Isaac Bickerstaff Esq was a pseudonym used by Jonathan Swift as part of a hoax to predict the death of then-famous Almanac-maker and astrologer John Partridge.
Matthew James Goodwin is a British academic who is professor of politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. His publications include National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy and Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics.
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, is a Swedish YouTuber known for his comedic videos. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage has made him one of the most noted online personalities and content creators. He has been portrayed in media as a figurehead for YouTube, especially in the genre of gaming.
Black Twitter is an internet community largely consisting of the Black diaspora of users on the social network X, focused on issues of interest to the black community Feminista Jones described it in Salon as "a collective of active, primarily African-American Twitter users who have created a virtual community proving adept at bringing about a wide range of sociopolitical changes." A similar Black Twitter community arose in South Africa in the early 2010s.
Fourth-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began around the early 2010s and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of Internet tools, and intersectionality. The fourth wave seeks greater gender equality by focusing on gendered norms and the marginalization of women in society.
The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian news satire website that publishes satirical articles on topics including religion, politics, current events, and public figures. It has been referred to as a Christian or conservative version of The Onion.
Jonathan Pie is a fictional character portrayed by British comedian Tom Walker. Pie is a liberal political correspondent who rants angrily about British, American, and Australian politics, giving his true personal opinions before or after filming a scripted news segment.
Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service known for its far-right userbase. Widely described as a haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem. Antisemitism is prominent in the site's content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory. Gab is based in Pennsylvania.
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
Bari Weiss is an American journalist, writer, and editor. She was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal (2013–2017) and an op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at The New York Times (2017–2020). Since March 1, 2021, she has worked as a regular columnist for German daily newspaper Die Welt. Weiss founded the media company The Free Press and hosts the podcast Honestly.
My Little Pony: Best Gift Ever is a double-length Christmas-themed special based on the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, taking place in-between seasons eight and nine. It premiered on October 27, 2018 on Discovery Family.
Cancel culture is a phrase contemporary to the late 2010s and early 2020s used to refer to a cultural phenomenon in which an individual deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is ostracized, boycotted, shunned, fired or assaulted, often aided by social media. This shunning may extend to social or professional circles—whether on social media or in person—with most high-profile incidents involving celebrities. Those subject to this ostracism are said to have been "canceled".
Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) is a parody Twitter account created and run by Andrew Doyle, a British comedian and Spiked columnist. Doyle describes her as "a militant vegan who thinks she is a better poet than William Shakespeare". As of March 2021, the character has more than 600,000 followers. Using this pseudonym, Doyle wrote a book, Woke: A Guide to Social Justice, which was published on 7 March 2019. His second book under the name, My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism, was published in September 2020. He also created a live comedy show featuring Titania, which debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2019.
James Stephen Lindsay, known professionally as James A. Lindsay, is an American author. He is known for the grievance studies affair, in which he, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose submitted hoax articles to academic journals in 2017 and 2018 to test scholarship and rigor in several academic fields. Lindsay has written several books including Cynical Theories (2020), which he co-authored with Pluckrose. He has promoted right-wing conspiracy theories such as Cultural Marxism and LGBT grooming conspiracy theories.
Helen Pluckrose is a British author and cultural writer known for critiques of critical social justice and promotion of liberal ethics, most notably in the grievance studies affair.
"Successor ideology" is a term coined by essayist Wesley Yang to describe what he sees as an emergent ideology within liberal or left-wing political movements in the United States, Canada, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, centered around intersectionality, social justice, identity politics, and anti-racism, the rise of which, Yang argues, is degrading conventional liberal values of pluralism, freedom of speech, color blindness, and free inquiry. Proponents of the concept link it to an alleged growth in the intolerance of differing opinions, to cancel culture, wokeness, social justice warriors, and to the far left; Yang himself describes it as "authoritarian Utopianism that masquerades as liberal humanism while usurping it from within."
Woke is an adjective meaning 'aware of issues concerning social and racial justice'.
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody is a nonfiction book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, published in August 2020. The book was listed on the bestsellers lists of Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and the Calgary Herald.
The Free Speech Union (FSU) is a British organisation which advocates freedom of speech. The group was established on 24 February 2020 by British columnist Toby Young. The organisation views itself as countering cancel culture by opposing hostility on Twitter and the withdrawal of some individuals' invitations to speak at some university events.
Robert Emil Soave Jr. is a libertarian American journalist who is a senior editor for Reason and co-host of The Hill's web news commentary series program Rising.
