The Winter Silly Season

#PizzaTate // Chemtrails II: Winter Boogaloo // Dead Internet Redux

#PizzaTate

The last week of 2022 ended with one of the most epic moments on the Internet in recent years. Online misogynist, Andrew Tate, was arrested following a spat with environmentalist e-celeb,  Greta Thunberg. The story, which has been recounted numerous times across different platforms, was that Tate tried to flex his wealth on Thunberg by asking for her email so he could let her know the emissions outputs of his 33 supercars. Greta responded with a “small dick energy” joke - which everyone agrees was humiliating for Tate. Tate, being a well-adjusted Alpha male, decided against being magnanimous in defeat and published a two-minute rebuttal video on Twitter, in which pizza boxes were placed on the table, joking that they were not to be recycled. Tate was subsequently arrested by Romanian police on sex trafficking offences after using the self-doxing pizza boxes to triangulate Tate’s location in the country. “This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes”, Tweeted Greta - a fable to mark the grave of her vanquished foe. 

The account above has all the narrative elements of a great story. A villainous Dark Lord (Tate) is brought low by a reluctant Heroine (Thunbderg) who forces the Dark Lord into a hubristic action which is the cause of their own downfall. It is a modern parable for “Little Red Riding Hood” - only that the Big Bad Wolf doxxed his location to The Hunter in the end. However, that fanciful bit at the end is, unfortunately, misinformation. As well-intentioned, funny, and exciting as the story of Andrew and Greta is, it is speculative to presume that the Romanian authorities are so thoroughly inept that their entire sex trafficking case hinged on a pizza box. 

Indeed, the #PizzaTate hashtag is littered with wild explanations for why the pizza box was integral to the story. The best is that Romania is in the EU’s Schengen zone - so the authorities had no idea Tate was in the country. This presumes that Tate freely travels between EU countries, suddenly becoming incognito the second he enters Romania and tears off his fake moustache upon leaving for Dubai or wherever he travels to. While such an “international man of mystery” mystique helps cultivate the image of Tate as a dastardly mastermind, it overlooks a few things, namely that Romania is not in the Schengen zone and security agencies like Interpol and Europol exist to try and stop organised crime - such as sex trafficking. 

Instead, the far more likely (and boring) outcome is overlooked - that someone within the Romanian Criminal Justice system decided to use the Twitter spat to accelerate the timetable for arrest. Within Criminology, the decision to charge (and arrest) a suspect for an alleged crime is seen as inherently political. Typically, state prosecutors also consider the “public interest” in pursuing / not pursuing a charge. Given that Tate has often framed Romania as a seedy, corrupt and barely functional state, there is certainly “public interest” in kicking the world champion kickboxer when he is down - particularly if the police investigation was largely wrapped up. 

The #PizzaTate narrative is, unfortunately, misinformation which has created a comforting story. I don’t even dislike the story, and it certainly is my headcanon version of events. However, the #PizzaTate narrative should be used as an example of misinformation created from emotionally resonant framing of events and memetically amplified across social media. The narrative was not created by far-right, anti-government loons looking to spread hate and bigotry. Instead, it was created for the purpose of ‘doing good’ and absolutely humiliating a detestable person. However, in situations where there is contested morality (or moral ambiguity), the urge to ‘do good’ is framed through a person's underlying cultural values - creating narratives which help create emotionally resonant stories that benefit ‘their side’. It is here that drag queens become reframed as ‘demons’ and LGBT+ teachers become ‘groomers’. While it is easy to find ethical fault in those who produce harmful narratives - such an approach overlooks how misinformation produces some really impactful stories. And everyone has a story to tell.