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.
^ That blog post you mention, David. That’s the one.
The one where she calls the WaPo journalist a smug b– for not replying to her email immediately. The one where the anti-bullying activist explains how she used her thousand or so Twitter followers to hound the same journalist.
Physical pain.
*guess she coulda been kidding. Dammit all.
Yeah, she’s definitely immature and suffering from a bad case of Protagonist Syndrome: “I’m the hero of my own story, so I can tell who the good guys are. They’re the ones agreeing with me. The bad guys, the ones disagreeing with me, aren’t evil, they’re just misguided because they don’t know how to listen… to me!” Basically, she seems like one of the worst types of personalities to run a startup, down there with “lazy, greedy, and immoral.”
I’m so confused. I want closure.
Can I just say that I am among the folks who sincerely hope this is just an elaborate troll? Because my faith in humanity can’t take a blow this huge.
I can only hope that her “investigation” turns up the truth, and she’ll be mature enough to see that she’s going after the wrong damn people, and that her doxxing company is a super bad idea, because just like Candice herself, it’s so easily corruptible.
You know where else I’ve heard it? GamerGators. And other bullies who inhabit the many niches of nerddom.
They’re so damn convinced that because they were bullied for their hobbies at some point in their lives, that they’re totally exempt from being shitty people themselves.
Hell, there are lots of assholes in nerddom who have told themselves that they can’t get a girlfriend because they’re nerdy, but in the same breath will demonize and harass nerdy women who are sharing the niche with them.
It is really kind of tragic. I get the sense she meant well, but fell down the classic rabbit hole of assuming her proficiency in one thing made her proficient in other things, so she failed to do any research and then became super defensive when people pointed out her horrible approach…and now she is psychologically trapping herself, running away from any chance of accepting she may be in the wrong.
Her website profile says she dreams of a world without plastic, and she happily announced she’s set to be interviewed by Breitbart news. At this rate she’ll be endorsing Trump next week.
People in finance go to jail. lol, ok .
I know someone like that, and he is absolutely impossible to reason with. He’ll jump to an over-hasty conclusion and stick to it come hell or high water, no matter how much court-worthy evidence emerges to show that he’s been barking up the wrong tree.
The only reason I waste time on him is because it’s sometimes very entertaining watching him jump through so many elaborate hoops in order to rubbish any suggestion that he might be wrong. But for someone who claims to have a PhD, he really is shockingly intellectually dishonest.
Sadly I hope she is not a troll, because if she is a troll she might have the technical skills to actually harm someone, but if she is as ignorant of the net as she appears to be, she’s more of a danger to herself than anyone else. I cant help but feel sorry for her. Even if it is trolling, there’s something very wrong with her to spend so much time on… this. whatever the hell is going on…
Watching Social Autopsy from around the time the Kickstarter first launched has been one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had. I still waver between thinking she is someone extremely naive, and thinking she is some elaborate troll just pretending. Regardless, by stirring up the muck again like this and painting a target on folks like Zoe Quinn once more, she’s dangerous, even if she never does manage to launch her planned site.
The #notyourshield sock puppeteers must be freaking ecstatic right now. What a mess.
I don’t do Twitter, and I’m sure there’s good stuff there. But stuff like this makes it seem like a substitute for shouting randomly at traffic, with the advantage that you don’t need to go outdoors to do it.
Oh God, all of the people submitted to the site are listed by their full names with a photo. Not even half assed password protection.
*Whines, holds head* sad and pissed and worried for people all at once
This is one of those situations where I can’t enjoy myself watching the carnage because I’m cringing for the person involved. When will she finally realize she’s being used by the alt right? I’m guessing it’ll be a while, because every shitlord who’s aware of her can amuse themselves by sending her abusive tweets, knowing she’ll blame ‘her enemies’.
Does anyone know if Harper or Quinn have actually bothered with her since their initial exchanges?
Those last couple tweets like, “For some reason people are surprised that I thought I could end online bullying while being entirely ignorant of everything about online bullying. Well, excu-u-use me!”
If nothing else, it proves that she was absolutely the wrong person to ever lead an anti-bullying initiative.
@Jody
Be aware there’s an account using the capital letter i for lower-case l trick.
https://twitter.com/sociaicoroner – posted that LMGTFY was malware because “someone takes over your computer”.
https://twitter.com/socialcoroner – did not do that (that I could see)
Oh the projection!
Can I just point out that Candace Owen a few months ago made a post about Kesha, calling her a liar, and accusing her defenders of being “emotional”. Furthermore, she says REAL feminists wouldn’t be so emotional.
At this point, my best bet is that she’s just a terrible person with bad judgement.
The most tinfoily part so far is the stuff about Jeff Bezos. Holy shit. Her reasoning:
Caitlin Dewey writes for the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2014. Jeff Bezos also owns Amazon. Someone released fan fiction about Zoe Quinn on Amazon in 2014. Therefore… Benghazi?
I tried reading her twitter, but even with the context most of it just made. no. sense. I’m hoping it will make more sense after some sleep, but right now I’m just horrified by the number of people she’s going to fuck up with her melt down/tantrum.
TW for various things in this comment. Sorry!
If only she would take the time to check out what her supporters in the comment sections have been saying in previous comments elsewhere. For example, the commenter “Dave The Sandman” is a frequent commenter over at the Ralph Retort, where he has made such lovely comments as:
Yeah, these guys are so anti-bullying. So sincere about that.
Most of the commenters have been clever enough to set their Disqus profiles to private. However, a few interesting things can be noted about the commentariat:
– Dean Esmay is there.
– People are encouraging her to start attacking Sarkeesian next.
– Futrelle has been mentioned.
– Many, many, many of the commenters are brand new accounts with only a few comments. They have such names as “Reasonable Democrat”, “Dean Jay”, “The Puoltryarchy”, “NoNamesLeft”. And, of course, generic female name with stock photo as avatar.
– The commenter “whatever” is a Slyme Pit and Friendly Atheist hangaround.
I really hope that someday she realizes that she was taking advice from the wrong people. Whether she’s clueless or a troll, she’s done a fabulous job of embarrassing herself in public.
This is why I’m convinced she’s going to hop aboard the alt-right gravy train. No shorter path to easy fame at this point.
Online bullying is increasingly making the news, so I guess we’ll see more organisations springing up claiming to have ways of dealing with it. Some will be led by smart, well informed people with good ideas, which may or may not work. Some will be cynical attempts to make money from misery. And some will be honest but deluded. So I think this is not the last time we’ll see a train wreck in this space.