Welcome!
Why have I started a Substack and what can you expect from me?
Hi, folks!
First, let me begin with a few words of introduction.
Many of you will know me from Twitter (which I refuse to call X) as Clarefella. I've been a NAFO fella since August 2022 and am active on the platform daily. My main focus has been and continues to be on combatting Russian misinformation and disinformation. I am also present on Bluesky and intend to become more active on that platform because of the hellhole that Twitter has become, particularly so in the last several months. That being said, as of January 2025, I am not intending to completely leave Twitter yet, because that is where the majority of the Russian poison is and continues to permeate Western minds. An additional consideration is that I am also a regular Community Notes contributor, with more than 200 notes published on posts ranging from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, various Russian embassies and other Russian accounts, Ali Khamenei (the Supreme Leader of Iran), Bashar al-Assad (when he was still the Syrian President), the UN, the ICRC, and various media organisations.
About me
I'm a British woman who considers herself neither young nor old (and I refuse to call it middle-aged). Apparently, I am what might be called a geriatric millennial. This means that I am old enough to remember the early days of the internet and have watched it - and been part of - its evolution. I had the benefit of growing up without social media. It wasn’t until my early twenties that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter started to take off.
In my adult life, I have lived and worked through 9/11, the London terrorist bombings of 2005, the global war on terror, the global financial crisis, the unrest and wars in the Middle East, Brexit, a global pandemic, and two Russian invasions of Ukraine - first in 2014 and then again as a full-scale war in 2022 which is unfortunately ongoing to this day. That’s a lot of political unrest and bloodshed in just under a quarter of a century.
I have watched in horror as fake news, clickbait, and propaganda have filled social media over the last decade in particular, poisoning people's minds and causing division in society.
For about eighteen months and up to November 2024, I paid for a Twitter blue check. However, Musk’s extreme right-wing views and how he has enabled the worst dregs of humanity to multiply, be emboldened and amplify their hateful views on Twitter forced me to confront reality. Twitter is no longer a place for serious conversation because of the deluge of abuse by trolls and bots which are allowed to run amok. On 21 April 2022, before Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, he wrote,
“If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
What happened, Elon? We are still waiting. I think we will be waiting a long time. In the meantime, I recommend that no serious liberal-minded person pays Elon a penny for Twitter.
So what can you expect from this blog?
I am not a naturally creative person. Writing doesn’t come naturally to me. But it can be a useful outlet for me to express myself without getting deboosted or shadow banned by Musk’s algorithm changes. The sort of topics I plan to muse about are likely to fall into the following categories:
Geopolitical analysis with a focus on Russia’s war on Ukraine, Russia’s hybrid war on Europe, NATO, and wider considerations.
Russian propaganda.
Critiques of Western foreign policy.
Political commentary on extremism and ideology.
Cultural and identity politics.
International humanitarian law, human rights and genocide.
Social media’s role in shaping political discourse.
The media’s role in normalising the unhinged rants of tyrants like Donald Trump.
That’s all for now, folks. I’m not sure how regularly I will be able to write, but I will set myself a goal of publishing something at least once a month. What are your thoughts on these topics? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.