In other words, the government is building a sociological profile of political discontent. The bulletin notes that these protests are “perception-driven”—meaning they are motivated by “generalized concerns about rights” rather than specific incidents. In the logic of national security, a lack of a specific trigger makes the public more unpredictable and therefore calls for “situational awareness.” But it’s the granularity of the monitoring that is most absurd. To determine the “threat” posed by Budget-Chicken-2425, analysts didn’t just look at the protest call; they scoured the user’s entire digital footprint. The bulletin notes that Chicken “frequently participates in various community discussions,” listing their interests in r/Texans (comparing the team to the Cleveland Browns), r/movies (discussing the film Almost Famous), r/stephenking (sharing book collections), and r/FuckImOld (reminiscing about 1970s television production logos). 🤣🌎

Crossposted from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10639749