Users on TikTok searching for “WGA” are met with a screen claiming that the phrase “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” No videos return. Users are also unable to search for the “WGA” hashtag.
TikTok has also blocked the search term “WGA strike.”
Additionally, it appears that TikTok is blocking results from any simple search that includes “WGA” in the search term. Including “WGA” in addition to another word — like “WGA support” or “WGA strong” — blocks results.
Update (9/11/23): A TikTok spokesperson told Media Matters that “WGA has been inadvertently blocked as part of the platforms’ protections against QAnon conspiracy theories.” (WWG1WGA is a common QAnon phrase.) The spokesperson added that searches for “Writers Guild of America” and “Writers Guild of America Strike” were not impacted. Searches for “WGA” and related terms now appear to function normally.
(Thanks mike591, SCB, crowsby, and others for putting in the comments)
For those fortunate enough to be out of the loop, one of the qanon catch phrases is “Where we go one we go all” which is some bastardized version of the three musketeers “all for one, one for all.” It’s often abbreviated as WWGOWGA, which you’ll see on bumper stickers to helpfully let you know the driver has completely lost touch of reality so you should give them plenty of space. I’ve never seen it shortened to WGA, but that is plausible.
You left out the best part, which is like 90% of QAnon shit, they stole it from a movie. This is from the movie “White Squall.”
QAnon people are fucking crazy man. How does anyone fall for this shit?
Because we have a cultic milieu and it’s an extremely syncretic conspiracy theory. Never quite got past the satanic panic? Q is fighting the Satanists who made rent too damn high. Think aliens control the government? They’re working with the Satanists but they’re on the beat of ensuring your kids disagree with you after going to college. Aware that the rich are the enemy? Trump is secretly at war with the elites. Just a massive fucking bigot? Who do you think the elites are? No seriously you can copy and paste the group you hate in there, it could be anyone that isn’t a majority, they could be redheads for all Q cares.
Qanon has absorbed everything from the new world order (alien edition, but also the other ones too) to flat earth to satanic panic to NESARA to the fucking protocols of the elders of Zion and cultural Bolshevism (though they call it cultural Marxism but still blame Jews). These are all things that used to get you laughed out of a room if not beaten up but now there’s an audience who will “yes and” the most deluded bullshit you can imagine.
Yeah this is a great point. I’d seen all the data points there but didn’t really put together that’s it’s become this sort of meta-conspiracy that is almost infinitely malleable.
If it makes you feel any worse it’s not the first conspiracy theory to do that. Cultural Bolshevism fulfilled a similar role in the 1930s. It incorporated fears of Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons, homosexuals, communists… and yeah it went exactly how 1930s Europe went.
It’s important to remember, who and what only matters a bit. They aren’t attached to the fact that it’s aliens, they’re attached to the fact that it’s scary and unknown others who don’t think like them and they have to be responsible for everything getting worse. It’s why antisemitism is skyrocketing at the moment. Who that other is is absolutely irrelevant. Hate can be channeled where it needs gone.
That’s a big wall of text to say QAnon is now run by a 13 year old girl.
But it doesn’t have to be. It’s eternally in power flux until people start breaking out of it. She holds power now but remember what happened when trump said to get vaccinated. They’ll kill their heroes easily.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously…?
I’m not here to talk B/S…
https://lemmy.world/post/3453314
A lack of critical thinking skills.
I dunno they need to be thrown in wards or something. It’s like many of our parents and entire families infected by the Qanon.
What’s weird is even smart people buy into it. My last boss is an amazing, caring, brilliant woman. She’s a senior leader at a Fortune 100 company!
She got into Q via New Age hippie shit, which she got into after a bad divorce and “rediscovering” herself. Now she believes in vampires. It’s mind boggling.
These people need an intervention. You can’t be all that smart buying into reptilians and Jewish laser space beams. Or they have dementia or something.
Smart people can believe dumb shit because smart people are still just people
Fetal alcohol syndrome.
They probably used some bad RegEx like
^.*WGA$because the QAnon people swap the “O” out for a “1” sometimes and the dev tasked with blocking QAnon shit was like, “Fuck it. I’m blocking it all.”Ok yeah accidentally mistaking it for an abbreviation of wwg1wga makes sense actually
Huh, what a terrible initialism.
Well that’s good
This is good to know and I’m glad to hear.
As an aside, do we have a system for OP to pin this comment to the top? This context is pretty important.
riiiight
Ok, if that’s true I can believe that.
BULLSHIT. China doesn’t want their citizens witnessing workforce strikes; especially ones where the celebrities striking are on Chinese TVs and movie screens.
Do you legitimately think people in China see the same Tiktok that we do?