For the Algorithm

In 15 years on Twitter I never once wrote or shared a syllable I didn’t believe – or believe in – so as to “provoke” people or to “grow the algorithm,” whatever that means.

As an experienced public relations executive, Chrissy Casilio – the daughter of an elected official, a Republican committeeman, a spokesperson for other political candidates, and someone who has been very active in civic life in Clarence – is well aware of the fact that her past statements and positions are going to be scrutinized, especially because she is a newcomer to politics. No one has any idea who she is, what she has accomplished, or what she stands for. She is a political blank slate.

It’s not like anyone can go back and second-guess any decision she has ever made, because none exist out in the public.

Well, except her decision to lock down, attempt to sanitize, and then simply to delete her Twitter account.

That’s why the “ChrissyCaBoom” Twitter account – which she has since scrubbed out of existence – is so relevant. It is the only repository of her public pronouncements on matters of wider public import.

Why is this still a thing? Because Casilio spent her time on Twitter engaging in stupidity. In horrible conspiracy theories. In shitposting. She dabbled in this on Facebook a bit, which is why I unfriended her there. I am not aware of having followed her Twitter, but really how many wackadoodle right-wing conspiracy accounts does one need to follow? One is too many.

“My view of social media, especially on Twitter, was to kind of provoke conversation and influence the algorithm,” Casilio said. “As a marketing PR person, I know how that algorithm works on Twitter. Whether I believe in a topic or not, I try to comment about it to get reaction, get likes, get comments.”

Conservatives legitimately think they can go out there to “provoke conversation,” which is a handy euphemism for “troll others,” and then complain about being blocked or “shadowbanned.” She thinks she is going to “influence the algorithm” by proclaiming silly things to her 250 followers, and that this provocative trolling will be promoted by “the algorithm” to more eyeballs.

Casilio tweeted: “Kim Pegula – Stroke…Damar – heart attack…John Murphy stroke…but don’t question anything! All normal!”

“There were people questioning what was going on,” Casilio told The News when asked about the tweet. “I obviously said things that I regret. I wasn’t implying anything.”

How stupid do you think voters are? You weren’t “implying anything?” Good God, if no implication exist, then what is the purpose of the Tweet – what was “going on” that “people” were “questioning?” Hm? This is just another pathetic entry in the “Covid vaccines cause clots/strokes/heart attacks” meme that is running rampant in right-wing circles. Your base loves that shit, Chrissy – embrace it! The normies? Mm, maybe not so much.

It’s all fun and games when you’re doing it for the lolz or the “algorithm,” and it’s different when you’re running for office and you know a majority of the electorate isn’t in the Proud Boys or watching Newsmax.

What she is saying, frankly, is that being a combative weirdo on Twitter is good self-promotion. Well, if that’s true, she really needs self-promotion now that she’s running for office, so shuttering her “CaBoom” account seems counterintuitive.

Not all of us want to vote for someone who gleefully repeats Covid vaccine disinformation. I mean, if you’re going to purport to “take accountability” then say – ‘I think the vaccine causes sudden deaths‘ and stop hiding behind how you were just trolling.

The WNYmedia.net article also referenced a debunked conspiracy theory about the online furniture company Wayfair allegedly being involved in child sex trafficking.

The conspiracy theory, which police said was false, alleged that the company was involved in sex trafficking in part because the names of some of its products matched the names of missing children.

“If there is no truth…why did they pull the items down?” Casilio tweeted in 2020.

Casilio also wrote the “100 percent” emoji symbol – which signifies agreement – below a tweet by another Twitter user that stated, “There are not 2 parties. There is ONE Globalist Party with a few honorable Americans on the fringe.” The tweet stated that the country’s politicians “destroyed Trump for exposing the swamp, and created a pandemic and rigged an election to do it,” according to the Investigative Post article.

Casilio told The News she did not share those beliefs. She said she was “not going to let Mark Poloncarz and his cronies try to diminish me to these tweets, because it’s a distraction from the disaster that they’ve created.”

So, she didn’t believe that Wayfair was sex trafficking, but she happily fed that idiotic rumor. She approvingly shares ridiculous conspiratorial nonsense, but now when caught says she doesn’t believe them and it’s all Poloncarz’s fault.

“I honestly couldn’t explain to you what a globalist party even is,” Casilio said. “Everyone has things they probably have regretted on social media, especially if they have never been a candidate. That’s just the world we live in for 2023.”

But Ms. Casilio can only be “diminished…to these tweets” because it’s all we have. The sum total of what we know about her opinion about things is thanks to her social media, and it is replete with things that swing between “vile” and “stupid.” Why did she agree – using the red “100” emoji – to a conspiracy theory about a globalist party that she cannot even begin to attempt to explain?

“I have tweeted and said things to provoke, to get reaction, to grow the algorithm. I would poke because that’s what you do.”

What a sad endeavor – to Tweet things to get negative attention so that you can grow an audience and harvest even more negative attention. Most of us dropped that in middle school.

When I tweeted, I knew things I would say would get negative attention from some people, but that goes with the territory. I never purposely wrote things I didn’t comprehend or did not fully believe for the sole purpose of provoking a reaction in people. What a waste of time and effort that would be, to shitpost for the algorithm.

Casilio said she deleted the tweets because she “didn’t want it to be a distraction from the topics at hand.”

No, she deleted the tweets because whatever was there was dumb and shameful and would come back to haunt her repeatedly right up until November. Again – the electorate is not so stupid. Now, their deletion will haunt her until November.

Her efforts to deflect accountability for it and blame her enemies is weak, and her ongoing sanitization of her social media footprint is weaker still. If it was important enough for you to say to your 250 followers when you weren’t running for office, it’s even more important now that you are for a few hundred thousand prospective voters.

Alan Pergament asked Public Relations executives and educators whether using social media to troll is a good PR strategy. As it turns out, it isn’t.

Deborah Silverman, the chair of the communication department at SUNY Buffalo State who has been teaching public relations for 20 years, said she was upset reading Casilio’s comments about her field. Silverman also is a former chair of the Public Relations Society of America Board of Ethics and Professional Standards, which advocates for honesty and accuracy.

That’s pretty damning.

You are there to build trust with people and you have to stand by what you say in public. If I were advising her as a public relations professional advising a candidate, I would never advise that person to behave in that manner. Never.”

“You don’t ever go on out in public in any social media or traditional news media, unless what you are saying is what you truly believe. And her comments made no sense to me,” Silverman said. “If I were running for public office, I would never say those things. It is all about trust.”

This is the biggest mystery of all – Casilio claims she doesn’t believe this crazy stuff she posted, so why use your public persona to come across as nuts?

You can tweet whatever you want but if it’s crazy and you’re running for office, voters deserve to know.