In absence of modern fear culture, I feel I would have rather less likely faced Boston state police’s sniper rifle and MP5 machine guns at the beginning of the first semester of my sophomore year. Therefore, I might have finished college.https://twitter.com/danielgross/status/1023261498569883655 …
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That was the absolute worst year, with very few upsides, and I hate talking about it on the whole. If there was any one thing I learned, it was about the intensity of emotion incited by media and the (then much lesser than now!) extent of effects of media segmentation.
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Over the subsequent year, at least two different strangers tried to beat me up in Boston or people would randomly shout at me (“you should be in jail!” me: “I should be in math class”..)
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I could almost instantly tell whether someone got their news online, in newspapers, or on television, and which outlet it was, by how any given person spoke to me - which words they used - that year.
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Basically all of the Boston papers instantly attacked. Only
@boingboing,@fmanjoo (then at Salon), and@schneierblog actually pieced together what had happened correctly. But nobody really seemed to notice or care.Show this thread -
Another thing that many/most people don’t know — when the call went in to the Boston State Police, it was that a “dark-skinned male” (was) “roaming the airport”. They were prepared to kill me on that basis.
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9/11 hit JUST as I started production on BBS documentary, so I was flying dozens of times right there. I watched my skin be dark enough for suspicion followed by them rolling it back, watched the trend pull.
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I looked just foreign enough that I was getting singled for searches, asked questions. Over the course of two years, it faded. I also got to watch security/TSA people completely make up "safety" checks....
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One made me take out all my camera lenses so they could look through them, in line, like a jeweler inspecting. Another would idly pat my camera bag, while another guy watched me (I believe that's an Israeli technique). Then they just kind of stopped.
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I remember reading about you in the Boston Globe when I was like 15. I could tell the whole thing was bullshit, and couldn’t believe the paper took it seriously. It still makes me mad!
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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