“His politics are guided by the platform Matrix,” reflects Andrew Gauthier, who was a top video producer at BuzzFeed and later Joseph R. Biden Jr. was working for the presidential campaign. “You always think that the movie villain is going to come from evil to evil, and then you’re like – oh no, evil can only start with bad jokes and vain behavior that are provoked by positive reinforcements on various platforms.”
And so Mr. Gionett’s story is not familiar to the lone young man falling down the rabbit hole of a lonely young videos in his bedroom, which has poisoned his worldview. It is the story of a man being rewarded for being a violent white nationalist, and for gaining attention and confirmation that he is obviously desperate.
We spent a lot of time on BuzzFeed thinking about how to optimize our content for an Audience online audience; He optimized himself.
An official said last month when he was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., For spraying a bouncer into the bouncer’s eyes, an official said Mr Gionet informed me he was ‘impressive’ and had a follow-up on social media. ‘In the police report. A Scotsdale police spokesman said he had been released on his own identity and was awaiting a hearing. Still, in the Capitol, he gave “ACAF” – all cops are friends.
His story amazes me what part of those who have taken the initiative to use social media to deliver qualified information at the moment will be blamed. Did we, along with the creators of that platform, help open the Pandora’s box?
I did not work directly with Mr. Gionet. But in 2012, I hired a writer named Benny Johnson, who was raising a voice that mixed social media savvy and right-wing politics. I thought, wrongly, that at that time only Rs. And I imagined their prosperity, as conscientious writers have done in mainstream newsrooms for generations, where they were interested in finding out the shared facts of their peers.
I was slow to realize that his interests were not in journalism, or even ideological, as much as he was aesthetic, thrilled with the image of raw power. In the tradition of dictatorial preachers, he was horrified by the neoclassical buildings, the guns and, later, the crowds of Donald Trump. And, after we fired him for stealing in 2014, he went to lead Mr. Trump’s youth wing, Content Arm of Turning Point USA, and hosted a show on Newsmax. Last week, she was cheerful of attempts to overthrow the election (although she withdrew when the violence began and later blamed the left for it). It is also Sale For the new generation of right-wingers like Rep. Lure Ren Bobert, we worked together at BuzzFeed with his “viral political storytelling” skills, which have won attention for his pledge to bring a handgun to work in Congress. (Neither Mr. Gionet nor Mr. Johnson responded to the email inquiry.)
