Raise Your Hand if You're a Grifter

If you've read my other recent posts you might get the impression that I'm a partisan. This post will hopefully clear that up. If I'm a partisan for anything it's mature, reasonable behavior. Since conservatives do not have a lock on immature and unreasonable behavior, though, let me dig in.

That's a collage of several bullshit Tweets from accounts like Occupy Democrats, BrooklynDad_Defiant!, MeidasTouch, MayraPhotography, and Kyle Becker. They feature asinine "retweet if" or "raise your hand if" calls and/or username emojis and/or images without ALT text.

I included Kyle Becker to help illustrate a particular point, but the biggest motivator behind this post primarily comes from the left:

• "RT IF YOU THINK..."

• "Raise your hand if..."

This is unreasonable behavior. Influencer/engagement claptrap that strokes the egos of the retweeters and hand raisers. Do conservatives do it, too? You bet. But the more annoying stuff stems from TDS. Righties ask you to retweet easy-to-ignore things like election conspiracies or gun rights or whatever.

I use the term, "grifter," for these kind of accounts because, while Liberal91826638 might get a dopamine boost from LOL'ing at Trump, the blue checks make money off this junk. Occupy Democrats and MeidasTouch have direct PACs that benefit from the "retweet/raise hand" -> follow -> outrage posts -> donate pipeline. And make no mistake about it, they're keeping that money.

Now, you might be wondering where the emojis and the ALT text fit in. If you're aware how those things play into accessibility, congrats. If not, a short intro:

• MayraPhotography's username is all in special characters (unicode). For some users of screen reader software, this can be beyond frustrating.

• Kyle Becker's Tweet reads, "Here is what a state election that makes no sense looks like," followed by an emoji pointing down and an image of election results. He didn't include ALT text, nor did he describe the image. Someone who can't make that image out has no idea what he's referring to.

How is that unreasonable or immature? Most of these users are aware of those problems with their posts. And while I'd believe it if I found out Kyle Becker had no idea, I'm sure he just doesn't care – like the majority of liberals posting memes of Trump being arrested or whatever. MayraPhotography and others don't care that their usernames are problematic to screen readers. They don't care that they're excluding a chunk of people from the full context of their posts by leaving out ALT text.

"But Calliander, the featured image on this very page doesn't have ALT text!"

Exactly. In the case of posts like this, I describe that image's content in the text where it's relevant. For most of my posts, the image is presentational only.

So get your shit together, liberals.

And stay tuned for my next post, "I Hope USA Today's Rex Huppke Stubs His Toe Every Day For the Rest of His Life." 🤣🤣🤣