Mira Jacob Two Things I Didn't Know Until I Was Yesterday Years Old 1 Memorial Day Was Started by African Americans Honoring Fallen Union Solders 2 the Statue of Liberty Was Gifted to America to Celebrate Freed Slaves Not Immigrants Erasure Is Real You All but That Part We Knew 728 AM May 27 2019 Twitter for iPhone 372K Likes 122K Retweets Valquainton Ms-Demeanor Ms-Demeanor The-Barista-Who-Became-A-Rabbit Meganphntmgrl Panic-Boy-21 Blckrapunzel Laughingacademy Interficio-Vos Thatpettyblackgirl the White Wash Is Real One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies Was Held by Freed Slaves the Statue of Liberty Was Created to Celebrate Freed Slaves Not Immigrants Its New Museum Recounts Just Wait Until You Google What the Original Statue of Libertythat Got Refused by Americalooked Like for Those of You Who Don’t Want to Look It Up Yourselves Lady Liberty Is a Black Woman Guys This Has Been Thoroughly Debunked Since 2000 and It Does the Statue on the Left There a Huge Disservice to Treat Her as an Unwanted Copy That’s Lady Liberty of St Maarten an Homage From 2007 Post-Dating the Debunking Even That Was Dedicated to the Anniversary of the Ending of Slavery There the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor Is a Representation of Libertas the Roman Goddess of Freedom With Bonus American Iconography HOWEVER Lady Liberty in New York Is Not Based on a White Woman Either She’s a Muslim Arab Woman at Least in Terms of the Modeling of Her Face Her Face Was Reused From an Abandoned Project to Build a Colossal Statue of a Modern Egyptian Arab Peasant Woman Near the Suez Canal as Verified by the Smithsonian No Less While She Wasn’t Originally Dedicated Specifically for Immigrants the Poem “The New Colossus” Was Added Specifically Because of the Position She Occupied in the Harbor and the Symbolic Visual Power She Would Have to Immigrants Coming in the Author Emma Lazarus Was Jewish It’s Important to Fight Back on the Whitewashing of History Because It Happens Left and Right but It Shouldn’t Happen at the Cost of Misinformation That Treats Lady Liberty of St Maarten as an Unwanted Prototype Rather Than a Powerful Monument in Her Own Right and Ironically Claims That She’s Now a White Woman When She’s Not While Also Ignoring the Powerful Influence of the Jewish-American Community on the Final Version Geez I’m Really Tired of People Trying to Spout False Shit All Over Tumblr Like This Post Has 37K Notes but I Assure You That Like Many Other False Posts ¾ of the Notes Are From People Who Saw the False Bit and Prefered to Reblog It That Way and Be Mad Instead of Just Making a Simple Google Search Hi Darling Friends of Tumblr I’ve Been Taking Too Long to Do Data Entry and I’m Not Good at Actually Doing Analysis So It’s Time to Start Naming and Shaming Is a Blog That I’ve Been Observing for a While That Has a Really Interesting Pattern of Behavior Namely Posting a Bunch of Shit Like This Remember That Tweet About Olive Garden Supporting Donald Trump That Was Debunked? Well When It Circulated on Tumblr Two Weeks Ago It Was Because of You Know the Misreported Post About the School Lunch Program That Refused Donations From a Local Businessman? That Was a Different Blogger but Thatpettyblackgirl Has Circulated Another Version of It That Other Blogger Has a Posting History That’s Full of the Same Kinds of Things Thatpettyblackgirl Posts - Lots of Reposts From Twitter Lots of Screenshots From Other Sites Not a Lot of Commentary and Things That Are Decontextualized Enough to Make Them Seem Worse Than They Are or to Totally Misrepresent the Actions Depicted Like This Reposted Video and Tweets Indignant About a Man Being Arrested When the Very Specific Purpose of His Protest Was to Get Arrested It Reminds Me of That Post About Coconut Husks as a Wood Alternative That’s Been Circulating Recently - A Screenshot of a White Man Above a News Article Is Posted With the Complaint That White People “discovering” Coconuts After Disregarding Them as Useless When the Article Is About a New Method of Processing Coconut Husks That Allows Them to Be Put to New Uses That Blog Is Fascinating and Has a Lot in Common With Thatpettyblackgirl - Both of Them Reblog Their Own Posts at a Rate That’s Higher Than I’ve Seen on Most Tumblrs Btw You Should Know That a While Back I Asked for Volunteers Who Would Let Me Explore Their Tumblrs and While My Research Sample Isn’t Random It Is a Collection of Small and Large Blogs and None of Them Have *Checks Notes* Reblogged Their Own Post of a Bunch of Screencaps of a Tweet Storm Five Times in the Last Couple of Days Both of Them Tend to Post Screencaps Neither One Really Writes Much They Reblog a Lot of Memes and Both Have Some Pretty Big Textposts That Are Just Straight Rip-Offs of Tweets ”bi Folks Have You Eaten Today? Answer Quick and Iced Coffee Doesn’t Count” Is One of Thatpettyblackgirl’s Recent Popular Textposts and It’s Ripped Off From Twitter They Also Reblog Eachother a Fair Amount - Along With and Who ALSO Have Really Weird Posting Patterns Also All Four of Those Blogs Are Part of a Group of Nine Blogs That Were Created in a Three-Week Period of 2017 That I’ve Been Watching That Don’t Seem to Follow a Pattern of Normal Tumblr Behavior and That Also Post an Awful Lot of Incorrect Viral Posts and Are Staggeringly Popular for Clarity Blackqueerblog Is Not One of the Nine Created in That Time Period ANYWAY This Is All Reminding Me Very Strongly of Bellygangstaboo and Lagonegirl I Know I Probably Sound Like This Image but There Are Excellent Thoughtful Bloggers Who Discuss Police Brutality Racism in the US Class Warefare and Institutional Bias Who Aren’t ALSO Unflaggingly Committed to Having Their Own Dedicated Snopes Pages Franchesca Ramsey and Might Be a Good Place to Start My Dudes I Don’t Want to Be Depressing So I’ll Let Vanity Fair Do It for Me That Russian Operatives Could So Effectively Engage Americans With Tactics as Simple as Facebook Ads Fake-News Postings and Twitter Trolls Shows How Dangerous Misinformation Is in the Social-Media Age When Propaganda Can Be So Easily Amplified More Important It Highlights How Primed Americans Already Were for Manipulation When the ICE Raids Started Up Again a Few Months Ago Thatpettyblackgirl Was Posting About How Shameful It Was That There Was Nothing That Could Be Done a Lot of These Blogs Are Writing About How It’s Impossible for Black People to Succeed in America They’re Writing About How Voting Is Always Rigged and You Can’t Fight the System and You Know What That Goes Against Every Fucking Principle of My Cold Little Anarchist Heart These Blogs Are Full of Despair - They Look Like They’re Full of Cute Memes and Fresh News but They’re a Poisoned Pill Telling You Not to Bother Because You Can’t Fight the System They’re Not Offering Help They’re Training You Not to Bother Fighting for Your Rights There Was a Popular Post About How the Hong Kong Protesters Are Light Years Ahead of US Protesters - That Post Didn’t Talk About Mutual Aid or Sharing Tactics It Just Said “people in the US Would Never” and Left It at That Like We Can’t Learn From Each Other and Share Information Across Borders Fucking Anyway I’ve Been Fairly Quiet About This Because I’ve Been Trying to Be All Good and Data Sciencey About It but I’ve Seen This Post on My Dash Fifty Times This Week Keep Your Eye Out for and - All of Them Have Large Followings and Are Known to Post Tweets and News Articles Out of Context and if You’re Considering Reblogging Information From One of Their Blogs Please Make a Point to Fact-Check the Post Yourself Not Everything They Post Is Wrong I Don’t Know if These Are Real Bloggers Who Don’t Care About the Potential Negative Impact of Their Tweet Thievery or if They’re Weird Psyops Blogs That Are Intended to Make You Feel Hopeless About Your Place in the Political Process Whatever They Are It Doesn’t Matter When They Continually Post Misinformation and Don’t Seem to Care About Stopping So Please Be Cautious Anyway I’m Cataloguing These Sorts of Posts at So if You Want to Keep an Eye Out for Stuff That’s Debunked I’ll Tag by Originating Blogger Over There Stay Safe Buds Dammit I Got All Fired Up and I Forgot to Add THERE’S a GAME THAT HELPS YOU RECOGNIZE WHEN PEOPLE ARE POSTING MISINFORMATION AND MAKES YOU LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO THIS KIND OF PROPAGANDA AND YOU SHOULD ALL GO PLAY IT Ah the Number Reposts From Their Own Blogs Had Puzzled Me in the Past I Assumed It Was Something to Do With the Way Tumblr Runs That I Wasn’t Tech-Savvy Enough to Understand but This Makes a Lot of Sense Unless Someone Tells Me Otherwise I’m Gonna Go Ahead and Unfollow the Blogs Listed Any Recommendations for Actual Historicalcurrent Affairs Poc Blogs to Follow Instead?