hampton.

@hampton

rhetoric PhD student @ UGA | senior researcher @ Princeton | staring into the abyss at: state violence & paramilitarism + radical memes & graphic media + paranormal realities & haunted presents

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hampton.@hampton· 1d

if you know me you know i'm not gonna really advocate for carceral anything, but this is certainly a wild end to the J6 sedition charges

screenshot of end of judge amit mehta's august 4 2026 order on oath keepers case, which concludes with the following text:

This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed. Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these
convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of presidential power—to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.
For the foregoing reasons, the government’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment, ECF No. 967, and Supplemental Motion to Dismiss Indictment, ECF No. 979, are granted. The Superseding Indictment, ECF No. 167, is hereby dismissed with prejudice.

hampton.@hampton· 17d

Some pretty bizarre (but on brand) admissions from Graham in footage captured since the start of America's war on Iran: edition.cnn.com/2026/07/26/p...

Screenshot of CNN article titled "Graham called yearslong push for war with Iran ‘the best thing I’ve ever done’ in new footage"

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. He loves blowing stuff up,” Graham said of his efforts in one clip.

“He hasn’t tweeted much at all,” Graham added, speaking about Trump, “No drama. He’s been a great wartime president. I said last night that Trump and Bibi are like Roosevelt and Churchill.”

hampton.@hampton· 25d

i'm running the gamut of many of my research interests on my blog this summer (RW politics, crumbling urbanism under neoliberalism, spectacles of absurd society, paramilitary violence, horror psychoanalysis, &c). if any of this is of interest to you, consider signing up: dead-air.ghost.io#/portal/

screenshot of recent blog posts on dead-air.ghost.io, including:
+ "My Time with Lindsey: Gunrunning, Doomsday, and the Iranian Bomb"
+ "Living in the Ruins: Killer of Sheep, Still Life, and Urban Development"
+ "UFC on the Lawn: Bread and Circuses without the Bread During Trump 2"
+ "More Trouble with the Belfast Pogroms: Examining Loyalist Bonfire Sites as Marching Season Kicks Off"
+ "'We're Gonna Need a Bigger Backrooms': Archetypes, Masculinity, and the Maladaptive Hunt"

hampton.@hampton· 26d

also, just for ref (and to be cute w/ a graphic), I've added match days to an @openmeasures.io graphic here. obviously, convos around a team will spike around match days, but the massive spike on the day of the (deeply controversial!!) Egypt match is, unsurprisingly, what brought this to the fore.

line graph of volume of posts containing the word "vargentina" since June 13, with team flags over match days. the egyptian flag is over a massive spike, the swiss flag over a growing spike, and english flag over a final spike.

hampton.@hampton· 26d

due to the favor that Argentina seems to have received -- from FIFA, from refs, and especially from the video assistant referee system (VAR) -- they have received the nickname "VARgentina" from their haters this cup. I ran a quick @openmeasures.io search and google trends search for this term:

openmeasures graphic showing volume of posts containing the word "vargentina" on 4chan and Bluesky, with intermittent spikes since july 5

screenshot of google trends interest in the United States for "vargentina" between June 12 and July 17, showing intermittent spikes since July 5

hampton.@hampton· 26d

Writing for @openmeasures.io's blog, @jaredlholt.bsky.social discussed a surge in World Cup conspiracy theories, especially after Trump's intervention to get Balogun's suspension overturned. Interesting search graphic from the post here: openmeasures.io/world-cup-co... (short thread below)

export of a graph from the open measures platform showing a significant spike in activity shortly after july 5

hampton.@hampton· Jun 26

Interesting to see a Call of Duty patch among Totenkopf and Sonnenrad ones. The bottom left patch from the insta stories is for the Konni Group from the MW reboot. It's the ultranationalist terror group run by antagonist Makarov in the game.

Screenshotted detail of image from OP, showing an elongated hexagon patch with a sword through a skull. The background of the patch is black, with white Cyrillic text and red details (including the sword). A totenkopf and sonnenrad are visible at the top and bottom of the image

Image of a Konni group patch from the call of duty game. Text around the outside includes Russian for "military" and "operation". The patch is dark grey with white text and skull, with a red sword through the skull and red details

hampton.@hampton· May 31

Back in 2021, @daveforan.bsky.social, @hariprasad.bsky.social, and I explicitly wrote women as #1 out group in neo-Nazi memes we collected, & noted that the meme creators were more likely to justify violence against their out group if they were depictions of women! gnet-research.org/2021/12/13/c...

Screenshot of figure 6, which shows that women were not only the plurality out group target of neo-Nazi memes, but neo-Nazi memes about women supported violence against their targets at a much higher incidence rate than the two other cases

hampton.@hampton· May 29

ngl the mw4 trailer looks like ass, but ~fun~ to see Ghost back in the original skullmask lol (it's slightly altered, no cheek gap). guaranteed good time on the weird guys beat

screenshot from MW4 trailer showing Call of Duty character Simon "Ghost" Riley in a skullmask balaclava, telling also-revived CoD character Captain John Price that "You broke a lot of rules, Price." while looking tough in beige lighting

hampton.@hampton· Feb 20

Illustrating the Mussolini comparison (pics). Perhaps also worthwhile to point out that the Mussolini façade was on the former HQ of the Ministry of the Interior and the cheap Trump banner is over the HQ for the DOJ, an agency that has been (imperfectly) known for being independent of White House.

Photo of a blue crane putting up a banner of a grey scale trump on the side of an austere building

old photo of a building facade depicting a creepy replica of Mussolini's face on a background of a repeating white "SI"

hampton.@hampton· Dec 21

Tate got so rocked he legit just copy-pasted one of the most overused speech excerpts ever, Teddy Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" segment from his 1910 Citizenship in a Republic speech in Paris. The context is that Teddy was leading the progressive side of his party as it was brutally splitting.

Screenshot of Andrew Tate tweet that reads "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

hampton.@hampton· Dec 11

Yesterday, Kyle Rittenhouse posted a couple of photos from his wedding this summer, one of which features him and his bride armed with a handgun and rifle (respectively). It took someone like 8 hours to kirkify Kyle's wife lmao.

screenshot of tweet from kyle rittenhouse, now posting under the handle @rittenhouse2a. he writes "I'm back on social media, I'm back in the fight, and i'm here to stay. For a quick update, 6 months ago I made the best decision of my life and married my best friend. @BellRittenhouse, I couldn’t be happier. I love you beautiful. More big announcements coming soon..." two photos are in his post. at the left is the couple holding firearms, kyle in a blue suit with a tan handgun, bella in a white wedding dress holding a tan ar-15-style rifle with a vertical foregrip and optic. at the right is a photo of kyle holding bella with water in the background, either an inlet or estuary, the sun just set moments before.

a screenshot of a tweet from @givemebudlight, who has zoomed in on bella rittenhouse in the gun picture of the couple and faceswapped charlie kirk's smiling face over hers

hampton.@hampton· Nov 25

Last week, I got an email from Medium telling me to have my tax docs in order to report my income from the platform. I haven't published on it in a while, much less published members only. Anyway, the only story that I ever listed paywalled (by accident) has earned a whopping $3.53 in 6 years lmao

Screenshot of medium earnings view, showing a march 2019 story titled "Militia Tourism: Trouble at the border, a new round of infighting, and a fake identity". The earnings show $3.09 earned in the month of April 2019 and $3.53 across the article's lifetime.

hampton.@hampton· Nov 20

💽 Album: Rosalía’s newest, LUX, for which essentially every song has a corresponding female saint (though not all have been canonized). It’s sanguine, one of her most classically-inspired yet, and a return to her villain music roots.

The album cover for Rosalía's LUX, which features the artist wearing white over a blue background.

hampton.@hampton· Nov 20

📕 Book: The Unworthy, a newly translated book by Agustina Bazterrica that is significantly more lyrical and intimate than her human meat hit Tender is the Flesh. Unworthy is set within a convent in the apocalypse,where most everything is built on rules and lies (or both!).

Cover image of agustina bazterrica's book the unworthy, featuring a woman in robes holding her arms to the sky. The title and author text forms a circling halo around where she gestures. The background is black.

hampton.@hampton· Nov 20

🎬 Film: The Devil’s Bath/Des Teufels Bad (2024), directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz. A beautiful, disturbing depiction off the horrors of a life lost to social expectations, based on research in Kathy Stuart's 2023 book Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation.

Movie poster for the devil's path, featuring the back of a woman's neck, where she pulls at a thread at the base her her skull. Another woman faces away from us, looking into the void created by the larger woman's spine

Cover image of Kathy Stuart's suicide by proxy in early modern Germany: crime, sin and salvation. If features a stylized print of a dead person covered in cloth. Stylized text covers the background of the image

hampton.@hampton· Nov 6

this week, I wrote an essay for class about two movies (killer of sheep + still life) where 'living amidst the ruins' is an important theme of many scenes, and I'm very interested in carrying this concept a bit further. pls share if you have any favorite movies that take place amidst ruin!

still from charles burnett's killer of sheep, showing a child in a striped shirt tying his shoes in a ruined train yard. behind him, several other children await his help to push a massive train car further along the tracks

still from Jia Zhangke's film Still life, showing two characters squatting in a ruined building sharing toffee as they chat. the ruins frame a city in active destruction behind them

hampton.@hampton· Sep 7

Rand has brought up Harper Lee's novel in a few settings, but most often he seems to do so when talking about extrajudicial killings similar to his Vance reply (a now deleted 2014 post contains a speech where he compares drone strike expansion to Mockingbird) web.archive.org/web/20250210...

Screenshot reading:
Rand Paul calls for release of drone memos, removal of Obama judge
“It’s easy to object to vigilante justice when you know the accused is innocent. When the mob attempts an extrajudicial execution, we stand with Atticus Finch, we stand for the rule of law,” Paul said. He continued, “Do we have the courage to denounce drone executions as nothing more than sophisticated vigilantism?”

“These traitors [were] betraying a country that holds dear the precept that we are innocent until proven guilty. Aren’t we in a way betraying our principles when we relinquish this right to a trial by jury?” Paul added.

The senator is arguing that, in a sense, to throw out due process is to stoop to the level of the accused terrorist or traitor. The rules of vigilante law are essentially the same as the rules of the traitor. Similar to the terrorist or traitor, a nation without due process is also without the rule of law.

hampton.@hampton· Sep 7

extremely not the point but I'm fascinated by Paul bringing up To Kill a Mockingbird. turns out he's been doing this a lot since 2016, mostly about Trump (who he at one point compared to Gollum in 2016 lol) www.theguardian.com/us-news/live... + www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016...

Screenshot reading:
Rand Paul is speaking at a rally at Drake University in Des Moines. He invokes To Kill a Mockingbird and tells students that he’s the candidate for Americans who want to be left alone.

He says that this election reminds him of the character Scout, who “found the inner humanity that exists even in a mob bent on violence”. He says he’ll end the “mob intent on detention without trial”.

Paul goes on to say that he’s reminded of the book’s other hero, Atticus Finch, when he thinks about how the majority can be wrong; he leaves it unsaid that they can be wrong even in a democracy. “I thought of what Atticus said: before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide majority rule is conscience.”

Then he paraphrases Victor Hugo, maybe just for fun: “an idea whose time as come is stronger than all armies”.

He finishes off by calling for a bigger, more diverse Republican party: one that treats addiction “as a health problem, not an incarceration problem”; that reforms the criminal justice system and ends the war on drugs; that fights off big government and IRS Swat teams at every turn.

“Forty-eight federal agencies, from the IRS to the Department of Education, that all have their own Swat teams. Is that freedom?”

Screenshot reading:

The Kentucky senator’s goal is to get 10,000 college students across Iowa to support him on caucus night, roughly the same number of students who turned out for Barack Obama in the Democratic caucuses in 2009. In a rally with several hundred attendees at Drake University in Des Moines this week, Paul gave a rambling speech in which he compared Donald Trump to Gollum, a deranged antagonist from The Lord of the Rings, and compared himself to the heroes of the civil rights-era novel To Kill A Mockingbird – all part of his attempt to win young people.

hampton.@hampton· Jul 24

That Bannon is the primary source on these claims across all of these outlets (left image) is related to the notion of reticulation @daveforan.bsky.social + @hariprasad.bsky.social + I wrote about in our TPV article on Rittenhouse memes (right image). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot reading:
The Times cited "Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House adviser to Mr. Trump and influential leader of the MAGA base," who told the paper that "the Murdochs' bizarre assault on the president galvanized his base" and that "we are united as Trump goes on offense-against the Murdochs, the courts and the deep state." (The Murdoch family owns the Wall Street Journal.)

The Washington Post cited "Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's former adviser who hosts a daily talk show popular with Trump's MAGA supporters," who told the paper that "MAGA is now united, because they can see there's a common enemy," which he described as "the Deep State, with their media partners, led by Murdoch."

CNN cited a certain Steve Bannon, identifying him as a leader of the MAGA movement. "We are finally on offense,' Bannon, Trump's former aide and a leader of the MAGA movement, said via text message to CNN. 'President Trump has had enough and is fighting back-against his real enemies.'"

Politico cited and reprinted the quote that Bannon gave to the Post.

Screenshot of journal article with highlights:
Much of the purpose of a given subculture's process of meme formation and dissemination is to create a representation of an event within the context of the values and worldview of the niche subculture, while linking it into a larger knowledge base.

These simulacra, "re-presentations" of a non-existent alternate reality, then link into mainstream discourse by targeting platforms' indexing mechanisms. The system (or ensemble) of recontextualized events gains its own agency, becom-ing a standalone entity that reproduces itself and its narrative(s).

The permanent nature of the content (posted content is not removed) and the lack of algorithms that reduce or result in a process of natural selection based on the veracity of content, results in the accumulation of content that becomes tied and enmeshed further into the mainstream regardless of its quality.

these narratives play into the purported goals of "alt-right" political activists, the movement of the "Overton window" as a result of the reticulating effect of engagement, resulting in the convergence of the various bodies of knowledge both fringe/extreme and mainstream

hampton.@hampton· Apr 10

excuse my orwellposting,* but... the (too blunt) irony of the agency that's perhaps best known for kidnapping students posting about their intent to enforce thoughtcrime from pg 10: files.libcom.org/files/1984.pdf *(i ever cringe at the insincere shouting 'this is 1984!' by rightists re: COVID)

screenshot of an excerpt of 1984 by George Orwell:
He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.

He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed — would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. [HIGHLIGHT:] Thoughtcrime, they called it. [:END HIGHLIGHT] Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

It was always at night — [HIGHLIGHT:] the arrests invariably happened at night. [:END HIGHLIGHT] The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual
word.

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:

theyll shoot me i don’t care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother

hampton.@hampton· Mar 17

Chuck Schumer, in grayscale, removes his glasses in the title header for The New York Times's story entitled "The Interview: Chuck Schumer on Democrats, Antisemitism and His Shutdown Retreat"

screenshot of Disco Elysium replacing the Joyce Messier quote and portrait with Chuck Schumer's name and a stylized portrait from the scene. the dialogue reads, "I can't. That's how simple it is. One may dye their hair green and wear their grandma's coat all they want. Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique* capital end up *reinforcing it instead..."

hampton.@hampton· Dec 19

who else spent yet another year dwarfin around

steam year in review spider graph showing heavy weight towards "Dwarf", "MOBA", and "Battle Royale"

hampton.@hampton· Dec 6

I distinctly remember how little I slept in 2015 when Russia started bombing, claiming they were targeting ISIS & AQ. Using hrs of footage from the ground, we dispelled this, showing that primarily these strikes targeted US-backed groups, often far from ISIS front lines. NYT piece still on my desk:

Except of a newspaper clipping from a 2015 New York Times article about Russia's campaign in Syria, showing zones of control and locations of major airstrikes

hampton.@hampton· Dec 6

Every offensive meant long hours updating the literal 100s of locations of control on frontlines (we were tracking ~5800 locs across Syria). TCC is such a significant core of data on this conflict since the beginning, and major, major props to @hariprasad.bsky.social for keeping it up especially.

screenshot of page 3 of a carter center report showing some visualizations of changes in control of territory in Syria. The first visualization on the page shows location control by the Syrian Government, ISIS, Syrian Democratic Forces, and opposition groups. The second visualization shows the trend towards Syrian government control between early 2015 and mid 2018.

hampton.@hampton· Nov 19

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains.

Album art for Green Day's dookie, which is mostly Grey's, yellows, and reds depicting a plant dropping bombs behind illustrated people

hampton.@hampton· Nov 18

would deeply depend on what they're into, but if it's a friend of mine they'd probably like Night in the Woods as a starter game

Screenshot of two characters from Night in the Woods, wearing goggles on a bike ride with the sunset behind them. Mae, a black cat with an orange shirt, rides on the back of a bike powered by Gregg, a fox wearing a leather jacket

hampton.@hampton· Nov 17

I refuse to join Bluesky - I don't want to become part of an 'il becco (giallo)' chamber

Scan of front page of 1920s Italian antifascist paper "il becco giallo" (Italian for "the yellow beak")

hampton.@hampton· Nov 13

Kind of wild just how much the founder of the Washington III% beat another Republican candidate in the race for the WA House last week:

Screenshot showing matt marshall taking 55.51% of the vote against John Snaza in the state representative race for WA legislative district 2

hampton.@hampton· Oct 22

Happy new @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social day to those who observe