The speaker recounts how they inadvertently went viral with a video discussing social justice, which led to them becoming an online persona. However, they soon found themselves dealing with trolls, racism, and online harassment. In an effort to understand their detractors, they created a fake online profile to infiltrate alt-right communities and engage with the individuals who had been trolling them. Through this experience, they gained insight into the fears and motivations of these individuals and realized that they, too, were victims of online echo chambers and misinformation. The speaker argues that the key to breaking down these barriers is to engage in courageous conversations with people who hold different views, and that this can be done by creating online spaces for dialogue and community building. They propose that this approach can lead to a collective evolution in human connection and understanding.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. The speaker was a survivor of police brutality and lost a childhood friend, Alonzo Ashley, at the hands of the police.
2. The speaker was a key figure in the Black Lives Matter movement and had a large online following.
3. The speaker's online presence was met with backlash and racist comments from online trolls.
4. The speaker decided to go undercover and create a fake online profile to understand the perspectives of their online trolls.
5. The speaker created a ghost profile and started commenting on videos and articles with anti-black sentiment.
6. The speaker discovered that online trolls were often misinformed and were being fed information through digital echo chambers.
7. The speaker found that the alt-right movement was using digital echo chambers to spread their ideology.
8. The speaker discovered that some members of the alt-right movement were regular people, including outdoorsmen, hunters, computer nerds, and family men.
9. The speaker found that some of the alt-right movement's leaders, such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer, were thought leaders who were using their platforms to spread hate speech.
10. The speaker realized that the left wing's wholesale demonization of white males was contributing to the growth of the alt-right movement.
11. The speaker discovered that millennials were being fed a limited view of history and were not being taught about the complexities of racism.
12. The speaker found that the alt-right movement was using fears of white genocide to recruit members.
13. The speaker realized that the key to overcoming tribalism was to have courageous conversations with people who held different views.
14. The speaker started a community forum called Shop Talk Live, where people could come together to have conversations about difficult topics.
15. The speaker found that in-person conversations were more effective than online conversations in building bridges between communities.