The curious case of the Ominous Share
[ by Charles Cameron — a side-note on web practice — American Lands Council vs BLM ]
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JJ McNabb is a Fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and author of the book The Seditionists, Inside the Explosive World of Anti-Government Extremism in America. Today she posted two linked tweets.
This first one shows what you can find on the American Lands Council site:
The picture attached to this story has cringe-worthy spelling but is relatively innocuous. https://t.co/OmlsyEVzuw pic.twitter.com/qdVYdOO7cM
— (((JJ MacNab))) (@jjmacnab) June 9, 2016
while the second shows what you will be sending if you hit the “share” button at the bottom of the same page.
When you go to share the same story on social medial, however, the picture attached turns inflammatory. pic.twitter.com/Lzw4q8TmZW
— (((JJ MacNab))) (@jjmacnab) June 9, 2016
As McNabb points out, you are “sharing” something quite different from what you might have expected to share — although you do get to see it ahead of time, and can thus decide not to share it after all.
McNabb makes a neat use of the rhetorical device I call the DoubleTweet — revealing the squirrely nature of the ALC’s “share” button.
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FWIW, the text under the new and menacing image is the vision statement of the American Lands Council:
To advance prosperity and self-reliance, improve the health of public lands, and provide increased funding for public education by securing and defending local control of land access, land use and land ownership of public and private lands.
and can be found on the group’s About page.
