THREAD: Been thinking a lot about images of the Jan 6 Capitol Hill attack, Inauguration Day, and cognitive dissonance. It got me wondering how, if ever, we could bring conspiracy-minded loved ones back into the fold. (1/N)

My initial reaction to conspiracists freaking out over Biden’s inauguration was schadenfreude. But then I started questioning why I was reacting this way, and if there might be a teachable moment for many of us. (2/N)

I’ve been pretty quiet on Twitter for a while now; most of my work is more behind-the-scenes nowadays, and my time away from Twitter has been recuperative for me. (3/N)

So I haven’t talked about the enormous amount of time I’ve spent over the last year monitoring domestic extremist and conspiracy-based online communities. The well of hate I see in these spaces seems bottomless. (4/N)

And yet when I spent Inauguration Day monitoring Gab, MeWe, MyMilitia and other places where white nationalists, Q believers, etc gather, alongside the usual hateful rhetoric, I saw confusion. People truly struggling to process what had just happened. (5/N)