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For the record: I was never guaranteed anything by Substack, let alone 10k a month. I don't know why I find it shocking that people make things up about me, but I do.

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I also find it shocking when ppl make things up about me, I'm still shocked despite it continuing to happen

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And yet I suspect (at least in my case, but likely yours, too) there's rarely a point at which some evil genius invents the lie wholecloth. More like an iterative process of hater hyperbole evolving some (often trivially true) thing into a nutty lie.

That small account that likes all your tweets.

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The "telephone game" in action. Motivated recall, misremembering that thing you read just a little, and that gets repeated multiple times until it turns into this. (But also, sometimes, something more nefarious.)

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exactly--in my case. Don't want to presume in Aella's

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oh yeah definitely. for me all the 'bad things' are like... vaguely true things, with all the negative lens blown up to be gigantic and nefarious and the good things completely ignored

6:34 PM · Jan 3, 2022

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right. sometimes I also detect strong signs of a falsehood fresh from a DM chat group. when like 12 intra-mutual accounts start saying the same absurd thing and riffing off each other in my mentions