenge — a strategy that some new Medium writers (including myself)…

Toxic gaming culture exposes the hateful ideologies that appear at violent political uprisings. — This article contains references to sexual assault, death, white supremacy, and mass shootings. After the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, social media exploded with false “photographed evidence” of anarchist movement Antifa’s role as the insurrection’s main instigators, with conservative lawmakers like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) joining in the…

Looming civil war, bloodless children, and ballot mules all cook in fringe voters’ minds as election day approaches. — “Democrats want Republicans dead,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said at an October rally in Warren, Michigan. “And they have already started the killings.” Rep. Greene isn’t the only leader this midterm season to tout this false narrative of “woke” liberal hunters pursuing conservative voters. Christian nationalists, including Pennsylvania…