I am deeply grateful that Talia Lavin chose to spend a year of her life reading the Net's most vitriolic, bigoted, racist, misogynist, and murderous chat sites and forums. First, because we really do need to know what's going on in these far corners of the internet, and second...well, because I don't want to have to. The result is Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy[1], a truly disturbing voyage into the heart of hate.
Lavin is perfectly formed for falling foul of the denizens in these forums. She describes what they see: "a fat, ugly, scheming feminist Jew (with a reputation for leftist journalism)". And, she says later, "antifa", which she sees as individuals collaborating to defend their cities against violent incomers who are rarely stopped by police.
These people would never knowingly let Lavin into their private conversations (which suggest she is "too ugly to rape"), so she adopts personas. For WhiteDate she refashions herself as a blonde, gun-toting Midwesterner, 'Ashlynn1488', who yearns for a strong white husband to give her cute, white babies. In 90 far-right Telegram channels she lurks as 'Tommy', who is given a pickup truck and a West Virginia home. She promises an administrator to "stomp some pagan heads" in order to join a private channel planning a Christgang vs Pagang fighting event, whose roots she traces to the literature of the medieval Crusades. Ultimately, the event was cancelled, in part because the intended beneficiary was arrested for kidnapping his wife at gunpoint and taking her across state lines against her will. This is a fun crowd!
Which is why