Invisible Rulers

23 Steven W. Webster, Adam N. Glynn, and Matthew P. Motta, “Partisan Schadenfreude and Candidate Cruelty,” Political Psychology, August 23, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12922.

24 Yoel Roth, “Trump Attacked Me. Then Musk Did. It Wasn’t an Accident,” New York Times, September 18, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/opinion/trump-elon-musk-twitter.html.

25 Sara Dorn, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Assails Ex-Twitter Execs for Banning Her Account—Accuses One of Endorsing Child Sexualization,” Forbes, February 8, 2023, https://www.forbes.com /sites/saradorn/2023/02/08/marjorie-taylor-greene-assails-ex-twitter-execs-for-banning-her-account-accuses-yoel-roth-of-endorsing-child-sexualization/?sh=47cdc9153848.

26 Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conpiracism and the Assault on Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 56.

27 Adrian Blanco and Amy Gardner, “Where Republican Election Deniers Are on the Ballot Near You,” Washington Post, updated November 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2022/election-deniers-running-for-office-elections-2022.

28 Karen Yourish, Larry Buchanan, and Denise Lu, “The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results,” New York Times, updated January 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html.

29 Greta Bedekovics and Ashleigh Maciolek, “Election Deniers Lost Key Races for Federal and State Offices in the 2022 Midterm Elections,” Center for American Progress, November 22, 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/election-deniers-lost-key-races-for-federal-and-state-offices-in-the-2022-midterm-elections.

30 Elizabeth Dwoskin and Jeremy B. Merrill, “Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ Fueled a New Generation of Social Media Influencers,” Washington Post, September 20, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/20/social-media-influencers-election-fraud.

31 Elizabeth Dwoskin (@lizzadwoskin), “NEW: Been working for months on this data project w/@jeremybmerrill. The ‘big lie’ wasn’t just a plan to overturn the election. It was massive clout-building exercise that spawned a generation of influencers,” Twitter, September 20, 2022, 7:20 a.m., https://twitter.com/lizzadwoskin/status/1572229291496308737?s=20.

32 Jesse Singal, “Teen Fiction Twitter Is Eating Its Young,” Reason, June 2019, https://reason.com/2019/05/05/teen-fiction-twitter-is-eating-its-young; Katy Waldman, “In Y.A., Where Is the Line Between Criticism and Cancel Culture?,” New Yorker, March 21, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-the-line-between-criticism-and-cancel-culture.

33 Nick Popli, “How M&M’s Became the Latest Flash Point in the Culture Wars,” Time, January 23, 2023, https://time.com/6249551/m-m-candy-mascots-culture-wars.

34 Tyler Kingkade et al., “How an Urban Myth About Litter Boxes in Schools Became a GOP Talking Point,” NBC News, October 14, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litter-boxes-schools-became-gop-talking-point-rcna51439.

35 Many, many things attributed to Mark Twain on the internet were not actually said by Mark Twain.

36 Venkatesh Rao, “The Internet of Beefs,” Ribbonfarm, January 16, 2020, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs.

37 Petter Törnberg, “How Digital Media Drive Affective Polarization Through Partisan Sorting,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 42 (October 2022), https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207159119.

38 University of Amsterdam, “Social Media Polarizes Politics for a Different Reason Than You Might Think,” Phys.org, October 12, 2022, https://phys.org/news/2022-10-social-media-polarizes-politics.html.

39 Victoria A. Parker et al., “The Ties That Blind: Misperceptions of the Opponent Fringe and the Miscalibration of Political Contempt,” PsyArXiv, October 1, 2021, https://doi:10.31234/osf.io/cr23g.

40 Ruby Edlin and Lawrence Norden, “Poll of Election Officials Shows High Turnover amid Safety Threats and Political Interference,” Brennan Center for Justice, April 25, 2023, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/poll-election-officials-shows-high-turnover-amid-safety-threats-and.

41 Jim Hoft, “What’s Up, Ruby?… BREAKING: Crooked Operative Filmed Pulling Out Suitcases of Ballots in Georgia IS IDENTIFIED,” Gateway Pundit, December 3, 2020, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20201204030147/https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/ruby-breaking-crooked-democrat-filmed-pulling-suitcases-ballots-georgia-identified. Rudy Giuliani, who had served as Trump’s personal lawyer, participated in defaming the women, who were awarded $148 million in damages in a defamation case against him. Eileen Sullivan, “Jury Orders Giuliani to Pay $148 Million to Election Workers He Defamed,” New York Times, December 15, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-defamation-trial-damages.html.