Before Bannon was a troubled, chaotic time for Other Naomi. She was tweeting and livestreaming with a worrying relentlessness, but her grievances were scattershot and diffuse. She shared her belief that children had lost the reflex to smile due to enforced mask-wearing, based on no evidence except her own observations of random children who might have been having rough days. She claimed to have overheard two Apple employees in a Manhattan restaurant discussing "vaccines w nanopatticles [sic] that let you travel back in time" (apparently mistaking a conversation about Apple Watch's Time Travel feature for a secret meeting about an actual time machine).

XREF: Connects to the broader theme in this work about how radicalization happens not all at once but through chaotic, human moments. Also links to general literature on conspiracy theory adoption stemming from underlying psychological needs.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 231