White Hat Magazine & Chrisella Herzog - Activist Poseurs in Action

I was initially considering doing a write-up on Chrisella Herzog, Editor in Chief of White Hat Magazine based out of Salt Lake City. In recent weeks, she seems to have been picking fights on social media and claiming that people who are diametrically opposed to a given movement are actually part of it.



When corrected on such readily-verifiable points, Ms. Herzog just minutes ago claimed that Mark Kern (World of Warcraft developer and currently a supporter of the aforementioned movement) was "gaslighter in chief" by way of deflecting his critique.



Such a toxic and misinformed personality, presenting herself as a magazine editor, seemed to be ripe for a story about how poor journalistic research can lead to poor journalism.



However, I then went and did some research of my own.



White Hat Magazine is actually going through a failing IndieGogo campaign right now (https://archive.is/wWsrT), billing itself as "Tech for Social Good". It has raised only $1800 out of a $20,000 target, in 23 days, from a total of 30 backers. It is therefore likely that Ms. Herzog's social-media attacks are an attempt to create artificial controversy and thus attention for the funding campaign.



Meanwhile, Ms. Herzog appears to be "editor in chief" of a webpage with a handful of articles and almost no employees, despite the business appearing to have started in 2006 according to the copyright notice there (https://archive.is/0RBJH). It appears to have no advertisers (although it is seeking same), and in fact the only news about itself on its own site has to do with promoting the IndieGogo campaign.



White Hat's headquarters are similarly unimpressive, yet telling: a community creative center in Salt Lake City called "The Impact Hub". There is exactly one review from the place, naturally five stars and clearly written as a promotional piece:



"The Hub's space is comfortable, productive and incredibly conducive to collaboration. There's no better place to engage with Salt Lake's vibrant community of socially-driven entrepreneurs, thought leaders and change-makers. This is where big things begin to take shape!"



TL;DR: White Hat Magazine is one woman,plus a few of her friends and family, picking fights to raise money for yet another openly-biased mess of wannabe journalism, because they're not able to raise it without picking fights.

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