One of the important side effects of the communications revolution is the proliferation of grifters, con men and hustlers. Things that were impossible thirty years ago, like e-mail scams, remain a constant problem. The internet has made it easy for even the crudest hustlers to reach a broad audience. As a result, the number of hustlers has increased and the types of hustles have also increased. The twitter troll, for example, is an entirely new type of hustle, made possible by the internet.
One reason for this is that the internet has turned into a big stage where anyone can try out their act on the public. In the old days, a carny bimbo would have been confined to a traveling carnival, Hollywood, New York or community theater. Maybe she would have ended up in pornography. It was not an easy way to make a living. Today, she can have a twitter account where she flashes photo-shopped pics of herself. Thirsty losers send her money through PayPal or super chats on her YouTube channel.
The low barrier to entry means every female with a desire for the carny life can get on stage from the privacy of her studio apartment. It’s not just females working the new rackets. In a prior age, Mike Cernovich would have been traveling from town to town selling his monkey mind juice to gullible townies at state fairs. Alex Jones would have been mailing people his mimeographed newsletter, where he explained how space aliens control the Federal Reserve Bank.
Most likely, it is the communications revolution that has caused the news media to commit suicide. In the old days, when the audience was fixed, the focus was on maintaining the facade of objectivity. No one was under any illusions about growing the audience, so they focused on keeping the audience. The internet promised a global market and unlimited market share. A relentless drive for eyeballs gave rise to the clickbait journalists turning the media into fake news.
The thing is though, the basics of the confidence game have not changed all that much with the new technology. The confidence man gets his name because he is adept at winning the confidence of the mark. The mark then lowers his defenses and foolishly trusts the con man, rather than his own natural skepticism. The mark is manipulated into thinking the con man is a friend or at least someone who can be trusted. The con man then uses that trust to exploit the mark.
The way in which the con men does this is by flattery. The mark trusts the con man, because the con man finds small ways to confirm the beliefs of the mark. The adept grifter will be a good listener and pick up the little things that the mark thinks are important, like religious beliefs or opinions about personal matters. Seemingly out of the blue, the con man will express those same opinions, which flatters the mark. After all, everyone likes being told that their private opinions are smart.
That’s something you see with the internet grifters. They often have worn a lot of masks as they seek out on-line audiences. Mike Cernovich is the obvious example. He was a sexual deviant, then he was into the man-o-sphere stuff. He was alt-right and then it was alt-light and Trump . After Trump won, he morphed into new media, claiming to have White House connections. Now he is a guy hustling supplements. He works a lot of hustles, because he is always looking for a new crowd to flatter.
Another aspect of the con that remains constant is how the con man uses his alleged status as a victim to work the mark. Con men will use their mark’s natural empathy to win their confidence. Today that often means claiming the big bad tech companies are censoring them. Alternatively, they will claim evil trolls are haunting their internet activity, causing them harm. The term troll has been changed from meaning someone seeking attention to something almost supernatural.
This is a favorite of the Left. They know their audience wants to believe they are in an end of days struggle with dark forces. Like the old circuit preachers, who would pretend to be wrestling with Old Scratch, the left-wing grifter claims to be in a holy war with right-wing trolls. The game is to portray themselves as a victim, as people naturally sympathize with victims. This scam allows the left-wing grifter to shift the focus from her con to the alleged evil doer.
That’s something else you see with the new con men of the internet. Like the old school con men, they really do see themselves as victims. That’s why they get so man angry when they are caught or even accused. Think back to Bill Clinton in his deposition with Ken Starr. When he was pinned down, he got mad, not because he was caught, but because he truly felt he was being persecuted. What allows the grifter to operate is the persecution complex. They think they are the righteous.
In the before times, society made an effort to police the con men. City police departments had “bunco squads” that worked confidence swindles. The point was to both tamp down these rackets, but also maintain public confidence. Society is based in social trust and the confidence man erodes social trust. We no longer have bunco squads and the grifters are running wild on new media. One result of that is the sharp decline in social trust. Carnies and con men rule the day.
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Who are the dishonest men among the right? Anyone who avoids talking about mass immigration transforming the West for the worse, along with race realism. An honest man of the right can also talk about other topics, but mass immigration should be the foundation of it all.
Conservative Inc. grifters like Shapiro aren’t just using flattery, they’re using fear. The mark has to want to believe the con. The old lady has to believe that the younger, handsome man finds her attractive. She believes this not only because he is flattering her but because she fears getting older and losing her beauty. CivNat whites are flattered by Shapiro et. al, who tell them how smart they are, but they also fear losing their country. Like the young con man telling the older lady she is still beautiful, Shapiro tell CivNat whites that the brown horde will become… Read more »
This is one of the best short descriptions I have ever heard of the problem with CivNats. Over at PJ Media (and Brietbart) they’re busy talking about how do you Educate the libs and the horde, because “we’re the smart ones”…
Yes, that is basically correct. However, if you obtain an adequate age and have an adequate memory and are reasonably thoughtful, you begin to remember that you’ve “heard it all before”—and most importantly what was predicted to occur, did not. A reasonable person then is faced with looking for different explanations of observable reality or to deny that reality and live in fantasy. In my discussions with younger folk—just about everyone I meet these days—half my discussion is lecturing them on recent “history”. Pointing out that what they say wrt policy and procedure has been tried in one form or… Read more »
Excellent point. It’s like a part ll to the habit of normie-cons practising willful ignorance in regards to immigration, race-realism, voting patterns, etc.
Part l-ignore reallity as well as possible; part ll-only listen to people who tell you everything is going to be great and that it’s actually good that they ignore the scary stuff ‘cuz it’s bad anyway…
I know people exactly like this and it really seems to be how they keep themselves in their bubble…
I had this dream the other night that I was with Ben Shapiro at some left-wing fancy party and I was explaining to him that everybody in the party was just a grifter and then all the sudden I realized, hey I’m with Ben Shapiro, the top grifter and right then the entire room started to turn on me and I woke up. Super weird. Ben Shapiro was really short in my dream. I was a good foot taller than him
That’s how you know it’s a dream, in real life you’re a good two feet taller than Ben Shapiro
I’m sure I speak for everyone when I write that I hope you don’t have any more night terrors such as that one.
Gotta admit, Benny Boi causing a guy to have night terrors is funny unto itself.
Stop this shameless libel, you buggardly trolls, or I shall complain to the management!!! 🙂
That’s one other thing about the con from the left: if you in any way oppose the agenda or narrative, you are instantly guilty of one of the so-called “Bads”. You think Obutthole is an empty suit? Racist! Didn’t vote for Hillary? Chauvinist! Don’t agree with sexual degeneracy? Homophobe!!!
Great. Now we can add trolling to the growing list of ‘bads’.
I had a vivid dream last night in which I answer the front door and Kim Jong Un is there in a wheelchair accompanied by Martin Sheen. They were very polite and came in and sat on my sofa. After that Johnny Cash came by and fried some bacon.
Did Mickey Rooney happen to stroll through?
This fits with a piece I’m grinding on this week for website rollout re: how “pathological altruism” is related to scale (site coming soon, have the infrastructure in place, grinding content). Short version – social input overload causes a PTSD-like response, making us disregard or even reverse our normal threat response to Outsiders. After enough over-exposure, we start treating our family & friends like strangers and taking candy and supplements from actual Strangers like Cenobite-ovitch. The unique demands of modern living force our psycho-social brains which evolved for smallish clan-tribal groups of 150 or so to process exponentially more strangers… Read more »
Your Dunbar number approach is interesting.
I find “pathological compassion” a more accurate term because the people demonstrating their “altruism,” for example, importing refugees or making blacks unprosecutable, often do not bear the burden of these “altruistic” acts.
My short explanation is that since at least WW2, our uniquely trusting white nature has been weaponized by the elite to anathematize anyone who questions xenophilia. Our elites feel more concealed in a world like the Star Wars bar scene and they force this on us.
The depressing part of this, whether we call it altruism or compassion, when kept in-house – the ability to sacrifice or sublimate selfish needs for others outside of their immediate kinship circle…is what made our civilization so extraordinary. We built an unmatched commons that became the gravitational center of our societies.
The people most naturally predisposed this way are the very ones who may not make it to the other side of our present troubles. The scum who did this to many of the gentlest of our race need to pay a very severe price for this war crime.
Great take on tracing the roots of pathological altruism and how in an over crowded world it is triggered and expressed. Would appreciate your occasional writings on speculating how our 10,000 BC hard wiring is going haywire in the post-modern over populated world. “Permission to Hate again would be the most kind and loving gift we could give each other this holiday season.” Sure is tempting. I substitute the word Anger. Deep Hate can consume my brain with …..rage…then that’s all I see. Would prefer from experience to remain in the state of Deep Awareness of the poz with a… Read more »
You don’t need to hate, you just need to love. Love yourself and your’s more than others and theirs. That and a logical mind will guide you in your interactions with others not of kith and kin.
RFF, bless you for recognizing the overpopulation factor. In my view, overpopulation (which is present today in varying degrees everywhere, not just Africa) is upstream from pathological altruism. Too many people in our immediate environment forces us to shut down direct compassion because we would need so much of it we couldn’t function. So we settle for symbolic altruism — the Other race/ethnicity/migrant/victim because they’re separate enough that we can let in just a small tug on our emotions.
RFF:
How can you live in the great state of Utah and not be filled with altruism no matter what it costs you and yours?
Your governor and senators are literally begging for more vibrancy from what I hear.
You just need to lie back and think of England….er Utah…..or something. Get with the program, young lady!!!!!
Range – I use “hate” tongue-in-cheek, of course. In a serious vein, I’d call it “ambivalence,” well short of outright anger. We just need to recognize that Others aren’t like Us, that most interactions with the Weird to Us are going to turn out poorly, and that both cultures need to limit their contacts to their respective fringes. As for those of us natural H8ers, we’re both more emotional and more iconoclastic than normies. Live-and-let-lives don’t get a fire in their belly about Others. Nor do libertarian spergs, for all their iconoclasm. It takes a balanced combination of giving a… Read more »
Exile:
I look forward to your website.
I just hope it does not mean you will not being imparting your always interesting insights on this site.
Best of luck.
So what’s the explanation for close knit ghetto Communities that kick the everloving shit out of a paddy like me for so much as trespassing on their side of the street? Do you think a Degos Dunbar number is 200? That’s like the size of a Latinos immediate family. Pathological altruism is what you get from virtue signaling free-range females with zero in group preferences seeking approval and getting that dopamine rush from helping child-like foreigners get into their countries so they can rape other feline fetish females. The beta orbiters helping them are the real traitors, they sell us… Read more »
Jer: The ghetto-clan-gang is the Dunbar Number expressing itself despite the counter-signalling, exactly what I’m saying about past cities where that kind of territorial pissing was the norm. At Scandza Oslo, Dr. Nyborg talked about the greater clannishness of “Meds” like Spaniards, Greeks, So. Frenchmen and Italians, as well as Slavs, KMac and Ed Dutton acknowledged this as well. This is likely an evolutionary-cultural response to historic Mediterranean urbanization, and it’s something Euros would do well to take into account re: immigration and how and where to roll it back. North Euros like Scandis, Finns and Icelanders are particularly vulnerable… Read more »
Hell, you forgot about the “old” communications of the standard telephone. Our phones have been rendered near useless as Indian scammers call billions of phones every hour with spoofed caller ID. The scams they run are for everything from people looking for work to pretending to be the IRS or FBI. They even target things like dog walking apps. A nurse walking dogs to earn extra money was recently the victim of one of these scams stealing every nickel in her bank account. Let’s not forget identity theft. Some bank gives some person money in your name and then YOU… Read more »
Same with illegals working with stolen SSNs. The government could have put an end to it yesterday. They choose not to.
Don’t even answer the home landline anymore–it is nothing but scams. Anyone that needs to reach me has my mobile.
Mobile is just as bad these days. It’s supposed to be illegal, but then again, so is impersonating the FBI and the IRS.
I no longer answer my mobile for that reason. Text me or e-mail me. I’ll call you if we need to chat.
Yup. My phone is a device for me to call people on.
Depends on my mood. If I’m particularly surly, I’ll answer the phone to get my rage on – I’ll use ethnic slurs and tell them they’re ugly. If I’m fairly mellow, I’ll just answer the phone and put it down while they talk into space. Waste their time. I tried blowing a whistle into the phone but it just wasn’t loud enough over the wire but drove my son crazy at our end. I rarely get scammer calls on my cell because I never answer it – it’s for texts or for me to call people I know.
I still answer my phone for the scammers. I figure the robo-calls are virtually costless to them, but every minute one of their live reps spends on the phone with someone costs them money. So, if I’ve got a little time to kill, I’ll string them along for a while. It’s great being retired.
Once upon a time, in a high functioning real-life community, the grifter would get his ass kicked (literally) the minute he cruised into town and tried out his con. That was (and is) the healthy and natural response to any predatory invasion. And it used to be laudatory to implement that remedy openly in the public square and was attended by many strong young men of honor in the community, but alas that is no longer PC. Grifting is on the rise because it is rewarded rather than punished. Commonsense 101.
Bring back the stocks!
Bring back the Community Brother 😉
I grew up with Uncle Walt intoning “And that’s the way it is” at the end of his 22 minute newscasts. In my family the tiny TV we had in the dining room was ONLY used for Uncle Walt and dinner time was was timed precisely to start when Uncle began his nightly religious sermon on objective Reality. To this day my mother shakes her head and longs for the past when people only had 3 objective news shows in which to have reality stamped into their brain. Interestingly enough just yesterday I was in a van of goodwhites when… Read more »
A van full of sheep-brained Goodwhites going over the precipice a la Thelma & Louise is a good metaphor for the FUSA..
My thought also on Z-man being the ultimate grifter of the folk here—except what/who/how is he grifting? The folk here are—in the main—quite up to snuff on the politics and basis of the DR. Some even partake of the same meetings and events Z-man keeps us informed upon. Hard to imagine Z-man could grift without a hew and cry in our commentary. No, we’re here because Z-man is the real thing and we’ll stay here until something better replaces him. 😉
Compsci:
It was just a thought about “what if the guy discussing con men is the ultimate conman.” I mean he charges $5 a month for subscription so he must have a master plan of getting rich.
I would not be be here if I thought that was true. Just a joke and I hope to meet Z IRL sometime.
Yes, I am the Victor Lustig of the dissident right.
I understand you have the Eiffel Tower for sale.
In fact, I have two of them!
The Vegas Eiffel Tower, too!?
In a civilization ruled by parasites, half-wits, malicious outsiders, suck-ups, flim-flam artists, credentialed morons and want-to-be martyrs…carnies and con men are doing us a favor. Anything that rots away public trust in the public square is driving us closer to that final straw. I understand the desire for some ray of hope, some stability, but what would that yield? A slow-down not a reverse. The sooner we can hit a critical pivot point the better. Putting that off by trying to slow the rot will simply put our children and grandchildren in a weaker and even more difficult position than… Read more »
YY – I’m with you. We’re approaching turning points in terms of social scale, ideology and our physical infrastructure. Big changes are inevitable, necessary and overdue, and preparing Our Guys for them is Job One. Instead of seeing our “White Flight” to the hinterlands as a retreat, I think we will eventually serve as examples of how to do modernity the right way. The beauty of tech (divorced from its dark side) is that it allows us to live in lower-density, more homogenous communities, sharing critical and useful information, goods and services without over-stepping on each other’s cultural toes.
Here, here. Well said.
The biggest conman is Google. Just google it, you’ll see.
maybe we’ll find out who’s a con man and who’s not, who’s a fed and who’s not if the shooting starts. But the the IRA was thoroughly infiltrated and managed its political aims. Had breakfast with my son this morning, it was nice to have him back, in the middle of our discussion it occurred to me that sanctuary city politicians may be compromised by cartels, makes sense that they use their political cause to keep Ms13 migrants out of the hands of ICE. When the Mobs ran things back in the long long ago they had the politicians in… Read more »
You may not be far off the mark, Sparky. Meets the Occam test.
We must also include the carny show in DC. Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Nadler could be dressed in carnival clothes and sent off across America with touring trailers in tow. Even Trump while he is a disrupter and the man who pulled back the curtain he is also all about himself and his own greatest show. Trump is kind of a carnival barker character with his gold plated casinos. I agree that the more regular Americans see what we have become the better it is and the closer we are to real change. By the way Z’s weirdo column from a… Read more »
I suspect, the “plan” is basically to reduce White strength until it can no longer be a determining factor, but not to destroy it, leaving a balance of competing minority interests which can then be set against each other and manipulated rather more easily by such (((folk))).
“Our thing” is filled with unscrupulous self-promoters monetizing anguish and victimhood. Woe-is-Me-Give-Generously schemes have been common on our side since Kekistani days. Remember Based Stickman? Laura Loomer? Gavin McInnes? With so many of us yearning for a providential avenger who will give Leftists the business, the conditions are ripe for grifters to swoop in and bridge the cognitive dissonance between outrage and powerlessness with the out of the vicarious struggle, wherein people give money to oily mountebanks to allay the guilt of their own inaction. It is remarkable the truly astonishing ideological mutations some of these clout chasers can undergo… Read more »
“The mark then lowers his defenses and foolishly trusts the con man, rather than his own natural skepticism.” — Z-Man I agree of course, but have trouble understanding people who fall for these things. My bank card tried to contact me over a charge that looked suspicious. I refused to even talk to them. I turned around and dialed the number imprinted on my card to report fraud . I told them that I was contacted and they handled the situation. They told me that they really had tried to call me and we handled the suspicious charge. Someone in… Read more »
The elderly are trusting because they grew up in an entirely different world where people were neighborly and helped each other out. I remember in the EIGHTIES the local cops going around and warning folks that Gypsies were travelling through, running roofing and paving scams targeting the elderly. Can you imagine that happening today? Hate Crime City!
Totally right, Return. I deal with the elderly and older people, and you also have to consider that those older than 55-60 are especially vulnerable to cyber crime because the Digital Age came into being during their middle age.
I don’t necessarily believe it’s age. Our dad worked on Univac and was great with computers. Yet some of my siblings are virtual Luddites. I’m the human Help Desk and IT Crowd rolled into one. Go figure.
Certainly how one is raised has a lot to do with it. But I also believe one’s chronological age plays an important part, perhaps the most. Folk just begin to mentally deteriorate and become more susceptible to such scams. Strangers, but also commonly relatives, take all sorts of advantages of aged parents and such. Scares me as I get older.
It’s because as we age we revert back to a more childlike state and become more trusting which is why you need a good Community to get older in or the very least have your kids close..
In one of the first Danish The Olsen Gang-movies from the early seventies, the protagonist is in love with his parole officer. In one shot, he enters the police station to meet her, and having used a real police station, you get a quick look at the sign outside. One of the floors houses “Justice Department, Office for Supervision of Gypsies.”
I predict lots of popcorn in the comments. Also, the part about evil trolls haunting their internet activity is interesting as regards to your timing. I mean, isn’t Vox Day on an anti-troll rampage at the moment?
You can accuse Day of a lot of things, but I would not call him a con man. He’s not fleecing anyone with his ventures, as far as I can see. He sells books mostly.
He rides that line awfully close, Z. I personally think he plagiarized most of his books on social justice warriors. About all he did was collect the content of others and try to pass it off as his own.
Not having read any of his books, I can’t say. I read Cerno’s “book” and it was just a hodgepodge of crap he skimmed from motivational speakers and self-help gurus. He just made it dumber and more grubbier. It is the dumbest book I’ve ever read and I have a copy Jim Wright’s Reflections of a Public Man.
CUCKSERVATIVE actually is an excellent book and recommended, Z. I became dubious of Vox Day due to his videos I watched, and to be fair it may just be he is socially awkward and not a good fit for that medium. As I wrote above, that will be sorted along with questions about others who appear to have globbed onto the Dissident Right for less than sincere reasons.
I’ve popped for a few of VD’s books. The political stuff he writes doesn’t seem pirated to me, and he seems to have his own voice and style. As a fiction writer he’s decent, not a fave, but at least reliably non-pozzed.
The dissident scene shares common points of reference so it’s not surprising that everything isn’t a “novelty take.” One of the hardest blocks to overcome in writing, particularly for those of us who came up as libertarian spergs, is trying too hard for originality rather than simply having a well-founded and well-presented grasp of the obvious.
I’m afraid I have to disagree. As a card carrying Yesterday Man, I was on the front line of the social justice war when it started and one of the first to fall in it. One day I was your average paleocon grazing in idyllic pastures, consuming the feed generously provided by Lefty and trying to make sense of the increasingly off-taste. The next, I had a shrieking militant lesbian activist for a daughter, a pozzed whore of a mother in law and father in law enabling and encouraging her, and barn was on fire and all there was to… Read more »
>I think I read that his father was in jail for fraud too
tax evasion., i would rather someone like him keep his money than have the govt spent it on yet another giant floating hotel with planes on top of it
Beale steals other people’s material and claims it as his own. Cuckservative and SJW are just two examples. He tried to rip off the label alt-right too.
The Zoomers will destroy that grifter for good.
…he projects…
Yes.
His two go-to adhominems are “low-IQ” and “gamma” – amazing that he can’t see how much that reveals about his self-image. And dig his dungeon master chair – he seriously bills himself as The Dark Lord! I bet he has a sword he waves around when he’s alone.
As for his comic book business, self-publishing is a classic money laundering scheme.
I think his ideas are more worthy of criticism than his business practices. His social sexual hierarchy system has a lot of contradictions and flaws. He says that gammas are low status but that Jordan Peterson and John Scalzi are gammas. Hmmm..if hundreds of thousands of dollars of book sales, hundreds of thousands of fans, and million-dollar publishing deals is “low status” I guess we have differing definitions of status.
As one astute person commented during one of his live streams his chair is “gay and cringe”. And there is a photo out there of him waving a flaming sword.
There’s actually a picture of him with a flaming sword floating around. Just google “vox day flaming sword” and it’ll show up.
If Vox is not shady, then it would be a first that a man can be proven reliably untrustworthy on the little things while being sincere on the big picture. The common man proffers his trust in increments. Any inconsistency uncovered at the verifiable stage serves as a warning to back away from the leap-of-faith stuff. The proudly secretive Vox is brimming with red flags in this regard. 1. He claimed back in the spring of 2017 that his “Castalia House” publishing company was legit and that his books could be ordered from any major European bookstore. I checked, it… Read more »
Point no.2 … he always is aware of every little mention, and always responds (most often like a petulant crybaby) and the chair. The chair says italldoesnt it.
Agreed on the criticism of VD. He does not come across as original to me. I was fooled initially by his confidence in his writing. And since I didn’t know much about the topics he was writing about, I took him at face value. But if you read Day long enough, you see the mask slip plenty of times. You also see him being wrong plenty of times and you’ll see him double down on being wrong. The man is seriously off socially. Him being awkward on video isn’t an anomaly.
he is not. afik he has always delivered on his comics and books and other stuff dutifully People so quick to throw out these accusations
Vox Day is, well, an interesting guy, but he doesn’t come across as a grifter. Cult leader, maybe; con man, no.
I will say this for Day, he explicitly argues that we fight back and that we form our own communities, our own systems. To me, that is the great dividing line, not just between grifter and honest advocate but between those looking to build a future and those just complaining.
He’s a tough one to pin down. Does a lot of good work, one of the smartest commentators IMO, but the dark lord thing is hard to swallow. Way too nerdy— and I’m a bit of a nerd!
The books are cool. Wish I had the money to buy the Collier Junior Classics.
You can always download them. They are out of copyright.
True but I have a thing for leather books. Not much as satisfying as reading a finely made volume.
Yeah but so does Cerno, Citizen. Both of them will pick a fight at the drop of a hat and go in swinging… the problem is that they often lose. If you’re going to pick a fight in this realm, you need to follow through and win it. If you want to know where the next Richard Spencer is going to come from, odds are on either on of those two idiots. They already got MILO. They don’t play well to the cameras or the critical thinker. Fuentes laughed at him when Vox “challenged” him. Jordan Peterson wouldn’t even do… Read more »
That is a good observation. Many of these people are just free riding on dissident politics in order to get famous, sell product, etc.
Look, I’m probably not the guy to defend Vox Day. I don’t know that much about him or read him much. But Day seems intent on building alternate entertainment venues, organizations that could go one without him. That’s the way to fight back and that’s what he’s doing. Cerno is a freak. Spencer didn’t want to do the little things to build a real European American political group. Cerno and Spencer love to play the dancing monkey for the Left. Day doesn’t even do interviews. As best as I can tell, Day (a weird guy for sure) is trying to… Read more »
I don’t know. Day’s blog is hosted on Blogger, which is owned by Google. His books are made and sold by Amazon. His video thing is a service called UScreen. His wikipedia alternative is just wiki with his bio edited to his tastes. No one keeps it up to date.
In reality, Vox just runs a cottage business. Nothing wrong with it, but that is a different thing that what a VDare is doing or what I’m doing.
Z, good points. Day hasn’t built alternate platforms. He just sells brand stuff on existing platforms. Again, my defending Day is odd since I’m not much of a fan of the guy personally. Indeed, Day (and Spencer) strike me as psychologically needy. Spencer jumps at any chance to be in the limelight. Day seems to avoid the media, but he stirs up unnecessary drama like a 13-year-old girl. Day may not need the approval of the media, but he needs something. Regardless, the next phase for DR needs serious men for building communities and organizations. Day came up through the… Read more »
I would take VD over Spencer any day of the week. Spencer is a clown at best.
Richard Spencer might as well be an enemy. He always comes down on the wrong side of things. He got his donors doxxed and then told his donors he might give the doxxer a “second chance.” He goes on TV to play the bad guy whenever they ask.
He did more than any other single person to utterly destroy and discredit the alt-right. He is a moron of the highest order or a traitor. I have zero respect for the guy.
He’s also generally consistent with what he says, though how a devout Christian is good buddies with Milo is a head scratcher.
I peg him as an atheist who does the god-stuff because that’s what his core audience likes. Plenty of those out there, both online and in normiespace. I don’t believe Milo is a Christian either.
Day has a huge man crush on Owen Benjamin. So much so that Day has even adopted phrases and mannerisms of the Big Bear. Hard to say how deep the man crush goes as to whether Day is aping Owen intentionally or unwittingly, either of which would not reflect strongly on his character.
I’d give him a pass for running that cottage business but his self immolation in 2019 is something to behold.
Why do you think he does that, Citizen? I’ll tell ya: because he gets the punt in every group he takes part in, and he alienates everyone in that group. And – when he loses those fights as he invariably does… he acts like a petulant child – as he did when he sued Gab for refusing to censor people that laughed at him or disagreed with him. I hear he’s getting ready to sue some OyTubers for laughing at him now. Looks like he’ll lose that one too. If you think he’s on your side…you’ll learn otherwise, eventually. Or… Read more »
he acts like a petulant child –
Like, in fact, a gamma.
After a few months of reading Vox fairly often I tuned out. Trump as “the God Emperor”? Please. His put-downs of Jordan Peterson may have some validity — I’m not very familiar with Peterson’s oeuvre — but Vox’s hatred is obsessive. Finally, I can’t see someone whose main business is publishing comic books as a cultural hero.
I guess I’m glad he’s doing his stunt, better that than nothing, but dissidence should be made of sterner stuff.
His put-downs of Jordan Peterson may have some validity — but Vox’s hatred is obsessive
Yes on both counts. I think it’s toss-up whether Vox or Peterson will crack first; run naked down the street with a werewolf mask and mustard smeared on their penis, yelling about glowniggers or space aliens .
Of course, Peterson is from Canada, so nobody would probably notice.
I can’t see someone whose main business is publishing comic books as a cultural hero.
No. It’s poz.
Peterson is in the nut hut now, fleix. I think we can safely say that vox, the autistic kape shit expert, has safely one this round.
“Day doesn’t even do interviews.” Au contraire. That’s what finally turned me away for good. Like others here, I’d given him a fair amount of my attention, putting up with with the mild goofiness – the Dark Lord stuff, his need to start slap fights with anyone who offered even mild criticism of anything he’d said, etc. The breaking point was when, following months and months of his beating the “NEVER GIVE INTERVIEWS!” drum, he landed an interview with a somewhat mainstream outlet (I forget which one now, was a few years ago). Of course he could completely justify THIS… Read more »
“What I’ve noticed about the leading dissidents in this culture war is that they all promote the cause first, and themselves second. The grifters have that the other way around.”
Good point although it applies to all forms of grift.
I like VDs stuff. He was one of the first I listened to in the red pilling process. I read his blog and here, mostly. I also read Anglin quite a bit. I truly enjoy his writing. Vox provides a lot of value and he’s making a living. I can’t fault everyone for making a living. He’s consistent and is who he is. He’s a bright guy, he could be doing a lot of things-he is choosing to do this. I don’t 100% love or agree with anyone in the larger movement. I try to accept the good with the… Read more »
I used to make the same argument for Beale but he’s long since frittered away any moral authority and the good work done with Infogalactic and SJWs Always Lie.
This recent “Troll War” is eye opening. Instructing his followers to dox someone and brag about having a 13 year old kid in a wheel chair arrested has sealed the deal; going forward, he can only be Teddy Spaghetti and a Lolcow.
I gave up quite awhile back. There’s only so much “I’m not saying the moon landings are fake, but let me list the reasons they are fake” before you realize he’s off his rocker. He’s not a grifter, but he is a salesman. He exists to sell his stuff. Close to if not the greatest stuff ever made, mind you. 😉
Hey quick question to all: what’s up with Fuentes and the groypers? He’s taking a lot of friendly fire. AJ is the only person I can think of top of the head who hasn’t criticized, condemned, or outright trashed the guy lately. Seems to me he’s hitting a nerve, but to see the reaction on the right puzzles me.
Nobody’s perfect. You can pick them all apart. That’s the type who gets into the media game. Maybe a little more tolerance for flawed personalities.
maybe because he gives off a ben shapro like vibe and sorta looks like him too .same height, hair color, etc.
If he’s conservative inc. it’s a deep op given his previous statements on our greatest ally and historical events.
I guess what gets my spidey sense tingling is how hard Vox and Owen Benjamin have gone after him. Those guys were previously pretty hard on Jews, but now they’ve changed their tune. Something is up.
It’s probably just the usual distrust that an online movement creates. The dissident right has no lack of bizarre goofballs who can easily rub each other the wrong way. Personally I’m not impressed with the groypers because they’re just dorky young kids, but they don’t need to be attacked; whereas someone like Richard Spencer absolutely does need to be attacked.
Sure they’re dorks. But they’re just getting started. Methinks they’ll grow into the role. That’s why I don’t get the reaction. This is the future. Why try to canabalize it?
I worry less about who needs to be “attacked” on our side and more about Them. The fact that Groypers exist is the important thing more than their particulars. Nick’s a net-positive (so is Beale, FWIW), as gateways to better thinking if nothing else. Spencer’s been an example of how not to do many things but he’s self-discrediting in that respect. I’m not interested in punching Right when we can avoid it or otherwise kicking the guy. The urge to purge has been the Right’s curse for years as we waste our energy on each other. Greg Johnson witch-hunts the… Read more »
I agree on not punching right, but we have to self-police when necessary. There is a balance. Criticizing what someone is doing is not the same as attacking the man. In the case of someone who has flamed out, like a Richard Spencer, using them as a cautionary tale helps our side, so I’m okay with that, as long as it is not gratuitous. In the case of someone like Beale, he is really not in our thing. He puts himself in the same club as Cerno and Milo, so that should be respected. No one gets mad at Milo… Read more »
Damn. Does that mean I should reconsider that S-star subscription? Kidding.
You can trust me. I’m not like the others.
That’s brings up a question that I had. Is it better to use S-star or pay pal. Sure the money is the same, but is there any momentum force by increasing the number S-star subscribers? Basically, the more subscribers, the more someone says, “Hey, this guy is fairly popular, I should join as well” or is there no evidence that more subscribers begets more subscribers?
Better to use checks or money orders where some third party isn’t taking a cut. Hell, YT takes at least 30%! And they hold on to the money for months.
I’ve always hoped that Steve Sailer inadvertently became a Bitcoin millionaire. He’s been accepting Bitcoin for years. Maybe he kept some laying around and accidentally rode the wave.
I just do it via SS for the convenience. Joking aside, we need to start directly supporting those that can give voice to our thing. I get good value for the money here.
Agreed. We need to support the people who support us. I’ve dumped satellite tv, the wall st journal, etc., decided to support four or five people or groups that I’m reading on a regular basis. Such as Z, vdare, gab, Ed Dutton. The DR has to find a way to be put on a paying basis.
You and Howie. 😉
I believe you.
It must be true.
I read it on the Internet and we know that everything is true there, Oh, wait, there’s this
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-12-27/rachel-maddows-defense-oan-lawsuit-my-words-are-not-facts
Stay safe, Z Man. “Baltimore Succeeds In Breaking Murder Record Of The Century”
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2019/12/29/baltimore-succeeds-breaking-murder-record-century/
Curse those Democrats for making Baltimore so unsafe! A Republican who offered tax incentives to inner city entrepreneurs could fix this problem in no time!
The biggest grifter of them all remains Professor Harold Hill, with Lyle Lanley coming in a close second.
Interesting post at ncrenegade.com regarding January 20 in Virginia, dated Dec 29.
Sorry to be a buzz kill, but for the life of me I can’t understand why “our side” continues to try and kick the football.
Check out the comments as well.
You’re describing media. It’s what they do. Now everyone can be media thanks to the Internet.
You’ve all seen the City Journal Christopher Caldwell article about the French Coming Apart. Its from 2017 but apt for America. The French author Guilluy posits a metropolitan: London, NYC, Paris, SF and periphery (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Tulsa, Baltimore) model of elites and the former working/middle White class pushed into ever greater poverty and despair and minority discriminated status. These con men and grifters seem from the Metropolitan class. There is not a Corsican corporal or Tsarist police informer among them. No doubt that is why these grifters are tolerated and encouraged. They are weirdos, incapable of organizing and leading the… Read more »
Er, I thought that trolls (pre-internet) originally were supernatural beings? Or, at least they were creatures that lived under bridges to collect tolls. This was, admittedly, in the days before the toll booth was moved to either end of the bridge, and the hobos replaced the troll as living under the bridge.
Sorry to be a bit dated here. Just don’t follow a lot of the current so-called dissident ” representatives ” . Although did catch that Milo once. Kind of sad how desperate we become to find a representative in such an obvious grifter and freak show. Glenn Beck was my wake up call to the fact con men were going going to hitch their wagon to our cause and make as much money as possible. Have to admit Ben Shapiro was appealing until he decloaked as a “Never Trumper” And that’s the thing. The left will continue to send over… Read more »
These alt-lite orgs attract the low/average-IQ types with a lot of disposable income. it’s a good niche which is why you see so much of it. The left attracts the either the very wealthy (such as in regard to Scientology and other leftist cults) or the poor and crazy.
> Today that often means claiming the big bad tech companies are censoring them.
Are they not to some degree. Some people have lost their twitter and or YouTube accounts.. One day day everything is fine and then one by one things get shut down. Once one service gets closed, the odds increase for others. You lose your twitter. Then maybe youtube. Then paypal. Then patreon.
Surely a true con man knows perfectly well that he’s a fraud. If someone like Cernovich ackually believes his own lies he has successfully conned himself and becomes his own mark.
I think what makes the con man work is he truly believes in his own righteousness. The mark deserves what they get, as far as the con man is concerned. It’s why the con man always claims to be a victim.
Whoa! That sounds suspiciously like a certain group who wear funny little hats. 😉
Z, are you saying that the conman cries out in pain as he strikes you?
“A relentless drive for eyeballs gave rise to the clickbait journalists turning the media into fake news….” ———————————— Perhaps a nit to pick: Back in the 80’s – London’s Fleet Street was a sewer of mass media crapulence. The Guardian – which has about half the credibility and integrity of the NYT – was literally the best of the pozzed rag sheets that – as the Kippers like to say, “weren’t fit to wrap your fish and chips in…”. Up here in Canada, the CBC got so bad not even the lefties would watch it. They often dip into the… Read more »
I know there’s a lot of atheists in these comments, but scripture has a lot of useful stuff in it for this kind of community building, policing, and grifting. Where Christianity failed is that they bought into niceness over protecting the integrity of their belief system. Basically, benefit of the doubt reigns supreme, but testing everything said against already hard learned truth is one of the only ways to deal with unknown grifters. When confronted or held to account for lies, if they adjust to the truth, keep ’em until they don’t anymore. If they slam the truth because it… Read more »
You MUST read this. Amazement and disgust were my reactions. The consummate confidence man.
https://www.amazon.com/Carnie-Kid-Tells-All/dp/B002FTG7RO/ref=sr_1_95?keywords=Carnie&qid=1577654967&s=books&sr=1-95
While I didn’t know that about Cernovich, and frankly don’t really care to learn anything about him, it wasn’t a surprise. He always had a grifter vibe in the few appearances I caught. I think we are seeing with some of those who globbed onto the Dissident Right the same as we saw with the Buckleyites. Younger, truly committed Dissidents are calling out the faux or at least spurious Dissidents right along with the Buckleyites. So as a result you have Cernovich going after the Alt-Right, the entirety of the Dissident Right snubbing Richard Spencer, and Vox Day and Milo… Read more »
[…] “[T]he internet,” writes the Z man, […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
Yes. Having said Yes; Beware of infighting. This is how the enemy rules. Also how the enemy Wars; we are on top to an extent in the parts of Syria and Iraq we want because the State Deep or not excels at promoting infighting and sowing chaos amongst its foes, this is how 1000 Americans in Intel/Diplomacy (same animals, different stripes) and SOF dominate. *How the Deep State is already winning* If your essential nature is something you seek to turn that to strength. The American governments nature is CHAOS and they have turned this to Progressive ends foreign and… Read more »
Molyneaux
Moly is a new sophist: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=16493
Moly was caught off the record as saying he had to flatter the Christians to keep his little grift going. I would like to think he was warming back to it, but doubtful.
A lot of shapeshifting goes on when these people enter other rightist spheres, so your con man take makes sense.
That right? I actually had some respect for him in regards to his views on parenting (no spanking in particular). Ah well.
Don’t be in such a big hurry to believe every random accusation someone levies on the internet.
Whoa! Are you saying people post fake stuff on the internet? Say it ain’t so!
It’s true. I swear! — Vizzini, Random Guy on the Internet.
There is no shortage of people to talk shit about popular voices on the right. I take all accusations with a grain of salt. I differ from Molyneaux in that he is not a Christian and I am not an anarchist, but I believe he’s generally honest about what he believes. I’ve seen him speaking more often using the language of Christianity lately, but I’d hesitate to call it pandering. If you are an honest thinker, eventually you drift toward the truth.
What a sophist that Stefan Molyneux is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J9FAyrhi1U&feature=youtu.be Warning us about Texas turning blue in his latest video. I follow Stefan on twitter and he warns about mass immigration turning whites into minorities about as much as anyone. He’s a guy I want more people paying attention to, not less.
his stuff about iq is good, him taking on taking on nassim taleb was awesome.
From the content of your post, I don’t regard “sophist” as intended as an insult.
Correct. I was using it in the way the ancients would have used it.
Molyneux always rubbed me the wrong way. It was even worse after I learned of his old defoo shit.
I noticed a lot of “generic extremists” in these spaces. Cantwell and Enoch come to mind. They go all in one subject after another.
Perhaps I judged them incorrectly. They are not and were not generic extremists, but sophists jumping ship from one subject to another as the old subject wanes and the new one gains popularity.
I’ll have to try listening to Molyneux without the video and the facial expressions.
I look at Moly as a modern sophist. He’s part entertainer, part rhetorician and part self-help guru. People like him because he gives them arguments to use on their liberal friends and he makes them feel good about themselves. In ancient Athens, he would have be training kids to read and debate in the agora.
As far as the antsemites, it is a subculture. People fall into for the same reason they join the Scientologists.
He takes too damn long to get to the point. That should always raise a red flag.
that is the problem with videos in general. just get to the point. when takes 40 minutes can be done in 10.
What is your definition of anti-semite?
I was big into Moly circa 2015-16….sometime in the Summer of 2016 he made the acquaintance of Mike Cernovich and his material became much less edgy and much more focused on getting donor money.
I don’t believe this is a coincidence.
My Breaking point was when he had Bill Mitchell on at the time of the Syrian Strikes in early 2017. Molyneux treated him with kid’s gloves even though Mitchell was being indefensibly buffoonish. That’s Mr. Tough-Love Reason & Evidence who triumphantly chews out his callers on the slightest inconsistency.
Instead of saying “cringe” now, I just say creepy things give me “a case of the Mollies.”
The stuff about his mom was the most authentic, and authentically disturbing, stuff I’ve ever heard him say.
Too clever by half, too obviously contrived but for that Inner Child inside, shrieking into that adolescent abyss. Definitely a candidate for epic libertard meltdown someday unless he somehow develops stronger, more authentic social moorings.
One of my favorites. He diagnoses the problems as well as anyone. The libertarian solutions and atheism can go. Still an interesting and insightful presenter.
Paintersforms,
I haven’t listened to him in close to a couple of years, simply because my tastes migrated but I agree with you. When he did his year end cataloging of his shows he reported by numbers that his personal diagnosis shows were his most listened to and popular… so I think you are spot on there.
Moly is a ferryman for our side as opposed to a gatekeeper. Is he a bit of grifter? I don’t know. Maybe. Think of him as a private smuggler who runs guns that our side needs and gets paid handsomely for his work.
Is he fully on our side? No. Are his motives pure? No. Is he helping our side? Yes.
I was surprised to discover that his call-in shows are his most popular, but I think he’s a good interviewer and I’ll listen if his guest interests me. Same as Rogan. I dislike purity tests.
Agree. Biggest problem I see is that for one reason or another he’s (Moly) trying to reinvent himself into some sort of investigative journalist, ala Tim Pool. As Epaminondas pointed out, he take too long to get to the point. I suspected that he was shooting for some YouTube video lengths in order to maximize revenue, but I’m not knowledgeable in such areas.
Anyway, his early stuff is online and viewable. I consider it exemplary. There were discussions/interviews with some important characters in HBD science and at that time were fairly unique on the medium as I knew it.
I feel the same about the shekel grubbing crew of degenerates and racist liberals over at TRS. The fact that I fell for the grift is the worst thing. Common Filth was after all right about everything.
Whut? Genuinely curious, what’s your gripe with TRS (got a few myself)?
They mysteriously are able to process credit card payments themselves with no issues: they don’t need to deal with Bitcoin or PO Boxes like virtually every other edgy dissident person/group. Even, allegedly, through Stripe! A very hostile vendor that’s quick to deplatform. This leaves two possibilities: 1. Mike and Jesse are so smart that they’ve figured out a way to fool credit card processors and stay under the radar, despite the alleged $100k/month in revenue. 2. Somebody in power is allowing them to keep their merchant account. Why might that be? The reader can judge for themselves which is the… Read more »
Your theory will be a lot more believable after the feds start rounding up their (supposed) ~10k subscribers
It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to realize that it’s more about TRS real life meetup groups (which the shows kind of serve as a funnel towards).
Some people would probably be interested in the names and details of several thousand lonely, disaffected and gullible white men.
By your logic (promotes dissident political views, able to collect money from listeners via credit card processors, encourages people get involved in real life meet ups, attends them himself) the Z Man is likely also working for the Feds! Z Man, come clean!
I fully expect Chief Lieawatha’s Justice Department to do exactly this after she takes over the big Teepee in January 2021
If it’s a grift, it’s a strange one: Podcast for free for a few years, get doxed and lose your ability to make a living the way you did before, then ask your listeners to chip in so you can eat,etc. They’re, of course, not everyone’s taste, but a grift? I can’t see it.
TRS is completely federally converged…and on top of that they haven’t been funny in a long time.
Asking for $10 a month is hardly a “grift” in my book. It’s better than listening to someone shilling for a product in a commercial. A lot of the Team Stormer vs. TRS stuff is way too inside-baseball for my tastes, smacks of personal beefs. Too many glass houses among e-personalities to throw stones and the TRS guys seem to have decent message-discipline on staying out of that mudhole. They’re a strong positive for Us overall.
Resurrecting Christopher Cantwell is a positive?
Giving a platform to unapologetic, unironic CommieNazi Erik Striker is a positive?
Having a federal informant running your IRL groups is a positive?
And worst of all, Mike Enoch used to be hilarious, now he’s just boring.
The little Castizo Boy has shown us the way. This isn’t it.
I hope that you’re right about Nick but I guess that he will ultimately recant and say something like, “because God loves all peoples we should not object to immigration. Let’s focus on Christian morality, bringing jobs back to the USA, and getting out of foreign wars.”
Yeah it is. Because that’s how people hone their ideas and convictions: by testing them and bouncing them off the opposition. I’ve listened to him and I’m in no more danger of becoming a collectivist of any stripe than I was before.
Meme: the number of people who know Cantwell from Orwell is probably single digit nowadays. “Fed informant” was just an accusation by Anglin – an extremely dodgy character in his own right. Take Striker or leave him, is on Unz now, and he scores points on the enemy. Enoch still makes good points.
I don’t see how any of those gripes change the big picture – it’s all drama-queen inside-baseball for the Extremely Online.
There’s room on the Right for TRS and Nick – save the Shoah for the other side.
TRS is a good departure point for a general discussion about trusting people whom you don’t know well in real life.
Will the standards that TRS is held to be satisfiable by any online group/person? Our numbers are small and we need capable people.
Is any group/person that processes credit cards or still has a website/YouTube untrustworthy?
How could TRS have better vetted Jayoh or Eli (who was with Spencer, not TRS)? Once these guys were shown to be untrustworthy, they were let go.
Is Jayoh gone now?
They could have handled that situation better up-front by Actually addressing it, and by not shutting off their comments section when it broke.