In 2016 all of our lives changed as the US election turned into something more than politics as usual.
Many of us online were being attacked by what we now know were Russian bots. I was just one of those people.
It was one of the most horrible feelings I've ever had- to be attacked online is quite a thing as anyone who has been bullied online knows- it's sort of this invisible thing you are up against all by yourself.
We now know that was the exact intent.
At first, I was just taken aback. I tried to describe this onslaught to people but I could never quite get it across to people not familiar with twitter or unaware or in denial that something deeply wrong and unusual was happening.
Folks still don't know what I'm talking about when I describe 4chan meme attacks, deza and trolls and bots. This is now a lot of people's online normal. And there's a huge disconnect between that normal and all too many other's experience.
Too many don't understand what we are up against.
The only thing that made me feel better was to start trying to document and organize the chaos to try to make sense of the senseless. Futile, I know.
Making accessible this often invisible, undetectable version of modern corruption and warfare is paramount to our democracy.
Abby Adams is an attempt to narrate, translate, document and provide reliable resources to help us all navigate this new matrix of madness.
Abby Adams works to help simplify complexity.