READER BEWARE: A Note To White Women
WAKE THE EFF UP AND SEE THAT YOU’RE GETTING PLAYED.
This piece has no images.
It has no fluff.
It serves as call out to the women that look like me.
That function like I did.
We never had to pay attention…and because of that, we’re now being preyed upon…
AND IT’S WORKING!!
PAY. ATTENTION.
I’ve written about this before. Too many times, actually.
The aesthetic radicalization of white women.
The influencer-to-truth-teller pipeline.
The wellness-to-MAGA slope.
The absolute collapse of media literacy in the digital age.
And every time I think, okay, this will be the wake-up call, we slide a little further.
This is your update.
Your check-in.
This is your very loving, very serious:
READER BEWARE
The Soft Disillusionment Shift
Brianna Madia and the “I Support Them But…” Era. (oof)
Well…let’s start with Brianna Madia.
For a while, she occupied the dusty high ground of Instagram storytelling. She built her brand on introspection, van life, and desert dogs. She cultivated a following that trusted her not just as a writer, but as a truth-teller. But over the last few years, cracks have formed between the story she tells and the facts beneath it.
The fallout began with her dog. When allegedly one of her pets attacked another and ultimately had to be euthanized, followers raised questions about how much she had shared, when she had shared it, and whether she had been honest about the timeline.
Then came the Reddit backlash and eventually, the doxxing (from her), which she used as proof that she was being targeted by cruel internet mobs.
(Which kind of I get! I’ve lived THROUGH a situation like that. I never did the doxxing but was most def doxxed along with my family and my kids.)
SPOILER ALERT: It BLOWS!
She released her memoir…and some readers noticed inconsistencies between the book and the real-time narratives she’d shared on Instagram for years.
Dates didn’t line up.
Claims didn’t match.
Stories shifted.
Brianna recently posted a string of emotionally charged reflections on her relationship with the Democratic Party, it wasn’t surprising, but it was telling.
She started with vague language, slippery allusions to “the party” and “performative leftism.”
Only later did she say the words outright. After the mobs replied.
She ran a poll asking if people “support the party anymore” and got nearly 8,000 votes saying “no.”
Then she used that as proof (even though it was just her following), as if emotional responses from followers counted as credible evidence.
No context. No policy specifics. No mention of what’s actually on the line.
Just a familiar pattern: a well-crafted narrative shaped to stir emotion and affirm her own perspective.
It wasn’t political analysis.
It was personal catharsis.
And thousands of people will take it as gospel.
Truth-Telling Without Training
We are living in the golden age of unqualified truth-tellers.
They’re not journalists. They’re not researchers. They’re not policy experts.
But they speak with the emotional confidence of someone who’s been hurt and therefore knows things.
That’s the new authority. Lived experience plus passionate tone equals credibility.
Except… that’s not how journalism works.
Here’s what actual reporting requires:
Fact-checking
Multiple, credible sources
Editorial oversight
Journalistic ethics
Accountability for mistakes
Here’s what influencer reporting looks like:
“I just feel like something’s off”
“I’ve been sitting with this for a while”
“Not enough people are talking about this”
[Screenshot of a tweet with no source]
[Poll sticker]
And people eat it up.
Because it’s aesthetically packaged to feel empowering, raw, and real. But it’s not real. It’s curated emotional manipulation, dressed up as enlightenment.
White Women and the Emotional Echo Chamber
This part is hard to say, but it’s true.
White women are the most emotionally targeted and politically vulnerable demographic in this space.
Influencers who look and speak like us are feeding us curated moral panic under the guise of care.
“I’m just sharing because I’m scared.”
“This is about our kids.” “I don’t trust either side anymore.”
It’s a soft manipulation, and it’s working. Because it doesn’t feel like propaganda. It feels like connection.
But that connection is being used to divide us.
The danger isn’t that these women become MAGA overnight. It’s that they become so disillusioned they stop participating altogether. Or they start aligning with ideologies that feel comforting and anti-establishment, without realizing they’re getting pulled further and further from actual democracy.
The Collapse of Media Literacy
And Why It’s Not Entirely Our Fault
We were raised to believe in the media.
That what was printed had been fact-checked.
That a journalist wouldn’t run a story unless it was vetted.
We believed the newspaper told the truth, because for the most part, it tried to.
Then we grew up and watched the collapse of trust happen in real time. Facebook turned information into a choose-your-own-adventure. Twitter turned headlines into punchlines. Instagram turned news into vibes.
And suddenly, everyone had a platform, but not everyone knew what they were talking about.
In the book Careless People, Sarah Churchwell explores the media frenzy around the Hall-Mills case, a 1920s murder that likely inspired elements of The Great Gatsby.
She details how newspapers obsessed over scandal and sensation, shaping public perception with emotion rather than truth.
“The facts were never clear, but that didn’t stop the story from growing.
The press printed what the public would feel — not what they could verify.”
That was a hundred years ago.
Now imagine that with filters, reels, affiliate links, and 300,000 followers.
This isn’t just about disinformation. It’s about media illiteracy. The inability to tell the difference between opinion and fact, between reporting and ranting, between a feeling and a verified source.
And it’s not a moral failing. It’s a systemic one. But it’s also our responsibility to fix.
The Floods, the Fallout, and the Fight Over Facts
This is all playing out right now, in real time, over the flooding disasters across the country.
And just like clockwork, people are arguing about who to blame. The government. The party in charge. Climate change. The elites. The people who didn’t evacuate fast enough.
Some theories are reasonable. Some are banana-pants. Most are pure speculation, repeated so often they start to sound like truth.
Instead of turning to experts or agencies, people are turning to influencers. To vague memes, recycled screenshots, and creators who know how to sound concerned without saying anything.
Nobody wants to wait for facts. We want to feel something. And in that rush, we lose the plot.
READER BEWARE (Seriously, Beware)
Here’s the part where I don’t sugarcoat it.
You wouldn’t take legal advice from a candle influencer.
So why are you trusting her on global policy?
You wouldn’t let a personal trainer perform your surgery.
So why are you resharing political takes from someone who “doesn’t follow politics” but feels like something’s off?
We’ve reached a point where people don’t ask what’s true.
They ask who sounds the most relatable. We’ve replaced facts with familiarity. And it’s costing us our ability to think critically.
You are not too smart to be manipulated.
You are not too skeptical to be misled.
You are not too kind to call bullshit when someone uses their platform to emotionally sway you into apathy or extremism.