Retracing the Twitter Storm
This is the Way, Fans Persecuted Gina Carano
Updated: 5/1/22
This investigative research piece retraces the Twitter mob that successfully targeted Gina Carano in February of 2021; who they were, how they did it. And why.
It’s February 10th, 2021…
Gina Carano is not the author of the post she re-shares on Instagram stories, leading up to her firing. You wouldn’t know it by what is being written online, or that Carano had a history of lauding inclusion among the Star Wars fanbase.
Stories are quickly being cloned wholesale, supported only by trending insinuation & snap labeling on Twitter. To this day, characterization is parroted— but little attention is given to what was actually posted online; And who acted out of malice.
Discovery: The pile-on is spurred by partisan, social activist minded fandom. Mass outrage is then repurposed by digital publications, riding a wave of clicks.
Thesis: Underneath it all, is trending mischaracterization. Beyond mob persecution, this is also a story of journalistic failing.
This is how it started:
7:53 AM
Tweet Zero: It begins just before 8am EST 2/10/21 with a slur from a then 30 year old female Star Wars fan in outer New York City.
The Twitter re-poster, Nori, uses the hashtag #FireGinaCarano.
Three observations about the February 10th screenshot of Carano’s Instagram re-share, as it reappears on Twitter:
1. The previous poster of the ‘meme’ is ‘Warrior Priest Gym Podcast’ on Instagram.
He maintains he is also not the original author either.
A screen capture of the post appears to have circulated initially on TikTok as well.
2. Carano’s post is at the end of a 29 ‘Instagram story’ day cue. The person who took the screenshot and reposted it to Twitter, waded through each story to get to the content to then “take offense” at & reshare.
3. The original creator of the post also embedded a music icon to the track ‘Nazi Punks F Off’ by Dead Kennedys. This supports an anti-Nazi theme to the post, which has an obvious position against hate, othering and persecution.
Here is the full post— which does not ever specifically mention ‘Republicans’ or ‘the Holocaust’ and ends with an evocative question. It is a photo of a Jewish woman in occupied Ukraine being attacked by children circa 1941.
The icon of the embedded anti-Nazi music track appears below the ‘club-wielding child’ in the historical image.
Jewish Political commentators Bari Weiss and Ben Shapiro will observe, the post is not anti-Semitic or disparaging. The post clearly warns against the historical atrocities of hate and othering.
The Twitter Reposter
Twitter user ‘ceo of bottom han solo’ is a New York City area independent illustrator & the author of Tweet Zero. Her day job is at a law firm. Ceo’s Twitter profile is dedicated to Star Wars fandom, her artwork, & fantasy shock posts regarding acts of dominance with Han Solo. She openly self-identifies as ‘neurodivergent’ & ADHD. Her identity will not be revealed in this article beyond her first name, Nori. She professes online to having mental health struggles and as of 2022 announced leaving twitter permanently.
After her first post, Ceo posts to an older thread (replying to herself from January 30th), using #FireGinaCarano, thus potentially notifying other accounts connected with the previous January Twitter effort. She also posts that she '“hates” Carano.
Other accounts follow suit, echoing the renewed sentiment on the morning of February 10th.
After asking Twitter users “to get it trending,” 31 people repost the hashtag in succession to fire Carano.
**The above screenshot shows the initiating account’s updated profile pic as of 2022 on the account where the tweets still exist, but now under privacy lock.
The 124 Twitter users who previously commented with the same hashtag on Jan 30th, are also potentially alerted to the reinvigorated effort.
A heavily engaged tweet with over 10K likes from a Game of Thrones / Star Wars fan named Sarah- makes a case for insensitivity, calling the original post “vile and unnecessary.”
The fan takes issue with the meme’s inquiry: is a society hating a class of people for their immutable characteristics / ethnicity any different than hate based on political beliefs? Twitter user Sarah emphatically maintains they are not the same. Her tweet gets over 11k likes.
Sarah is a performing arts student who in an earlier tweet credited the original poster of Tweet Zero (Nori / Ceo) for supplying the 1st screenshot that morning, which Sarah then redistributed on her own.
1pm EST
Another Superfan, Janet, with a brief Twitter history of idolizing Pedro Pascal (& antagonizing Carano), produces a tweet suggesting ‘the Holocaust’ & ‘Republicans’ for the first time. Janet has been out of work since COVID hit and is a student who has been venting about finals.
The Janet post is retweeted en masse & gets 10k likes, setting the table for the dominate talking point:
That the meme can only be interpreted as an offensive comparison between ‘Republicans’ & ‘the Holocaust’ (per Janet), though neither are mentioned in the original IG story meme that was re-shared.
Outlets continue picking up the story, cloning a narrative wholesale with Janet’s interpretation— which many continue to parrot ‘til this day.
4:25PM EST
Janet’s tweet, by afternoon, is parroted by a film fan-site with over 170K followers, which adds the label ‘disgusting’ to their narrative.
That post also gets over 10k likes and by now the hashtag is trending...
This extrapolated interpretation will then echo through the Twittersphere, and later be cemented by legacy publications like Newsweek and Rolling Stone.
4:57PM EST.
The Daily Beast presents a lopsided write up, as the Tweet storm still unfolds. Daily Beast author Cheyenne Roundtree makes claims of “right-wing trolling,” which there is no evidence of- as Carano remains publicly silent throughout the day.
The publication later doubles down on the ‘Troll’ label.
Yet, how many of the thousands encountering the already cemented narrative, even read the original post- or noticed the “Nazi Punks F Off” icon tag at the end?
How many realize that Carano didn’t author anything at all, but shared a meme to her temporary story cue?
How many fail to see the irony, as a wave of persecution continued to build?
The Twitter Storm Apexes
As the February 10th tweet storm continues, a handful of accounts post Tweets reaching 10K likes. The online labeling of “anti-Semitic” starts to be thrown in, as well as “racist,” to brand the targeted figure.
A tweet, which no longer exists, after being featured that afternoon by The Daily Beast, offers up more labels.
Journalists from different political approaches, Ben Shapiro & Bari Weiss, point out in the aftermath that the original content is not anti-Semitic, though they both say it is best to avoid comparisons to Nazi Germany.
Both also highlight a double standard, as co-star Pedro Pascal similarly invoked Nazi Germany with online posts comparing MAGA to the third riech, but encountered no push back, as the posts support the political left.
The trending hashtag is also used by those defending Carano online and neutral observers, unwittingly adding to the algorithmic inertia of #FireGinaCarano.
Those attempting to defend Carano, or offer a more nuanced discussion, use the hashtag to increase tweet visibility, but this also snowballs the Tweetstorm.
Some on TikTok take the time to thoughtfully discuss the content. Others point out the photo is also occupied Ukraine and not Nazi Germany.
Before day’s end on the west coast, without granting additional time for investigation, or engaging with Carano further- Disney decrees of the actress:
“Her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
The Disney accusation is made without reference to supporting material. The head of Disney HR, Jayne, was contacted in 2021 for this investigation but refused to comment on the matter following direct requests to respond to this research piece.
Toxic Landscape
Ceo herself was on the receiving end of criticism for racially charged comments she made about the Star Wars character Finn in 2020 & had to apologize to the twitter community in January of 2021.
I contacted Ceo and pointed out her controversial tweet was still posted & asked for comment.
As she worked to delete it, she wrote of the online community, “They literally have people spew racist shit every day & they are obsessed with a 3 year old tweet.” Ceo then deleted the racially charged tweet- which reflected on a racial dynamic if Finn, portrayed in the films by John Boyega, were in a fantasized relationship with Adam Driver’s character, Kylo Ren.
Ceo evoked slavery in her ‘3 year old tweet.’
Note that Ceo does not get the thousands of likes the handful of others do, even with her original tweet that precedes all others. Her outrage lit the fire— but did not sustain the same engagement, perhaps, as she does not mask the distain she has for Carano, who she slurs.
One Twitter bot account with over 1,000 tweets named Fire Gina Corona bot has been dedicated specifically to retweeting posts calling for Gina Carano to be fired. The account bio reads, “I am here to keep receipts on her internet behavior.”
Some fans attract engagement by calling Carano a white supremacist.
The label is also parroted throughout the day.
Richard, an author & creative writing teacher, also joins the 10k club with his take.
Opinion: Similar to online mob escalations that I witnessed targeting journalists voicing an unpopular viewpoint of militant street actions in 2020, it starts by calling the target ‘alt right.’ Then they are a white supremacist. By the next day, they are a Nazi.
First Use of #FireGinaCarano
The fandom-activists started their push months before in September 2020, when the hashtag was first used on Twitter by a profile, “Giovanna”, self-identifying as a ‘Social justice advocate’ who also admits to never having seen The Mandolorian.
The initial use of the hashtag targeted Carano as a Trump supporter.
It is retweeted initially by two sci-fi fans. Carano’s political leanings, along with posts critical of mask mandates & forced business closures, are continuously cited by the Twitter mob as grounds for firing.
The initial attention on Carano started when she made a joke in her profile after twitter users demanded she list preferred pronouns. She wrote “boop / bop / beep,” a possible joke reference to R2D2 noises, and was labeled trans-phobic.
Carano previously addressed the issue saying Pedro Pascal helped her understand pronoun culture and that she stands against bullying.
Some fan-activists adulate star Pedro Pascal but campaign against Carano, as well as Rosario Dawson, a Bernie supporter, who nevertheless is deemed “problematic” by the Twitter mob. This is due to a personal dispute Dawson once had with a live-in friend / tenant who is Trans.
Like ceo of bottom han solo, who authored Tweet Zero, Janet has been a part of prior efforts.
Three days before the pile-on, Janet tweeted a call to fire Carano, a previous topic posted on her then new profile, which tweeted about Star Wars over 4,000 times in its first two months on Twitter.
Janet’s tweets are adversarial.
As some do in a persecution trend, the fan screenshot and redistributed tweets that Carano merely ‘Liked.’
Janet alludes to Baby Yoda using the Force to choke Carano, as others do as well.
In a later development, the Janet profile eventually reveals herself to be a biracial, Star Wars & Marvel fan in her 20s who is also a Free Palestine activist.
Leading up to the February 10th controversy, Carano’s political affiliation had been continuously cited by the online movement.
Analysis:
In the rush to jump onto the wave of an online trend, media publications (and the corporate entity itself in this case) fail to vet the history, bias & vitriolic ecosystem generating the controversy. The outlets arguably end up promoting bad behavior & bullying for the fruits of temporal online engagement. That the engagement is also addictive for participants has been well documented.
After original footage I shot for CNN, MSNBC and Unblocked Podcast of the January 6th riot was appropriated by the web tabloid Raw Story, Publisher Roxanne Cooper wrote to me of the unethical lapse:
“We do about 80-100 stories a day, and publish about 20 hours a day.”
To what end? If this is business as usual for digital publications, how many of those stories are independently researched or fact checked?
How many are quickly rushed online to catch up with an online trending topic?
With this workflow, there’s no time to consider the victim’s actual words— or audit the bullying behind a trend.
Thus, a business model dependent on trending engagement & riding a wave of vitriol, has once legitimate publications, at times, running with whatever gossip or disparaging / partisan take yields the most shares.
The unseen vulnerability is that, whether we are talking elections, political activism or Sci-fi fandom, bad faith chaos actors easily take the day.
7:28 PM EST
The use of the Asterix in the name ‘G*na’ serves to hide the celebratory comment from Twitter search inquiries or attract opposing viewpoints to push back. This keeps the comment siloed among the account’s immediate allied followers.
In the end, the major players celebrate and congratulate each other.
As of 2022, the above post was deleted and the author’s handle changed.
“We did it Joe,” the 30 year old author of Tweet Zero, Nori, echoes Sarah's sentiment in a TikTok video.
The author of the original Tweet- (made only 12 hours earlier), lip syncs to audio of Kamala Harris famously telling Biden over the phone they had won the election, “We did it Joe.”
Conclusion
Some have enjoyed taking advantage of the runaway train that is outrage based online media, and leaving careers overturned in its wake.
A new generation of journalists, failing to dissect the hysteria, have neglected their duties of investigation in favor of parroting trending social narratives. If a journalist is a political partisan, they will win more clout for quickly taking down somebody perceived to be a political adversary.
Meanwhile, a drawn out investigation like this one can expect to get only a handful of views.
If we never slow down to investigate, we unwittingly co-sign onto mischaracterization. The victim is silenced. And we cave to emotional demands, (in this case) made by a cultural movement that, yes, preaches inclusivity— but at the exclusion of others.
What’s more, there is a level of projection- whereby those falsely accused of being “bigoted” are actually the ones targeted for their immutable characteristics.
The Twitter to Tabloid rage pipeline is solidified in other subcultures too, not just for those who would sway Disney / LucasFilm, to have it their way: From QAnon to Leftist social justice ‘Antifascists’ to Stop the Steal. Rage trends.
Carano’s contested re-post can be fairly critiqued as heavy handed. Still, evidence has not come forth that Carano in any way emitted an iota of the hate or vitriol that was projected on her by the persecution mob.
It might also surprise those who are averse to Carano’s political affiliation to know, ‘normie’ conservatives were, in fact, beaten in the streets without provocation on November 14th in Washington D.C. and in California on both October 17th and December 5th of 2020. I documented those attacks myself.
Conservatives would be later attacked in the streets on July 3rd in Los Angeles at WiSpa and Portland in April 2022. But you would only know that if you followed one side of today’s polarized media. (Nori cited one of her reasons for targeting Carano being that she believed conservatives don’t actually face hate attacks).
Beyond all that, what are we now saying about sharing ideas in the public square?
If one posts an article- or a meme, is one responsible for every word, every thought, extrapolation or interpretation of it?
What about every other post the original meme creator has written?
Does individual intent mean nothing at all? If no- where does the persecution by free association end?
For the triumphant, it may be only just beginning:
Final Notes:
The trending post appears to be a Tweet- of an Instagram story- of a TikTok post— that was originally created on somebody else’s Instagram.
But even today reporters incorrectly say Carano “made disparaging comments.”
No. It appears she re-story-grammed somebody else’s post. She shared it. And who did the post disparage? Nazis are clearly cast as the villains of the original post,
It was on the Twitter where momentum was weaponized and cross-pollinated with mainstream media digital journalists (who then used their story publication to promote their own Twitter feeds).
Though the identities were uncovered behind twitter accounts, the full names of the anonymous have been withheld so as to not add more targets to the cult of persecution and its proliferation even today.
Those who did what they did, admit freely why they did it:
The author of tweet zero eventually said she did not wish to participate further in this investigation if this article ‘defends Gina.’ The intent was to investigate- but the evidence clearly yields ample material for such a defense.
This publication has encouraged ceo to remove personal references from the web to preserve anonymity in the current toxic Twitter climate. She has also been invited to have an anonymous audio conversation, as have all the main participants in the twitter storm.
This report was brought to you by Unblocked Podcast - the anti polarization podcast.
Please subscribe to support independent, non partisan content and research based journalism. The author of this piece is a registered Democrat who voted Biden in 2020.