Police State Era: It's This Week Online

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Ari “average VICE employee” here, welcoming you to This Week Online. This week has been tinged with a hint of Pantone 112-22: Police State-Blue. Exhibit A depicts a soulless, edgy, pushing-retirement cop delivering a tepid attempt to recruit teens on TikTok. Exhibit B sees Ultracops demonstrate the best use of domestic security funding: deploying a helicopter to take down an industrious 15-year-old kid and his motorised bud-mobile. The New South Wales government has also defended a new $55,000 penalty for strike organisers. 

• Clive Palmer finally got someone [real estate agent, conspiracy theorist] in government
• Facebook wants to become TikTok before TikTok becomes Facebook
• Australian border force agents love searching mobile devices without a warrant
• Codependency aversion might not be a great way to live?
• Cops hate your right to free assembly
• A good podcast you might like

Incredible. It took two federal elections, eight years, well over $100 million squandered dollars, countless vandalised billboards and a chalky wave of populist fear mongering, but Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party has finally gotten exactly one (1) person in government. The pick of the litter is real estate agent and conspiracy theorist Ralph “Deej” Babet, who will be Victoria’s newest senator. 

Babet’s achievements, much like those of his party colleagues, include narrowly escaping charges for unlawful assault and criminal damage, and taking advantage of the fear and suspicion among the population amid the height of the pandemic – getting a bolstered reputation in return for spruiking well-debunked conspiracy theories on his social media accounts. From the “Great Reset” to the Davos conspiracy, to claiming the federal election was “stolen” (proof for this “freedom fighter” conspiracy is “field research” on “voting proclivities for fringe parties like One Nation” conducted on “personal acquaintances”), Babet’s Facebook account was a showcase of the most popular conspiracy theories among the angry, confused and paranoid set. Before it was wiped squeaky clean, that is.

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In a desperately opaque attempt to stay relevant, Facebook will try to become TikTok. An internal memo seen by The Verge details how Meta’s Facebook guy, Tom Alison, wants the app’s news feed to start heavily prioritising recommended video content. Just like TikTok, only, if Reels are anything to go by, worse. 

Messenger and the main Facebook app will be reunited once again, mimicking TikTok’s “DM this vid” functionality. Alison’s take is bone-chilling: “What we’re really finding is that people want to connect over content,” he says. “And so a lot of where we’re going with Facebook is trying to bring you the best content that’s going to really cater to your interests, but then making it super easy to share that and discuss and connect with other people in your network over that.” So, TikTok. But Facebook. 

This blatant copycatism is unsurprising from Meta, which famously stole Stories from Snapchat, and is currently in the process of TikTokkifying Instagram as well. It’s unoriginal, ugly and vaguely upsetting as we contemplate a future depraved social media that is… all… just… TikTok. 

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The Australian Border force has searched the contents of 41,410 mobile devices in 5 years, according to new data. It’s all without warrants, and all totally legal. There’s a broad set of search powers that allow officers to riffle through travellers’ phones for pretty much any reason. These same powers enable the agency to copy data from a mobile device seized and even hold the device for a period of up to 14 days. They’re not obliged to inform you of your rights, though, which generally allow you to politely decline.

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If you’ve spent any time at all on the apps you might have noticed that today’s pervasive casual dating culture is a literal hell of feigned and disingenuous emotional unavailability, stone cold relationship-phobia, and complete and utter disinterest in other people. The environment is hostile to intimacy, connection, or the forging of relationships: at this point it’s the ultimate faux pas to admit you’re actually looking for a relationship. On a dating app? God forbid.

As Laura Pitcher wonders, “is our fear of appearing weak just feeding into rampant individualism in the dating climate and, in turn, robbing us of true community and connection?”

Probably. Dating dynamics between adults these days are indistinguishable from high schoolers, as each steadfastly refuses to be the loser in the game of feelings. Who started it???

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On the weekend, officers staked out and took down a campsite of climate activists from Blockade Australia. Human rights advocates and lawyers have called it the latest in a series of “very alarming” police actions that seek to target peaceful activists with overly harsh tactics. 

Activists said two masked and armed cops decked out in camouflage gear were seen surveilling the campsite in the early hours of the weekend. When approached, Blockade Australia said the cops refused to identify themselves as police. Later, local officers responded with air support, dogs, a riot squad, “police rescue”, and even NSW Police’s “Raptor Squad”, a sort of militarised special ops unit ordinarily reserved for organised gang crime and bikie stings, writes John Buckley. Seven activists were arrested and charged with a range of offences. One of the cops allegedly took a piss in front of a 14-year-old girl.

Overzealous, militarised police curbing the right to peaceful assembly? Sounds like home.

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The BBC knows reality television is ripe for analysis, and in “Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV”, journalists Pandora Sykes and Sirin Kale go in deep. Dive in with them to evaluate the ethics and implications of everyone’s (guilty) favourite format.

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That’s all for This Week Online. I hope it has been, if nothing else, a low level psychedelic experience. 

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