Moist in the Anteroom

Then they’re just crimes.

In the Reddit screenshot we see three instructions:

Press & hold the Win key + R

In verification window, press Ctrl key + V

Press Enter key on your keyboard

(We also see some odd grammatical errors - "Complete these verification steps use keyboard" instead of "using keyboard" or "To complete" - which should be a red flag as well.)

The first instruction - Win+R - opens the Run dialog:

You might notice that this looks like it's part of Windows; that's because it is. This dialog isn't part of the CAPTCHA but part of your own computer (a huge red flag!!)

The description says that Windows will open a file for you, but it's actually more advanced than that: this can run any command-line command you type into it. (If you don't know what that means, the command line is a way to interact with your computer by typing commands, and lets you do basically anything Windows can do.)

The second instruction - Ctrl+V - you might recognize: it pastes whatever you have copied to the clipboard.

Usually, you'd have copied this with a Ctrl+C or Ctrl+X, but websites are able to modify what's in your clipboard directly. (You might have experienced this with something like the "Share results" button in Wordle.)

In this case, they've copied a malicious command into your clipboard already, so when you hit Ctrl+V the command gets pasted directly into the Run dialog. I don't know the details of the specific command, but it has the power to do basically anything you can: download files, run programs, delete files, whatever.

The third instruction - Enter - is the same as hitting the OK button in the dialog: Windows executes the command you've pasted in for it.

In short, Win+R opens a tool to use commands, Ctrl+V pastes in a malicious command, and Enter executes it.

Many of you might be saying, hey, I already know what Ctrl+V does! That's great! I'm just trying to clarify how exactly the keyboard presses "run a command that can download malware onto your device", so you or anyone can understand what your keypresses are doing in general (not just in this specific fake CAPTCHA attack), and be aware when they might be doing something dangerous.

because it’s trying to take a series of insights (many of which aren’t universally applicable, are not helpful, or are more useful to Keep The Autistic Kid Shut Up than to help you make friends)

and turn them into clearcut rules

[id: a tweet thread by twitter user ‘Katherine Cross’ @ Quinnae_Moon

It begins with a qrt of a tweet by twitter user ‘penitent admirer’ @ loudpenitent

“A disturbing amount of Online Discourse these days from the Puriteens et al is entirely a desperate attempt to make the world ‘safe’ by giving you a set of cheat codes about how to Purge The Evil From Our Midst.

It’s nega-pickup artist logic, social interaction as a ruleset.”

Katherine Cross said in response:

“In my many discussions on activism down the years, I’ve said that one of the most dangerous things we tend to do is treat *insights* as rules. Things like the ‘tone argument,’ for instance, or ‘intent doesn’t matter.’

It’s insightful to note that marginalized people are more likely to have their tone policed, or used as an excuse not to hear them.

it does not mean that one’s tone can never be a problem under any circumstances whatsoever.

Similarly, it’s insightful to note that whatever your intentions, any harm you caused remains.

It does not mean that we should always conflate open hostility with simple accidents or ignorance.

By calcifying such insights into inflexible rules, we gamify activism by making it a ‘winnable’ sequence of inputs. To no one’s surprise, this is part of why social justice communities are vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors. It’s very easy to *say* the right things.

So easy to *say* what’s right, and perform everything to a tee. And since that’s where all the emphasis is, in viewing oppression as evidenced by social faux pas, it allows truly abusive and toxic people to pantomime their way past scrutiny for months or years.

Meanwhile, it is precisely this sort of academic perfection that is most elusive for the marginalized- we who were raised in a world where compromise was a way of life.

That means that, in a world where ‘context’ can only ever be a bad faith excuse to escape accountability, you are left with little recourse to defend yourself if you run afoul of an unwritten rule.

And this means those of us, like trans women of color, are often excluded from the spaces notionally advocating for us. Too messy, not up on the latest language, not living our politics perfectly enough.

And I want to stress something here. I’ve been beating this drum since at least 2012. It’s not an issue among ‘teens,’ though it certainly affect those youngest and newest to activism most acutely. It’s something elders do too. My generation does it. We *all* do.

Consider the structure of every online callout:

‘What do we want!?’

‘Accountability!’

‘What does that mean!?’

*variously confused muttering*

^ this is where the rules leave us time after time. And while I don’t hold much hope these days, we can still make different choices.”

"Maybe we should treat women better."

And then Wake up dead man is like: