Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg isnât the first human flashpoint for conspiracy theoristsâheâs not even the first school shooting survivor to become oneâbut the 17-year-old does have a strategy for dealing with them.It appears to be this: Call bullshit with abandon.In a conversation with VICE in March, Hogg and his family responded to the various claims that have been repeatedly lobbed at him: heâs a crisis actor, heâs a communist, heâs basically Hitler reincarnate, heâs a lackey of George Soros.âI donât care,â Hogg said. âI donât. I have bigger, more important things to focus on than these stupid conspiracies that arenât true in any way, shape or form, have no validity, and donât hold their weight. At all ⊠these people are going to keep trying to take us down but thatâs how we know what weâre doing matters ⊠whenever someone tries making a change that matters, and a change for the better, thereâs always someone that tried stopping them.âPointing out the absurdity of the threats and conspiracy theories has acted as somewhat of a buffer. âThese people have no fucking life. To go after a witness of a school shooting, itâs pathetic, and as my dad was saying, itâs fucking weird,â he said.This attitude is consistent with Hoggâs previous declarations. Heâs gone after everyone from former sheriff and noted media hated David Clarkeâhe said âYou disgust meâ after Clarke tweeted that the Parkland teens were connected to George Sorosâ to Fox News host Laura Ingraham and her advertising revenue. He chalks this approach up to his age, which is both encouraging (todayâs teens know how to harness and handle the internet better than any of us) and depressing (this is likely the only version of the internet theyâve experienced.)â[Weâre] the generation of 9/11, the recession, cyberbullying, and school shootings,â he said. âWeâve had to live around that and through that our entire lives. Weâve had to learn to deal with these sick fuckers that are saying this stuff, that are out there, claiming that weâre not real people, claiming that weâre actorsâand we know not to let this stuff online affect us.â(The attitude may also come from his mother, who at one point said, in reference to online threats made against her family, âYou fucked with the wrong mama bear.â)
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Hogg brings up several incidentsâhe said an âNYPD officerâ showed up in his DMs and called him a âlittle bitchââbut he reserves particular ire for Alex Jones, the face of InfoWars and an infamous conspiracy theorist who has floated the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax.âThe lovely man that is Alex Jones, who believes that water turns people gay, sells snake oil, which, by the way, great snake oil, itâs called Jones brand snake oil ⊠heâs a conspiracy theory-peddling alt right fuck who doesnât do any research,â Hogg said. âHonestly, the guyâs pretty smart in the sense that heâs able to fool all these Americansâwell over two millionâinto believing all the crazy shit he says, just so he can sell them stuff.âPart of the reason Hogg and his activist classmates have stuck out so much is because they have an unusually sophisticated grip on what makes movements like this successful. Itâs notable that theyâre viewed as beacons of light, because in some ways, theyâve proven themselves adept at recognizing humanityâs darker impulses.âThere was a short time when I was like, âoh god, this is like, scary and stuff,â but then I realized, this is great advertising,â he said of the conspiracy theories. âItâs keeping us in the press, itâs keeping us relevant, and itâs continuing our story.ââI think this is somewhat of a problem with platforms, and it always will be, in the sense that you canât control every single person that makes these things,â Hogg said at another point. âBut the power in politics and the power in media lies with the advertisers and the people that actually give you money."âTo the people that are out there that actually believe what he says,â he added, âdo some fucking research and show me some credible evidence to what heâs saying about me.âIn some ways, itâs refreshing to hear these kinds of zero-tolerance statementsâparticularly given that the call to boycott Laura Ingrahamâs advertisers was met with a whole lot of bad-faith hand-wringingâthough they can come across as perfectly clipped soundbites.But given that this sort of fear-mongering is likely to happen again (and again, and again, as long as massacres like Parkland continue), Hogg and the other teens have helped create a new kind of blueprint for how to respond. Jones, Clarke, and Ingraham arenât the only attention-grabbers anymore.“To the people that are out there that actually believe what he says, do some fucking research and show me some credible evidence to what he’s saying about me.”