How to avoid sharing Social Media Scams in the Wake of a Disaster
The world is full of disasters. It is also full of people who have learned to profit off of disaster. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the modern social media/online environment that in order to avoid spreading scams, you have to make a continuous effort and you have to be cynical.
There are a lot of wonderful, well-meaning people in the world who want to help everyone who asks for it. Unfortunately, those people are easy to scam.
These are some rules to prevent you from either falling victim to scams or from passing scams along to other people.
These are not suggestions, these are not things to take into consideration, the rules listed here are RULES that you need to adopt in order to keep from spreading scams on social media.
Rules:
Never, ever share screenshots of fundraisers or resources that you haven’t verified yourself. If you see a screenshot of, say, the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds Instagram announcing that they will be accepting evacuees with RVs, you go find the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds website, you find the social media linked on their website, and you check that the post you’re seeing actually came from the entity it’s claiming to. Once you have proved that the post actually came from the entity it’s claiming to, double check that entity with a couple of verifiable sources. So, for instance, if I was checking on the Guitar Center Music Foundation I’d check Guitar Center’s website and maybe I’d look for news articles about donations from the foundation. If I was looking up the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds, I’d look for a local newspaper calendar of events that linked to the fairgrounds or would check the city websites in the area and search “fairgrounds” on them. I would not share a link to a social media page for an organization until I was 100% certain that it was actually associated with the organization. You shouldn’t either. If you see a post that claims to come from a specific group but all you have is the screenshot of the post, go find the group’s website and if it all checks out you may share it IF AND ONLY IF you add the link to the post. And if a post has a link already, click through it and STILL check that everything looks okay.
Never give money or information to someone with a free email address. This sucks. I know. But if the group you’re looking at only has a gmail address or a protonmail you have no way of knowing if they’re legitimately associated with the organization at a glance. And even if they ARE associated with the organization, the free email account demonstrates a lack of planning/commitment that has troubling implications for the handling of your money or data.
Do not share screenshots of “resources,” headlines, social media posts, or news articles. I’m done with screenshots. Screenshots are easy to fake and almost always remove context from the discussion. A standalone screenshot isn’t information, it’s a trap to get you to share something without thinking. Do not *trust* screenshots of “resources,” headlines, social media posts, or news articles. Always assume a screenshot is faked unless you have found the original post yourself. A screenshot isn’t a “resource” it is an un-source, it is intentionally removing information from the viewer and we are well past the time when people should have understood that sharing screenshots without a link to the original text in context is never, every trustworthy.
Do not give money or information to accounts without a history. This may mean individual social media accounts, or it may mean a shiny new mutual aid project that popped up near your house. It’s unfortunate that people have their accounts deleted, it’s unfortunate that new orgs have trouble finding support, but the likelihood that a new account is a scam is simply too high to trust your money or information with it. If someone is asking for money or offering help on an account that hasn’t posted for years, or that suddenly changed all its content, or that has only existed for a month with no links to other, older sites and socials, you shouldn’t trust that account.
Okay, those are the RULES. Those are the lines you draw in the sand. The TL;DR version is this:
Don’t share posts you haven’t personally verified
Don’t give money or information to accounts with generic email accounts like gmail
Don’t share or trust screenshots that have no links or further context
Don’t give info or money to brand new accounts
I absolve you of any guilt you have surrounding this. You want to share that post to help a stranger but they have only had an account for a week. You want to spread that resource, but unfortunately it is only available as screenshots of an anonymous instagram account. You think that perhaps that mutual aid group really can help people, but the only way contact them is to put your info into a google form and send an email to their gmail account. That post seems really helpful, but actually you can’t find anything that suggests that the Mt. Pacifico Aquatic Center exists outside of this twitter account. No more guilt! Guilt be gone! You do not have to feel bad for not sharing these things, or not reaching out, or not giving money because doing so would be irresponsible and would put other people at risk of being tricked by scammers or wasting what money they can donate on a potential fraud.
Now, some tips:
Always, always, always take at least ten minutes to think about giving someone money or your information online. Read the post that moved you, then re-read it, then go sit away from it for ten minutes and think about it. There’s a good chance you will still want to give, or sign up, but ten minutes away will give you a chance to consider if there are any red flags in the post that inspired you.
Independently search everything you’re going to share. Go outside of social platforms and check on search engines. Check Wikipedia. Look up the website and send a while clicking around. Go on a *different* social media platform and check their account.
Just straight up search “[SUBJECT] Scam” before you do anything. See if this thing you’re looking at is actually an old scam that’s revamped for a new disaster. See if you can find an explanation of how something might be a scam or risk in a way that you didn’t understand before.
Get used to getting away from social media. Go check websites.
Learn domain name syntax. “musicfoundationguit.arcenter.com” is a bullshit scam. “guitarcenterfounditaon.org” is a bullshit scam. “guitarcenter-foundation.org” is a bullshit scam. The actual domain is “guitarcenterfoundation.org” and the link to the correct page isn’t going to be “guitarcenter.foundationfires.org” it’s going to be “guitarcenterfoundation.org/fires”
Tips for Orgs:
If you do not want your org to look like a scam you are going to have to put some effort into it. Unfortunately this will probably also require at least a little bit of money; I know it’s hard to get money together at the beginning, but it will pay off in the long run.
Invest in a domain and hosted email. You can get relatively inexpensive hosted email through most domain registrars and even if you only get one email address for your domain you can forward it to all the free gmail and protonmail accounts you want. But buy a domain, set up a simple website, and get an info@[yourdomain].com email set up because you don’t want people emailing “MyOrgInfo@gmail.com” because it’s super fucking easy for a 1337 hax0r like me to set up “YourOrgTeam@gmail.com” and scam the people who want to reach out to you.
Make a blog on your actual website, not on a social media site. A blog means that you can make regular posts and establish a history to prove that you are real and you do real stuff; it will also help with SEO and help to ensure that when people search for your org YOU are what comes up. Keeping up calendars of previous activities with links to those activities is also good.
Set up social handles on all the sites you use, make a “socials” page on your website, and link to your handles so that people can verify if you’re the one posting something. If you don’t make it extremely easy to find your socials, that means it’s extremely easy to set up fake accounts claiming to be you. Then put the link to your website in the bio on your socials.
If you are offering something or holding a fundraiser or doing anything on your social media page, link it back to your website. If you have an IG post offering resources, you should include a url for your site in each image. If you share a photo on twitter with the info for a march, that should link back to your website with more info about the march. If you post a fundraiser on tumblr you need to link the fundraising page of your website on that post.
If you absolutely positively cannot set up a website and a real-ass email address, set up a linktree, choose a primary social media to post on that all the others refer back to, and very explicitly state what your email address is and that you do not have other email addresses somewhere that’s difficult to miss. Build a history of posts and link to other orgs that you work with or any writeups or stories about your events or projects. The point of all of this is making yourself easy to verify. “northfullertonfnb@gmail.com” sucks but it sucks a lot less if it’s in the bio of “@northfulltertonfnb” and that page has a two year history of posting meal share schedules and menus.
In conclusion, don’t share things that you haven’t personally checked. When in doubt, it is always safer not to share.
…I want to just draw a fashion zine of just Miss Piggy, oh my god. she is so underrated and underutilized, where is my succession-like muppets satire thing LOL I want it so bad. let me do it disney call me pls
EDIT FOR JAN 2025: I’M MAKING A ZINE OF MISS PIGGY FASHIONS. It is happening, I have heard your comments. Please stay tuned to my instagram for updates!! Here’s a preview:
thank you for like, a bajillion notes!!!
JUST TO BE SURE YOU DIDN’T MISS IT.
EDIT FOR JAN 2025: ✨THE ZINE IS COMING✨
It is happening, I have heard your comments. Please stay tuned to my instagram for updates!! Here’s a preview:
it’s funny although a little exasperating how artists designing “princess” or medieval-esque gowns really do not understand how those types of clothes are constructed. We’re all so used to modern day garments that are like… all sewn together in one layer of cloth, nobody seems to realize all of the bits and pieces were actually attached in layers.
So like look at this mid-1400’s fit:
to get the effect of that orange gown, you’ve got
chemise next to the skin like a slip (not visible here) (sometimes you let a bit of this show at the neckline) (the point is not to sweat into your nice clothes and ruin them)
kirtle, or undergown. (your basic dress, acceptable to be seen by other people) this is the puffing bits visible at the elbow, cleavage, and slashed sleeve. It’s a whole ass dress in there. Square neckline usually. In the left picture it’s probably the mustard yellow layer on the standing figure.
coat, or gown. This is the orange diamond pattern part. It’s also the bit of darker color visible in the V of the neckline.
surcoat, or sleeveless overgown. THIS is the yellow tapestry print. In the left picture it’s the long printed blue dress on the standing figure
if you want to get really fancy you can add basically a kerchief or netting over the bare neck/shoulders. It can be tucked into the neckline or it can sit on top. That’s called a partlet.
the best I can tell you is that they were technically in a mini-ice-age during this era. Still looks hot as balls though.
Coats and surcoats are really more for rich people though, normal folks will be wearing this look:
so you know that ballgown look that people default to when making “princess” designs
this is kind of the fashion equivalent of when an AI has been trained to approximate what art looks like without understanding what it’s drawing or how physics work. A costume designer has general recollections of about how the dresses looked from art, and a lot of the art they’re learning from is also romanticized revival recreations of earlier art, so things are getting pretty confused structurally.
(I have to blame Disney for a lot of the specific trends but to be clear this was already happening before Disney was born.)
You can probably recognize how the gestalt of the bodice evokes what would actually be two layers–a gown laced over an under-gown, maybe with a stomacher in the same color as the gown.
The skirt is the very distant legacy of a trend that starts around here, in the early 1500’s:
deliberately slitting the skirt of your gown so that it shows a triangle of the under-gown peaking through.
You know what a farthingale is? it’s this thing.
Reeds sewn into the skirt to give it that round bell shape without needing 100000 layers underneath. Unsurprisingly invented in Spain, where it’s hot as fuck. This is also the era where the farthingale starts its evolution into the eventual hoop skirt. You see that wide “ballroom” shape in a lot of princess designs. Princess Peach is a classic example.
Farthingale becomes hoop skirt, and using basically the same technology (reeds sewn into the fabric for support) the under-gown/kirtle becomes stiffened and shaped.
Eventually you get to this very pronounced version of the “slashed skirt” shown in the left figure, below. You can see that the red skirt is probably part of a whole dress, because the red sleeves in the same fabric are visible under the outer gown. (you can also see the chemise at the edge of the neckline). They did have detachable sleeves back then, as a standard part of a gown, so the red sleeves could be pinned to the chemise instead of attached to the body of the gown.
>Right figure, you can see this shit is getting elaborate now. I think that’s a white under-gown with a yellow gown and a burgundy overgown. The collar around her neck is actually a partlet, not connected to anything else, just tucked in and maybe pinned underneath the neckline. But they’re starting to have separate skirts now, so it’s also possible she’s only wearing a yellow skirt with the overgown on top it.
At this point whalebone is coming into the picture in a BIG way, and that’s when you start to get Tudor style boned gown/kirtles tight around the bust really taking off. Also boned sleeves, if you can believe that. The smooth flat conical bodice is the product of a boned kirtle, which will eventually become stays, which will eventually become a corset.
anyway by now we’re fully out of the medieval period and into the early modern/renaissance.
look at this bad ass bitch, hat ON titties OUT, who is doing it like her
I went to the ren fair recently, which got me interested in the specific historical inspirations of common “Renaissance Festival” clothes and consequently bugged my sister about her research so hard that it made us miss our turn
One common outfit you see (thanks to Amazon) is this modern take on the kirtle
On the left: Amazon. On the right: a recreation of what people actually wore. You can see how we have the same basic concept with a very different execution. This is what you would call a kirtle.
Another common ren fair look is the outer-wear stays. Always with the un-collared billowy undershirt.
I want to draw attention to the lacing. Stands to reason that costumers now would use contemporary lacing rather than that of previous eras. But check out even the romantic depictions of clothing from the 1870’s below this. No grommets. That’s just pure fabric baby.
Stays are boned. Jumps are not. Stays/bodies were pretty expensive due to the craftsmanship, and a poor person would have budget for a single pair. You can imagine this investment was not as popular with women who did hard physical labor. Jumps got really popular in the mid-1700’s and largely replaced stays in working class fashion.
A brief history lesson: clothes are ephemeral; we lose them as they are worn out, cut down, repurposed, and thrown away. Before modern anthropology and modern record keeping, it was difficult for anyone to know what anyone else looked like in the past or even a country away. Words used to refer to one kind of garment kept being used even as that garment changed in structure and purpose over time. Even after paper became common enough for printing art, it wore out fast and art was lost. References were hard to get.
What we think of as “peasant garb” is actually the product of a game of telephone that travels back from Romantic Revival art, and many of those (urban) artists got their idea of what rural peasants wore from opera costumes. The costumers working at the opera were not going out to the country side to take notes on what farmers actually wore, nor did they want to. Opera is show biz, you want it to be evocative, but not ordinary. Their costumes would have been based on what urban folks were wearing, with extra little touches like a shepherds crook to make it look “rural”.
Below: some mid-to-late 1800’s artistic depictions of peasants wearing improbably nice fabrics/clothes (probably a reflection of opera costumes). The painting of the peasant girl on the right is wearing more-or-less jumps.
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You can see how the romantic art depictions of unstructured vests eventually inspired the “medieval revival” styles of the 1960’s/1970’s which lives on in the ren fair. Not only the neckline of the vest, but the style of undershirt with an open neck and billowy sleeves.
Compare (unstructured, laced, outerwear):
Nobody wore that in the 1400’s or 1500’s, but they wore things that looked similar at a glance. When 1960’s artists went back looking for early modern/medieval styles to replicate, they mostly had a hodge podge of this art to reference and extrapolate from.
The fact that a historical laced kirtle with an over skirt looks a lot like stays worn on the outside, probably made this confusing for artists. Undershirts of the 1500’s were collared and high necked, however, with tighter sleeves.(Below, 1500’s kirtle)
One last example of 1800’s romanticism, this time depicting a contemporary girl. Looks familiar, right? We’re back at the ren fair, if you take the bonnet off.
TLDR; what we think of as “Renaissance” or even “medieval” peasant garb is actually a remix of the working class clothes from the 1800’s, with some confused memories of the kirtle from older art thrown in.
Structured stays? 1500’s. The blousy no-collar undershirt? 1700’s. The cross lacing? 1800’s.
Anyway. This image of peasants has always been costume & fantasy. That’s why I think it’s kind of fun that it reaches a terminus in the anachronism and fantasy of a Renaissance Festival.
cannot believe we are having a whole discussion about “princess dresses” without talking about THEE iconic feature of the Princess Look, the conical hennin (Wikipedia)
I know these words mean things and this is not a hoax but reading this is like having eldritch information forced into my brain, causing me to struggle to retain my grip on reality. It’s just totally *benign* information.
I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable
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amhrancas 
