For a few years now, I have been getting requests from readers wondering how they can donate to my efforts. I’ve always told them to donate to VDare, Steve Sailer or a good YouTuber like RamZPaul, as I don’t have a mechanism for accepting money. It’s not that I don’t like money or I am selfless. It’s just that the costs were minimum and there are others out there who could use the money. There’s also a cost to setting up a finding apparatus, especially in an age of woke capitalism and systematic de-platforming.

I’ve also been asked by other content creators to join the merchant right, because it helps reinforce the notion that a culture war is not won on love. It takes money to run these sites and many of the people doing it have no other way to make a living. If you are a guy who has been anathematized due to your politics, you need to get support from people in this thing so you can live. Part of building that support structure is building a culture of giving where we support our guys with more than just snarky comments and clever banter.

While I like money and the culture argument is persuasive, I’ve been slow to come around to the idea. The recent issue with upgrading my server has caused me to rethink things, as there is now a real cost to running this side. The new server now comes with a hefty fee every month, compared to what I was doing. Now is probably a good time to test the waters and see if being a media whore is for me. I’ve created a SubscribeStar account for people to contribute to my work. If you feel generous, please sign up.

Now, I’m not entirely sure I am cut out to be a media whore, so I’m starting with a modest goal and one funding mechanism. I think I should begin creating some premium content as a reward to those who contribute. That seems to be the model popular with independent media, but I’m still noodling that one. RamZPaul does videos just for his subscribers. The TRS guys have a paywall that does the same thing. I’m still investigating how others handle that part of it, so feel free to offer suggestions and examples.

The other thing I’m looking at doing is crowdsourcing a book effort. I have been working on a book. I hope to have the first draft done this fall. Since I’m a terrible editor, I will need to hire a professional to edit the copy. I’m thinking the way to do that is with a crowd-sourcing effort, but I’m still looking at how that works. I might just setup something myself, but that would require a merchant account and some changes to the site. Alternatively, I could raise money for the project and then just give the book away on the site. We’ll see.

The bottom line is I am sticking my toes into the merchant waters. If anyone has suggestions on this front, feel free to offer them up. There are a lot of people making a living as a solo content producers, so I’m not breaking new ground, but maybe doing what everyone else is doing is not the right course for me. Like it or not, I’m a bit of an outlier in the dissident media, so I may have to be an outlier in the merchant game too. Therefore, I’m open to suggestions. Sometimes old puzzles need new solutions.

I was on with Frodi Midjord, RamZPaul and Tiina Wiik to discuss dissident politics on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as organizing for our future efforts. We had some technical issues with Google, so we went off-line for a while and then started over. Paul broke up the video into three parts and re-published them. The live stream service from Google seems like it has trouble every time I do one of these things. Maybe I give up some form of bad mojo that causes havoc on their servers.

I thought it was a good discussion. Frodi is a great guy, who has done great work in the Scandinavian countries. We need more sensible people out front talking about these issues. I think he made some good points, especially about people’s risk tolerance. If you think your people are worth preserving you do what it takes to accomplish it. On the other hand, I don’t think they have the challenges we have here in America with people being fired from their jobs for holding unpopular opinions. I could be wrong.

Otherwise, I think I did better on this than I normally do on these sorts of things. There is a skill to being a live streamer or a guest on these shows. I just don’t do it enough to be comfortable with it. Paul and Tiina do these shows all the time, so they make it look easy, but there is a talent to make it look natural. It’s why I have avoided getting into the video stuff to this point. I’d end up spending countless hours trying to figure out how to look normal rather than like I was making a hostage video.

Anyway, here is the show in three parts.

https://youtu.be/p-2U14sycdY

https://youtu.be/bjjC57AnFDA

https://youtu.be/mJXOyqbic8o

Whenever I watch or participate in a live stream, I’m always curious about who is watching or listening, specifically the numbers. I tuned in for some of Spencer’s new gig the other day and I saw that he had about thousand people listening. When I was on with Josh Neal we had about one hundred people. Spencer is obviously a bigger name and surely draws lots of of enemies to anything he does, in addition to supporters. Still, these are small numbers, compared to what we think happens with television and radio.

Now, in fairness, local radio often has just a few thousand people listening at any one time and some small TV channels have such small audiences they round to zero. There’s also the fact that live streams are a new and different medium. It’s like watching the rehearsal, rather than the finished product, but you can interact with the performers. That and you can watch it anytime, because live streams are recorded. If you look at the views of these things, 90% of the audience is for the recorded version, not the live feed.

The newness of live streams can be seen in the radio programs that have started putting their content on-line. Lots of talk radio people have set up cameras in their studio to simulcast their shows over Facebook or YouTube. They also provide a feed to services like iHeart and TuneIn. I listen to the legendary Howie Carr off YouTube, as he is in Boston and I’m in Lagos. I’ve never seen the viewer count on his YouTube feed exceed a hundred. Most of the time, it is below 50, yet he is the #14 talk radio guy in America.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the new audience for the new media. One thing I’ve learned after a year of doing a podcast is there is little overlap between my writing and my spoken word material. In fact, I have been approached by people at secret handshake meetings who only listen and have never bothered to read my blog. Lots of readers have told me they have no interest in the podcast, but they would read a transcript. John Derbyshire has been doing transcripts for years now, because most prefer it.

My guess is the audience for live streams is a completely different animal than the audience for writing and podcasting. There is a sense of urgency to the live stream, in that watching one from a year ago feels like reading an old newspaper. Most live streams are about current topics. Podcasts are often topical, but necessarily so. The people doing history and philosophy can expect an audience long after they have published their shows. That does not seem to be the case with the live stream.

A few weeks ago I was made aware of the fact a very famous person reads this blog on occasion. They don’t read regularly because they think I’m too wordy. That person wanted to know where I was on social media, because that person prefers Twitter over longer written material. This was a bit of a revelation, but it made perfect sense. While there is overlap between the audience for longer material and the audience for social media, there are many who do one but not the other. Live stream is the social media of video.

A few years ago I predicted Twitter’s problems. A large scale public platform is either open to everyone or it allows for self-segregation. Any attempt to moderate an open platform fails and this was known long before Twitter of Facebook. UseNet and message boards were the first social media and they learned that you either have segregation or you have the Wild West. Any effort to tone police or regulate blasphemy ends in disaster. The reason is the cost of regulation eventually outweighs the benefit.

What’s happening in social media is segregation, as people retreat to their own kind. The dissidents are the first to start building their own, but it will spread everywhere. Your social media platform will be your tribe. That or platforms like Facebook will simply acquiesce to reality. This has happened to some extent as there are private Facebook groups populated by alt-right people. Something similar will have to happen with Twitter or it will collapse under the weight of its own stupidity.

This brings me back to live streams and video is general. The live stream is a response to YouTube censorship. The hosts make sure to stay within the rules and they have the option to not post the recorded show if it could cause problems. The thing is though, even the most berserk member of the volunteer morality police is not sitting through three hours of Spencer talking about himself to find some blasphemy. The use of guarded language and the format allow for some self-segregation within the YouTube platform.

One final thought on all this. I mentioned that I’m not a very good live stream guest. Some people with small brow ridges will accuse me of false modesty, but I think there is a skill at being a host and a guest. This has always been true. A good host features the guest and keeps the guest from getting lost in the sound of his own voice. On the other hand, good guests have answers like a woman’s bathing suit. They are big enough to cover the material, but small enough to keep it interesting. They keep the show moving.

With these new formats, developing new skills to exploit the format is something we see all over now. The cut and paste bloggers, for example, have mostly faded away, as that has been displaced by social media. Those pithy comments are easily done on Facebook and Twitter. Content driven bloggers like J’Onquarious and Heartiste are the future of the format. The group blog is the new magazine and the solo blog is the new pamphleteer. Similar skills, but more interactive and responsive.

On the video side, that’s where things will be more interesting, as the format has no analog to the analog age. Live streams are not like TV. YouTube channels are not like a cable channel. PewDiePie is not Howard Stern. As Paul Ramsey talked about in his chat with Millennial Woes the other day, the internet video format continues to evolve as people try to figure out how to use it. Look at old videos of a guy like Molyneux and they are nothing like what he is doing today, because he evolved with the format.

That also means the audience will change too. Fifty years ago, movie stars never did television, other than chat shows to promote themselves. That may be how things unfold with video, at least initially. The live stream guys will be a special skill, while the recorded people, with high production values, will appeal to a different audience. Bloggers and writers that can be good guests will use appearances to promote their work. Otherwise, like the difference between book readers and TV watchers, there will be little overlap.

The other day, Paul Ramsey had an amusing take on Gavin McInnes dramatically quitting his fan club, the Proud Boys. Everyone is assuming this was in response to the FBI using the word “extremist” when describing the McInnes fan club in a bulletin they issued to the Portland Oregon police department. The assumption is that the FBI is now going to treat Proud Boys as a criminal organization or a terrorist group. McInnes is disavowing them in order to avoid legal guilt by association or any financial culpability stemming from lawsuits.

Maybe that’s what motivated McInnes, but the more likely answer is something I pointed out a year ago with him and other edgytarians. For right-wing edgytarians, the game is always to keep an eye on where the Left is drawing the line. To be edgy on the Right means always staying just inside that line. When the line moves, make sure you move with it, maybe do so reluctantly, while lecturing those to your Right about the need to play nice or be civil. A good discourse on principles and “who we are” always helps.

It is a tough life and many trip up and fall into the void. That’s what’s happening with McInnes and his fan club. Let’s not kid ourselves about the Proud Boys. It was never intended to be anything but a fan club for McInnes. He got the idea from hanging out with alt-right people in the run-up to the presidential election. He saw that guys like Mike Enoch and Richard Spencer had built an audience around a personal brand, so McInnes created what he thought was a mom-safe version for himself. Proud Boys is alt-right-lite.

Now, the assumption that the FBI is about to RICO the Proud Boys is way off base. The use of the term “extremist group” is meaningless. There is no such formal designation in the law or with the FBI. It is as meaningful as saying the Proud Boys are a drinking club or they like wearing polo shirts. The FBI is a corrupt and broken organization, but they are not about to RICO a TV clown’s fan club. The dramatic reading of his resignation was about getting inside that line again, so McInnes can keep his career alive.

It’s why it is always wise to think about the motivation of popular figures who dabble in dissident politics. A guy like McInnes is primarily a performer. He has spent his life feeling around for a vehicle that will get him a big audience. He’s tried edgy magazine writer, edgy polemicist, TV clown, YouTube clown, jokey political analyst, cheeky ad-man and now he is the hipster gadfly. His instincts, with regards to politics, are conventional white guy politics, but they have always been a a decoration for his performing career.

Another example is Stefan Molyneux, who built his career being a dramatic, somewhat edgy, anarcho-libertarian YouTube performer. His edginess was to flirt with things like biological realism, by posting available data on things like race, sex and IQ. Molyneux is a trained stage actor, who has developed an act that works well on YouTube. As soon as he got some heat from the Left, he has quickly retreated into generic libertarianism, which is completely safe, because it is completely harmless. The show must go on.

On the surface, the right-edgytarian feels like a good thing, because through humor (McInnes) and dramatic presentation (Molyneux) they can help normalize and popularize heretical ideas. Lots of alt-right people love Moly, because his videos are useful in making clever social media memes. The trouble is these guys can just as quickly vilify dissident ideas, when they are sprinting to catch up with the new line Lefty has drawn. Effectively what McInnes is doing is throwing his own fans into the gaping maw of Lefty outrage.

The trouble, of course, is that in an age of extreme intolerance, like we see today, the ideological enforcers are less tolerant of edgy clowns like McInnes than the serious dissidents. They see the edgy clowns as mocking their identity and that can never be tolerated, so they go after these otherwise harmless performers. It’s why a relatively safe performer like Molyneux gets mass reported and protested. The ideological enforcers know they are defending a dead and brittle orthodoxy, so there is no room for tolerance.

It’s why edgy guy is doomed, at least for now. As I pointed out a year ago, in an ideological age, you pick one side and only one side. There’s no bridging the gap or performing on both sides of the street. The edgytarians, if they are to exist at all, will have to operate on this side of the great divide. That requires a new type of performer with a grounding in dissident ideas. None of the edgy guys today have that, so they will eventually end up on the other side, singing to an audience of true believers.

One of the positive developments of the last few years has been the collapse of respect for the mass media by white people. Blacks always assumed the media was run by “the man” and no one really cares what Hispanics think, so the mass media has always relied on gullible white people. Most whites have always assumed the media was biased in favor of the Left, but now most white think the media is just making stuff up. Older whites still fall for the lies coming out of the magic box, but younger people assume it is all fake news.

The funny thing about this is the collapse of trust in the media has changed the media and not for the better. Thirty years ago, media people would fight tooth and nail against the charge of bias. Today, they routinely hire Progressive activists and give them a platform for their activism. The Daily Beast, for example, pays Antifa spokesbot Kelly Weill to harass white people. The New York Times famously hired anti-white rage-head Sarah Jeong to their editorial board. They were worried it was not anti-white enough, apparently.

Further, the media is not only just a conduit for anti-white propaganda, it is now a part of the activist wing, directing doxxing and de-platforming campaigns. This post last week at the Wall Street Journal, by anti-white activist Yoree Koh, was an effort to force YouTube to shut down channels that don’t comply with the sensibilities of our imported overlords. The fact that Mx. Koh would be working in a rice paddy if not for the heroic efforts of white men most certainly never comes up in her commentary. She just hates white people.

Since the Journal has fire walled the piece, I’ll post it in full.

After Robert Bowers stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, far-right personality Ethan Ralph launched a live stream on YouTube to discuss the shooting that claimed 11 lives. Soon, some viewers began paying to have their comments featured on the live chat scrolling alongside the streaming video, through a feature YouTube launched last year called Super Chat.

During the live stream, which YouTube said Mr. Ralph has since deleted, one user paid two British pounds to write, “How u get a Jewish girls number? Roll up her sleeve.” Another viewer paid $5 and wrote: “If you want to know if the Synagogue shooting was a false flag then check out the lucky Larry life insurance policies on those dead Jews.”

YouTube said late on Friday that it had permanently removed Mr. Ralph’s channel, “Ralph Retort,” from its platform for policy violations and for going against its terms of service.

Mr. Ralph, whose channel had 22,500 subscribers, is one of several far-right YouTube celebrities who have used the Super Chat function to make money. Topics among such users can be wide-ranging, from events like the tragedy in Pittsburgh and the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to critiques of the media and internal debates among members of the far-right online communities.

Most Super Chats generate a few hundred dollars in revenue, according to an analysis conducted for The Wall Street Journal, with YouTube typically collecting 30%, people familiar with the matter said.

A spokeswoman for YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, said the company donates to charity the proceeds from any Super Chats that violate its hate-speech policy.

“Hate speech and content that promotes violence is prohibited on YouTube,” the spokeswoman said. “We have also been working over the last several months to refine our policies on who has access to monetization features, and while this work is ongoing, we are dedicated to continuing to improve in the fight against hate online.”

Like other popular social-media platforms, YouTube has struggled to draw the line between cracking down on hate speech and allowing freedom of expression. The company relies on a sprawling ecosystem of “creators” to supply a steady flow of content to the world’s most popular video site, where they get access to special benefits and resources on the platform.

Super Chat was launched last year to further encourage those creators to produce more content and attract more viewers. Paid comments receive special treatment: The video host often reads the comment out loud on air, and it gets pinned to the top of the fast-moving chat thread. The more someone pays, the longer the comment stays featured at the top of the chat box.

While the Super Chat function is available to YouTube’s vast cast of video celebrities, and was made primarily to appeal to gamers, it hasn’t gained the same traction or scale among those groups as it has with the far-right crowd, according to an analysis by Storyful, a social-media intelligence firm that is owned by News Corp, the Journal’s parent company.

Racist comments are not uncommon. Just as troubling, according to researchers, are the comments that stay within YouTube’s guidelines to avoid getting taken down through the use of coded language in place of hot-button topics and slurs. For instance, some commenters use the term “basketball Americans” rather than a slur against African-Americans and “population replacement” when referring to conspiracies about white genocide. Some users spell certain words with numbers to avoid detection by YouTube software.

Many payments, for example, are made in the amount of $14.88—the number 1488 is often used as shorthand among white supremacists to signify their ideology, and related merchandise is often sold for $14.88.

“What they’re doing is transmitting these ideas in other ways,” said one researcher. The researcher has been targeted in the past by white supremacists and other members of the far-right fringes.

After a BuzzFeed article in May detailed the popularity of Super Chats among white nationalists and other far-right personalities, YouTube said it had started using machine-learning technology that can detect hateful comments and put them on hold for further review. The company doesn’t disclose how much it makes from Super Chats overall.

When YouTube temporarily suspends a channel for a violation, that creator often appears as a guest on a like-minded person’s channel until the ban is lifted. The problem for YouTube, said this researcher, is that “YouTube is going to be continuously trying to apply a technological fix to what is a social problem.”

Mr. Ralph didn’t respond to a request for comment. On Thursday evening, after the Journal approached YouTube with questions for this article, Mr. Ralph opened a new live stream by reading what he said was a Super Chat submitted earlier in the day, in which the viewer wrote “Abort Hebrew babies.” The stream continued for more than 20 minutes before it was shut down for violating YouTube’s policy on hate speech, according to a notice posted on his Twitter account. Mr. Ralph then shifted to another channel and continued for several minutes before that also was shut down.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital this week arranged to return donations raised in September during a live stream by Mr. Ralph dubbed a “Super Chat for Good,” even as the comments section became populated by anti-Semitic comments and the hosts talked about a Holocaust meme. The money totaled about $26,000. Many on Twitter complained Friday about having their donations returned to them. They also attacked the Journal and members of its staff, blaming the news organization for the return of the money.

When contacted earlier in the week, St. Jude said it was aware of the chats and was making arrangements to reverse any donations. On Friday, a spokesperson said: “We had no intention of receiving or accepting any of the funds associated with the live stream.”

Following the Journal’s questions, YouTube also took down a live stream by far-right personality Jean-François Gariépy that was broadcast after the Pittsburgh shooting and included a number of anti-Semitic and racist comments in the paid Super Chats.

Mr. Gariépy said his channel doesn’t allow hate speech and that he tries to delete Super Chats that “are either hateful or that constitute calls for violence.” He said his channel has banned thousands of viewers from his channel for repeatedly violating that policy.

Mr. Gariépy, who calls himself a white nationalist, said he doesn’t see a problem with people referencing 14/88 or Hitler, saying such comments “are aimed at encouraging people to gain a better historical understanding of Germany during the first half of the century.” He added that it would be easy for YouTube to prohibit donations made in that amount “if they differ from my interpretation.”

Mr. Gariépy’s live stream in the wake of Pittsburgh generated $244 in revenue, according to the Storyful analysis.

Write to Yoree Koh at

yo*******@ws*.com

Corrections & Amplifications

YouTube said Ethan Ralph deleted a video he posted about a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that YouTube deleted the video. (Nov. 2, 2018)

You’ll note the reliance on the site Storyful by the activist who wrote the story. Storyful is a company owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, that bills itself as a social media intelligence firm. That means it researches content found on-line. In reality, it is just a hive of Progressive activists. For example, anti-speech activist Michael Edison Haden is one of their “researchers” and probably the guy who fed this story to the airhead activist at the Wall Street Journal. Mike Enoch explained this on the Jean-François Gariépy show.

The point of all this is that the media is not just biased or even just fake. The media, including allegedly right-wing sites like the virulently anti-Trump Wall Street Journal, are activists now. There’s no question that cucky outfits like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News fear the growth of alternative media on economic grounds. When a guy like Ethan Ralph, who is not even very far to the right, is able to get audiences bigger than most of the cable chat shows, just by showing up, the conservative model has much to fear.

It’s more than just economics though. It is ideology. The people running the Wall Street Journal, hiring anti-white activists like Yoree Koh, are operating from the same animus as the New York Times. The approved media does not just want to shut down your ability to speak and hear alternatives. They want to stop you from eating. When Trump says the media is the enemy of the people, this is exactly what he means. That’s why the Wall Street Journal hired Yoree Koh to try and deprive dissidents of a way to make a living.

Some may have noticed some performance issues with the site recently, as well as some down time and connectivity issues. There were at least two de-platforming efforts, but most the trouble here has been technology related. Part of the problem is the traffic, which keeps ticking up despite my best efforts. The server this site lives on is just not up to the task so it results in downtime. There’s also the problems that come with using WordPress, which is fine for what it is, but it is not without its problems in terms of reliability.

After many hassles with broken plugins and comments systems not working, I’m now committed to looking at alternatives. I have the move to a bigger, better server ready to go, but I want to do it when I do the site redesign. That way, I can work out issues with the new software before going live with it. Conversions are always full of surprises, so it is best to measure twice, covert once. The domain is not going to change, so the only change for the user will be look and feel, and I hope better performance.

With that in mind, now is the best time to solicit suggestions for features of changes in the new system. Number one on my list is a better comment system. One option I’m considering is a system with an integrated message board. This will mean commenting is for registered users only, but you can use your social media account to register. This means that the character you play on Twitter of Facebook can become your character on this site. It also means more commenting features as well as granular privileges.

Another thing I want to do is make it easier to get around corporate firewalls. What I’m learning is that many companies just block anything running WordPress. I found this out the other day, when I sent a link to a business to someone. I did not notice that the business was using WordPress for their website. My client tried to o`pen the link but his firewall blocked it. Using something like Joomla or Drupal would get around that, but there are other less complex options that may be better and require less work on my part.

Another item on my list is a better way to organize posts. I write a lot so not every post is going to be a winner, but some are clearly better than others. Organizing posts by popularity seems like a good idea. New readers can look at the greatest hits selection and see if they should stay or paddle back over to normieville. The ability sort and search by subject matter could be useful too. I have over 2300 posts now. I’ve written something about almost everything. Organizing by subject matter strikes me as useful.

With that said, the floor is now open. if anyone has suggestions, demands, desires, whatever that they would like to see in the next version, post them up. Obviously, I’m working with a limited amount of resources, so I will not be building a site to rival Facebook, but there is a lot that can be done for very little. Developing a community around the content posted here is certainly possible. Adding the ability to start a premium service, if I ever decide to go full on Dinesh D’Souza is also a possibility.

Last year I started showing up at dissident events and I started to interact with some of the important figures on-line. The main reason was to get to know some of these people a little better. You get a better sense of people when you see them in person and interact with them. Frankly, I figured if I was getting quoted and linked to by people in this thing, I should meet them and get to know them. It turned out that many of these people wanted to meet me.

Now, I am no rock star, so it is not as if people are chasing me down the street looking for a selfie or autograph. Even so, it is flattering to have someone walk up to you and thank you for your efforts. I was approached at a bagel shop recently by someone who recognized my voice and decided to see if I was the man behind the voice. I am not particularly good at handling these encounters. I usually resort to false modesty, as I do not have a lot of experience with it. I also have no great desire to be famous.

Now, there are famous people who are incredibly good at being famous. They enjoy it and they know how to handle it. I once saw a famous guy do selfies for fans, while carrying on a conversation with a friend. My guess is that the truly famous, the people most everyone recognizes, look at celebrity in the same way that most of us look at filling out a time sheet or an expense report. It is just a part of the job. Those fans asking for selfies are just part of the package.

On the other hand, minor celebrities are obsessed with getting noticed. A guy like Milo is a good example. His glib homosexual routine was a good compliment to his writing at Breitbart, but then he got a little famous. The desire to see himself on TV and internet had him doing increasingly nutty things to get attention. Whether you are a fan of Milo or not, he has real talent, but it has come to a sad end for him. His desire for fame exceeded his ability to maintain it.

Milo’s story arc is a familiar one, but the proliferation of social media has brought a new version of this, the e-celeb. Mike Cernovich is probably the best example. He has no real talent for anything, as far as anyone knows, but he is good at getting attention on social media. One of the things you cannot help but notice is how much he obsesses over his follower count and impressions on Twitter. Followers and friends are the coin of the realm, so all of the internet celebrities focus on growing those numbers.

This lust for recognition is certainly at the root of the endless in-fighting we see among the alt-right personalities. An alt-right person gets some traffic to their YouTube channel and before long they are picking fights with everyone, they used to call allies. Because the drama results in more traffic, it becomes a feedback loop. The uptick in traffic releases endorphins in the brain of the e-celeb. It is like crystal meth for these guys as each hit increases their craving for the next hit.

Another side of this is the leaders are picked from the pool of people desperate for attention. Some glib or photogenic person pops up on social media and they attract a crowd. Before long, the other e-celebs are inviting him onto their platforms to get some secondhand traffic. The result is the influential people are being selected for their vanity and lust for celebrity, rather than intelligence or mental stability. That is why more than a few weirdos have turned up as alt-right celebrities.

It is possible that this benefits dissident politics eventually. The dominant media has a filtering mechanism to make sure no one with unclean thoughts ever gets access to their platforms. The result is a dreary sameness. The breathtaking lack of self-awareness scares off more people than it convinces. The people who survive the e-celeb gauntlet and establish themselves as trusted voices could turn out to be much shrewder and savvier as a result of it.

A guy like Nick Fuentes is a good example. He has a creepy maturity to him that has gained him a lot of attention. He is like Bill Mitchell in a child’s body. He is an alt-right version of the movie Big. While he does a fine job on his YouTube shows, he often goes onto social media and posts stupid and childish things. People who talk about their IQ on social media tend to be mentally unstable. On the other hand, Fuentes is a kid so maybe he figures it out and gets better.

That said, it could be that new media and social media have evolved in a way that allows the people in charge to keep challengers out on the fringe. Instead of smart subversives quietly doing what it takes to weasel into the orthodoxy, they are having purse fights with e-celebs and disqualifying themselves in the process. Since your internet activity is now part of your permanent record, all those youthful mistakes will later be used against you as an adult.

In other words, YouTube is a favela for political and cultural dissidents. The people dominating the space will be narcissistic attention whores, willing to do and say anything to get views. The result is they drive out anyone with ability, so outsider politics remains a land of unwanted toys. The narcotic of minor celebrity is not a byproduct of the communications revolution, but a product of design. Either way, the narcotic of minor celebrity is the new opiate of the masses.