Twitter Ablaze With Hot Takes After Learning Very Leftist Influencer Ana Mardoll Works For Lockheed Martin

Twitter is in the process of digesting one of its most convoluted and darkly poetic controversies in recent memory. If you aren’t hip to the latest highly complicated and very online beef, strap in to learn more.

tried to explain the Ana Mardoll thing to my mostly offline wife and she divorced me before I could get to the Lockheed Martin reveal

— Jerard Fagerberg (@jgfagerberg) July 31, 2022

part of Being Online and remaining sane is letting some trending topics wash over u like water. i saw something happening with lockheed martin and i simply said “this is one i won’t research. i will not know about this one.”

— caleb hearon (@calebsaysthings) August 1, 2022

Back in April, young adult (YA) author, social media influencer disability and trans rights advocate Ana Mardoll tweeted about how expecting authors to be interested in other books was ableist. Mardoll’s reasoning revolved around several points, including that some people have ADHD and difficulty focusing, and reading books, in general, can be a little elitist.

Mardoll’s tweets stated that people who write books expecting others to read them should not be mocked for never reading a book themselves. A great number of people disagreed with Mardoll and a few defended him, leading the controversy to balloon out and encompass more than just author Twitter. Like tweetstorms of the past, it was all cleared up within a few days.

I don’t know how to tell you but implying that people with adhd can’t cope with reading adult fiction and/or non formulaic plot structures is, actually, unabashedly ableist. Even if you have adhd yourself.

— flo is gone (@florianehendon) April 2, 2022

But now, the discourse is active again. Lolcow gossip forum Kiwi Farms has revealed that Ana Mardoll is currently employed by Lockheed Martin, an arms manufacturer and defense contractor that has been controversially involved in a number of wars. To put the cherry on top for some, Mardoll controversially got the job at Lockheed Martin through his family.

Many on Twitter, which often delights in hypocrisy, used the revelation about Mardoll’s professional life to shun, cancel and shame him.

hey question, why won’t you name Lockheed Martin? is it because it’s one of the largest defense contractors that provides arms to Is/r@el and played a role in American imperial reaches in both Iraq and Afghanistan? ($75 billion in pentagon contacts in 2020 alone??) pic.twitter.com/d5aopHiGEP

— Brendon Zatirka (@BrendonZatirka) July 31, 2022

‘So the self-published YA author who said that ‘reading books is ableist’ turns out to have been a neopotism hire at Lockheed Martin,” I say to my therapist when she asks me how my Twitter addiction is going.

— Alexander McCoy (@AlexanderMcCoy4) August 1, 2022

Some also took the chance to accuse Mardoll of posing as "purer" than he actually is and of participating in the same kind of online harassment that he is now subject to. Ana Mardoll has since deleted his account in the aftermath.

As a Twitter personality who organizes mobs to attack small accounts I’m no stranger to bombing the defenseless. That’s why this summer I’m partnering with Lockheed Martin to

— Isaac Butler (@parabasis) July 31, 2022

crowdfunding for your mortgage and cosplaying as a poor struggling person while working at lockheed martin as a nepotism hire for more than a decade… couldn’t have even imagined this one up for the twitter bingo card

— Elly Belle 🔮 (famously not a woman) (@literElly) July 31, 2022

sorry to wade into the lockheed martin thing but i think it’s the perfect example of what most internet discourse is--projection. if you accuse (of ableism, of transphobia, etc) you absolve yourself of wrong. purity and sanctity-obsessed identity formation thru negation of others

— p.e. moskowitz (@_pem_pem) July 31, 2022

The discourse took a number of swerves from there. Some extremely progressive posters found themselves defending Lockheed Martin, a company that sells weapons to the U.S. military.

If we are going to have a conversation about disability and Lockheed Martin, we cannot brush over DisabilityIN's role in awarding them a best place to work, with a perfect, 100 disability inclusion rating, year after year. https://t.co/2rUItIR978

— Liz Jackson (@elizejackson) July 31, 2022

What harms are we comparing? A vulnerable and marginalized person losing their job and being rendered highly vulnerable, likely to actually die from lack of healthcare/resources, or the harm of one small cog in a massive military machine being maybe slightly more optimal

— Bacchuslaureat (@Bacchuslaureat) July 31, 2022

Some then speculated about how the weapons manufacturer would react to the news as it continued trending throughout the day.

imagine being the PR person for lockheed martin and having to write up an internal brief on this for executives

— abdullah (@AShihipar) July 31, 2022

A number of people also attacked Kiwi Farms, which has been blamed for several deaths due to purported online harassment or cyberbullying.

I do know some things about being doxxed by Kiwi Farms. Kiwi Farms has a 10 year long thread on my wife. Kiwi Farms HATES trans people. They share pics of my wife, me, our kids, our house. They email my wife's professors, our landlords and employers.

— mifeprestone+misoprostol = 👼 (@ADubiousPronoun) August 1, 2022

This. Kiwi Farms, the source of the doxing, is a transphobic group of white supremacists who attempt to harm trans folk by doxing them. They apparent keep a kill and rape count. I've seen at least one thread by someone doxed by them who had someone attack and rape them after. https://t.co/QtfhXcYMEA

— A. H. (@a_h_reaume) August 1, 2022

Much commentary turned back on itself, like a snake eating its own tail, as Twitter debated and discussed the nature of Twitter debate and discussion into today, also spreading elsewhere such as Reddit's OOTL sub.

current ranking: Will Smith apology – green circle; Nathan Fielder – blue square; Ana Mardoll/Lockheed Martin nepotism scandal – double black diamond https://t.co/tdPrTXZAOm

— hannah (@HannahLNYC) August 1, 2022