Response to Jacobs

August 31, 2026

Last week, we published Extremely Online: A Definition, in which critic and scholar Katherine Alejandra Cross argued that social media provides a “pinhole view of the world, showing you truths through the narrowest possible aperture.” When we mistake that pinhole view for the world itself, when we take behaviors learned in online spaces out into the real world, we are manifesting Extremely Online behavior. Cross noted that X, thought of by its owner Elon Musk as “the everything app,” is “microwaving brains” of persons such as Magdi Jacobs, Noah Smith, Susan Abulhawa, J. K. Rowling, and Musk himself. In particular, Cross wrote of Jacobs:

“...some of Twitter’s reactionary centrists (and some resistlibs like Magdi Jacobs, with 45k followers) decided to blame a middling poli-stat account for Haley Stevens’ loss, alleging electoral interference because the account reported on internal polling that turned out to be wrong.” 

This was the full extent to which Jacobs was mentioned in the essay. The original text included a link to a Bluesky thread of screenshots of Jacobs’ posts; we have since updated it to include direct links to Jacobs’ posts, such as the following:

Jacobs has since claimed that Cross’ essay in Liberal Currents attacks Jacobs’ mental health, calls her mentally ill, normalizes online harassment against her, and attempts to engage in misogynistic and sexist silencing of her. None of these claims are accurate, and they mischaracterize what Cross wrote. Concerned readers should compare the text of Extremely Online: A Definition against Jacobs’ claims.

The Editors

Liberal Currents