Some of my father’s posts are so crazy and bizarre that I can’t help but to think of them for years after the fact. In this post, I’ll show you one of these posts and explore the background of the media site that originally posted the content back in 2016.

My father posted this “SHOCKING” report from “USA INFO BOX” back in June 2016.

Here, my dad is sharing a belief that Michelle Obama is really male, and that this is why President Obama was interested in trans bathroom access issues. And also sharing a belief that the Obama girls don’t have birth records because they were adopted from North Africa. (Michelle can’t be their mom because she’s male.)

First of all, I want to say how embarrassed and horrified I am by this post. I remember seeing this post for the first time in 2016, immediately showing my husband, and feeling so mortified that my father engages in this kind of content. Makes me even sadder today to see that his post resulted in 25 additional shares of this article. And those peoples’ friends surely shared it, and the chain just continued, probably resulting in thousands of people being exposed to this idiotic “report.”

Beyond the cringe factor, the fact that that my father presents this as something serious is sad on every level. Sad that he is demeaning the Obamas in such a public, hurtful way. It’s sad that he’s spreading lies, sad that his mental state is in a place where he believes such absurd disinformation, sad that his judgment is deteriorated such that he thinks this is an appropriate thing to share with thousands of friends.  

When I went back to find this particular post to write about it here, I noticed that the link to the underlying article is no longer active. I did a little research about the website and here’s what I found.

The site that originally shared this “report” was www.usainfobox.com. This website is no longer in operation. The domain is still actively registered, but the website has been taken down.

I found two sources of additional information about this website. First, “UsaInfoBox” is on Twitter (see screenshot below and here), complete with a header/profile pic of an American flag and bald eagle. The header has a link to the usainfobox.com website. This Twitter account has just 30 total tweets and retweets. The first ten tweets/retweets are not in English. Per Google translate, they are in Macedonian and are dated from April 2015 to July 2015. I translated them all and they’re just silly / nonsensical content (such as: “Do tweeters who have 60 tweets a day do anything else in their lives?”).

After the Macedonian-language tweets, the account goes silent for almost 14 months, until late September 2016, in the run-up to the 2016 election. Here, I must note that North Macedonia is well known as a hotbed of political disinformation targeted at US conservative audiences. See here.

From September 2016 through end of October 2016, there are about 15 tweets, most of which are hashtagged as “TrumpTrain” and “NeverHillary” and other similar hashtags, and share articles that are pro-Trump / anti-Hillary.

There are just four Tweets post-2016 election. Three were posted on November 11, 2016 and the last tweet is dated January 17, 2017. (At that point, just days before Trump’s inauguration, their work was done.)

I also looked at the WayBack machine for more background on www.usainfobox.com. The first records reflected in the WayBack machine for this site are in 2016 (here). A review of the headlines available here shows this is a very clearly pro-Trump / anti-Hillary site (all of below headlines found here):

• Breaking! Donald Trump just received the best news! Hillary Clinton is furious!
• Breaking: President Putin warns America: “If it’s Hillary Clinton, it’s war”
• Trump is leading all over the country and Hillary has no chance! Yes!!

It’s very clear that USA INFO BOX is a foreign disinformation site, created to sow discord and to spread disinformation aimed at conservative audiences. They certainly caught a “live one” in my father.

Of course, none of the people sharing this content are doing any kind of critical thinking or due diligence about what they’re putting out into the world. They just mindlessly scroll and share, getting more and more immersed to the point of complete and total clownishness and absurdity.

I sometimes think about what these foreign troll farms must think of Americans. Do you think they’re sitting back, thinking “Wow, these Americans are an impressive bunch?” I would guess not.

XOXO,

Jane