#memes: central station

[mobius-fields]

Thank you @hylian-riders for pointing out this is 💯 Silver coded LOL!! 😂

[lais-a-ramos]

i was tagged by @deerest-deer and @monstrousgourmandizingcats to list my fave watches of january

thank you so much for tagging me 😊💖

ps.: i'm listing in chronological order

1 - the watermelon woman (1996), dir. cheryl dunye

2 - wicked (2024) , dir. john m. chu

3 - central do brasil/central station (1998), dir. walter salles

4 - eraserhead (1977), dir. david lynch

tagging (no pressure, guys, this is just for fun 😊)

@invisible-pink-toast @isitcasualnow @taweretsdagger @thechosenthree @45-armadillos and everyone else who wants to participate :)

[starfieldcanvas]

☝️always ALWAYS keep this in mind when you see a callout post about a trans woman.

"but she actually did bad things!" perhaps, but how are her actions being framed compared to those same actions committed by others? take the time to investigate, and more often than not you'll find a mundane behavior like "tweeted something moderately insensitive" or "publicly advertised having a taboo kink" is being framed as deeply sinister, manipulative, and predatory. even when the misbehavior itself is genuinely egregious, it will garner outsized coverage and exaggerated outrage compared to the exact same sin committed by any other identity category.

transfemme icon blahaj being a shark is a coincidence, but...it fits.

framing is everything

[mariacallous]

My earliest memory of 4chan was sitting up late at night, typing its URL into my browser, and scrolling through a thread of LOLcat memes, which were brand-new at the time.

Back then a photoshop of a cat saying "I can has cheezburger" or an image of an owl saying “ORLY?” was, without question, the funniest thing my 14-year-old brain had ever laid eyes on. So much so, I woke my dad up by laughing too hard and had to tell him that I was scrolling through pictures of cats at 2 in the morning. Later, I would become intimately familiar with the site’s much more nefarious tendencies.

It's strange to look back at 4chan, apparently wiped off the internet entirely last week by hackers from a rival message board, and think about how many different websites it was over its more than two decades online. What began as a hub for internet culture and an anonymous way station for the internet's anarchic true believers devolved over the years into a fan club for mass shooters, the central node of Gamergate, and the beating heart of far-right fascism around the world—a virus that infected every facet of our lives, from the slang we use to the politicians we vote for. But the site itself had been frozen in amber since the George W. Bush administration.

It is likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again—which is, likely, a very good thing. But it had also essentially already succeeded at its core project: chewing up the world and spitting it back out in its own image. Everything—from X to Facebook to YouTube—now sort of feels like 4chan. Which makes you wonder why it even needed to still exist.

"The novelty of a website devoted to shock and gore, and the rebelliousness inherent in it, dies when your opinions become the official policy of the world's five or so richest people and the government of the United States," the Onion CEO and former extremism reporter Ben Collins tells WIRED. “Like any ostensibly nihilist cultural phenomenon, it inherently dies if that phenomenon itself becomes The Man.”

My first experience with the more toxic side of the site came several years after my LOLcat all-nighter, when I was in college. I was a big Tumblr user—all my friends were on there—and for about a year or so, our corner of the platform felt like an extension of the house parties we would throw. That cozy vibe came crashing down for me when I got doxed the summer going into my senior year. Someone made a “hate blog” for me—one of the first times I felt the dark presence of an anonymous stranger’s digital ire, and posted my phone number on 4chan.

They played a prank that was popular on the site at the time, writing in a thread that my phone number was for a GameStop store that had a copy of the ultra-rare video game Battletoads. I received no less than 250 phone calls over the next 48 hours asking if I had a copy of the game.

Many of the 4chan users that called me mid-Battletoad attack left messages. I listened to all of them. A pattern quickly emerged: young men, clearly nervous to even leave a message, trying to harass a stranger for, seemingly, the hell of it. Those voicemails have never left me in the 15 years I've spent covering 4chan as a journalist.

I had a front-row seat to the way those timid men morphed into the violent, seething underbelly of the internet. The throbbing engine of reactionary hatred that resented everything and everyone simply because resentment was the only language its users knew how to speak. I traveled the world in the 2010s, tracing 4chan’s impact on global democracy. I followed it to France, Germany, Japan, and Brazil as 4chan's users became increasingly convinced that they could take over the planet through racist memes, far-right populism, and cyberbullying. And, in a way, they did. But the ubiquity of 4chan culture ended up being an oddly Pyrrhic victory for the site itself.

Collins, like me, closely followed 4chan's rise in the 2010s from internet backwater to unofficial propaganda organ of the Trump administration. As he sees it, once Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 there was really no point to 4chan anymore. Why hide behind anonymity if a billionaire lets you post the same kind of extremist content under your real name and even pays you for it?

4chan’s “user base just moved into a bigger ballpark and started immediately impacting American life and policy," Collins says. "Twitter became 4chan, then the 4chanified Twitter became the United States government. Its usefulness as an ammo dump in the culture war was diminished when they were saying things you would now hear every day on Twitter, then six months later out of the mouths of an administration official."

But understanding how 4chan went from the home of cat memes to a true internet bogeyman requires an understanding of how the site actually worked. Its features were often overlooked amid all the conversations about the site's political influence, but I'd argue they were equally, if not more, important.

4chan was founded by Christopher “Moot” Poole when he was 15. A regular user on slightly less anarchic comedy site Something Awful, Poole created a spinoff site for a message board there called “Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse.” Poole was a fan of the Japanese message board 2chan, or Futaba Channel, and wanted to give Western anime fans their own version, so he poorly translated the site's code and promoted his new site, 4chan, to Something Awful's anime community. Several core features were ported over in the process.

4chan users were anonymous, threads weren't permanent and would time out or "404" after a period of inactivity, and there were dozens of sub-boards you could post to. That unique combination of ephemerality, anonymity, and organized chaos proved to be a potent mix, immediately creating a race-to-the-bottom gutter culture unlike anything else on the web. The dark end point of the techno-utopianism that built the internet. On 4chan you were no one, and nothing you did mattered unless it was so shocking, so repulsive, so hateful that someone else noticed and decided to screenshot it before it disappeared into the digital ether.

"The iconic memes that came out of 4chan are because people took the time to save it, you know? And the fact that nobody predicted, nobody could predict or control what was saved or what wasn't saved, I think, is really, really fascinating," Cates Holderness, Tumblr's former head of editorial, tells WIRED.

Still, 4chan was more complicated than it looked from the outside. The site was organized into dozens of smaller sections, everything from comics to cooking to video games to, of course, pornography. Holderness says she learned to make bread during the pandemic thanks to 4chan's cooking board. (Full disclosure: I introduced Holderness to 4chan way back in 2012.)

"When I switched to sourdough, I got really good pointers," she says.

Holderness calls 4chan the internet's “Wild West” and says its demise this month felt appropriate in a way. The chaos that defined 4chan, both the good and the very, very bad, has largely been paved over by corporate platforms and their algorithms now.

Our feeds deliver us content; we don't have to hunt for it. We don't have to sit in front of a computer refreshing a page to find out whether we're getting a new cat meme or a new manifesto. The humanness of that era of the web, now that 4chan is gone, is likely never coming back. And we'll eventually find out if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

"The snippets that we have of what 4chan was—it's all skewed,” Holderness says. “There is no record. There's no record that can ever encapsulate what 4chan was."

[thatswhywelovegermany]

Australian travels to Cologne to watch a hole in a ceiling

A man from Australia traveled to the German city of Cologne to sightsee a hole in the ceiling of an underground station caused by an incident in 2017 that has become a worldwide meme.

During the carnival celebrations, Cologne turns into a state of exception with people walking around in the weirdest imaginable costumes. A man dressed up as Jesus Christ is nothing special, but if he carries a giant cross, he may turn some heads.

In 2017, a man dressed up as Jesus Christ became famous as he traveled up the escalator of the underground at Cologne Central / Cathedral station, crashing his giant cross into the ceiling. He managed to pull the cross free, but it had pierced a hole into the ceiling. The incident was filmed and uploaded to Youtube where it had gained at least 16 million views as of now (the original video has been deleted).

Meanwhile, the hilarious scene must have made it all the way to Australia. A man known on Reddit as towerbooks3192 was haunted so much by this meme that he said to his girlfriend that he wanted to do a pilgrimage to this very site, particularly after he heard rumors that the hole still exists. His girlfriend then surprised him with tickets for the journey. The man said on his Reddit post that it was the happiest day of his life.

Indeed, he is apparently not the only one to take a pilgrimage to the holy hole in the ceiling. Frequntly, people are seen taking pictures of the section of the ceiling that includes the hole. Maybe this is the reason why the city of Cologne (or the local public transport company) has not repaired the hole yet, although it must be said that the city has many more tourist attractions making it worth a journey and stay for several days.

[love-and-deepspace-wiki]

Wiki Guide Post:

Welcome!

I'm V, an unofficial representative for the Linkon City Tourism Bureau. Allow me to be your personal tour guide through Linkon City and the surrounding areas! Whether you're a visitor passing through or a brand new resident, I hope you enjoy your stay! The links below will be updated as information is posted.

If you have any leads, screenshots, or info you'd like to contribute, please:

Send the info via dm

Include when/where in the game you found it

All information is sourced directly from public, in-game resources.

Any theories or extrapolation will be clearly defined as such. (For any Speculation & Theories posts, search the "#speculations and theories" tag)

Spoiler warning because 100% of the information I learn in-game will be posted without spoiler omissions.

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[sugar-crash]

🏎️Turbo (Wreck-It Ralph) x (gn) Reader🏁

(Drunk Turbo Edition!)

(Picture’s not mine!)

(Request here! Oh this loser… He just screams Oingo Boingo vibes, which is a bit ironic considering they were very popular during the 80s… I feel like I’ve probably already said this but I don’t care if I did or did not you know? I have a nasty habit of repetition lol)

- Who knows if alcohol (I believe Tappers sells Root Beer cause… Kids arcade game) or even cigarettes exist for the arcade members, but it’s fun to think about.

- I for one think him getting drunk is kinda rare, mostly because I think smoking and being self-absorbed among other things are his main way of coping with his emotions over drinking… Though he isn’t exactly against it.

- When he finally lets himself let loose and drinks at Tapper's… He drinks. Getting drunk as a goddamn skunk, like how Fix-It Felix chugged it in the… Sequel that must not be named, as witty as the name is. A real waste of a good movie name ngl.

- ANYWAYSSSS, I think he either somehow miraculously manages to find his way to you or you find him after one of your… Dare I say, friends?? Mutuals??? Complain about him being a drunk little shit and killing the mood.

- Honestly I think he flip flops from mean drunk to emotional drunk, really empathizing the turmoil that goes on in that gold ball shaped head of his.

- Going from wanting your comfort to insulting you, his speech is even more slurred than it usually is as he clutches onto you…. Freak.

- He’s so pathetic in that state, which is partly the reason why he doesn’t drink that much, against his whole thing of not being perceived as vulnerable keeping him from relying upon you like that.

- That reflects in his insults towards you as one might assume, insults elementary on the surface but tells you what’s going on in that fuzzy pea brain of his a lot more than it usually does.

- Alcohol really dumbs him down for a bit, too focused on standing up or the bug that’s clinging to the side of the wall to really string his thoughts together more concisely as words just pour out of his mouth if you poke and prod him just enough.

- Something tells me he does do the stupid ass cartoonish drunk hiccups when he’s smashed just enough… Why not? He has a bit of cartoonish whimsy to him.

- The type to try to get into a bar fight if he gets offended by some minuscule thing someone did or said, wrangling him is lot harder than one would think.

- Overall it’s usually not a great experience for any party though he does have his extremely rare moments of chilling the fuck out while drunk, mostly when he’s only sort of buzzed and still has some of his wits while being at home.

- Again I can see him being more clingy, not in a “Hehe I just like holding them💫💫🧚” but in a “Oh fuck I think I’m going to fall HELP—” Kind of way, he’s not the most graceful by any means.

- Like definitely as tripped over his shoelaces and makes you swear to keep that to yourself when he’s sober and embarrassed as all fuck when he’s able to recall the foolishness he partook in.

- Oh and keep him away from his kart— You think he’s a menace behind the wheel sober?? He is an absolute scrounge when he’s drunk, that one meme personified— Has definitely attempted to drive his kart into the Game Central Station before you put a stop to it much to his drunken annoyance.

- In a way, he was always wild, ‘liquid courage’ was just a more bitter way for that to be less constrained under his urge to maintain a powerful main character persona, makes him more honest but more incoherent.

- Rambling about what anything that comes to mind as he grips onto you as you lead him to Turbo Time to try to get him to wind down and hopefully sober up before opening time.

- Honestly, I think the more drunk he gets the more emotional side of his drunkenness comes out other than the usual slurred snarky remark he makes towards someone as they simply walk past him. Like I said he’s a little shit.

- A little attention-monopolizing hobgoblin who just so happened to get more than he should’ve drank.

- Hungover Turbo is a kind of creature you don’t want to mess with… Mean as a mother fucker, you just know his fellow racers taste his even uncaring cruelty as he fights back a migraine.

(. -. .. --. -- .- - .. -.-./.-. ..- ... .... . -../.-. . -.-. -.- .-.. . ... .../--- -... ... . ... ... .. ...- ./.-. .- -... .. -..)

[gorgiawrite]

First Lines Meme

Thanks for the tag @etoilesombre, who is one of the reasons this writing to publish thing has been sticking this time around, after fifteen years of just drafting bits and pieces for my own amusement.

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your latest fanfics (or up to if you have less!) & tag 10 people. (Or as many as you're in the mood to.)

agreeing with prevs: I'm cheating and adding a second sentence (...or even a third) if I don't think it quite captures the vibe.

1. Black Sails, John Silver/James Flint (at this point, it's a full novelization of the first two season with a soulmate AU canon divergence and a 20 year plan).

In John Silver’s experience, sailors came in all shapes and forms, but if he had to make a definition of it, he would speak of three sorts. 

Indentured workers, who payed their way to the new world with hard labour, were some of the worst kind. One trip on a passenger ship taught John two things : people too poor to afford the journey were not worth stealing from, and had nothing that could be lost to cards or empty promises of better prospects in the colonies.

2. The Pitt, Michael Robinavitch/Jack Abbot (Robby POV, over the 3 months post-Pittfest ; that one will be out quicker, thank God, but is still ridiculously lengthy)

“Should we be worried?”

Robby shook his head with a shrug. He was leaning, with Princess, against the central work station. They were both observing Victoria Javadi, in the middle of a strange exercise : the med student was prepping to suture a patient admitted after an accident with a sharp kitchen knife.

3. The Pitt, Michael Robinavitch/Jack Abbot (no idea where this thing is going, but it's going)

Emery Walsh had that pinch on her face again, the one Jack Abbot learned to watch out for.

They were six hours into a Saturday shift ; an hour past Sunday. So far they had one domestic violence victim with a cracked skull, two stomachs pumped for alcohol poisoning, three GSWs, and four MVCs. It felt like a shitty attempt at a Christmas carol : one battered wife, two passed out teens, three gun shot wounds, and four moving vehicle collisions…

Tagging the people who I've been reading lately (feel free to ignore) : @icemav86, @remyfire, @alethialia, @jackabbot, @alasse9, @topaz-eyes, @ezlebe, @soberqueerinthewild, @obvious-captain-rogers, @cristobalsifuentes

[rosetyler42]

Here's a ship dynamics meme from @ship-dynamics that's the plot of the first film in a nut shell. XD

@lovelylivelyv @black-ak9 @hotelt-resurrection @ssleeping-in-a-coffin @serial-serializednovelreader @deathfangirl9 @twinklecupcake @ebevkisk @wingingfromthezing @heartsong1994

[shitpost-it-tristan]

I'd like take the time to tell yall a scenario that me and @bashfulgnome thought of because I just remembered it and I have been absolutely losing it, its been like 10 minutes and im STILL laughing.

The Patrick starr "LOOK AT IT" meme, and its TAMMY AND FELIX INSTEAD

Tam, in the middle of game Central Station. Pulling out a megaphone, yelling into it:

"I NEED EVERYONES ATTENTION"

everyone's like "fuck there's another run away cybug or turbos back from the dead AGAIN and we're all screwed"

Everyone is in a damn line up, ANXIOUSLY waiting for her to deliver the most soul crushing news..

And she JUST LIFTS FELIX UP,, SHE LITERALLY PULLED HIM OUT OF THIN AIR-

Everyone's like: Wait what's happening-

And she goes through THE ENTIRE LINE UP JUST

Felix, just says "hi" and he's just A BALL OF ANXIETY LIKE

OR he's GIGGLING and just over the moon, "aw, Tammy jeans reintroducing me to everyone! She's just the sweetest!" And she is literally TERRIFYING

Surge Protector is like: for the love of- LADY, we have seen this guy FOR OVER 30 YEARS

Tam marching up to him, MENACINGLY holding felix-

she's literally an INCH away and she WHISPERS INTO THE MEGAPHONE

"I want you ALL to L O O K A T I T"

[brightlotusmoon]

As soon as I read the title, I said "Fuck you, Trump" out loud and decided I should say that for everything fucked up. It's nothing like the "Thanks, Obama" meme (Remember when Obama himself referenced it?? That was awesome, I miss him). It's thick with derogatory mucus and rage. We hate this guy. Hates him, precious.

[mobius-fields]

I really hope somewhere out there, a fanfic or rp of Sonic and the Black Knight incorporates this joke-

[mikamikapodcast]

Area 51

In the remote Nevada desert, far from the neon lights of Las Vegas, lies one of the most famous—and controversial—places on Earth: Area 51. This heavily guarded and long-denied site has, for decades, captivated conspiracy theorists, aviation historians, and UFO enthusiasts alike. But what do we really know about this mysterious location?

Born from Cold War Necessity

The story of Area 51 begins amid the tensions of the Cold War. In July 1955, the first aircraft—a prototype of the U-2 reconnaissance plane—was brought to a secret base next to the dry salt bed of Groom Lake. Just a few weeks later, on August 19, 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order closing the airspace above the site, effectively erasing it from the map.

The base was no ordinary military installation—it was a cutting-edge test center. There, the United States developed some of its most advanced aviation technologies, including the F-117A Nighthawk stealth bomber and other top-secret aircraft. Intelligence gathering played a central role, and operations at the site were closely linked with both the CIA and the U.S. Air Force.

Official Silence and the Veil of Secrecy

For decades, the U.S. government refused to acknowledge the existence of Area 51. It did not appear in official budgets, and its location was omitted from maps. The surrounding airspace, designated R-4808 N and nicknamed “Dreamland,” became an invisible boundary in American aviation. Even pilots stationed at nearby Nellis Air Force Base were strictly forbidden from entering the area under any circumstances.

It wasn’t until 2013 that the CIA finally admitted Area 51 existed. In response to a request from George Washington University, a 400-page report was released confirming that U-2 aircraft and other classified planes had been tested at Groom Lake. Many UFO sightings were subsequently explained: the U-2 flew at altitudes of up to 18 kilometers, reflecting sunlight long after sunset, and appeared as bright objects in the night sky—sparking confusion and speculation.

Internet Memes and Aliens: "Storm Area 51"

Even as secrets were being declassified, Area 51 continued to capture the public imagination. In 2019, a student from California created a tongue-in-cheek Facebook event titled: “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” The idea was to gather at the base on September 20 to “see them aliens.”

The event went viral. Millions signed up, memes flooded the internet, and the U.S. Air Force issued a serious warning—even though the event began as a joke. In the end, only a few thousand people actually showed up, but the phenomenon brought Area 51 back into the global spotlight.

What Really Happens at Area 51?

Though many technological achievements and test flights have since been revealed, much of Area 51’s current operations remain classified. Its purpose—experimental research, development, and testing—allows for a wide range of military projects. It continues to operate as a closed test facility, possibly already developing the next generation of aircraft.

Area 51 has become a symbol not just of technological advancement, but also of how governments construct secrecy—and how the public fills in the blanks with imagination. It is a place where facts, conspiracy theories, and pop culture converge on the horizon of the desert.

Yhdysvaltain Nevadan autiomaassa, kaukana Las Vegasin neonvaloista, sijaitsee yksi maailman tunnetuimmista – ja kiistanalaisimmista – paikoista: Area 51. Tämä tiukasti vartioitu ja pitkään virallisesti kiistetty alue on vuosikymmenten ajan ollut salaliittoteoreetikkojen, ilmailuhistorioitsijoiden ja UFO-harrastajien mielenkiinnon kohteena. Mutta mitä todella tiedämme tästä mystisestä alueesta? Synty kylmän sodan tarpeista Area 51:n historia alkaa keskeltä kylmän sodan jännitteitä. Heinäkuussa 1955 ensimmäinen lentokone, U-2-tiedustelukoneen prototyyppi, tuotiin salaiselle tukikohdalle Groom Laken kuivuneen suolajärven viereen. Jo muutamaa viikkoa myöhemmin, 19. elokuuta 1955, presidentti Dwight D. Eisenhower allekirjoitti määräyksen, jolla alueen ilmatila suljettiin – alue sai virallisesti kadota kartalta. Tukikohta ei ollut tavallinen sotilastukikohta vaan kokeellinen koelentokeskus. Siellä kehitettiin Yhdysvaltain ilmailuteknologian huippusaavutuksia, kuten F-117A Nighthawk -häivepommittaja ja muut huippusalaiset ilmailuprojektit. Tiedustelutoiminta oli avainasemassa, ja alueen toiminta kietoutui tiiviisti CIA:n ja ilmavoimien yhteistyöhön. Virallinen hiljaisuus ja salaisuuksien verho Pitkään Yhdysvaltain hallitus kieltäytyi myöntämästä Area 51:n olemassaoloa. Aluetta ei mainittu virallisissa budjeteissa, eikä edes sen sijaintia tunnustettu. Kartalta se puuttui, ja alueen lentokieltoalue, R-4808 N – tunnettu lempinimellä "Dreamland" – oli ilmailun näkymätön rajalinja. Jopa Nellisin lentotukikohdan omat lentäjät oli kielletty tulemasta alueen läheisyyteen. Vasta vuonna 2013 CIA lopulta myönsi virallisesti alueen olemassaolon. George Washingtonin yliopiston pyynnöstä julkaistussa 400-sivuisessa raportissa vahvistettiin, että Groom Laken alueella oli testattu U-2-tiedustelukoneita ja muita huippusalaisia ilma-aluksia. Samalla monet ufohavainnot saivat rationaalisen selityksen: U-2-lennot jopa 18 kilometrin korkeudessa loistivat auringonvaloa pimeällä taivaalla, luoden harhan valonlähteestä, jota ei voitu selittää tunnetuilla lentokoneilla. Nettimeemit ja avaruusolennot: ”Storm Area 51” Vaikka salaisuudet olivat paljastumassa, Area 51 ei kadonnut kansan mielikuvista. Vuonna 2019 Kaliforniasta kotoisin oleva opiskelija perusti Facebookiin vitsinä tapahtuman: ”Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”. Ideana oli kerääntyä 20. syyskuuta tukikohdan porteille ”näkemään avaruusolentoja”. Tapahtumasta tuli viraali-ilmiö. Miljoonat ilmoittautuivat mukaan, internet täyttyi meemeistä, ja Yhdysvaltain ilmavoimat joutuivat reagoimaan vakavasti – vaikka kyseessä oli huumorilla alkanut kampanja. Lopulta itse tapahtumaan saapui vain muutama tuhat uteliasta, mutta se nosti Area 51:n jälleen kansainväliseen huomioon. Mitä Area 51:ssä todella tapahtuu? Vaikka monia teknologisia saavutuksia ja koelentoja on sittemmin paljastettu, suuri osa Area 51:n toiminnasta pysyy edelleen salassa. Sen käyttötarkoitus – kokeellinen tutkimus, kehitys ja testaus – antaa laajan liikkumavaran erilaisille sotilashankkeille. Alue toimii edelleen suljettuna koelentokeskuksena, jossa uusi sukupolvi lentokoneita saattaa olla jo testivaiheessa. Area 51 onkin jäänyt historiaan paitsi teknologian kehityksen tyyssijana, myös symboleina siitä, miten valtio voi rakentaa salaisuuksia – ja miten kansa voi täyttää ne mielikuvituksella. Se on paikka, jossa tosiasiat, salaliitot ja populaarikulttuuri kohtaavat aavikon horisontissa.

[aturnoftheearth]

top 5 places you’ve stopped on a road trip or while camping :]

omg okay dani said “top 5 places you’ve been” so for this one i will do stops along roadtrips :D

most love’s travel stops lmfao. in 2021 i made an offhand joke about “loves my beloved” bc “my beloved” was a huge meme back then and we went to one and i liked it so. the meme was born. and to this day everyone in my family will say “where’s the nearest love’s my beloved?” and we stop at sooo many on our trips

greensburg, kansas. we went in 2022 and actually stopped for the day, went to the museum there, and got ice cream at a nearby parlor. but basically the town was hit in 2007 by an ef-5 tornado and was all but destroyed. i believe that it was the first tornado to be classified as an 5 on the enhanced fujita scale due to it being introduced earlier that year. anyway, the town built back greener than most cities and towns in the U.S. and they have a museum there with pieces from the tornado’s damage, stories from survivors, the town pre-tornado, and how they built back. anyway i loved it!

golden spike tower in north platte, nebraska. my dad likes to go because it’s a train yard and he just sits and watches the trains but i love it because there’s an open-air observatory 6 stories up and i get to feel the wind in my hair and see the fields of crops for miles and it just feels so staunchly different from my home that i love it .

any wawa. i love the roadtrip vibes of a good gas station and store and this one has it !! plus i love getting delicious little drinks at a fair price and every time i walk into one i feel like im on vacation in central florida about to go to a theme park or beach house. probably because of the palm trees and also the fact that, before we got one near my sister’s old apartment, nearly every time i had been to a wawa was while in central florida on my way to a theme park or beach house (so 2 times lmfao) . omg and also for my destiel mutuals out there, going to a wawa immediately reminds me of early 2021 when my sister and i would walk there once a week to get a little treat for doing our schoolwork and me excitedly telling her the newest silly behavior or tea or whatever that was happening.

lebanon, kansas - HEAR ME OHT HOLD ON LSITEN. i think its beautiful that, because my sister and i were obsessed with spn in 2021 and managed to sneak us there via telling my dad that it’s the center of the geographical US, we now make an effort to stop there every year. like go out of our way to stop there. and my dad still doesn’t know that it’s because castiel supernatural died there.

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday morning, celebrities like Stephen Curry, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kerry Washington used their social media platforms to mark National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan effort to get Americans to sign up to vote in November’s election.

But at the same time, a group of MAGA influencers were rolling out a very different message about voting to their followers.

“Millions of illegals have been crossing our southern border, many of them who are coming are drug traffickers and sex traffickers. But what I’m worried about is the illegal voting,” Danielle D'Souza Gill said in an Instagram video she shared to her 255,000 followers, alongside the hashtag #OnlyCitizensVote. D’Souza Gill is the daughter of election conspiracist and right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza and wife to Brandon Gill, a Trump-endorsed election denier who recently won the GOP nomination to run for Congress in Texas’ 26th district.

Her video about immigrants voting is not a one-off. It’s part of a coordinated effort called “National Only Citizens Vote” week that has been rolling out since Monday. The campaign has been coordinated by a network of election denial groups who created the Only Citizens Vote Coalition to centralize their efforts. A WIRED review of recordings of half a dozen meetings to plan out “National Only Citizens Vote” week has revealed that the organizers, guest speakers, and volunteers who are participating are pushing conspiracies about immigrants, planning to post threatening signs at polling places, and blaming the “evil left” for stealing the election even before a vote has been cast.

The coalition was spearheaded by Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump adviser and attorney who was on the infamous call in 2020 when Trump asked Georgia state officials to reverse the election results. Mitchell has personally hosted online Zoom calls for the last several months where hundreds of local volunteers were given marching orders about how to spread the conspiracy about immigrants voting.

For the week, the coalition created a website filled with resources including PowerPoint presentations, handouts, posters, and printable signs in Spanish and English warning: “If you are NOT a citizen of the United States of America, it is ILLEGAL for you to vote.” Across platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, volunteers and GOP influencers with huge followings have been encouraged to post memes and videos pushing the conspiracy. The campaign also incorporates offline activities, encouraging supporters to attend flag-waving events on street corners, hand out bumper stickers and yard signs, write to their local representatives, and seek airtime on local TV and radio stations to spread the conspiracy.

Monday was dedicated to “shining a light” on noncitizen voting, Tuesday “celebrated citizenship, and Wednesday focused on “federal action.” Friday is, unironically it seems, dedicated to “protecting noncitizen voters” when the activists will push the message that voting when not a citizen could get you deported.

It’s the culmination of the last six months of work from election denial groups like Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, which has been spreading election conspiracies for the last four years, as well as organizations like the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Transparency Initiative, a group headed up by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli and backed by far-right billionaire Dick Uihlein. Their work hasn’t been in a vacuum: Former president Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers, conservative activists, and right-wing pundits have been strenuously pushing the lie that a flood of immigrants pose a threat to the integrity of the 2024 elections.

The connective tissue between the Trump campaign and the grassroots activists spreading the conspiracy is the Election Integrity Network, a group established in the wake of the 2020 election by Mitchell. The Election Integrity Network, which earlier this year was involved in mass voter roll challenges, has established a huge network of regional, state, and county-level groups with tens of thousands of activists who attend regular online information sessions about everything from poll worker recruitment to media training.

In recent weeks, Mitchell and her staff have been laser-focused on the threat of noncitizens voting, according to WIRED’s review of recordings of more than half a dozen meetings. In a series of online webinars, each attended by hundreds of volunteers, Mitchell and her colleagues have spoken at length about the supposed threat posed by immigrants, while providing no evidence to back up their claims.

“The noncitizen voting has become one of the top talking points this election cycle, despite effectively zero evidence of it being a widespread problem. They're just going on vibes,” Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director at Documented, tells WIRED. “It's become a centerpiece of MAGA-oriented messaging in the run-up to the 2024 election, embraced by everybody from Donald Trump, House speaker Mike Johnson, to Elon Musk, in part because it links together two of the right's biggest talking points for this election: immigration and the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.”

All the available evidence suggests that noncitizen voting accounts for a vanishingly small fraction of a percent of the votes cast in US elections. The GOP push to suggest this is a problem echoes much of the rhetoric around the great replacement conspiracy, which falsely suggests that a “cabal of global elites” is encouraging people of color to immigrate and replace white voters. Experts also believe the narrative is being seeded as a scare tactic designed to lay the groundwork for Trump and his allies to once again question the outcome of the vote.

The push to make immigrant voting an issue began to gather steam in April when, standing alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago, House speaker Mike Johnson said he was working on some voter suppression legislation to make it illegal for noncitizens to vote—which it already is. That legislation became the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act—better known as the SAVE Act—which not only seeks to make it illegal for noncitizens to vote (again, it is already illegal) but to also introduce a requirement for people registering to vote to provide documentary proof that they are citizens.

According to a June survey by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, this measure would disenfranchise one in 10 voters, or around 18 million people, who for various reasons have difficulty accessing the documents like passports and birth certificates necessary to prove they are citizens. The White House dismissed the bill in July as “​​based on easily disproven falsehoods.”

These claims have made it to the mainstream: Last month, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo posted on X about a friend of a friend who claims to have seen “a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote.” The claims were quickly debunked, with Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Sergeant William Lockridge telling The Fort Worth Star-Telegram that “none of it is true” and that the claims were “kind of racist.”

X owner Elon Musk has also helped the conspiracy theory go viral. In July, he wrote on X that the Democratic party’s “goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible.” Trump even repeated the claim last week during the presidential debate. “Our elections are bad,” said Trump. “And lots of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote.”

Now, as Trump’s acolytes push this lie at a hyper-local level, experts are concerned about the danger to voters and nonvoters alike.

“There is the potential for intimidation that results from these efforts, [such as] the [Election Integrity Network] activists showing up at the polls and calling into question the eligibility of non-English speakers or nonwhite voters,” Fischer says.

Many of the volunteers participating in the calls organized by the Election Integrity Network also repeated rumors and conspiracies, some in relation to the claims that pro-Democrat NGOs were registering immigrants across the country.

“I would also like to see something like television ads or billboards in Spanish specifically warning, if you are not a citizen and you vote, that is a felony and you would be subject to immediate deportation, something like that, very crisply stated,” an attendee named Pat said at one meeting. She added that the message should be targeted directly at Spanish-speaking communities, resulting in “a lot of people saying, ‘I'm not going to the polls.’”

In some cases, speakers voiced entirely new conspiracies. One woman named Patty King from Tennessee, on a call on August 22, claimed they had “identified illegal immigrants that have registered through the homeless shelters. I have over 564 of them,” adding in the next breath: “Proving that and then proving that they voted is another very big problem.”

A number of participants on the calls self-identified as election officials, poll workers, and representatives of their local Republican Party.

One attendee on a recent call was Deanna De’Liberto, who was recently named by her local Republican Party as the presidential elector for North Carolina's 5th District. De’Liberto raised a conspiracy about immigrants skewing the electoral maps in favor of the Democrats.

The meetings have also featured a number of prominent guest speakers, including Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project. The Heritage Foundation, the ultra-conservative group behind the dystopian Project 2025 plan, has been at the forefront of pushing the lie that noncitizens are voting in huge numbers. The group has also posted a number of “explosive” undercover videos claiming to show how noncitizens can obtain fake documents; a recent New York Times investigation debunked the claims made in a number of those videos.

“[The Biden administration] is mobilizing this huge, targeted, [get out the vote] government-funded operation at their preferred demographics, which obviously includes illegal aliens,” Howell told those listening, without providing any evidence to back up this claim.

And just last week, representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas who is the main sponsor of the SAVE Act in the House, spoke to the weekly meeting, answering questions from attendees and urging them all to continue pushing the conspiracy theory. Days earlier, Mitchell had appeared at a Judiciary Committee Hearing chaired by Roy on Capitol Hill, discussing the very same topic.

While the activists behind Only Citizens Vote week claim the initiative is meant to be about protecting US democracy, the reality is that pushing these conspiracies disenfranchises voters, or worse.

Last month, officers from Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit conducted early morning raids on the homes of Latino civil rights activists, including multiple members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), as part of “ongoing election integrity investigations.” While the press release announcing the raids did not mention noncitizens specifically, Paxton has been among the loudest voices pushing the conspiracy about immigrants voting.

The noncitizen voting conspiracy “is certainly part of the reason that Latino nonprofit organizations, civic leaders, and LULAC members were targeted,” Juan Proaño, the CEO of LULAC, told WIRED about his organization’s members being attacked. “This is setting a precedent in the courts to normalize these tactics, so they can be copied in other Republican states.”

“There’s a reason Joe Biden brought people here illegally,” Paxton said on The Joe Pags Show last month. “I’m convinced that that’s how they’re going to do it this time, they’re going to use the illegal vote. Why were they brought in, why did he bring in 14 million people? He brought them here to vote.”

“It's hard to think of anything more intimidating than having someone who's involved in civic activism and voter turnout have their home raided, and it appears that those raids have been motivated by these noncitizen-voting conspiracy theories,” Fischer says.

Beyond all the bluster and divisive rhetoric, another possible reason that the GOP is so focused on this non-issue, experts believe, is that they are simply laying the groundwork to question the outcome of November’s vote.

“Why is it happening now?’ Michael Waldman, CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, said last month during a House committee hearing on the SAVE Act. “It’s being pushed preemptively, I believe, to set the stage for undermining the legitimacy of the 2024 election this year. The Big Lie is being pre-deployed.”

[zegervetters-blog]

Scale model of coming soon space at Antwerp central station, where I'll have an exhibition in April.

Made while watching Import/Export (2007) by the Austrian Ulrich Seidl.

'Geld und Sex sind immer alles.'

Through train and station.

Maybe my exhibition should be an ode to all windowgazer and conductor evadors. I have yet to decide what to show.

Or maybe a play on the 'good side, bad side of the bus' meme?