Digital Grifters

Like most slang terms, no one is entirely sure how the word “grifter” came into common usage, but it has been fairly common since the start of the last century. Researchers claim it was carnival slang that crossed over into common usage in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It was possibly a corruption of the word “graft”, another slang term that loosely meant financial crime. Either way, a look at Google Ngram shows it took off in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

One interesting fact about that graph is the usage of the word seems to track with the rise and fall of social trust. In the run up to World War Two, social trust began to decline for a number of reasons. One big one was the financial collapse and the subsequent economic depression in the 1930’s. The fact that the word is increasingly common today, starting in the 1980’s with the digital revolution, suggests a correlation. People are more exposed to corruption now than 30 years ago.

Putting that aside, the microprocessor revolution has changed many things in our culture, one of which is the nature of the confidence man. Before the internet, running a con was an intimate affair. The con man had to personally interact with the mark in order to earn his trust. That meant the con man had to be able to read people and control his own emotions and body language. He also had to understand his mark, so he could say and do things that played on the mark’s vanity.

The life of the analog con man was a dangerous one. Having to operate in close proximity with the mark meant physical risk. If the mark got wise, it could mean a beating or maybe worse. The analog con man therefore had to be highly skilled, but also possess some courage. Often, he was operating in a world with other criminals, maybe even targeting criminals. One mistake, knocking on the wrong door or targeting the wrong old lady, could mean physical harm.

That’s the first thing that has changed about grifting in the digital age. The con man can operate from a great distance, often in anonymity. He can put up a false website that lures people in, based on certain known characteristics. Alternatively, he can create a false persona on-line that ticks the boxes needed to appeal to a class of people the con man is targeting. The confidence game and marketing are often indistinguishable from one another on-line. It’s easier to be a con man now.

Unlike the analog con man, the digital con man no longer has to possess the personal skills to work a mark or a group of marks. They also have a much lower risk of being caught and they don’t have to worry about physical harm. The result is a lower barrier to entry, which means many more con men. In the depression of the 1930’s, money was scarcer so people were more aware of swindlers. Today, the number of swindlers is much higher, so the word “grifter” is more common.

Another difference between the analog and digital grifter is the former operated on a small scale. He had to work a small number of marks at any one time. The latter can work in volume. In fact, the digital con game works better when scaled up as it can then rely on social proof to draw in suckers. While analog grifting was a retail operation, often a bespoke business, the digital con man works wholesale. He skims a little from many people, who often do not notice the con.

One main way the digital grifter works is through front running. They find a fad that is building up steam on-line and rush to the front of it. This helps them get attention from the sorts of people who get caught up in fads. These are people that like being led and need social proof. Once the con establishes himself as a prominent person in the fad, he either asks for support or has something to sell. Think about all the Tea Party sites that offered merchandise ten years ago.

A great example of this is Mike Cernovich. He has jumped from one fad to the next, almost exclusively operating on Twitter. He jumped from fad to fad on-line until he struck pay dirt with his goofy self-help book. He then re-titled it for the Trump era and became a leader of the MAGA cult on-line. When Trump got into office, he then started claiming to be a White House insider. His front-running of Trump allowed him to move a lot of merchandise and establish his brand.

That’s the other aspect of the digital grift. In addition to front running, the digital grifter is always looking to free ride. They look for a movement or fad forming up on-line and then come in with something to sell. It may be a book targeted at the vanity of the people in the movement. E-books are a popular item, because they are cheap to produce and don’t require a lot of work. Video is another, as it can monetize the front-running aspect with just the cost of a webcam.

The real pros in this segment were on display when it looked like Trump was contemplating war with Iran. The cable chat shows were littered with people ready to sell a book on their alleged inside knowledge of Trump, the war planning or the Iranian regime. The same people who peddled books for or against Trump three years ago were going to selling war books. Cable news was a grifter’s ball for a few nights, until Trump pulled the plug on the ear machine.

One similarity between the analog and digital grifter is that the mark builds what he thinks is a strong personal bond with the con man. In an atomized world of deracinated bugmen, there are tens of millions of people willing to follow a guy on-line. Just as lonely old shut-ins were easy marks for the analog grifter, the intensely on-line, who lack the normal personal connections in the physical world, are easy targets for the digital confidence man.

The low barrier to entry means we are Carny Town. The question that remains unanswered is that of cause and effect. Is the proliferation of con men on-line driving down social trust? Is the decline in social trust opening the flood gates for the con men to pour into our lives? Another possibility is that both are driven by the breakdown of white community. A world of atomized strangers is a fertile hunting ground for sociopaths, serial killers and confidence men.

Note: Some have asked why comments end up in moderation. This is the doings of the spam filter I’m using. It is often triggered by epithets, certain links and mysterious word combinations. These messages get flagged as possible spam. Now, in half a dozen years it has blocked over 3.5 million spam messages, so it is trade-off I accept. It means I check the moderation queue once an hour or so. I approve the real comments and trash the spam. Otherwise, there is no moderation.


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233 thoughts on “Digital Grifters

  1. According to the OED grift may be related to graft, which has origins in the word for digging. This is confirmed in th at an 1890s “grift” was a channel or crack in the ground.

    HTH

  2. The sirens call of easy money is certainly a powerful one. Gain enough
    popularity on the internet and t-shirts / merch are always forthcoming 🙂

    Expound on a topic popular with a large enough group and here comes the book deal. I suppose if the presenter is not sincere with what they preach it could be considered deception for monetary gain.

    But wouldn’t consider it any different than a used salesman trying to sell some rusty heap. At the end of the day it’s just a business = buyer beware.

    On the other hand robbing seniors of their life savings for nonexistent home improvements ? Those bastards should be hung by their nuts !

  3. “The fact that the word is increasingly common today, starting in the 1980’s with the digital revolution, suggests a correlation”

    the movie from 1990 probably helped.

  4. The rise of the term starting in the 1990s is probably attributable to the movie The Grifters, released in 1990. Excellent flick, btw. It certainly fits the present times of decreasing trust.

  5. Is Z inviting readers to examine whether he is himself a digital con man? The first several times I visited this site, I asked myself this question. Still do with some of his posts. I would think Z would expect nothing less from us.

    • How to spot a con man?

      1. Who is his paymaster?

      2. Ever caught in a lie? Two faced.

      3. What does he do when he makes a mistake or is just plain wrong about something?

      4. Oily. Uriah Heep.

    • Funny you mention that. I’m working through a 1000+ page US history book from the mid-60s. Last night I was reading the part about the settling of national debts after WWI and the author wrote that many Europeans groused that U.S. actually stood for Uncle Shylock. This despite the fact that the U.S. often received pennies on the dollar for what it was owed.

      The book, not surprisingly, uses plenty of words that are verboten in serious scholarship today.

  6. “A great example of this is Mike Cernovich.” – I was waiting for this line to come up, and I wasn’t disappointed. Yes, there are more con men (and women…ahemm….Candice Owens…ahem…) The great thing about the internet however is that you also have real access to unlimited sources to verify. Walter Cronkite was a grifter for the established political elites. Today you have a thousand tiny ones instead of a few “trusted sources”, most of whom are just out to make a buck. Most of the population falls for lies most of the time. Social trust always declines when countries are socially imploding, internet or no internet.

    • Cernovich did some decent work during the election season. He was a key figure in getting Hillary’s health in doubt. #SickHilary was all him.

      I don’t know much about his early years, I have read bits and pieces. I don’t follow him and don’t pay close attention to him though I did during the election.

      I felt like he starting to cuck a bit more because of his daughter and the fact that his wife is Iranian brought him a lot of hatred, that would tend to turn you off of certain politics, I guess. That was when I stopped paying attention to him. Not because his wife is Iranian but because he cucked. As I have said on this board before, my husband is half Asian and I am still a huge advocate for white identity and culture.

      • I’m not sure Sick Hillary started with him. I saw a lot of memes about her health on /pol. That was infinity Chan /pol which is now gone.

        I stopped paying any attention to him when he made his movie Silenced and cut Baked Alaska from his entourage. Not that I liked BA, but it showed Cernovich is a hypocrite.

  7. “Confident prediction: Since all Western societies have now irrecoverably lost all sense of common responsible government, they will loot the shit out of themselves until it’s over.”
    Nick Land

    • Please let it be so. Crash and burn is the fastest path back to a natural evolutionary environment in which fitness selection will once again favor robustness.

    • Press the “Mute” button and observe — that is exactly what we’re seeing. Looting like they don’t have a lot of time so it doesn’t matter if we see them and do not approve. Like they’re protected and our people are destined to be smothered out. I’m not sure when, how or why, but I am expecting a great culling in the near future. A very unfair culling on a massive scale, something people who believe in fantasies will be caught short by.

  8. It doesn’t help that truthful men and frauds alike looking for online exposure feel the need to craft, maintain and burnish a contrived persona. The obsession over branding as a sensible pathway to prominence and an efficient way to snag the rootless & atomized yearning for tribal belonging, has the effect of blurring the line between earnestness and fakery. Hence the hokey theatrics worthy of Walter Winchell.

    Come to think of it, pantomime has been the norm since the beginning of broadcasting. You must impress to be listened to. I suppose in the absence of social credentialing from the community or a trusted authority, you must manufacture cachet to break through the credibility barrier.

    Successful online personalities always have a recognizable shtick (or proprietary mien) and a compelling emotional hook, usually ego or status driven.

    Cernovich – Shtick: I’m a fearless balls-out gorilla
    Hook: I’ll teach you to crush nookie (old), I’ll vindicate blue-collar America on your behalf (new)
    Day – Shtick: I’m a resourceful soopergenius
    Hook: I’m masterminding the cultural counter-attack you’ve been waiting for
    Molyneux – Shtick: I’m a rational thinking machine
    Hook: I’ll lead you to the light
    Scott Adams – Shtick: No one but me is capable of clear thinking
    Hook: I’ll liberate you from hypnosis

    Who’s to tell crusader from cult leader from common mountebank? Who’s to tell sermon from spiel?

    • “Cernovich – Shtick: I’m a fearless balls-out gorilla” WHO LOVES LADYBOYS
      Modern American Man. Product of modern self-worshiping Jewish, er I mean secular, western society. Gag, pass vomit bag this way, please.

  9. It’s always been interesting to me in the history of American criminality over the past 150-years or so, that Italians and the Irish seem to be the biggest organized criminal groups. Then there’s there’s the black and Mexican gangs and what I would call “incorporated” white gangs like the Hells Angels. I understand the Russian and Chinese mafia has also established themselves in the US, but have shown up much later.

    Why is it we don’t hear or read much about German crime gangs, or Dutch crime syndicates or Scandinavian drug lords in America? It is because they’re more moral people, law abiding by nature or are there just fewer of them? Too poorly organized perhaps?

    Curious.

    • The Germans don’t need gangs because they typically run the police force and most civic institutions. The rulers don’t need to commit crimes if they can change the rules.

    • Too poorly organized perhaps?

      I think that is the first time I have ever heard it suggested that Germans are poorly organized. 🙂

      Germans and Dutch are rules-followers. Organized crime is societal chaos. They are fully capable of being successful within the rules.

      Scandinavians are community-minded. At its worst, that comes out as creeping SJW-ism (we have to save everyone from themselves), instead of criminal.

    • Well, at least for the Germans, they were the largest nationality in this country after the English through WWII and probably into the 60’s before the Hispanic invasion. Lack of Germans is not the reason for lack of “German” criminal syndicates. However, IIR, there were some notable Germans in the 20’s and 30’s in bootlegging gangs—“Dutch” Schultz comes to mind.

      My suspicion is that the Germans, Dutch, English were so well integrated into this country by the 20th century as not to be noted or notable, whereas the Italians, Irish, and Russians were “Johnny come lately” here.

    • Back in the late 19th c. organized crime was mostly street-level and contained in the respective ethnic enclaves (Jewish, Italian and Irish.) They ran protection rackets, ran numbers, sold gov’t jobs. No real wider influence. Until Prohibition which is when the the syndicates really gained power (that’s when the German community began to–right or wrong–disregard the law and support organized crime.

    • In America, the Jewish monsters were much more powerful than either the Irish or Italians, dude.

    • Maybe better integrated into American society in the time period mentioned. Being part of an immigrant enclave is probably immensely helpful for organised crime: one, you have a group you’re more loyal to than the legitimate authorities; two, the people you’re robbing aren’t your people, which probably goes easier on your conscience; three, law-abiding members of your community might still prefer you to the legitimate authorities, who are foreign to them.

      And yes, I know: these gangsters preyed on their own communities as much or more than outsiders. Still, even if only a small percentage of their victims were from outside their ethnic group, that out-group disinterest in the victims’s fate probably contributed to success in criminal endeavours. That marginal edge in place, year after year, would lead to greater accumulation of wealth among these criminal organisations; coupled with the marginal edge of greater intracriminal loyalty, and the marginal edge of intraethnic solidarity causing support or at least neutrality towards the criminal element, we should see immigrant or other outsider groups gradually come to dominate organised crime over time. Which is what happened.

  10. “The question that remains unanswered is that of cause and effect.”
    Cause and effect can run both ways at once. That’s what a feedback loop is.

  11. The morphing of the original analog grifter into the modern digital variant is an excellent example of fast evolution. The environment changed, and the con man evolved to exploit the vulnerabilities in this new artificial construct we call the technological age. Affluence breeds parasitism breeds easy predation. In natural evolution, this process would cull the weak. But in our modern world of government interdiction in everything, the weak thrive nonetheless. And the beat goes on.

  12. who cares, really. If someone wants to push dubious pills and self-help books that is their business at the end of the day. Those sites tend to be of low quality anyway and cater to a low-information demographic, so you are not the sort of person who would be most susceptible to such grifts. This is what the left tries to do, by trying to protect people from their stupidity. The result is safe spaces and regulation. Making money at this sort of stuff is hard and does not pay for itself. You have to sell product in order to pay writers and keep the site running. Unz Review was able to run for a long time without ads, but that is because Unz has enough money to bankroll it himself and is smart enough to do all the ITand coding work too.

  13. A key aspect of a grifter is that you are not getting what you pay for. The product is imaginary, substandard or ineffective. In what case is that true for this crowd? You pay for a book, you get a book. You pay for a t-shirt, you get a t-shirt. You pay for an exclusive video, you get one. Just as with any author or entertainer, if you don’t like what you get you stop coming back — and most of these types depend on repeat business.

    I think we have to think primarily about ideological grift.

    With Ben Shapiro, they think they are getting someone who is fighting for their traditional values. They don’t realize, at least not right away, that what they are really getting is someone shilling for Israel, globalism and demographic replacement.

    • Great point. That may be the key distinction between a Shapiro and a Vox Day. Vox Day may be profiting off the movement by selling whatever it is he sells, but he does seem like he’s on our side.

      Again, I keep finding it odd that I defend Vox Day since I find him more than a bit odd.

      • You and me both. He’s very odd and kind of an asshole, but I think he’s sincere and he is building communities and structures. I don’t mind if he makes a buck. He’s running a business.

      • Unlearn the habit.

        “Rooting for the underdog”, “Don’t punch right”, slave morality and the ADL all serve the same function: cover and protection for egomaniacs and predators.

        A common observation on the demise of the Tea Party movement is that it got nothing accomplished after the subversives, clout chasers and grifters were done siphoning away its energy to feed themselves rather than benefit the nation.

        Nothing was done with this observation, so interested parties still have to navigate a gauntlet of egomaniacs, weirdos, degenerates, grifters and subversives. Those that do find their resources spent on the same things the Tea Party spent its capital on.

    • You pay to sue IndieGogo into oblivion, you’re not even privy to the resolution.
      You pay for Proud Boys’ legal defense fund, they’re rotting away in a cell.
      You pay to sue the SPLC, nothing gets off the ground.
      You pay for Alpha Wave Clairvoyance pills, you still can’t hear the Chinese Technofascists on your police scanner.
      You pay for Gorilla Juice Concentrate, you’re nowhere nearer being a chick magnet.

      These are fantasy salesmen monetizing people’s angsts and insecurities.

      • IndieGogo: Settlements routinely have non-disclosure clauses. It’s just the way things are. Did Vox Day at any point guarantee “no settlement?” It’s often the best thing to do.

        Proud Boys: You can’t demand a guaranteed outcome from contributing to a legal defense fund. That’s just the way things are.

        SPLC: I thought things were still in process with that. Unfortunately, the wheels of justice turn exceedingly slowly. Mark Steyn has been waiting for his day in court against Michael Mann for eight years.

        Alpha Wave Clairvoyance Pills: Are those a real thing? That’s an old-fashioned snake oil grift. No argument there.

        Gorilla Juice Concentrate: Ditto.

        • IndieGogo: See, what you need to understand is, “we virtually hold their fate in our hand at this point”. What part of “make the rubble bounce” is even remotely congruent with granting a ND clause to a party whose skull is (supposedly) nice and ready for collection? Never mind the moral and legal skeeviness of roping your patrons into your lawsuit, then having them sign an agreement whose content is kept secret from them.
          Said secrecy resulting, I’m reliably informed by his Darklordship, not from his initiative. In other words, it was likely a concession or a bargaining device. Way to give the baying hounds what they pay for.

          Proud Boys: You can’t beg your audience to give generously when your fan club is in trouble for following your explicit mantra and then run away from any association with said fan club. Seems to me the leader has primary duty of care to see his boys well. Way to panhandle for a cause you don’t even believe in.

          SPLC: Last I heard, the SPLC had filed a motion to dismiss, as is their wont. Further proceedings may be stalled or pending, but defendgavin.com is still up, with an active Donate button. Imagine that.

          Alpha Knight Avenging Potion: If you’ve never heard of Alpha Chad Gabagool Elixir, are you even trying to defeat the Globalists?

          Apart from that, Vizzini, how did you manage boldface? That’s pretty neat.

          • I’ll take your word for it on the Indigogo thing. I didn’t follow it closely. He may not have had a choice due to the user agreement.

            I know there are a number of suits pending against SPLC by different parties. I’m not an expert on any particular one of them, but it’s going to take a long time.

            Clearly I am not doing my duty to fight globalism by staying knowledgeable about Alpha Game Alpha Alpha Supplement (now with 90% more Alpha)!

          • There was never a lawsuit against Indiegogo. Court filings are public records. For starters, in such a dispute the attorney will look at the contract you signed. He will see there is a dispute resolution process and ask you if you initiated that process. If not, then you will need to do that first. Once that is done and you are not satisfied, he will tell you that the next step is arbitration. Getting a judge to set aside an arbitration clause in a contract is extremely difficult and mostly pointless.

            The bottom line is Indiegogo canceled the project, gave the people their money back and that was it. There was no lawsuit. No class action. No arbitration. Nothing.

          • why is vox unable to talk about it? For months he was saying how IndyGoGo would be crushed, and his case seemed very strong. I find it very implausible that he got nothing out of it but just refunds. It may have been settled before it had a chance to became an actual legal case.For example a personal injury case can be resolved without going to court if the case is strong enough. A lawyer is contacted, and a dispute process begins, specifically what is known as an Alternative Dispute Resolution. This means that the problem is resolved without anything even being public.

          • The arbitration has been sealed from what I can gather (I am not in the know). Indigogo KNEW VD was behind the Castalia Jr Classics campaign and did not take it down. That is all I need to know.

          • If there was a lawsuit, there would be a public record of the case and a record of the petition to compel arbitration. Z’s correct that arbitration is king because it lets the judicial branch tactically libertard itself out of doing its job. To the extent Chief Voice of Dawn LARP’d about lawsuits, he was casting shadows.

          • Thank you both for correcting me. I misspoke when I said “sue” and “lawsuit”. I recollect that with IndieGogo it was arbitration all along that was claimed, not litigation.
            That that was itself posturing is news to me. I know he promised armageddon and delivered undisclosure, but he looks to have been more impish than even I gave him credit for. Egg on face.
            Plainly I need to reup on the Alpha Alfalfa.

          • He’s told so many lies in an effort to cover his tracks. Here is an example. https://tinyurl.com/tate3l4

            That’s not how arbitration works.

            There is no such thing as class-arbitration. To get a class certified for a lawsuit, it means going before a judge and that is a public record.

            He’s a con man. When one lie is exposed he tells three more. It’s just lies on top of lies.

          • This is how a cult leader reassures the faithful: Denigrate the faithless to instill self-righteous superiority within the cult so that they dismiss any counterclaims without thought. Real evidence is no longer necessary.

            A measured response is to link to evidence or acknowledge that a sealed arbitration leaves room for skepticism.

          • If he filed suit in court, there would be a record. If he filed for arbitration, he could post up the commencement letter on his site. There would be nothing preventing him from doing that. Even if the parties agreed to not disclose the settlement, that would not prevent him from acknowledging there was arbitration.

            He’s a liar and his cult is full of retards.

          • This blog post by Beale is an ego-driven overreaction that gives me the evidence to state that he uses sock accounts.

            “Reality Check” is a strong hit for one of Beale’s sock accounts. That Reality Check’s thoughts and attitudes towards ZMan – which were presented prior to this blog post – are very similar to the thoughts and attitudes displayed in Beale’s blog post is not a coincidence.

          • You can use basic html tags in your text: b in angle brackets starts bold face, /b ends it. Same with i for italics, u for underline and strike for strikethru. Sorry, too lazy to look up the code to display an angle bracket to make that explanation pretty. 🙂

        • There was no lawsuit against Indiegogo. They have a dispute resolution process. That’s standard stuff. If that fails, you then go to arbitration.

    • Vizzini, that’s my usual definition of a grifter—ideology. If he believes in one thing today and another tomorrow or in one thing privately but states another depending on audience. He speaks falsely. He is a grifter in the ideological sense to me and should be avoided. Other types of grifters are just con men and thieves, and they’ve been around forever.

      Folks however, who are true believers, albeit mistaken in those beliefs, I have no problem with morally. I usually respect them, but do not waste my time with them.

  14. When I hear the word “grifter” I always immediately think of the Clintons. All the politicians are pretty much grifters in my book, but the Clintons are world class. They all pitch you that they alone can save the world through policy position xxx and sponsorship of bill yyy. They are really just playing off of people’s preferences and desires, in order to scalp them for political power and their own personal financial gain. I will never willingly donate a penny to any political entity, ever.

    • Can tell you from experience the Clintons were running the king of all grifts. CGI was really a pyramid scheme. Got a look inside when two of my old firms’ large trading partners “joined up”—and were promptly encourage to recruit other firms in our industry vertical. Since one of my jobs was keeping stuff like this from getting to my boss’s desk (a “C” level guy) had to go to one of the CGI meetings in NYC, meet the Clinton crew and then listen to the follow up pitch at their then palatial offices up on 6th Ave. So basically it was 750k annually to get “in”, then the expectation that your firm would “sponsor” specific initiatives (this could run into the millions) You would get unique “access” to people at the various meetings held around the world. When we picked the numbers apart it was clear that all CGI was was a giant bundling operation that took in money, skimmed a massive cut to run the Clinton Empire—then simply remitted a portion to various charitable enterprises. This was how the Clintons funded their lifestyle, since everything they did was “foundation business”. Met none of our financial integrity criteria—we knew that going in but the trick was “letting down” our trading partners without telling them “you realize you’ve bought into a massive scam”.

      • My CGI experience was an earnestly designed and pitched green energy project for West Africa, all done and presented by smart and capable native (black) West Africans, who held legit U.S. engineering degrees. Exactly the kind of thing CGI was supposedly all about. The grant request was relatively small, in the six figures for start-up. Crickets. No response, not even an exploratory conversation. CGI is/was a con.

        I believe the legitimacy of the project was a problem, as the opportunities for grifting off the thing were probably not great, at least at first.

        • Not surprised. At all. One of the more surreal parts was a “prospective members” breakout where Chelsea introduced the McKinsey guy CGI brought on to help bring rigorous “measurement” of results—sitting there thinking—ok so you guys are cycling eight figures a year in cash flow through this thing with absolutely no idea what the results are beyond paying for your personal expenses and keeping all the Clinton hangers on employed at the British naval officer’s equivalent of “half pay” until Hillary’s campaign spins up (she’d just resigned from State at that point). Got it. Sign us up… Your African friends had absolutely nothing on offer for this crowd,.

          • I warned them CGI was not what they thought it was. But they, being honest, earnest people with respect for America and Americans, proceeded with the application and got a small dose of reality thrown in their faces…in yours and my names. The whole thing ticked me off.

  15. It would be interesting for some of us to get together and use this phenomenon against the Anti Whites by setting up businesses to sell ridiculous products and use the funds to support white well-being. Some things that come to mind are selling garbage merch to cat ladies like solidarity hijabs, rainbow colored prayer flags, Trump piñatas, Green New Deal stickers, Ban White Men t-shirts, Make America Green Again hats.

    I’m sure that a few brain storming sessions with a white board and notepads at a meet up would be a fun exercise that could home in on some sound targets to channel some cash from the pockets of Shitlibs and into worthy organizations like American Renaissance and Patriot Front.

    • They would sell like hotcakes with huge markups. Extra points for having it manufactured by Chinese slave labor. The possibilities are enticing.

    • The problem with that plan is that if it succeeded, it would create an incentive for the merchants to create more cat lady customers, they would turn to the dark side.

  16. The current batch of dis-right grifters are the Knights of Summer. They took the Youtube shekel, and they saw that it was good. Now they whine about censorship when their mortal enemies oust them from their platforms. There are a dozen alternatives to Youtube or Facebook, if what you simply want is a platform to express your opinions. But there are no shekel involved, of course, and that’s what the Knights of Summer whine about: being demonetized, not getting their fair share of crumbs from Establishment Social Media.

    The low barrier to entry means we are Carny Town.

    The low barrier of entry is the main feature of modern social media. You get a lot of dross of course, but you also get a lot of hungry comerups, snapping at the heels of the griftosphere: as soon as you pass 100,000 subs, there’s a start-up business model in take-down videos. It helps in keeping everybody honest-ish – Cerno will soon have more detractors than fans.

    And because the barrier of entry is low, you get an absolute torrent of vulgar abuse directed at the globalist meatpuppets pretending to run our countries, and being subjected to constant heckling erodes trust. I bet Mark Dice’s Brian Stelter-voice-over has done more to discredit Stelter that would twenty op-eds in Mother Jones. When people snicker at the sight of your face, it doesn’t matter if you’re Socrates.

    Is the proliferation of con men on-line driving down social trust?

    What’s driving down social trust – apart from mass immigration, of course – is that the internet allows punters to speak back to power, the usual suspects no longer have a monopoly on propaganda. People are granted glances at the man behind the curtain, they are discovering just how much they are being lied to, and that doesn’t promote trust in your fellow man. If our rulers are all about plundering the public trough, why should I work to keep it filled? Why should I honor the social contract?

    • Newspapers and magazines were destroyed for a number of reasons, but the comments section was bigger than most people think. Commentors showed over and over that the reporters didn’t know what they were talking about, insanely bias and usually both.

      It’s why many outlets don’t allow comments anymore.

      • Just so.

        And not just commenters. Anonymous commenters; give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth, as heinous degenerate Oscar Wilde said.

        • Hummmm. Wasn’t Oscar Wilde a “butt pirate” like the “Amazing Randy”? And yet you quote him? 😉 Seems he and everyone else of like sort should be cast into the void and forgotten. 🙁

  17. At least Cernovich is a talented grifter. Like he’s actually good at grifting, built a brand, probably makes good money on SUPER BRAIN juice.

    When I think of a shitty grifter, look no further than that retard Richard Spencer trying to gain clout for his failing brand on the view and CNN. His Iranian themed and Michael Moore retweeting twitter is a thing to behold. No wonder the alt right is a joke, it would have been better off under a talented but cynical grifter rather than a retarded one.

    • Gotta disagree. Cernovich isn’t talented, he’s try-hard and has just enough connections to keep pitching no matter how many times he has to reboot.

      I put Spencer a notch above Cerno simply by virtue of his lack of merch ala Monkey-Mind-Juice. Spencer’s worst flaw is his McCain-like lust for adulation as a “great leader.” While I can see him LARP’ing like American Psycho about being the Neo-Fuhrer, at least he’s not shekel-grubbing,

      • I think there is a difference between the narcissist and the confidence man. The former just wants attention. Money is a secondary consideration. The con man seems to get some sort of rush from the con. Maybe these are two faces of the same impulse, but they seem different to me. Spencer really thinks he is some world changing intellectual. Cerno is all about the hustle.

        • I think you’re right about Spencer. I’ve noticed, especially lately, that he seems to like to shock people with edgy takes on subjects. He doesn’t like to have predictable, conventional opinions about things. I believe he gets a kick out of the imagined gasps of his listeners.

        • Cernovich wouldn’t object to Zman’s characterization – he’s proud about social media success and sees it as innovative. The funny thing is he’s become almost a father figure, with a handful of young imitators cultivating their own niche audiences but who still defer to his spin on the big events, not wishing to stray too far from the pack. ike a school of fish. Perhaps it’s ‘professional courtesy’ in their minds.

          One thing all they all have in common, whether conscious of it or not, is conflating the medium with the message – the medium IS the message for them.

          Alex wins the Originality prize (and the Endurance prize, coming from the radio era and before that, the local late nite community cable era!), and Cerno wins the Social Media prize. But lookout! From the left, Harry Markle is gaining and about to break away!

          • Cerno is a steroid taking ex s3x tourist who used 5o do dirty things to Asisn lady boys & brag about it in his blog. He has described himself as having forced himself into people there as well.
            He lived off of his ex wife’s income while married and sued her for alimony and got it post divorce. His mystery meat current brown wife is currently performing as the Cerno house breadwinner, until he finds one who has a bigger bank acct or this one tires of being the mother and the father of the home.
            He has lied to & about so many people on the right and backstabbed so many people that we’d need a week to begin to catalog all of his callowness and treachery.
            Anyone remember back in 2016 before Enoch was doxed by the left and Cerno posted a pic and private personal info on Twitter of Enoch’s MOM, so that Antifa could track him from her?
            I remember. F Mike Cernovich.

        • Z, that’s definitely a distinction. To Devil’s Advocate myself on this, maybe the guy who just wants to make money is more harmless than the guy with a flawed and unqualified Will to Power.

          I’ve never met Spencer beyond line-of-sight. Unlike Derb and some other stalwarts. I have no eyeball-to-eyeball, non-verbal-written-vidya experience of the kid.

          From an outsider’s perspective, I can’t understand how Spencer would believe he has a unique take on Our worldview based on anything he’s ever said – something worthy of staking out his own turf.

          TRS covers all of the ground he ever laid claim to in a much more well-staffed and nuanced fashion. Spencer’s “beyond-tribal” White identity is almost as ephemeral and unrealistic as civic nationalism.

        • Yes! I have been trying for forever to explain this very distinction. TY, Z.
          As for right wing grifters, I can roll you out a few here-.
          Cerno
          VD
          Milo
          Benny Johnson
          Charlie Kirk
          Candace Owens
          Diamond and Silk
          Jack Pesobiec
          The MAGA Choir
          Gavin
          Jovi Val
          The entirety of the TPUSA/QAnon/God Emperor Trump purveyors

          and the list goes on and on. There are TONS of low IQ dolts that wrap themselves up in the flag and pray before the altar of the MAGA Church of mug sales, ebooks, supplements and tees. The ones who are ALWAYS posting about needing money for this project or that project, to find their lawsuits and defenses against some lefty or institution. They change the stances dependent on whomever is the majority of their current target audience & will say literally the DUMBEST crap in the world, if they think the rubes and window lickers who follow them will buy ithe BS and donate. again and again and again.
          .It’s like the Evangelical mega churches and their never ending building funds, trips to dig 3rd world schools & toilets, buy the pastor his 2nd plane scams.
          In the last 10 yrs of product peddling, even some mild forms from ppl I genuinely like and respect, I have only purchases one item and it was a marked down tee for $10.
          I am not a member of the CRTV “fill the pockets of Glenn Beck and Mark Levin for access to some terrible Boomer Ziocon takes” club, nor am I paying to listen to Hebrew Benny Shapiro try to sell me Christian co-op health insurance and Boll & Branch overpriced bed sheets.

  18. The powerful fanboi identification with e-personalities is one part of this phenomenon, as we see around here at times when some fandom feels Their Guy is being gored.

    On the one hand we have the persistent problem of cynical individualist contrarianism, stemming largely from our widespread libertarian priors (myself included), On the other, we have the guys who want to focus on a Supreme Leader or the One Thing We Must Do/Not Do.

    Our dynamics as a group are often volatile due to this mix of knee-jerk non-believers and true believers. Part of Z’s recent theme about shunning weirdos and attracting and elevating people who present admirably, as someone people in general would want to associate with and emulate, is presenting a balanced outlook and worldview to the world.

    Like sociopaths in general, grifters rely on developing false and one-sided personal bonds and empathy in/with their marks. If you find yourself taking criticism of an e-celeb so personally that you’re actually mad, in the sense that you’d react if a friend was being criticized unfairly, take a hard look at what Your Guy actually does vs. what he says and how much you know about him vs. what you’ve been told about him. We rarely have personal knowledge of these guys (and don’t get me started on the e-thots). We probably know each other as well as or better than we know them.

    • What you are getting at is toady-ism.

      “Oh, Generic Commentary-Man, you are so smart and erudite, can you help me understand better if I strike a submissive-enough pose?” (include kissy-slurpy background noise). Think about it: even rumpswabs such as KD Williamson have rumpswabs.(1)

      I see it on nearly every commentary site and blog. There has to be a social function/phenomenon/utility behind it that I have yet to suss out.
      .
      .
      .
      (1) “Its turtles/toadies all the way down.”

      • It’s also a good way to elicit an answer. Even grifters are not immune to flattery.

        • Apex, your instincts are sound as usual (good contribution at UR on Fredo Reed’s latest, BTW) – I’m dancing around namingtheGamma to avoid the VDPC’s who seem to use search-bots to detect the “B word” and other flags around here.

          The alpha-lite among them is net positive as I’ve said before, but harvesting the ComicCon fringe of Heartiste’s man-o-sphere (PBUH) meant the alpha-lite legion’s genes would be thin and rife with spiteful mutation. To uber-lite’s discredit, he feeds that monster for adulation rather than raising them up and demanding they become leaders rather than followers. His choice.

          Loyalty deserves a long leash but when Milo and Cerno are doing the kind of sh*t that Cerno bragged about in his pre-Trump blog posting (hint – Gavin’s self-pegging wasn’t as cringe), what the Hell would anyone who claims to be (non-degenerate) humanist, Christian or pro-Euro culture find in common with these “guys?”

          Iconoclasm isn’t enough. Brand/follower/like/up-commy support isn’t enough.

          Who, whom? What is to be done? More importantly, Who, What is not to be done?

      • Not to sound like an arse, but seeing dudes Fawn over other dudes who have some quantity of e-fame, super grosses me out. I am used to my fellow females stupidly fawning over pop singers and the Kardashians, everyone knows most women are gullible af, but dudes doing it to other guys or some e-thot that will never give them time of day? It’s painful to watch.

    • Exile, what you say may be so. But it seems there are a lot of people labelled grifters on this forum. In the few cases where I disagree, it is apparent to me that their (grifters’) body of work is little known in depth.

      That and the very looseness of the definition of “grifter” here promotes some skepticism on my part at the frequent application of the label. I note also that the greatest rebuke seems to be reserved for the most popular of these folk as well, perhaps that’s natural as they could be seen as the greatest practitioners of their evil art. It might also be seen as jealousy.

      That’s not to equate popularity with correct thinking on matters of interest to us on this blog, just that not everyone who see differently, and expresses theirself successfully on the Internet, does so out of bad intent (=grifter).

  19. In a sane world instead of Trump having dinner with Zuckerberg and bragging about it like he did on the Rush Limbaugh show a couple of days ago a President looking out for us would publicly embarrass the alien looking Zuck man and demand that he clean up the false advertising and censorship on his spy site.

    • yeah but this is part of the plan . if trump wins, then one could argue that it was . Trump knows that Facbeook will play a non-trivial role in the 2020 election, so trying to cozy up to Zuck makes at least some sense from a strategic standpoint even if perceived as a betrayal by some voters. Also, I think the wealthy tend to be well networked and less invidious than the poor and middle class.

    • Trump lhas shown zero qualms about betraying his base. You could see that at his San Jose rally where he fled CA after the Democratic goons beat his supporters to a bloody pulp. He never condemned that action or supported those that we harmed.

      Immigration and deportation, the same thing.

      Then he greenlights bringing in even more H-1B’s and H-2’s into the U.S. Bends over for Apple and it’s sweatshops.

      Trump only cares about Trump.

      • The fact that no Journo asked him if he used E-verify* in his businesses was one of the “tells.”
        * It was only Spring ’19 when Don Jr. and Eric began to use E-verify, only to discover that Trump companies employed many illegal aliens. Was their response to increase wages to attract citizens? Hell no! It was to apply for more foreign workers (H-2B.)

      • I’ve been thinking for quite a while that what ever effort he is putting into the open borders is just to string along his increasingly whacked out base…

  20. From an 80’s man’s perspective.
    The grifters that I remember were people like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Pat Roberson, Jimmy Swaggart….along with others on TV scamming monthly donations from Christians.
    And Amway promising get rich schemes for the working class.
    All the while the working class wages stagnated.
    This was before the internet got going.
    Now grifters have moved from just TV ads and TV preachers to all sorts of politics and social media.
    Try buying something from a Facebook ad.
    It’s presented as a quality item until you order goes through and then you notice the tracking number. It’s coming from a sweat shop in Asia.
    Grifting and false advertising is now rampant with the internet and the modern age.

  21. There is a line running from 80s heavy metal to 21st century dissident metapolitics.

    And I still have “Electric Eye” on loop in my head from the last post…

  22. The word “grifter,” in my mind, occupies a sort of linguistic grey area with regards to meaning. A swindler or a con man, for instance, is doing something commonly thought to be unethical and immoral, and also most of the time flat-out illegal. A grifter, like a hustler, is somebody who would rather do anything, anything at all, than work at an honest normie job and do an honest day’s work. That could be criminal, or it could be technically legit but just shady. Cernovich and Jordan Peterson aren’t doing anything criminal, they’re just blowing hot air at psychologically damaged people and making money from it. For them, the upside is they can sleep late in the morning and they don’t have to punch a clock or file the dread TPS reports.

    There’s also the frisson of being known, being a species of cut-rate famous. For instance I don’t care at all who Stefan Molyneaux is, or what he has to say, but for some reason his name gets mentioned so often in these circles that now it is stuck in my head, despite the fact that I don’t care at all about this person and his opinions. I think that carries a kind of value in itself for these sorts of people.

    • The narcotic of minor celebrity. I think that is a big reason for the volume of e-grifting. People start up something on-line for good reasons. They get some attention and then they are hooked. They chase the dragon forever after.

      • Agreed. I’ve a daily guilty pleasure of listening to S Adams podcasts during workouts. He made the Trump win call early and has been chasing that success ever since.

        Between getting his YouTube channel demonetized and the apparent flop of his WH app, I’d have to agree that celebrity must be a hell of a drug that is hard to lay down.

        Why else spend numerous hours every day chasing clicks and followers?

        • Back in the ancient times, when “paperwork” still meant giant piles of actual paper, when I was a teenager I used to have a summer job at a Wall Street brokerage house, doing dreary back-office filing.

          During lunch hour when the streets were packed, there was the usual circus of crews of young black men and teens on the corners, working the old three-card monte scam. They had the usual negro talents of physical agility and a kind of loud, superficial, fast-talking charisma. I used to stand around and watch the show. The kids working the hustle were only clearing about as much as they would have made doing my job, but this was way more fun: they were out on the street, chattering and leaping about (which aside from banging white girls is really all negroes want to do), and best of all, they were ripping off The Man.

          I couldn’t help noticing though, that the “suckers” putting down a twenty for the “bet,” were not the shirtsleeve bridge and tunnel guys working the back office. The suckers were usually the guys in suits, the real players, for whom twenty bucks was contemptible pocket change. They were basically just humoring the negroes, and playing a game of, “gosh, you sure out-smarted me, clever fast-talking street kid!” Wheels within wheels; wow, man, who’s really conning WHO?

          Everybody got what they wanted: I got money for school and a tick on my resume, the Rich White guys were contributing to the United Negro College Fund, and the negroes made a quick buck doing something pointless and silly. If they had spent some time doing my job or going to summer school, they might have gone someplace later on in life, other than Rikers. But like all grifters, they’d rather do anything other than a straight gig.

        • Adams predicted Trump’s victory and Hillary’s victory. Like Molynuex, he puts out so much stuff that it is impossible to keep track of what he says. I never thought he was any good, so it was easy for me to ignore his grift. I was never a Dilbert fan. I once worked for a company that had Dilbert fever. They had giant cut-outs of Dilbert, Dilbert screen-savers, Dilbert calendars and Dilbert office paraphernalia. Bland as all hell and not at all funny.

          • I worked for a (now defunct) Fortune 500 company and they had a “no Dilbert” policy. (I suspect our CIO recognized himself in the pointy-haired boss.)

          • Especially grotesque when the corporate leeches celebrate those who lampoon the very greedy corporate culture they represent as if it were separate from the grift they partake in.

      • “The narcotic of minor celebrity”. The things people will do, and the levers they will frantically pull, all for the dopamine hits.

      • That need for attention or fame is something I just cannot fathom. I like praise as much as the next person, but the idea of being stopped in the street or recognized by strangers does not appeal to me at all. The whole mindset behind online “influencers” just weirds me out.

    • I think Molyneaux gets unfairly tatted in these discussions. He has some really good stuff out there, mainly historical material. He has a great piece of Joseph McCarthy, that was a huge redpill for me. I was 42 when I watched it and it opened my eyes to how deep seated corruption is
      In our institutions.

      He also has great pieces on Mandela, King, and even Ghandi.

      I get that he is overly dramatic and flamboyant, but in my opinion a lot of his deep dives are really good stuff.

      • Moly, also brought on “interviews” with some notable HBD figures. Long before (if ever) it was fashionable.

      • I think he’s a good interviewer. And he seems to have endless patience for his “call-in’s.” I can respect that

      • I’ll second that. Even for an experienced hater like me Molyneaux’s “The Truth About…” series made me realize that people like MLK and Ghandi were even worse than I had thought. Very good stuff.

  23. Another reason we have so many conmen is that we can’t see what they look like. If whites only knew what most of these cretans looked like, they would hit the spam button immediately.

      • Alex is a true believer who hustles vitamins on the side. He has always been consistent, so I don’t consider him the same as someone like Cernovich, who is a chameleon.

  24. Re:
    ” In the run up to World War Two, social trust began to decline for a number of reasons. One big one was the financial collapse and the subsequent economic depression in the 1930’s. The fact that the word is increasingly common today, starting in the 1980’s with the digital revolution, suggests a correlation. People are more exposed to corruption now than 30 years ago.”

    Correlate that statement with the graph below on immigration levels into the US:

    http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/immigration_data/images/line-graph-decade.gif

    Looks like immigration levels peaked at the turn into the 20th century – and slowly declined from there heading towards WW2. But I’d hazard a guess here that the social trust and corruption don’t decline (social trust) – or increase (corruption) in a direct correlation to immigration levels but are rather a lagging indicator.

    It takes a while for all of those immigrants to get into positions of power where they can actually inject corruption into the system. It takes a while before people start to notice the constant and persistent increases in crime and social disfunction.

    The fact that our current immigration levels have yet to severely taper off like they did in the years heading into WW2, would seem to indicate our shit show has yet to fully arrive.

    • That’s a good point. I think reaction to immigration follows a familiar pattern. At first, the hist population is welcoming and flattered. Maybe they really need the human capital. Then they get uncomfortable with the newcomers and have second thoughts about it. Then the friction becomes hostility.

      • Don’t forget that back then, a large percentage went home. Today, they have lots of kids, go on welfare and flood the schools with non-English speaking “brown” kids who (in large numbers) target native kids. There also wasn’t the general anti-white sentiment at the time and most of the immigrants came from Europe.

        • Additionally a lot of those people were more colonists than immigrants. The midwest is littered with towns with German names that were essentially just German colonies founded in the second half of the 19th century. Normal people could live their whole life never bothered by the existence of those towns.

        • Excellent points. The welfare thing in particular is one that I think is a massive problem. Back in my younger years I came to the conclusion that America in those years was more of a crucible – than a melting pot , a crucible that is – in the way the Marine Corp uses the term.

          If you wanted to survive here – you HAD to try to fit in – in some form or fashion. You also HAD TO work. Without welfare – you simply didn’t survive. That’s why a lot of those people you mentioned went home. They came here, were without extended family or community – and they failed. So they retreated back home where they might survive – because they wouldn’t survive here – and nobody much gave a shit if they didn’t.

          A number of years back I read the book “Flags of Our Fathers”. The book makes the point that the six men who are covered – came from vastly different backgrounds. Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian, Michael Strank was a Czech immigrant (1919) . A lot of WW2 movies from years gone by – do make the point that the men who fought in the US military in that war came from all those different backgrounds. There’s often a token Mexican, a token American Indian – etc.

          And the thing is – for the most part the crucible worked.

          We had a huge amount of immigration – which tapered off , then we had a war that mashed everybody together under a common goal and we also had a reason to forge all those people together in that crucible.

          The lefties seem to have taken that lesson of yesteryear – and turned the dial way past 11 and all the way up to 15. They seem to think they can mash together black and white and brown, male and female and other, Spanish and English and Swahili , Jewish and Christian and Muslim, and they think they can just force this all to “work” – while keeping up a never relenting stream of new immigration.

          The crucible only works when there is an end goal. In the Marines – you pass thru the crucible – which is based on non-relenting standards – and you either fail or succeed.

          In the America of old – you also had to pass thru the crucible to become “American” – and if you failed – you went home. There was no welfare fallback.

          The left has destroyed all of that.

          • Not only that, but the crucible failed spectacularly when it comes to Jews who are no less Jewish than when their first ancestor who came to America was when he/she got here, possibly even more so. Same is true of a large percentage of the Irish. Both the Irish and Jews were heavily into ethnic grift. The Irish took over the police in many of the big cities and ran it like an ethnic enclave.

            Even with whites, the ethnic tension and the ethnic loyalties is always there. A big part of why we have all these problems is immigrant groups of yesteryear who built up massive schemes to get more of their countrymen into America. Now these advocacy groups and lawyer groups turn their attention to current immigrants. It’s like they forgot why the thing existed in the first place, which was to get more polacks or more Jews or more dagos or micks into the country.

          • I still have my father’s immigration paperwork. He required a “sponsor”. The sponsor’s responsibility was to take care of him should he become indigent. Welfare, albeit not specifically mentioned, was not available. Basically, if your sponsor did not pick up the slack, you were gone—as in deported.

            That was shortly after WWII. Now the BP issues EBT cards to illegals when they turn them loose in the country awaiting adjudication on asylum claims. What the hell happened, America?

      • I don’t think the flattered part gets enough play. There’s a hubris to us whites, particularly liberal whites but certainly CivNats as well; we really do seem to believe we and the society we created is the pinnacle of virtue. When immigrants come here to live in our society and presumably adopt our ways, it confirms that belief.

        The idea that people move here to get our stuff never seems to cross their minds.

        • That’s one of the toughest pills to swallow. The idea that not everyone wants to live like we do is hard for the average person to swallow.
          They want the money, but they don’t want the way of life that created all the money. What they really want is to live exactly the way they lived in their home country, but with an American or European income level.

      • I encountered a robot this morning optically scanning shelves for inventory. A few feet away was yet another uneducated, illiterate, unskilled, untrained and ignorant immigrant, who’s a few years from being replaced by an AI controlled robot.

        You want friction??? Wait until the tens of millions of immigrants are added to out of work white people in the unemployed welfare camps.

        Google “Boston Dynamics” for a sample of the engineering power set to roll over the masses.

        • That actually could work to some advantage, but only if national bankruptcy curbs welfare.

          Welfare is a luxury. Therefore people living on welfare are also luxuries. It’s a harsh reality. The crucible Calsdad talked about.

        • I’m suspect that the robot revolution has been exaggerated. One of the notable trends in England in recent years has been the near extinction of automated car washes. Automation requires significant up front capital investment, Bulgarians with buckets, sponges and squeegees not so much. Not only that but the Bulgarians generally do a better job.

      • This was the entire basis of the book Bowling Alone It would’ve been a better book had it gone further into the ramifications of mass immigration, but Putnam is your typical universalist one love type.

    • “the run up to World War Two” = The New Deal
      America’s first experience with government-gone-wild. Continuous promises of government cure-alls that just created more and sharper recessions. A decent sized minority could see through FDR’s lies, propaganda, and recognized his dabbling with fascist and socialist bad ideas.

      • I agree with you however no one ever wants to talk about how corporate greed and suffering workers lead up to a people wanting socialist/communist policies because they are so poor and miserable even after spending almost every waking minute of their lives working for wages kept artificially low by the presence of hordes of legal and illegal immigrants. It becomes hopeless and people don’t care about the warnings given about the millions of deaths that occur with communist policies, they just see that the nightmare capitalist reality they live in is hell. Even Cesar Chavez, back in the day, would whoop and drive out some illegal immigrant laborers back in the day because it was known that they undercut the native/union workers. Same as the English back when Irish were constantly imported to undercut their wages. The Chamber of Commerce is sadly right up there with our top enemies. Our own people doing this to their fellow countrymen.

        • Corporate greed and over-reach caused the crash in ’29 – that opened the door for government greed and overreach. It was government, not corporate appetites that caused the suffering in the 30s – hence the fall in social trust.

        • Donahue from the CoC was on Bloomberg this morning crying about a lack of employable people available, and how it will cause inflation. The inflation he is speaking of is the higher wage rates for the wage slaves of the Bain-type private equity people who want to skim all the profits for themselves. They want cheaper employees and more customers for those forlorn places like Staples that they skim all the assets from. If it takes ruining the culture in the process, so be it. More car elevators for the people living in their second homes in La Jolla are important. Ok, rant over, sorry.

          • Dutch, I wouldn’t wish that sick world upon you, but if you ran for public office you’d win by a landslide. And I’d fear what would happen to a person like you who’s real about our current economic climate. God bless you, brother.

          • Kind words, thank you. I am happy right where I am, and would rather work, live, and chat with people I like and respect, that’s the best.

    • We can learn even more from that graph.

      1. Divide every number by total US population.

      2. Make a new graph that tracks foreign born as a cumulative percentage of the population.

      3. Include illegal immigration as well.

      I think these changes would even better emphasize your point that our shit show has yet to fully arrive.

      • Ryan, that was the entire point of the astroturfed opposition to the Census’ citizenship question. Neither Conservative, Inc. nor the institutional left want American citizens to have that data because they might insist on something being done.

  25. Another example of the labor-saving miracle of technology. Also an example of the moral utility of labor. Thanks Z-man!

    • Shrinking the world in our minds because we can email, text, skype with anyone connected to the net makes us feel connected.

      But at the same time the lack of physical proximity and connection gives us a certain license to not see them as human. The moral universe is then split open as well.

      Technology is strange like that. A single iphone placed on the table – not even used, between two people having coffee lowers their level of empathy toward one another. Thats all it takes.

      Extrapolate and amplify that across ‘the world wide web’ and you have a system that dehumanizes by its very nature.

      Its the wild west, a frontier with no real borders, a heap of gold to be mined, and only one sheriff for every million aspiring residents.

      Because there is real money to be made selling real things, there is moral cover.

      So as the wagons head west you can sell them that bad flour because they are gonna buy if from someone and chances are you will never see them again.

      Then factor in a couple billion people from cultures where the fool is the one at fault in the scam, who happen to have 24/7 tech access to the American whales with their click-now-to-buy and credit cards at the ready.

      Buyers want to feel something. Sellers provide this. Good flour and bad flour are just as likely to pop up on your screen because they both use the same methods.

      The real grift was convincing everyone they need stuff to feel something.

      • It’s a paradox. I think the old saying “idle hands are the devil’s tools” sums it up best. Giving people who look for ways to game the system more leisure time is a mistake.

        And the web was really wild west in the 90s. Pornographers, gamers, PhD candidates, conspiracy theorists, and not much else. Those were the days!

  26. This is good advice.
    What about our own camp though? The history of the dissident right is replete with rumors of hucksters and government operatives. How can we know if our people are in earnest or perhaps left wing conmen trying to divert funds from the Cause? What if our entire side is some sort of 1984 government or democratic party operation? How can we know the gold from the pyrite?

    There was a pretty good blogger i followed about a decade ago. He was sort of Steve sailer bracket but seemed more youthful. Later he was outed as a Minority and stopped blogging! Not that there’s anything wrong with that per se, but I could tell there was something off about his tone. When he spoke of minorities he sounded hate charged and excessive, like he didn’t quite get it, as though he thought we are motivated perhaps by cruelty and respond to that , when in fact we are motivated by rationality and fear. The ever so subtle wrong timbre alerted me that he was not for real.

    • Look out for gratuitous language about minorities and very hateful statements. Not only are they usually grifters, but even if they are sincere, they aren’t doing the dissident right any favors. They confirm people’s worst fears about the dissident right.

      Grifters often have giant red flags around them that the sucker sees but ignores. After the mark has been fleeced, you will hear them say things like “I had a feeling this was too good to be true… I knew something was off” If your inner skeptic says ‘something ain’t right,’ listen to it.

  27. For our edification, someone should come up with a short list “you might be a grifter if…”

    • Excellent idea. The first things that come to my mind are the willingness to talk about the ‘ones who must not be spoken of’ and race-realism.

  28. It seems to me grifters of all types and classes are enjoying great success (both sides). I don’t see much difference between a Cernovich, Shapiro, or even Hannity who is much more “mainstream” and loved by a larger audience of conservatives. I see grifters everywhere.

  29. Funny that Z mentions Mike Cernovich, his face is what pops into my head anytime I hear the word “grifter”

    • Me too. To his credit, he has leveraged a very thin inventory of talents into a national brand. I think most dissidents naturally think of him when this topic is broached.

      Something I thought about after I hit post is that maybe the digital age is due for a digital James Randy, a guy who exposes the digital scammers.

        • Maybe all this digital scamming will open up a new market for good ol’ fashioned in-person grifting. You know – the personal touch, the old song and dance, right here in River City… Hmm… now I’m off to buy a lime green suit and a bowtie.

      • I see him and some of his buddies like Milo and Vox Day too. To be honest, I am wondering why they all didn’t stampede and scamper to the front of the dissident parade… maybe that is coming later on, who knows.

        The problem is though – are they grifers? Their customers seem happy enough. Sure, they may write crappy books that are full of excrement – but the mass media does that every day. It’s not a crime. The only difference between them and the media is their marks – Cerno and his boys prey on the very young where the media preys on the very old. From a legal standpoint, all they’re doing is selling badly written books and opinions.

      • Boomers seem to have a hard time adjusting to living in a low social trust country as they get older. I have noticed this in a few that I know, and look what just happened to Jared Taylor (again) letting a mainstream photographer take pictures of him under a dishonest premise. Taylor has admitted he is too trusting when he gets these press inquiries.

        For a slightly different example, look at the middle class people who still give to National Review fundraising drives. Nearly every time Jack Fowler will post a message from a donor that is something like, “I have been reading NR for 45 years, keep up the great work fighting the left, here’s $100.” They can’t comprehend that these nice, polite people are scamming them. It seems impossible, but that is the only explanation.

        • Boomers seem to have a hard time adjusting to living in a low social trust country as they get older.

          Millennials seem to have failed to learn that gross generalizations are foolish and fail to meet the logic test.

          • Yes, but again we are conflating two aspects of “Boomers”. 1) that they are boomers and a product of their generation and experiences, but also 2) they are an aging generation—most in their 60’s and beyond.

            Age brings on mental changes/deterioration. Of these a well known one is excessive trust, rather than distrust. Elderly folk have been known to be an easier mark since well before the boomer generation.

            I’ll be dead, but I bet the same thing will be said of millennials in 30 years.

          • Its taboo in American society to admit a lack of trust.

            This is common in many societies as it creates huge social friction but most of them realize its something we all know, we just can’t say.

            Americans are getting there and oh boy are we not going like the results.

          • I think most people believe so much (what should be obvious) bullshit, that comparing generations in this regard, is just splitting hairs…

          • To Compsci’s point- With regards to demographics, Boomers still think it’s 1980. Millennials still think it’s 2005. Neither is correct.

          • I am not a millennial. It is certainly reasonable to conclude part of the reason the grifter problem is rising now is that Boomers are getting past retirement age and think the high trust society of their youth still exists and that it transfers online. I have seen it with family members on a minor level first hand. They are a large group of people who generally speaking are too trusting and prone to flattery. You can prove something is a scam to them and see the disappointment in their faces, they don’t want to believe it.

          • Me and my Boomer friends haven’t trusted anyone’s bullsh** since 1967. But go ahead and make generalizations if it makes you feel better.

          • Pro tip: Every time someone makes a generalization about a demographic, they mean you, specifically. It is your ticket to righteous outrage!

          • There is a reason that the elderly are prime targets for scams. Barnard is offering a psychological reason that may be valid. Its kinder than going straight to the diminished mental capacity that goes along with aging. Or are we going to now imply that boomers are the only generation that is also immune to aging and nature too?

            Good grief.

          • Penitent Man, I work with many elderly people, and they trust those who they think they know, or in those whose stories they believe in, much like children do. The difference is that the elderly have the financial assets, and the agency to do what they want with them, neither of which children have. Stopping an elderly person from doing what they want with their money is hard to do, and the grifters play on that. The other thing is that the elderly themselves often cannot comprehend that their judgement has become somewhat impaired over time, and the grifters know that, too. If one is over about age 70, one needs to build up a network of truly trustworthy people around them, who are not only individually trustworthy, but who have no particular loyalty to the other trusted people, so that everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. Either that, or set up one’s finances so they are inviolate, even by the grantor/owner, which is not an ideal strategy, but can be a lesser of evils. Especially if one of the elderly couple is much more financially sophisticated than the other, and may not always be there. Sorry to drone on, but this is an area I work in, and the targeting of the elderly for financial grift and theft is unbelievably broad and intense. This is not a subject for older Boomers to be prideful about, but instead needs to be addressed as if everyone is out to get them, because, in a sense, they are.

          • Wise words Dutch. I’ve thought of that myself. There are licensed fiduciaries here that can be hired to step between you and your check to a Nigerian prince. Even without such, I’ve attempted to create a relationship between folk handling assets and family members—children—such that they know they can be expected to contact such when I begin to make unexpected withdrawals. Ditto with physician and health care desires.

          • Compsci, there are new regulations allowing financial professionals to block transactions by the elderly, or on behalf of the elderly, that appear to be coerced. It’s a delicate thing, though.

            In my next life, I will set up a professional fiduciary practice, a big one. The need for licensed fiduciaries far exceeds the available supply, and many of the fiduciaries themselves are getting elderly. Unfortunately, I am getting closer to needing a fiduciary rather than being one, but perhaps I can hire proxies to set it up, upon my retirement when I need more to do. Right alongside the stores I am going to build that sell the Greta prayer candles and gay banners, made by Chinese slave labor. 😉

          • Thanks Dutch,

            I understand completely as per the personal experience I detailed below. Sainted Mum’s been on top of it, she had a tougher upbringing, but her abilities are starting to fade too. I’ll have to look into some sort of financial management option sooner rather than later.

            Her one fault… and back to OT of ZMan’s post… I wish I could take the money she has spent on books by O’Reilly, Hannity, Savage, D’Sousa et al. over the years and put it into a trust fans for the grandkids.

          • Dutch, CA for all its faults has some decent laws on the books re: elder abuse, but there’s no substitute for advance planning as you wisely advise above.

            Anyone who’s 40+ should be looking at this seriously. The same attorneys and financial guys who handle wills and trusts are usually networked with the guys you need to talk to regarding planning for retirement as well as post-life planning. There is a lot you can do if you work the system actively, but almost all of your leverage requires planning well in advance, often years. So get on it, fam. Don’t let people like Gavin Newsom or your gold-digging stepmom loot wealth you could be leaving to your based kids or pro-White causes.

          • Agree that people of my (b. 1945) generation need to be more skeptical about “helpers,” cult figures, trend front runners, legacy political organizations, etc. And learn to step outside themselves, so to speak, and recognize that aging does tend to dull the mind and make people more vulnerable.

            Now I’m sure the following will be taken by some as evidence that I have been conned, but on the subject of age-related mental decline, I recommend that if you are in that cohort it is worth investigating cognitive enhancement supplements (e.g., phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine, Bacopa monnieri, vinpocetine, many others).

            They aren’t magic but they aren’t fairy dust either. Biochemistry is a science, although not an exact one. Experimenting to see what works (which requires some patience) is the key to benefiting. Not every nootropic I’ve tried has panned out, but enough have that I believe I am no more foolish than I was as a callow youth.

            Now let’s see, which button on that key thingy do I wiggle to post my comment …

          • Another great example today, Paul Krugman posts a message on Twitter that he was on the phone with a “computer security specialist” who told him someone was using his IP address to download child porn. After initially blaming “Qanon” he comes back a couple of hours later and says the NY Times IT people told him it was a scam. Another user posted screen captures showing Krugman falls for some sort of online scam and asks about it on Twitter every few months. Regardless of what anyone thinks of his economic ideas, he is well above average and has to have been online for at least 20 years. Yet he habitually falls retard level email scams. Does this self correct as people who didn’t grow up online die off?

          • Barn – kinda like the newb phishing scam Podesta reputedly fell for re: his emails. With Krugman I think it’s a bad case of Taleb’s “IYI” effect – Paul’s been huffing his own farts for so long that he no longer realizes his Big Brain is very domain-specific.

          • Wow….lots of good points about Boomers. Am responding to this as a Boomer. Just came back from the SF Bay Area and visited two Boomer friends. They are annoying to visit. They get that the tyrannical time is blasting in, but don’t get that their lives in California will drastically change, the streets aren’t safe now, and their lives may be at stake. They won’t leave the decaying state. Oblivious. Plus the oldest one, 20 years older at 88, is being non-stop ripped off by a black women tenant in her business building by not paying rent for months. Margie even gave her money…”oh the poor thing had such a rough life.” Rough life my ass. Another one who thought with her crotch, no baby daddy around and scams everything and everybody. Speaking of grifters. My friend’s too old a Boomer to realize she got had. A target and colorblind.

            There’s another Boomer coping quality that has not been plumbed. Yes, some Boomers are pig headed and stubborn as jack asses. Yet some Boomers, my husband, are becoming more and more anxious as they feel the rug being pulled out. Basic Husband rode life hard and was put away wet. Plus old folks get anxious because the body hit the angle of repose and is in full slide. (Whaaat! I can’t hear you! Thursday! Thought you said thirsty!!) He reacts to the changing world and tanking trust by flying flags, waiting hopefully for the Barr Report, watching Hannity and heading for the hills. This is fairly new entrenching for him. Didn’t see the Boomerconning coming. I cope by saying to myself the phrase, “It’s the way it is. Can’t outrun reality.” I just leave him alone on this, particularly waiting for Godot..er..the Barr Report, and find ways to kindly overlap without poking the bear. I’m very good at creating calm and contentment in my home. As I do, he’s very sweet and builds a fine Half Acre Eden for us.

            Many times I withhold comment on the Z Blog because often topics are learning topics for me. Many concepts I don’t know, so I must learn or in the least keep open. You wonderful Z commenters bring me along and teach me. In a beginners mind there are many possibilities/options, in an experts mind there are few. I’m in beginners mind in this brave new world. So be it.

            PS: As a little kid I used to wonder why the Jews got nailed by you-know-who and didn’t see it coming. Why didn’t they leave?! I think I figured out the dynamic and I’m seeing that happening currently. My son-in-law’s family still have pictures of the Magic Negro on their walls. Richter Scale 10 virtue signaling. Hopeless. Both Boomer sides of the great divide have their heads buried and arse in the air. Think this is human nature when scared. Massive cognitive dissonance paralyzes. I’ll bet it was middle aged and older Jews who got caught than younger Jews. Anyone know the stats on this? There were some who witnessed what was bearing down on them and left. Few. Bookends to my life.

          • Range, there is something karmic and poetic in the proximity of Oakland and Alameda to the Cloud Temple across the bay.

          • Only from 20,000 feet. Not karmic and poetic when I was being chased by hoards of psychotic violent drug addled street vibrants as I dodged them crossing the street for lunch in downtown Oakland. Only one old Chinese drunk…count ’em….one. No difference between SF and Oakland. Safe travels through Russia.

          • I work part-time for a Boomer, and do a job that is *absolutely essential* to the running of his business. Without me, his bills aren’t paid, orders don’t get shipped, and emails from customers go unanswered. He insists on calling me an “independent contractor.” He is as stubborn as an ass. I’ve given up arguing with him over this, as it isn’t worth it. I need the money, which is a pittance over the course of a year.

            That’s a lead-in to his weekly smug diatribes at me for not filing quarterly tax returns (for $5-6K yearly? like hell I’m throwing away hundreds of bucks for nothing) so I can grab muh Social Security in a few decades. Dude has about 10 checks come in monthly to fund his lifestyle, his wife never worked a minute in her life and has gotten — ballpark — about $1 million in various experimental treatments for her cancer, and he is incapable of comprehending that *his post-WW2 experience* is an anomaly in human history, that it’s over, and he was the lucky piece of meat in a shit sandwich — his parents (Great Depression) and Gen X/Millennials (post-1980 wage stagnation, rising costs of everything else) being the bread in this very imperfect analogy.

            I don’t think we’re making a generalization here so much as we’re talking about our experiences with guys who grew up in the 60s and 70s, who simply refuse to look at the world around them and make empirical observations.

            The anger comes in when they won’t get out of the way and let the younger men have their day. I gotta’ tell you, it’s reaching a crisis point. They had their turn, and they did well. Enough’s enough. Especially considering most of them — like the ones I know — all seem to have kids born between 1969-1972, during college, with their girlfriends (whom they then married just in the nick of time, if you catch my drift), and then not a single one afterward. (That this coincided with the height of the Vietnam draft is, I suppose, a neat coincidence.)

            We are tired of it. They are the men of the ledger, the spreadsheet, and the stock market. Not men with chests. The Boomer mindset is within their power to change — it’s not too late. A little empathy and solidarity from old men in this season would go a long way. I won’t hold my breath.

          • Tollah: the conservo-libertard-Mammon-Boomer who shorts his workers like this and lives up to the Scrooge archetype in general is one of the worst of the species (right behind Kill em All McCain Boomer and Muh Izrul Boomer).

            They are the reason for the regulations, unionization and red tape they despise. Their hypocrisy is as boundless as their self-awareness is lacking.

            One of the nastiest red-pill realities I had to face was realizing what two-faced, self-dealing a**holes a lot of my fellow-traveling Objectivists and libertarians were – guys I had known for years.

          • Same here, but as I’m prone to say, “anecdotes are not data”. There are more reasonable and supported interpretations/explanations of the boomer trust issue at hand.

          • “My boomer friends haven’t trusted anyone’s bullish!t since 1967”

            Some of the oceans of bullsh!t boomers swallowed:

            — puffed up with righteous fury over Watergate, too dumb to realize it was just a palace coup;
            — stopped protesting the Vietnam war the minute the draft ended, some sense of principles;
            — spent their twenties d!cking around on an endless vacation, didn’t start building careers and lives until a younger set were also trying to build careers and lives, thus gumming up the whole assembly line;
            — either believed Reagan’s nonsense, or else their opposition to Reagan was childish and uninformed, the first of many Hitlers;
            — bought the whole Gordon Gecko “greed is good” routine. Well, it turns out greed WAS good — but just for Boomers, not the country;
            — had a naive and imbecilic response to the onset of the AIDS pandemic, thus prolonging it and enlarging it’s scope;
            — when a single Jew judge nullified the will of the entire state of California by overruling Prop 187 using utter nonsense partisan legal reasoning, thus dooming the entire Southwest to a nation-ending tsunami of infinity illegal immigrants, Boomers rolled over and did nothing;
            — on the subject of immigration, Boomers washed their hands, Pilate-like, saying Hey, WE didn’t pass Hart-Celler! Meanwhile doing nothing at every turn either to reverse it or roadblock it despite endless opportunities to do so;
            — Bought the retarded War on Terror and TSA/Homeland Security bullshi!t without a peep. Muslim 9/11 attacks somehow translate into infinity Muslim immigrants, not a word from Boomers;
            — bought the whole Bush Iraq war, the most transparently stupid, crooked, and Jewish war in American history — or if they were against it, protested using retarded vaudeville Vietnam-era techniques like it was a dress-up show;
            — still no effective action on immigration from the richest, most politically powerful, most numerous, most privileged and advantaged generation in human history. America is now mathematically set to self-destruct thanks to Boomer inaction. We are literally living in a scene from a sci-if movie where the robot ship’s computer counts down, “Auto self-destruct commencing in T minus 10, 9, 8…”

            — Oh, nearly forgot about the whole, Hey let’s give free houses to immigrants and then sell the bad loans to dupes under false pretenses routine, that set the U.S. economy back half a century. Forget about a manufacturing base, we’ll all get rich flipping houses and selling off the whole country to foreigners, one bite at a time;
            — strip-mined three centuries’ worth of social capital within the space of a single generation, the societal equivalent of draining the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and the Oglala Aquifer all at once.

            But you didn’t take anyone’s…

            OK Boomer.

            I hear Jackson Browne is gonna do a free show at Will Rogers this summer.

          • Blaming Boomers for doing “nothing” is ridiculous. Doof, what have you done! Yes, specifically please tell us What.Have.You.Done?

            Look, I’m not putting you down, nor yelling, nor making light of your frustration. We usually tend to agree IIR. The point I’m making is that individuals of the Boomer generation may very well have done all they could to make such changes you refer to—but through the political process. I know I did.

            But time and again, one party’s candidate after another sang a siren’s song and after election gave their constituency the “finger”. For example, Bush the II promised to “fix” SSI. He made one pass at it, decided it was’t worth the shit he was getting from Democrats and went back to bombing sand people. The Democrats, after using SSI as a political bludgeon did not follow up with a fix of their own. And here you are today.
            Not sure where—short of taking to the streets—Boomers could be expected to have any more political effect than today’s Gen X’s, Millennials, and Zoomers (who are greater in number than Boomers) do.

          • (Just slightly) pre-Boomer here.

            Yeah, you’re right.

            One more:

            — “Hey, how about those [Eagles/Vikings/Redskins etc.]”! Glued to the tube or paying for admission to corporate-sponsored stadiums for hours of their lives watching sportsball instead of conversing, reading, thinking.

          • DE is not wrong. Boomers among us, you can either take pride in transcending this legacy or beclown yourselves by defending it.

            There are strong systemic defenses to make for Boomers – first generation exposed to television-era mass-media, Madison Ave weaponized consumerism, post-WWII World Savior mythology, the full furor of cultural Marxism. And more.

            I don’t condemn Boomers for falling to this kind of onslaught. It’s hard to imagine how any generation in their circumstances could have withstood it.

            I only criticize those Boomers who fail to humbly acknowledge that they got played and refuse to make amends by doing everything they can and should to pass on that bitter wisdom to their successors, those who prefer to shift the blame to “snowflakes,” retail “bootstraps” poopytalk and bury their own shortcomings in rose-colored ret-conning.

            And for Christ and Odin’s sake, please stop with the “kill all them raghead terrorists b/c Izrul” sh*t. John McCain’s ghost is fapping in Hell with Jeff Epstein to the tune of this useful idiocy.

          • Every single time. Keep proving our critiques, Carl Boomer.

            NABALT is never enough. Boomers now demand immunity from criticism. Kinda like…

            In the spirit of Z’s “be a black conservative at CPAC,” let’s start a defense fund to declare anti-Boomerist tropes and canards as hate speech. Soon to be America’s largest senior advocacy group – move over, AARP.

            The floor is open for acronym suggestions. I got nuthin’ at the moment.

          • I’m always stunned when the Carl Boomers go nuts about being judged as a generation yet have no problem judging whole religions or races… Clown World at it’s finest.

          • Here’s where I’m at re: the Boomer Question currently-

            Because of demographic change, a one-way ticket to hell is unavoidable and inevitable. Becoming a hated, hunted minority isn’t not going to happen.

            With that being said, why should the Patriotards who inhabit the Breitbart comments section be exempt?

            If we’re going to hell, let’s take them and their rascal scooters with us. Bring it on before the Grim Reaper takes them.

          • Scooter chariot races, that’s what I am up for. Give them Life Alerts that set off fireworks in the Coliseum for when they crash and can’t get up.

          • The Boomers you are angry at (for good reason)…will not be found on the Z Blog, boys. Most of them are in assisted living and are running around in Velcro shoes and squishy diapers. Or they’re so close to it, it doesn’t matter anymore.

            I made the tail end of the boomer demographic by a couple months. I missed the bubble of boomer opulence and opportunity by at least 5 years. Fact is that when I got out of school, youth unemployment was around 37%. My leading edge Boomer parents told me I couldn’t get a real job like theirs because I was stupid and lazy. If I only worked as hard as they did, why, I’d have everything they did too. It’s hard to have that in one ear, and then the kids in the other thinking you got everything handed to you on a silver platter.

            As a crabby old fart all I gotta say, as someone stuck smack dab in the middle of it all… is f*** all y’all.
            😆👍

          • I completely agree that the CivNat Patriotard Boomers aren’t to be found here…the good boomers that post on this board are smart people and well-prepared do what’s coming next.

            The world post-‘65 is a bad joke. ‘Murica types get what they f**king deserve.

          • I don’t argue as much about vast generalizations wrt boomers as I do to conclusions drawn. However, the few boomers who are still sentient—which I hope includes myself—are good witnesses to the present predicament the follow-on generations experience.

            All of us have skin in this “game”. Newer generations seek their piece of the pie, but boomers have given birth to those generations, have we not? We need to secure the best environment possible for our progeny—which includes yourself.

          • I just don’t get the concept of Boomer opulence. I think the Greatest had a harder time of it early on, but the best hand ever dealt post-war. They got much better goodies than Boomers, imho. Things have been steadily declining for everyone.

          • I think a lot Boomers didn’t realize or didn’t care that their prosperity was coming at their children’s expense. That’s where the resentment comes from. It isn’t jealousy about nice things.

            And a lot don’t give the wwii gen a pass either. They stopped fighting the bad guys after the war.

          • Correct. It makes me mad enough to spit nails. I’m seriously close to raising the skull and crossbones, running out the cannons – and giving back with a fusillade broadside.

            The kid answering the phones at the furnace company is a civil engineer. The kid at Costco tweaking my new glasses is a mechanical engineer. No – I’m not joking. I wish I was. My Gen X Prime Minister is more concerned about prancing with the queers at pride parades, and importing coloured morons and weirdos from the third world when our own kids can’t find jobs.

            My millennial daughter is a gay artiste and an SJW. She and her creepy love partner don’t want to work. They went to school for four years to become painters and authors. When I refused to celebrate it and support them I got sent out to the airlock. My parents called me a fascist.

            This is an inter-generational problem, fellas. We are now four generations deep in it. The good news is that our best men – you guys – are on the job and you see what’s going on. Start prepping fellas… because yes, it’s going to get that bad.

          • Everyone here alive today in the West has the opportunity to carve out whatever private good life they can, that would be the envy of practically anyone who has ever gone before, or likely will come after. To complain is simply churlish. It proves the point that people judge their circumstances by those of their neighbors, not by any truly objective measure.

            And then there are those who are out to change the world, rather than minding their own business, building their own communities, and letting others build their own communities.

          • I guess so. Unless you drive a truck or are/were involved in construction. Then 2020 worker makes less in “real dollars” than 1970 worker.

          • Millennials: coddled as children, trashed as adults. Thin-skinned Boomers can‘t handle a little turnabout.

            What a mess!

          • Not really, it’s just when the arguments wrt “Boomers” are incomplete or one sided. So Boomers here point such out. You get push back, but also another side of the story. Especially wrt how choices are made and what those choices were perceived as.

            I don’t disagree with any number of conclusions, such as “Boomers had it great”, but that’s different from arguments such as ”Boomers are the cause of all my woes.”

            Change the generations around, say Millennials with Boomers and I’d wager they’d do the exact same things and make the exact same choices. It’s human nature, we are not all angels (hardly) and not all devils.

          • I don’t disagree at all. I just think Millennials have been dissed and dismissed and I don’t blame them for being salty about it. Not that there isn’t truth to the claims about them, but I can see why so many of them check out. This is the first generation to be told they’ll be poorer and shorter-lived than their parents, no longer majorities in their own countries, subject to China, and whatever else— all after being told they’re stars and the future’s theirs when they were kids. Total head ****. I ask and often hear ‘what’s the point’, etc. What I rarely see is someone asking them why they’re pissed instead of reacting to the saltiness.

            And God bless the Zoomers. At least they know they’re growing up in a society that hates them. EXCEPTIONS, of course.

          • Rooster,

            Right. My step dad keeps falling for scams and giving out financial information. Yes, he has some diminished cognitive capacity but nothing out of the ordinary for his age.

            He simply cannot fathom that people who sound professional on the phone and have some info on him really aren’t “from the bank”.

            He let a scammer into the house to “see about upgrading to windows for a great price!” Luckily we caught on quick. When admonishing Dad he kept saying “He had a uniform and an I.D. badge. A clipboard and a measuring tape! How was I to know?”

            “Because the window tech doesn’t need bank routing numbers, Dad.”

          • Watch out for the golddiggers, too, with the widowed elderly. Grifters par excellence! But as they say, “The person who marries for money usually earns every penny of it.”

          • Penitent, same here.

            The boomer getting ripped off over their blind trust of the credentialed, authoritative, experts is really a reflection of their own inflated status as accomplished elders and good citizens. They must believe in the system.

            An indictment of the credentialed status hierarchy would call into question their own status.

            Their fetish for credentials-as-status is also how they encouraged their kids to borrow $150k for a gender studies BA. They sell their millennial kids into the grift before they risk a decline of their status.

            My mom has been taken by one of those pop up screens “you have a virus call this number (and give us your bank account number)” because the screen looked official. “Well it had the Microsoft logo!”.

            Poor dear. She’s intolerable, but she isn’t rich by any stretch. She just wishes I would have become a dentist like her neighbors kid.

          • ScrewTape, that’s a bit of a stretch. Who is responsible for credentialing and the fetish we all seem to have for it? Even in this forum.

            I have been listening for decades to government propaganda wrt “a mind is a terrible thing to waste” claptrap. And how everyone needs to go to college for a good life—regardless of their ability or the gutting (through lowering standards in all departments) of a once great University system.

            It’s really Leftists in this regard. Yeah, there are any number of Boomer Leftists out there and perhaps even more in government and academia. But it’s not universal enough (IMO) to paint with that broad a brush.

          • Screwtape,

            Step-father also fell prey to internet bank scam.

            He’s a different egg than your mom though. He came over as a dirt poor immigrant in the late 40s. Spent his early formative years helping pick crops alongside his folks after school.

            He and his brothers got it good and hard to “become Americans” asap. Regular ass-beatings by the locals for any deviation.

            He got the message fast. Refused to learn their native language. Would ignore his parents if they spoke to him in anything but English. His two other brothers followed suit. Dove into the most American sports in school that he could. Volunteered for Viet Nam in 67 to “do his part.” Has refused to ever visit his county of birth but does occasionally get excited by a food item from there. He hates being reminded he was born elsewhere and even complained when his company would send him to the UK because it was “too foreign.” Only buys American cars even through a number of lemons in the 1980s. In his declining years the TV is permanently blasting Fox news and any action movie showing macho guys blowing up terrorists. He cracks me up, complains about “too many foreigners everywhere!”

            I think you are right on Boomers being, as a group, a bit more into credentialism than later gens. He is the same but on steroids because he sees that as a path to being accepted as an American.

            He’s also the reason I’m not completely against a small number of immigrants being allowed in. Not in the current scenario… but okay with it circa 1940s and 50s… tiny numbers and mercilessly hammered into westerners.

        • One of the worst things being done by my generation as they retire or approach retirement, especially those with university degrees, is the amount of money they are leaving to the institutions of their youth: Colleges and Churches.

          Universities are the most anti-white institution by far. All of their legacy money is controlled by the worst of our sort, new Americans and that usual group. Every penny is used to raise up parasitical outsiders and to attack the descendants of European Christendom (practicing or not)…in every corner of the globe.

          The churches are the welcome wagon for the paleolithic and barely neolithic cavemen. “The churches are now doing such wonderful work” , as they write a check. I’ve heard some variation of this from many…most of whom have been practicing atheists or at best deist since they were 15.

          Small timers like Cern and NRO are a nuisance but the serious problems lie in our beyond-redemption institutions. It is the faith in these institutions that really separates my generation (boomers) from the younger generations. It is a faith that the majority of boomers will carry with them to the grave.

          • Yep, you got me there YV. Those boomer academic supporters and those boomer athletic supporters are the worse. I’ve always attributed it to an ignorance of the inside workings of the institution.

            After a lifetime in academia, I’m not so naive. But if you only spent 4 or so years—in the 60-70’s—with nominal tuition—to be exposed upon graduation to an expanding economy and myriad of job opportunities for a newly minted college grad, of any discipline—you might confuse the higher education institution of yesterday with the Leftist indoctrination centers of today. Sigh.

          • YV – And for the lamest of reasons – to put their name on a givers’ list – or, if they’re loaded, on a building. So their route to immortality isn’t having children and raising them well, or impacting others’ lives, but buying a wall to hang their name on. I actually had both my undergrad and grad schools remove my name from their alum mailing lists – haven’t gotten any requests for money for at least a decade. Husband hates his school but still gets their newsletter in the mail, so he can complain about it.

        • One reason Boomers are so interesting is that they are the generation with the highest self-regard in all of history, convinced they were the coolest and most moral generation ever, and now they find themselves universally disrespected and dismissed. OK Boomer.

          I suspect that they believed that future generations would canonize them and instead the opposite happened.

          (I’m referring to Cloud People Boomers not Dirt People Boomers)

        • Personally I don’t believe Taylor’s problem is that he is too trusting. He knows how the fake media as much as anyone…

          Some say he wants too much to be in the limelight…

          • If anything he’s humble and genteel to a fault. There are occasions where it can frustrate me but he’s a hero for Our Thing in my book – a guy we should honor despite any shortcomings, someone whose shoulders we’re standing on.

          • Mmk, Taylor chooses to deal with people he knows will screw him over and then complains when they do. You pick the term to best describe that.

      • Randy himself is a bit of a carny freak. He is one of these typical ‘movement atheist’ types who wants to break down societal rules against things like homosexuality under the guise of being a “skeptic” or a debunker. Just look at the guy! He has carny freak written all over his face. Came out in his 60s or 70s as a butt pirate. I would never let my children near him!

        • Randy however was a very good magician during his time however. If he’d stayed in the closet….

          • It’s Randi, not Randy. I didn’t know he is a poofter. Anyway, by supposedly debunking all psychical phenomena and research, he displays his ignorance on a 4K, 65-inch screen. Randi is himself an intellectual grifter who collects money and hosannas from people whose minds are closed to anything beyond materialism (in the philosophical, not just economic, sense).

    • I could never get past his queer lispy stuttering to bother.

      I could see why he was writing pulp help books. A face for radio kinda thing. But the whole video and “journalist” angle was a bridge too far.

      Though if there is a profession that deserves to be mocked by these retards, its journo.

      We are a culture of grift. Everything is for sale and that is celebrated.

      Sociopaths? The whole system favors the dark triad. Because we have not just stopped bashing the sociopath’s head in or with a rock, we have lionized them for their “success”.

      The moral stew of relative evil that remains makes defect-defect the best possible outcome.

      How long do the cooperate suckers last in that before they grab a fork themselves or become rendered fat?

      Even begging has been morally elevated. Don’t believe me? Here is a link to my go fund me page.

      This is the marketplace we are teaching to our kids. 6th grade kids’ goal in life is to be a you-tube personality. Not fireman or doctor, youtuber.

      “Social influencers”. Even the title doesn’t hide the grift that it is. Everyone is a brand now. If you aren’t, you should buy my ebook on how to build your brand.

      Yes, atomized people are ripe for harvest. But the relationship is not so easily delineated as victim/perpetrator.

      In a pyramid scheme, who is the victim and who is the grifter? At what point does the victim cross over into grift?

      Does ignorance of the fact that there is no ‘free’ money absolve those who regularly pursue the too good to be true?

      Buy my ebook on how to make millions writing ebooks on how to write ebooks to make millions.

      Then there is the ‘gig economy’. One big grift. Its a long con that snares a bunch of desperate and opportunistic short-time preference people, but it also provides a ‘great service’ to many end users who take advantage of the social and financial engineering that offers short-term price deflation.

      Are those users grifters or just savvy “consumers”?

      Sure, somewhere at the end of the line is a grandma getting taken, but we are at a point where the fool is the one who is not getting in on the action.

      The nigerian prince is still out there. The indian and chinese scammers are slowly getting more sophisticated. Though they still need better translators.

      But when the Amazon, Tesla, Theranos, etc are the apex of our striving social economy, sorting the complicit from the perpetrators from the victims is a hair-splitting exercise.

      These questions are reminiscent of the old Twilight zone episode about the stranger who offers a man $1MM for “free”. The only hitch: someone far away he doesn’t know will die.

      He accepts. Rationalization. Emotional and physical distance. He really needs that money. The stranger leaves.

      Somewhere, far away from that newly minted millionaire, that stranger is offering a briefcase of $1MM to another man. That man also really needs the money. You are left to decide what happens next.

      We are all far away strangers in a marketplace absent empathy and universal morality constantly being offered something to fill that void created by being far away strangers.

      Low trust in real life means our desire to trust has to go somewhere. Trust me on this, I have 600,000 followers

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