Last week, I wrote about Candace Owens, the founder of a would-be anti-bullying startup called Social Autopsy, and her strange descent into GamerGate-style conspiracy-mongering after prime GG target Zoe Quinn contacted her to point out how her startup’s strategy of doxxing alleged bullies could backfire in a big way.
As GamerGaters and assorted other shitlords whisper into her ear on Twitter, Owens seems to have concluded that the real villains in the GamerGate saga were those, like Quinn and anti-harassment activist Randi Harper, who had in fact been the targets of the GamerGate mob.
Owens has so far dropped three long posts on the subject, including one tonight — an attack on Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey that I may end up writing about tomorrow.
But much of this drama has played out on Twitter, as Owens has furiously Tweeted out a seemingly never-ending torrent of self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing and frequently delusional thoughts and accusations.
To those supporting or simply flattering her, she shows an almost childlike credulity; towards her “enemies” she displays a level of paranoia so extreme that it would make all but the most dedicated conspiracy theorists blush.
I touched on this, and quoted some of her more paranoid Tweets in my original post.
But her Twitter timeline really needs to be seen to be believed.
So here, in chronological order, are some of the more, er, enlightening of the literally hundreds of Tweets she’s graced us with since this whole mess began, starting with the Tweet where she first started to go seriously off the rails. Be aware that the Tweets here are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721195254393790465
(Hint: It is never safe to assume that anything in the Ralph Retort is true.)
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721195801779810305
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721207466168610817
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721209335309803520
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721215403494666240
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721308241947467776
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721317140360491008
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721319090015612928
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721457219267661830
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721457425082105856
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721457721095143424
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721458028273385472
This was an accusation she returned to again and again: anyone who devoted more than a few moments of their time to criticizing her startup’s possibly quite dangerous strategy was suspect, because … I’m not sure. They were being paid? They were part of some vast conspiracy? They were all the same person?
Actually, she made that last accusation more than a few times. Here she accused Twitterer @WithMetta, attacked in the Tweet above, of being Randi Harper. Or vice versa; I’m not sure.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721459981426507777
And here she accused a longtime anti-harassment activist, who could have been easily Googled, of being another possible member of, well, whatever she thinks he’s a member of.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721460797268959232
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518163830116354
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518353978888192
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518785363111936
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721518941416353794
I think she means
a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.
I guess that’s more than 140 characters, though. There was no Twitter in the McCarthy era.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721533356417150976
Here, she cites Kanye West as, I guess, an inspiration? Not musically. As a Twitterer.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721574245785059329
Here she talks about herself in the third person:
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721577674280419328
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721600063542333442
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721601517636227072
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721728934455316481
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721730057811529728
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721733117673738240
When she learned that Quinn had appeared at the United Nations to talk about online harassment, it didn’t occur to Owens to stop for a moment and consider if perhaps she had gotten the wrong impression about her. Nope. The United Nations had obviously made a HUGE mistake.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721736300366147585
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721737063603642368
I have to admit that this next one puzzles me a little:
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721759375732391936
PAY ATTENTION TO THE MENTIONS!
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721776420016504832
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721776805720494085
We are THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS HERE, PEOPLE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXVE01oOTAM
This is BIGGER THAN WATERGATE!
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721787353904386048
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721787818884886529
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721831676976959488
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721836033684467713
This next one is rather comically ironic, as she’s been manipulated by GamerGaters and others of their ilk since the start of this whole embarrassing spectacle.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/721853079096848384
The next morning she was back to the mentions. The sinister, sinister mentions.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722063672642838529
And then, in another deeply ironic Tweet, she suggested that anyone who Tweeted too much about a person was somehow inherently sinister.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722064134624436225
She promised a thorough “investigation.”
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722228142019125248
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722229357314510848
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722229462528565248
Not long after this, she declared that she was “going to take a Twitter break for a couple days.” She followed this with innumerable tweets in rapid succession, culminating in this weird burst of melodramatic idealism.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722293636885516288
The next day, her 3-day Twitter break evidently forgotten, she returned to posting in a decidedly less idealistic frame of mind.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451043242622976
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451161618505728
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451645595000834
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722451758547615746
Zero self-awareness:
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722453126779965440
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner/status/722453526996258820
This seems an appropriate point to take a break. Stay tuned for part 2, and possibly even part 3.
Every time I think the article is over, it keeps going! I can’t even bring myself to make a joke. It’s like watching someone fall down the Penrose steps.
“I was a victim of bullying therefore I can’t possibly be a bully” is a rationalization I’ve heard far too often from bullies.
It’s so gross to see her actually give an ear to vicious bullies while blocking out the voice of the people she’s supposed to be helping.
I hope that makes the gif go, because that is my face right now
So sad to see. At times, if you let your eyes cross, it’s vaguely reminiscent of Francis E. Dec. “Electronic pattern in the mentions” has an equally paranoid and delusional ring to it…
God, this woman. It can’t be real, can it?
If I was any of her team at Degree 180, I’d be looking for ways to distance myself. If i was get friend or family, I’d be seriously worried that she has suffered some kind of break.
The irony is that this will all be nice and archived on the internet for any future “partners” doing their due diligence before working with her in the future. I have a feeling no one at Westerberg’s gonna let her play her reindeer games
Fuckin’ rookie amateur hour.
You wanna know how she figured this all out through the mentions? Back traced it!
I have never seen such a rubberneck-worthy train wreck. Fascinating. I can’t look away.
She’s truly a Bennett Marco for the social media age.
No hate in her heart, but she thinks they’re “horrendous people”.
Congruence: she no haz it.
BreadandCirce:
Yeah, she’s definitely bet the farm that this conspiracy is real and that she’ll be vindicated by its exposure and destruction. It’s a bad bet, like with any “conspiracy,” and I doubt from her conduct here that we’ll get to see the modest apology that was promised.
http://i1064.photobucket.com/albums/u375/erica_cross2/police_zpsekvrlhci.jpg
Consequences will NEVER BE THE SAME!!
She really strikes me as the sort of person who has been convinced for a long time that they’d be famous for something.
Honestly, even though she mentions who she’s talking about, these all just sound like teen girls vagueposts to me: “Omg, I don’t hate any1, but SOME PPL are just SO MEAN for no reason, but I don’t evn give a FK. But u guyz wil neva stop my dreamz, so don’t be h8rs you bitches!”
I guess she is aiming it at Quinn and Harper but also some conspiracy web made of people who may not exist, so the accusations need to remain vague as to who she accusing, and of what.
This, definitely!
I’ve read all of those damn tweets a couple times now, and they still aren’t making any damn sense!
She didn’t know what Let Me Google That For You was. I’m pretty sure she’s a troll.
I mean, I guess she shoulda been kidding, but it seemed like a dead giveaway.
I missed the earlier post but I clicked to see that she believes that reporters from New York Magazine and the Washington Post are lying liars taking part in an “‘organized press effort’ to protect the reputations of Zoe Quinn and Randi Harper”.
She’s going to expose this grand conspiracy with the help of Brietbart and The Ralph Retort because she’s a remarkably poor judge of journalism.
Just seen this on twitter 🙂
*groan* I just went and read her latest blog post.
It’s all so very fucking painful.
I don’t know if she’s for real or not, but I’m definitely out of sympathy either way. My god. It burns.
She certainly is her own biggest fan.
Once upon a time, my father and I had to talk to a crazy man who lived up on the hill near our home, about a prospective nearby housing project. I don’t use “crazy” lightly; he literally wore a tinfoil hat and plugged his nostrils with dung to avoid mind control. Dad made the mistake of giving him our phone number. When we got home, he started calling us, and when we let it go to voicemail, he would literally talk and ramble until the machine cut him off minutes later…and then dial again and do the same thing, picking up the same incoherent stream of thought. He did it about five times before we finally answered and asked him to stop.
In other words, not sure if Owens is trolling, but based just on that ceaseless mental train of paranoid delusions, horribly convinced she’s not.
All the “we’re tracing the mentions using computer forensics!” nonsense sounds like someone who wants to write a cyber thriller but has no idea how either computers or spy stories work.
Well… I’ll hand it to her. It left an impression on me.
Her latest post, which went up just as I was finishing this one, is even more unbelievable. She’s completely off the rails now.
Among other things, she cites … Matt Forney and Davis Aurini as if they were reliable judges of journalistic ethics. No, really.
And there’s a section on Jeff Bezos that is like a really bad episode of the X Files.
The Twitterverse: It’s free and open to everyone, no matter their lack of logic. People who used to get no attention now might get all kinds of attention, which is not necessarily a good thing for the person demanding that attention.