The Future Of Virtual Society

At the dawn of the internet revolution, it was common for big-brained public intellectuals to talk about what it meant for the nature of society. As is always the case, they confused what they wanted to happen with what would happen. That usually meant some form of “as information is democratized, more people will have access to information and therefore come to agree with me on everything.” The internet would bring about the glorious egalitarian future.

Most of the predictions about the impact of the internet turned out to be wrong, but the internet has changed society. In fact, it has changed people by changing the selection pressures within society. For example, the phenomenon of the digital grifter is something that could not exist in the past. These people certainly existed in some form, but the digital age rewards their behavior, while the analog age did not, so they now flourish, while in the past they were suppressed.

That is how to think about it. Virtual reality is not reality. Life on-line exaggerates certain features by removing constraints or offering incentives. The solitary nature of on-line life removes the social signals that people rely upon to figure out what they can say and what they should not say. When you are on-line, you are by yourself in the physical realm, even though you are interacting with others in the virtual realm. Those people, however, are mere avatars of people.

Of course, things that get the user attention are rewarded with likes, clicks and views, so this encourages more of that behavior. It does not take long before the weak minded are consumed with attention seeking. Twitter is full of hollow people who amplify the current thing as a way to get attention. In the hours after every cable news actor was sporting a Ukraine pin and chanting “keev”, the internet personality was pulling down her Covid stuff and putting up Ukraine stuff.

Years ago, Dave Chappell did a skit where the internet was a real place. What made the skit amusing, in addition to Chappelle’s delivery, was the fact that the internet is such an absurd place compared to reality. Imagine walking through a store and everyone in the store is doing whatever they can to get your attention. Imagine the day after the war started, everything at the store is in Ukraine colors and all of the employees are chanting “keev” at the top of their lungs.

Another novelty that the digital age has brought is the clout chaser. This is a person who spends his days scanning the internet looking for the next thing so he can seem like the first person to get on it. These people front-run trends in order to present themselves as trendsetters. They will often glom onto a person, positively or negatively,  who has a big following on-line. This lets them free-ride off that person to gain attention and followers for themselves.

This is not something that could exist in the analog age. Famous people had flunkies, but the flunky was never going to use their association with the famous person to make himself famous independent of the famous person. Mike Cernovich could never have become a thing in the analog age by stalking famous people. On Twitter he was able to build a huge following mostly by front running trends he had no role in creating and glomming onto big Twitter accounts.

Another version of this is the manufactured influencer. If you watch YouTube, you will have noticed that Lex Fridman was always in your suggestions. You could only watch woodworking videos, but YouTube would suggest to you a Fridman video. The reason is the people backing him paid YouTube to do it. A similar thing is now happening with Jordan Peterson, who signed up with the Ben Shapiro operation. They are now paying to have Peterson promoted on YouTube.

They did the same thing with Ben Shapiro. The people behind the Daily Wire made a Mortimer and Randolph Duke type of bet to see if they could make this obscure hobbit man into a star. How they did it was social media. They paid to have Ben Shapiro pushed heavy to middle-class whites on Facebook. He was what they hoped young people were really thinking. It worked. This helium voiced nobody is now a household name and a major influencer of old white conservatives.

Tim Pool is another version of this phenomenon. Spend some time watching his YouTube channel and ask yourself why he has a huge audience. There are hundreds of people doing some version of the same act. The answer is he has the backing of an influencer production company. Richard Hanania is the most recent example of the manufactured influencer. The guy suddenly appears on-line and before long all the other influencers are mentioning him.

This deranging of the public culture to now has mostly been about rewarding qualities and people that existed but were suppressed in the analog age. What we see with the Zoomers is a whole generation of people raised in this culture. This post in the New York Times, of all places, is a good read on the subject. Those born around the turn of the century are the first generation raised on the internet. This is their normal as they never knew a world without the internet.

One result of this cohort being raised on-line is they lack the normal social skills that have defined human life for ten thousand years. People have noted that in real life, this cohort is shy, awkward and quite weird. On the other hand, they are the exact opposite as their on-line persona. Meet Nick Fuentes and you are not all that impressed as his social skills are non-existent. Turn on a mic or pull out a camera and he goes from shrinking violet to boisterous and confident.

This is why this generation was not upset by the lockdowns. They did not complain about Zoom school because that was better than having to be around those talking meat sacks on campus. They prefer life on-line to life outside. They have grown up with the chat room as their playground. Instead of playing games with their friends in the physical realm, they played games on-line. Their peer group was the collection of avatars and personalities in the chat.

Everyone has their opinion on this stuff, but the important question that no one seems to be considering is if society is possible under these conditions. China’s heavy-handed censorship is viewed as a defense of the regime, but it could simply be a way to tamp down the negative selection pressures of the internet. American censorship is driven mostly by ethnic paranoia, which is another negative quality that is being amplified by the forces of the digital age.

It could very well be that the newly diverse Western societies cannot hold up under the selection pressure of the internet. The digital age amplifies the differences, which amplifies the natural reaction to those differences. This has the effect of bringing diverse civilizational outlooks into virtue contact. The result is hostility. The West may be forced to choose between the glories of diversity or the virtual public square. The answer may be a segregated internet in order to keep the peace.


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JDaveF
JDaveF
1 year ago

“The ugliness of the ’70s” – yeah, those high school girls sure were ugly back then – slender, no tattoos, no facial piercings, and no blue hair – ugly, all right….

ray
ray
1 year ago

Impossible for me to describe growing up in Fifties America to the young cohort. Literally I am describing an alien world.

We spent all day outside as kids, in exhilarating physical exertion and athletics. My dad cut me loose at 12 or 13. Don’t get arrested and don’t get girls pregnant. That was it.

Now most children never grow up. UC and UMC kids are bubble-wrapped by gynocentric cultures and governments. Freedom and self-reliance are horrors to be avoided at all costs. My world is a prison to them, and their world is a prison to me.

Fakeemail
Fakeemail
Reply to  ray
1 year ago

“My world is a prison to them, and their world is a prison to me.”

Their world is prison to them, whether they knotrivialities.

The entire entertainment complex was always meant to be brainwashing and propoganda at worst. At best it was made to hawk products and waste people’s time by sucking then into unreal trivialitily. It’s all idolatry.

I’m also sure that the kids you tried to explain the 50s to cannot comprehend not having to deal with the tension of the 50,000 different racial and religious groups now in the US.

ray
ray
Reply to  Fakeemail
1 year ago

If the government tried to pull the stuff it does now when I was a kid, my dad, grandpa, and their friends would have burnt the town — and the punks — to the ground. With govt. officials and LE the first to go. Then they would have gathered at the golf course clubhouse they built to drink beer, play gin, and laugh. These were men hardened by the Depression and by wars. Now the nation is ruled by women, and masculinity has been under full-on attack since the Seventies. The men required to stand against totalitarianism and thuggery are… Read more »

My Comment
My Comment
1 year ago

Glad Z mentioned Richard Hanania. He has a new grift. He has been full bore on team Ukraine and now has stepped up his game. Recently, he wrote about how the right is wrong to have such a negative view of the press. Except for woke issues, the press are really dedicated journalists who are committed to the truth. Sure! While Hanania was working to get the right to embrace journalists, a more senior grifter, Cernovich, was telling his followers that athletes getting heart problems is not new and no big deal. I am sure that the synchronicity was a… Read more »

Panzernutter
Panzernutter
1 year ago

I few weeks ago I was parking my truck in a underground parking structure located in west LA to meet with the head engineer of facilities, I could have sworn I saw nick Fuentes getting into an elevator. The building was mostly populated with skincare and plastic surgery practices. E1 had no idea who I was pointing at. Thank goodness.

Bartleby the Scrivner
Bartleby the Scrivner
1 year ago

Ridiculously OT

Leaving the Dr office, and if I don’t type this now, I’ll forget before I get out of the parking lot.

The people on this comment section are some pretty sharp cookies. That said, when high end Indian (Brahmins) like Drs etc, interact with whitey, do they perceive us as untouchables?

I got that distinct vibe today.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 year ago

It’s hard to say if it’s that or just that Indians always regard their official job description as peripheral to the real task of milking the system. You see this with the techies. It’s not that they’re too stupid to understand code but that they seem to regard the actual coding as being somebody else’s problem. Translated into the medical field I suppose this could mean viewing physical contact with patients as somehow outside their “real job”, whatever it is they imagine that to be. One could speculate that such an attitude might account for the low level of development… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 year ago

Honestly–and this won’t be popular–my interactions with Indians of all castes have been positive. Doctors, restauranteurs, scholars, students, grocers–they’ve almost all been quite friendly. And the girls gaze with big round eyes and coy smiles.

Intelligent Dasein
Intelligent Dasein
Member
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

I don’t regard all Indian women as hot, but manty of the hottest women I’ve ever seen were Indian.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Intelligent Dasein
1 year ago

Have you ever seen a Subcon woman who aged well and wasn’t a nondescript mound of fatty flesh wrapped in a sari?

ray
ray
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

My only extended contact was an Indian family that owned a cheapie hotel I hid in for quite some time. Hard workers, kids didn’t act up, didn’t ask questions, stayed outta my business.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 year ago

Used to be 3 Sikhs in engineering where I work, only 1 now. Don’t know the difference between them and Hindus, but they were/are all pretty decent. Worst I can say is there seemed to be an assumption that I must be stupid because I work on the floor, but when I argued my position that usually went away. One was actually VP of Ops, or something. Found him reasonable and easy to work for. Got into it with him about masks, asked if I was going to have to quit over it. He said his wife is a doctor,… Read more »

Bartleby the Scrivner
Bartleby the Scrivner
Reply to  Paintersforms
1 year ago

Thank you all for the input.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 year ago

From past experience around the manosphere one thing that was noteworthy was that Indian men lusted after white women to a degree that would make a Ferengi cringe, and resented that those white women preferred tall white men (or failing that a tall black man).

It’s actually a great example of how the browns will always resent and hate the whites: as Americans we never did anything to Indian-Americans, they came here of their own volition, and have a higher standard of living than whites on average.

C matt
C matt
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

Can’t fault him for finding White women attractive.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 year ago

Seattle city council just made cast prejudice illegal,
I had no idea this was a problem.
Thankfully there are top.people working on it, Top people.

usNthem
usNthem
1 year ago

I read the article from the ex-youtube bimbette. Let’s face it, she wasn’t doing that crap online without her parent’s support and authorization. And just like often exploited childhood actors through the years, they were hoping to (and probably did) cash in on her popularity. The thing with tv/movie acting is that the possibilities were relatively limited. Now, practically anyone can attempt to cash in online with their often worthless opinions and/or antics. If the internet went down for good tomorrow, a rather large segment of the population would seriously freak out and have no idea what to do or… Read more »

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

The official NATO Twitter just compared WW3 to Harry Potter and Avatar:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nato-criticised-tweet-comparing-ukraine-conflict-harry-potter

It’s all fake, it’s all lame.

All of it.

Barnard
Barnard
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

Auron MacIntyre had posted a meme a while back that read, “This is just like when Dumbldore battled for civil rights against Hitler in The Handmaiden’s Tale.” The people running NATO now are beyond satire.

ArthurinCali
Reply to  Barnard
1 year ago

This NATO tweet shows the mentality and level of maturity of the people in charge. Which is quite low. Taking pop culture and a bloody conflict to make a amalgamation of a Hollywood production is pathetic.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

Whether or not the regime chooses to propagate or suppress the message in this tweet will tell us a lot. Could tell us everything, depending. So far it looks like suppress. Like they are going to pretend it didn’t happen.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

What other broad cultural touchstones does the West (or even just America) even have anymore other than big production Hollywood slop?

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Not only did it have these social impacts, but it has had major economic and quality of life impacts. My phone rings all day long with scam calls. The caller ID doesn’t help because they spoof the caller ID. Our elderly are being targeted by Indian scammers. People lose hundreds of thousands of Dollars to this criminality. It has gotten to the point where if my bank wants to speak to me about something, I just hang up on them and then call my bank. There is even a genre on youtube of people uploading videos of themselves messing with… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

And the benefits are often illusory.

TomA
TomA
1 year ago

All of this has been studied via societal modeling (the studies are ongoing) and the results are not good. The net effect is a destruction of ancestral robustness as a result of isolation from a natural environment where fitness is both challenged and refined. There is no tangible “fitness” derived from virtual reality and you cannot exercise your immune system through cognitive activities. Which means we are becoming much more fragile in body as well as in mind. Modern affluence allows a large cohort of people to pretend to be productive by “working from home” and massaging data ad infinitum,… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

“Which means we are becoming much more fragile in body as well as in mind.”

Interesting observation. For those that doubt this, one need only look to such occurrences in human evolution. Neanderthals had a larger brain that Sapiens, and Sapiens are much more “graciated” in phenotype than Neanderthals. Read about the ancient Roman legionnaires and their gear weight and daily marching distance. We really are a society of Pillsbury Dough boys. 🙁

Davidcito
Davidcito
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Ive read that neanderthals had a different neckbone that would have prevented speech. Women were probably more bearable but complex societies would be impossible

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

read where our bone mass is declining by about 1% per 1000 years. there’s a reason wisdom teeth don’t fit in our current jaws.

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
1 year ago

I’m absolutely convinced that had the “elites” who own our society known that they internet would have become, we would all be accessing it right now with pre coded key cards that fit into some card reader like DirectTV. They thought, in their early 90’s “End of History” hubris that their ideas had won, when in fact, they just enjoyed a monopoly on info-tainment. In their last desperate years, which are coming, they will indeed be cracking down on all of us in a way that made Twitter bans for anti-vax posing look like nothing. Society actually has a chance… Read more »

SouthPoll
SouthPoll
Reply to  JR Wirth
1 year ago

While some of that comparison may be biased by changing standards of humor (people in say 2000 found 1940s radio humor flat) your point stands. The entertainment complex was previously largely in the hands of a select few who were mostly rather mediocre. Case in point Hollywood is now crumbling, despite large budgets and the backing of left media.

BSM
BSM
1 year ago

I haven’t been on Taki since November… finally caught up on the z man articles, so I figured I would check it out.

They have an article by someone named Rugy calling for a massive increase in immigration, including low-skilled immigration. She is literally calling for a great replacement, except bigger and better than what has happened in the last 60 years.

What the hell is going on over at that site these days?? I saw they also added Stephen Moore?
I wish they still had a comment section to see the reaction to the Rugy article.

ArthurinCali
Reply to  BSM
1 year ago

Taki used to have a lively comment section but took it down a few years ago. This seems to be the trend for most sites. Can’t have the proles talking back to the anointed ones apparently.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

You take down the comment section when up can’t support the bulls**t you publish. Comments become too embarrassing when they point such out.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

In light defense, as I liked reading the Taki comments (never commented there myself), it wasn’t unusual for a throwaway article by Jim Goad to get +1000 comments and if what was left had even been lightly moderated it was probably getting to the point that someone had to babysit those comments fulltime. With a feature that popular they should have commercialized it like Unz or Zerohedge, but I don’t think that capability is built into Discus.

cg2
cg2
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

Ive been wondering how many commenters here were from the Takikariat. And searching for it led me to Z-man.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  cg2
1 year ago

I’m a Taki exile. So are WhereAreTheVikings, Felix Krull and Strangerinastrangeland, among others.

(Reposted. Me initial post vanished into the ether.)

WhereAreTheVikings
WhereAreTheVikings
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Epaminondas, another Taki exile.

ray
ray
Reply to  cg2
1 year ago

I commented there often.

WhereAreTheVikings
WhereAreTheVikings
Reply to  ray
1 year ago

Were you Racial Ray?

UsNthem
UsNthem
Reply to  BSM
1 year ago

When the comment section got deep-sixed over there, I quit – that is until Zman started writing. When he quit, I quit again.

SouthPoll
SouthPoll
Reply to  UsNthem
1 year ago

Rugy’s bio reads so big-Con…

“Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist….Previously, de Rugy has been a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.”

jake
jake
Reply to  SouthPoll
1 year ago

She used to write, and maybe still does, for National Review.

Also a Frenchwoman who decided to be an American.

ray
ray
Reply to  BSM
1 year ago

Taki’s went into the dumpster fast, when Taki wiped out the excellent comment section . . . which was the meat of the site. Reason went unstated, but it was obvious that Taki’s princess daughter — who ran and ‘edited’ the place — grew increasingly uncomfy with the anti-feminist and anti-gynocracy nature of many comments. The solution, as always with our Gender Superiors, was censorship or, in this case, silencing of all dissent. So much for ‘conservative’ zillionaires. Cucks just like the rest. As with Donald Trump, Taki could not keep his princess daughter from destroying the house. So it… Read more »

WhereAreTheVikings
WhereAreTheVikings
Reply to  BSM
1 year ago

Articles like the Rugy article and the acquisition of Stephen Moore are why there is no longer a Taki comments section. Our knives would have been out, gleaming in the blue light from the ether and ready to slice and dice.

Rowdy Moody
Rowdy Moody
1 year ago

One of the biggest advantages of social media for the craven individuals is the freedom to insult and call out those with whom they disagree or hate. Theses are the type who would never do that face to face for fear of physical reprisal but the internet gives them the safety of doing it at a distance. Basically chickenshits with opinions. If it ever becomes possible to punch someone in the mouth online then this behavior will diminish. There’s always the hope a new invention will have overwhelming positive effects. For example, the first powered airplane flight happened in 1903.… Read more »

Pozymandias
Reply to  Rowdy Moody
1 year ago

If you invent a way to make a Twitter post that actually kills online shitlibs (or just punches them in the mouth) I’ll invest my depleted saving in your stock.

SouthPoll
SouthPoll
1 year ago

This is so spot-on. My family does some homesteading and as part of that watch a number of homesteading youtube channels. Some friends of ours gave us tickets to a homesteading convention where we met one of the people we follow, Justin Rhodes. His online persona is all about work and family, engaging people. In person he was so awkard that he couldn’t even look you in the eyes. Now I already had a health suspicion of those who promote themselves on social media. But this seemed something bigger, not merely grifting or inflating ones ego. They might have started… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
1 year ago

A minor point, to be sure, but this “Keev” idiocy is maddening, not just because it is pretentious, but because it is technically wrong. The Ukraine’s capital is not a one-syllable word. Yes, the stress is on the first syllable, but there is a second syllable. Kiev is a perfectly accurate transposition of the city’s pronunciation.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Just another loyalty test/identifier for the clouds and the wannabes

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Spot on Jeffrey Zoar. Gargle throat and every statement ending as a question is pretty easy to mimic. Not much to differentiate classes. Now you are in the know if you are willing to sound ridiculous and say, Keev.

It’s a bottomless pit.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Agreed. We also pronounce things as they translate to our language, (e.g., we say France and not Fronsay). I recall when the media were falling all over themselves to pronounce Qatar as cutter or even gutter.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  DLS
1 year ago

I remember that Gutter tripe. And Donald Rumsfeld was in the van.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  DLS
1 year ago

I had a good friend from Britain, spoke with very old-school RP but he seemed to get a kick out my nasally Great Lakes accent. Anyway, he told me that as a child he could never figure out why the Yanks would use the couplet “The King of France wet his pants,” because the two words didn’t rhyme. This also brings to mind a World Series broadcast several years ago when Joe Buck was discussing the pitcher Chien-ming Wang. He started lecturing viewers about how to pronounce his last name. You see, you corn-shucking rubes, despite the spelling it’s pronounced… Read more »

Severian
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

I used to have fun with that back in the days. Covering WWII in Asia, I’d say “We’re going to refer to the leader of the Allied Chinese as ‘Chiang Kai-Shek,’ not ‘Jiang Jieshi.’ For one, he called *himself* ‘Chiang Kai-Shek,’ and people who spoke both English and Chinese, like his main American adviser Gen. Stillwell, called him ‘Chiang Kai-shek,’ so it’s period-appropriate. Second, ‘Chiang Kai-shek’ is no better or worse than ‘Jiang Jeishi,’ since neither of them include the tones and those are the only thing that matter in any case.” I started getting grief on this from White… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Severian
1 year ago

Rather a different scenario, but I refuse to call Bombay, Mumbai.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Severian
1 year ago

how do you handle Siam and Ceylon? 🙂

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Severian
1 year ago

Don’t get me started on the way media types pronounce Beijing, with that “zhhhing” sounding second syllable. Unlike some other Chinese phonemes, “jing” is actually Romanized in a way that English speakers should nail at first glance. But the smart set can’t help signaling that there’s a hidden trick in there that only they have figured out. I’d rather they go back to saying Peking.

Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Yes, I agree about the weird pronunciations. My mother and grandmother fled the Bolsheviks thru Manchuria into China. My mom went to (gymnasium) high school there and then to California for college. Her older sister went to music conservatory and taught piano for many years in Oregon and Nevada. I have cousins out that way I’ve never met. Anyway, my grandfather was from Kharkov, Ukraine, went to the university there. I never met him as he had been arrested by the Bolsheviks and imprisoned in Siberia where he died after a year. Mother used to say that he called Ukraine… Read more »

Gespenst
Gespenst
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

Politically correct pronunciation can be a life or death matter.

“Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.”

Compsci
Compsci
1 year ago

“…but the internet has changed society. In fact, it has changed people by changing the selection pressures within society.” Perhaps one of the biggest changes, which you alluded to, is the Internet—and by Internet we really are talking software applications that run upon it—has had a detrimental impact on attention span. I find this even in myself. Too much information, too little time to spend on any one source. Skim, then on to the next one. Compare this to an in depth course of study and concentration in any field of study found in a typical graduate college level course.… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

My graduate field was Russian history, and when I got to grad school I spent so much time reading that I actually put on weight. I just didn’t have time to play pickup basketball–which previously had been my chief mode of exercise–anymore.

Davidcito
Davidcito
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

I cant argue with stem curriculums, but what ive learned online in the last twenty years for free has granted me a pinch worthy life. I just wish i encountered jared taylor earlier. Now im 39 trying to find a white woman that i havent already burned through.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

If Fridman is such a brilliant MIT researcher why does he need a YouTube channel with several million subscribers?

How does he have time to run such an enterprise?

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

he’s not a researcher at all. you can find the truth online, but he has no real affiliation with MIT.

SidVic
SidVic
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

Lex Friedman causes me to grind my teeth. He lacks even a scintilla of charisma. When he had Kanye on his show to talk him off the defcon ledge I almost blew my stack. It’s similar with the head of the ADL. Who puts forward such an unattractive goblin as their spokesman? It’s like there’re asking for it!

WhereAreTheVikings
WhereAreTheVikings
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 year ago

I thought Fridman was retarded when I first listened to him speak and that maybe it was all some kind of affirmative action joke. I haven’t changed my opinion much. The way those guests slobber over him has really exposed them as being way too easily impressed.

Abelard Lindsey
Abelard Lindsey
1 year ago

Twenty years ago I could have made the argument that it would be the “old” people that would take to virtual reality whereas the young people would be living life in the real world like we did 1980-2000. Old people lack the energy and stamina, not to mention physical attractiveness, to be out wind surfing during the day and hitting the night clubs in the evening. The fantasies of virtual reality are certainly more enjoyable than the reality of living in an aging, fucked-up body.

But it never turned out this way.

Gespenst
Gespenst
Reply to  Abelard Lindsey
1 year ago

You will understand when you get old.

Abelard Lindsey
Abelard Lindsey
1 year ago

“They prefer life on-line to life outside. They have grown up with the chat room as their playground. Instead of playing games with their friends in the physical realm, they played games on-line. Their peer group was the collection of avatars and personalities in the chat.” This is utterly depressing to contemplate. Youthful physical reality in the 80’s and 90’s, particularly in the sun belt and Southeast Asia, was much more fun and fulfilling than virtual reality of any kind. “The West may be forced to choose between the glories of diversity or the virtual public square. The answer may… Read more »

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  Abelard Lindsey
1 year ago

Maybe there is some hope. Zuckerberg’s VR Meta looks like a spectacular failure. Given the chance to go full on virtual world, young people gave it a pass.

Then again, maybe not. That generation seems to be unable to interface with other people in real time…with all the messiness and social gaffes that can entail.

Social media today is all about composing the perfect frame, the perfect picture, the perfect rejoinder, joke or insult. It’s as “risk free” as interactions with other people will ever get.

It also is incredibly limiting.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 year ago

The problem with meta isn’t the concept, it’s that the product isn’t good enough. Someday, it will be good enough. When physical sensation is part of the experience. I doubt I live long enough to see that.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Anyone remember the movie, “Brainstorm”? 🙂

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 year ago

The magic of Facebook and Twitter is that they allow midwit attention seekers to treat actual reality as virtual reality, therefore Meta is downgraded experience of the parent product.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 year ago

What Zuckerberg’s peddling already exists and has been very popular for about a decade: VRChat. (And before that, there were others.) The “market” for the Zuccerverse is people who don’t use VRChat because it’s not censored enough. That’s literally nobody, so as the Zuccerverse has failed, there’s been a coordinated media campaign top paint VRChat as a “virtual strip club,” “e-brothel,” secret racist social club, etc. In response to this, VRChat of course immediately trust-and-safetied itself half to death—as purely profit-motivated libertarian corporations do. But it wasn’t enough. That weirdly highly publicized girl who was recently denied a US visa… Read more »

Range Front Fault
Range Front Fault
Reply to  Abelard Lindsey
1 year ago

“The solitary nature of on-line life removes the social signals that people rely upon to figure out what they can say and what they should not say. When you are on-line, you are by yourself in the physical realm, even though you are interacting with others in the virtual realm. Those people, however, are mere avatars of people.” Another great article Z. How do you do this every day? The younger generations are so deformed by virtual reality that they can’t even talk on the phone. My daughter just made a dental appointment on the phone, and the dental assistant… Read more »

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
1 year ago

“Those people, however, are mere avatars of people.” – TV was the first visual social experience and had a 50 year head start. It made for sameness. Everyone buying the same products from the same commercials. and political opinions carefully crafted by (((big media))) and (((Hollywood))) screen writers. The internet inverts all of this, making the avatar his or her own screen writer. So we have an older crowd who had their information presented to them by some 1970’s jewess like Barbara Walters and today’s group that’s having their information presented to them by Tim Pool. As awful as Tim… Read more »

Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
1 year ago

Hrrrrrrrmmmm.

Haven’t had a chance to fact check… but my favourite‘personality’ that I live to hate is Scott Adams. Apparently he’s just been red pilled on blacks.

If true… this is big, in so many ways. The jews have been spectacularly successful undermining the mass media, and claim to have done so with the social media as well…but if you’re seeing guys like Adams getting red pilled on judeoliberal sacred cows… it speaks well indeed of the digital age…

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Glenfilthie
1 year ago

Assuming he’s not “grifting”. That is to say, he’s truly red pilled rather than sensing which way the wind is blowing and turning to catch the latest wave of sentiment for viewership, clicks, and what have you.

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Or isn’t some sort of plant trying to get you to go in a certain direction.

Davidcito
Davidcito
Reply to  Glenfilthie
1 year ago

I was literally cheering when i saw that clip. I imagine he’ll receive the phone call and walk it back tomorrow.

DLS
DLS
1 year ago

“These people front-run trends in order to present themselves as trendsetters.” One of the worst front-runners, in both digital and analog formats, is that Jim Cramer clown on CNBC. He will praise or bash a stock after it has already moved, and convince people he had predicted it all along. I recall when Apple was down several years ago, he did his sell/sell/sell schtick, saying they just sold cell phones and had nowhere to go but down. A year or two later, the stock took off, and he was talking up how innovative they were, and it was buy/buy/buy. If… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  DLS
1 year ago

Virtually every stock market “analyst” or commentator is emotion driven. If you waste time watching CNBC you’ll see their moods, and their “analysis,” correlate to whether the market is up or down. The most difficult thing about investing is overcoming emotion. Easy to say. Virtually impossible to do. Even the all time greats have to battle it. If you can overcome your emotions just a majority of the time you’re ahead of the game.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Emotion, and also the need to conform to the general consensus. We just saw the desperate need to conform drive people to inject untested drugs into their bodies because of a slightly worse flu season.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  DLS
1 year ago

Indeed, when it’s your job to make predictions, there is safety in numbers.

It dawned on me about 30 years ago that the majority is usually wrong, and if I wanted to be right about anything I’d increase my chances by taking a minority position.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Reminds me of a plot line on Seinfeld…

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

The people that truly know how to make money picking stocks have no time nor interest in television appearances.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Humans weren’t “meant” to all get along together in the same cyberspace anymore than they were all meant to get along together in the same geographical space. But this does not automatically lead to segregation. The current purpose that the internet serves of supplying the “two minutes hate” could hypothetically go on forever. I’ve no doubt that the regime prefers us plugged into our devices. I must do a pretty good job of firewalling my own internet since this is the first time I’ve heard of Richard Hanania or Lex Fridman. There are a lot of very popular things and… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Obviously, I live in a bubble. I’ve not been exposed to your URL’s, but do get Peterson and Pool and Adams. I assume Peterson video’s is a grift of sort—not Peterson, I like him—but the video clips (all excerpts) of his former talks and presentations, some quite old, and many under different channel names. Pool on the other hand is old hat, and never seems to be to the point. There must be some monetary deal because he always takes 15+ minutes to discuss a 60 second topic. Scott Adams, the same. Never saw a video less than 30 minutes… Read more »

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

His daughter doesn’t really walk his talk, so that makes me wonder. I question all of the youtube personalities. The alpha shit and sigma shit, and cleaning your room. Youtube is owned by google who was probably created by the CIA. Take it all with a grain of salt. Remember when the church made it a crime to jack off because it was important for people to reproduce so the king or lord would have a larger army then his peers? Now turn that on its head, not enough resources to go around, those at the top are aware of… Read more »

The Greek
The Greek
1 year ago

Firstly, another example of a “conservative” internet “star” that makes no sense is Jeremy of the Quartering. This guy has over a million subscribers, and he’s dumb as a goldfish. He literally just reads articles and adds very little insight or original commentary. Plus, he often uses the clickbait/intentionally misleading video titles. I don’t know why, but his popularity insults me more than any other conservative.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

News is little different from music or movies in that they have to come up with something that appeals to the bottom half of the bell curve if they want to maximize profits.

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

He’s the youtube version of the national inquirer. Most of the really strange shit “going” on in our society only happens via the internet. One giant psyop.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

I didn’t know who this person was until Matt Walsh showed clips of him yesterday. The first thing I notice about him is that he’s got the requisite shelf full of children’s toys behind him. Video games, Star Wars, etc. He’s trying to signal to the left that he’s just as innocent and fun-loving as they imagine themselves to be.

What is it going to take for people to put away their toys and act like, and present themselves as adults?

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

survival of the fittest. Won’t happen a second sooner or a second later. Which is why the left fears it the most and does all in its power to keep it at bay. Most of their support isn’t very fit.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

Far cry from the old days when you’d want your shelves to display the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Poe, Kant, Rabelais, Descartes, Goethe, Neitzsche, etc. We have not come a long way, baby.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

He started out in the gamergate grift, that’s why he has all the childish toys and videogames as background props.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Ploppy
1 year ago

He’s in one of the primary demographic groups of youtube grifting: the older millennials (35-40 years old now) who didn’t get fully sucked into woke, but still never got their lives together. They can’t interact with younger people because not being woke means they have old man foot-in-mouth disease, but older people don’t have any respect for them for being video game obsessed losers. Youtubers suck them in with nostalgia for their youth which is primarily focused on the Super Nintendo that dominated their childhoods. Think about why in God’s name anyone would want to watch a speedrun or lore… Read more »

A.B Prosper
A.B Prosper
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

Dudes comforting to fence sitters and geeks on the Right, allows them to vent feel like people are fighting with them without going down the rabbit hole and realizing the only solution is probably lead

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
1 year ago

It makes sense. Agrarian society produced rugged individualists. Industrial society produced rough worker bees. Financialized society produced the boomer. Virtual society produces nerds.

Z’s got a very interesting idea. The lack of social skills and cohesion could lead to segregation, like it did in the first place. Coming full circle. Funny how the virtual could burst the bubble.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Paintersforms
1 year ago

Revenge of the Nerds 🤣

Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
1 year ago

We may end up with small, highly religious communities, with high birth rates, that sharply limit internet usage, especially among the young. Birth rates in the general population are so low that’s where we’re trending. Incels don’t reproduce. Today only something like 50% of young women will bear children, compared to maybe 90% in the 1950s.

miforest
Member
Reply to  Jack Boniface
1 year ago

no society can survive this . at some point the top heavy age demo cant make the gears of the economy turn. there is nobody sadder than a childless never married 50’s woman.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  miforest
1 year ago

“… there is nobody sadder than a childless never married 50’s woman.”

I get what you’re saying, but I think the consensus of opinion in this group has been, “ there is nobody *more dangerous* than a childless never married 50’s woman.” 😉

miforest
Member
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

true, the resentment and rage at the world they have is unbelievable. once they can’t even get picked up at the bars anymore , the sadness is supercharged with anger

ray
ray
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Amen. They are the black heart of the Woke West.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
1 year ago

Mrs. W and I now have had the amusing experience many times on vacation of watching young newlywed honeymooners at dinner at nearby tables. They are playing with their smartphones and not talking to each other for long stretches of candlelit dinners. And these are the married ones! The single ones are at home doing God-knows-what.

Can you all imagine doing this on your honeymoon? Mrs. W will say: “they cannot possibly last!”. But who knows? Maybe the secret to marriage nowadays is ignoring your spouse and watching scantily-clad influencers on TikTok.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Captain Willard
1 year ago

Maybe the screen makes it possible for them to coexist, a way around the man’s weakness and the woman’s hysteria. Dreadful thought.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Paintersforms
1 year ago

Maybe contradicting myself? Or maybe virtual world is going through the same stages of development as meat world. Does meat world wither away like the maniacs think it will? Does the ideal finally conquer the material? Forget all that!

ArthurinCali
1 year ago

My father is a big technophile who always made sure to have the latest computer in the house when I was growing up. I still remember us having a Commodore 64 in the 1980s. By my teenage years in the 90s, we had the full set-up of AOL to ‘surf’ the latest new thing out called the World Wide Web. I marveled at the ability to have access to the vast amounts of knowledge and literature that was available online. Being naively optimistic, I imagined that this new technology was a paradigm shift for the advancement of human progress. Boy… Read more »

The Greek
The Greek
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

You weren’t completely wrong. That knowledge is still there for curious minds. For example, someone that’s in the trades and handy with tools can now easily venture out and do numerous other handy projects by simply watching YouTube videos. If you’re a carpenter, you can easily learn how to do basic plumbing, electrical, drywall, etc. I’ve fixed household appliances as well. The problem is that we over estimated how many people are intellectually curious people. The masses largely want mindless entertainment and surface level engagement on politics at best. Hence the popularity of tic toc. However, those with curiosity have… Read more »

Mr. Generic
Mr. Generic
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

> The problem is that we over estimated how many people are intellectually curious people.

We shouldn’t have. Before the internet every town or city spent thousands or millions of dollars building, maintaining, and staffing public libraries, but how many people actually went in and used them to research, learn, or inform?

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Mr. Generic
1 year ago

Good question. How many? Is there statistical evidence that public library patronage declined from, say, 1945 to 1995?

Baltimore Oriole
Baltimore Oriole
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
1 year ago

I wouldn’t look so much at total patronage counts… But rather borrowing counts and type of items borrowed. I would venture to say that patronage (both card/non-card holders) has likely increased, as public libraries continue to increasingly offer more than access to books. In way too many locales, libraries are mostly daycare for street people/loser drug addicts who’ve worn out their welcome with personal contacts and shelters. Most of what patrons check out are: 1. Children’s “easy-reader” books 2. Hot bestseller garbage fiction 3. Hypercontemporary pop-sci B.S. 4. DVD’s The normie library patron really sucks, quite frankly. You do get… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

Yep, the tradesmen videos are in the whole, great. As to your example, I am now undertaking setting up an EV charging station at my house. Without the videos I’ve watched, I’d never have attempted to open my home electrical panel and begin the necessary wiring, nor would I have even thought about the power requirements and the concept of commercial grade components. Pictures of melted receptacles does wonders. 😉

DLS
DLS
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

There’s a joke that asks: what would be the most difficult thing to explain to someone from 50 years ago? Answer: that we have all knowledge ever written on a device we hold in our hand, and we use it to argue with strangers and watch cat videos.

As for myself, I recently repaired my washing machine with a $29 water inlet sensor valve thanks to YouTube.

ArthurinCali
Reply to  The Greek
1 year ago

The Greek,

That ability of the internet is still great. Being able to access resources on how to fix, build, or learn a task is nice.

“The problem is that we overestimated how many people are intellectually curious people.”

This comment hits the nail on the head. I will be using in the future if that is fine with you.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

ArthurinCali: In many ways our experience was the polar opposite. I used a number of early word processing programs and platforms in the late ’70s and early ’80s and was comfortable with them, but overseas we were limited to typewriters for security purposes. When we returned to the US in the early ’90s, everyone was talking about something called ‘Windows’ and we had no idea what that was. We got our first computer for firstborn in 1998, so he could use Storybook Weaver. Then followed various and sundry logical, historical, and educational programs. My first political reading online was Michelle… Read more »

DLS
DLS
Reply to  3g4me
1 year ago

I pride myself on my knowledge of words and spellings, but I have not come across “contumacious” before. I see myself becoming more and more contumacious as this country slips further and further away from the one I grew up in.

As to your point, I agree the internet is simply a tool, no more responsible for the grifters and perverts that abuse it than a hammer is for someone who hits himself in the head.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  3g4me
1 year ago

Young people will never appreciate just how amazing the first word processor that used WYSIWYG.

I almost cried tears of joy.

I.M.
I.M.
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

You sound like me, right down the C-64.

One thing those of us from that generation have to ensure is that our children do not fall into the smartphone trap. Not until they’re 18+ and can pay for it themselves. I don’t think there’s any “safe exposure level” for these things to developing teenage brains (especially the girls). I’m not even sure they can handle it at 18, but legally you can’t stop them then.

The internet’s a nice (?) place to visit, but a horrible place to live.

Barnard
Barnard
1 year ago

Richard Hanania is a really bizarre one. It appears he has no actual followers (people who appreciate and support his work) at all. His personality as such, is just what you would expect from smug and condescending academic. Why does he keep getting attention?

ArthurinCali
Reply to  Barnard
1 year ago

FWIW, I’ve been hammering the guy online trying to show more people that he is a charlatan grifter. We all fight the good fight in our own small ways.

The other day he called the Ohio disaster a “local train derailment” acting as if it was merely lumber and baling wire that was on those railroad cars instead of toxic chemicals polluting the Ohio river. The guy is a joke. He obviously is being pushed by unseen backers onto the public.

Robert
Robert
Reply to  Barnard
1 year ago

Hanania talks about race realism doesn’t he? Or something like human biodiversity. He also talks about men and women being different. So I guess that’s why there’s some authentic interest in him.

He may be a libertarian who is for open borders. I’m not sure. He also does some trolling and will say things to deliberately get both liberals and conservatives riled up.

Diversity Heretic
Member
1 year ago

I’m a mid-Boomer (born 1954) who has never had any desire for a Youtube channel and whose presence on social media was limited and brief. I wonder to what extent the Internet culture is a democratization of the TV culture that began in the 1960s?

Vizzini
Member
1 year ago

Somehow I never received the Lex Fridman promotion on my YouTube feed, but I did get another example of it. The Daily Wire (the Ben Shapiro folks) decided they needed a personality to reach da yutes, so they auditioned and basically created Brett Cooper. She’s a product, an actress hired for the role. She has a nice, fresh-scrubbed, girl next door look to her*, pretty but not overly sexualized, and she literally just does an “I’m a cute young chick” version of exactly the same topics on the same day being done by their “adult” hosts, and they pushed her… Read more »

ArthurinCali
Reply to  Vizzini
1 year ago

Whoa, you are right. I did a quick image search and she is literally BS with a wig.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

There are endocrinological disorders wherein XY-chromosomed fetuses develop only female features, and grow up to believe that they are simply infertile women, but only genetic testing can prove that they actually have a Y-chromosome. The olympic track athlete, Caster Semenya, suffered from one such disorder. Just off the top of my head, the occurrences of these disorders are on the order of 1-in-10,000 [or maybe 1-in-100,000?] of all ostensible females. But lately I’ve been wondering whether, in the j00ish community, it might be a whole lot more like 1-in-1000 [or maybe even 1-in-100]. If a statistically significant percentage of all… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  ArthurinCali
1 year ago

That is funny. I clicked on one of her stories. It was about JLo raising a tranny child. It was about celebs raising trannies. Before the paywall blur out it said that Dwayne Wade is raising a tranny. That is a name from back before sportzball was banished in my life. I found that hysterical. Tragic for the child, but quite funny. I wonder if LeBron The Scholar let’s Wade’s kid play with his. This has gotten weird very quickly. I am starting to see all of this as a test. If you are willing to stand up for yourself… Read more »

David Wright
Member
1 year ago

A bit of an eye opener for Matt Walsh this week when the so called conservative grifters took him on for being too mean to that creep tranny(any other kind?) Dylan Mulvaney. Kind of like thinking National Review is really conservative until go time comes and they build their case for surrender and slither back. The two conservative fakes from Triggernometry even slyly suggested Matt might be ‘too into Dylan” . All of them are like this when the time comes to act and fight and we then realize they never were in this for any reason other than grift… Read more »

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  David Wright
1 year ago

Jordan Peterson wants to be the spiritual heir of Robert Scruton (RIP).

Well I have met Robert Scruton, and you, sir, are no Robert Scruton.

(Tongue in cheek, of course. When you’re around someone as smart as Scruton or Feynman, it’s best to shut up and learn)

Wkathman
Wkathman
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 year ago

Has Jordan Peterson said anything that leads you to believe he’s emulating Roger Scruton? Scruton was far too sophisticated to peddle something as banal as self-help. Of course, Peterson’s self-help is cloaked in such gratuitous and excessive verbiage that it’s hard to blame normies for falling for it.

I generally refrain from speculating about the motives of people I don’t know personally. While it’s possible Peterson is a straight-up grifter, my suspicion is that he’s an articulate lost soul speaking to other lost souls. Blind leading the blind.

Robert
Robert
Reply to  David Wright
1 year ago

The whole game was always to get conservatives to treat crazy leftists with respect. They could disagree but as long as they were respectful, that gave liberals the validation they needed.

So I think Matt Walsh has the right approach. We wouldn’t treat Charles Manson like he’s some deep thinker and engage his ideas. So why be so respectful to a transsexual who’s pushing an agenda that will hurt children.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Robert
1 year ago

Something tells me Walsh is sincere. At some point he will have enough money to get off the reservation and build his own. I’ve seen him confronted with the question in public and it knocked him back. I hope I am right about him. As things unravel, we’ll need defectors with an audience and he remains a possibility.

David Wright
Member
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

Exactly my take on Matt. I think eventually he will have to make a choice and move on. No way is there a certainty it won’t be money over principles, even the best of us are weakened. Pray for him.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  David Wright
1 year ago

To his credit, Walsh doubled down. He distills the tranny issue down to its easily-understood essence. These freaks and their supporters are openly attacking his children, his flesh and blood, and the time to throttle them is now. That’s non-negotiable. He basically made the point that’s been made many times on this site — victory comes first, pieties wait until after your opponents surrender.

KGB
KGB
1 year ago

I don’t think you’ll see the Chinese fare any better with this younger generation. In fact, I suggest the lack of diversity makes them even more robotic and detached from reality. If you’ve been to the Far East you’ll witness youth addicted to screen time at a level that surpasses anything seen here. Stop in a McDonalds and you’re confronted with an eerie silence despite being surrounded by other humans. What you’ll see is a dozen or so teens completely unaware of their surroundings, moving only their thumbs. A half hour will go by and they won’t change their posture… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

It may well be that east Asians are naturally robotic and that diversity has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

KGB: Saw this in Asia in 1990. Everyone had a cellphone (not us, of course – husband may have had a pager) and everyone was always on it. They might live in a shoebox apartment, but they had the latest and most expensive phone models at the time. Huge status symbol and part of the whole kiasu mentality.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  3g4me
1 year ago

I saw a massive change in one year. In 1996 I spent time in Korea and cell phones were still a novelty. Just 12 months later I began a year-long stay in Taiwan and at least 90% of the people had cell phones. It took the States a few more years to reach usage at that level.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

Z’s quip reminds me of the conservative hand wringing many years ago when the Chinese government would crack down on Internet parlors. It was framed as a fight over freedom of speech, but any slight investigation revealed that these were just seedy places where young people were literally gaming themselves to death.

Wkathman
Wkathman
1 year ago

I was one of those naive dreamers who once imagined that the Internet might offer us some kind of salvation from many of the ills of civilization. It’s become all too obvious, however, that the forever-online phenomenon among younger folks is producing a generation of perfect pod people. They’re no longer quite “human” in the way that term was traditionally understood. They’re turning into bug men. Funny thing about Mike Cernovich — he’s an honest-to-goodness lawyer. It’s hard to believe he passed the bar exam. I guess grifting online is now easier and more profitable than doing it in a… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Wkathman
1 year ago

What they are is cyborgs. Their digitial appurtenances might as well by integral parts of their physiognomies.

Mr C
Mr C
1 year ago

I’m a bit puzzled on this one. I flowed you until the very end. I disagree that we need a segregated internet. Real power of separation comes when we are able to pick and chose when to live in the digital world and when not to. Leave the full time residents to their own devices. If you tune out of social media and use the handy stuff, you are essentially segregated from the weirdos. Online banking, ordering a pizza, sending email – these are all transactional and don’t require you to lose your mind. The above names you mentioned aren’t… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Mr C
1 year ago

Almost all of the gas pumps in my area transmit videos that promote worship of blacks and degeneracy while I pump my gas. At high volume. You can’t turn them off.

Hard to avoid this one. Irritates me to the point of fury.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
1 year ago

“clot” adams presents an interesting example of this phenomena, this morning. he has a video up where he recommends white people live apart from blacks, and stop trying to help them. he gives a number of reasons, but the one that i think is what affected him the most, is seeing videos of blacks beating up on whites. i have never been a fan of our african brethren, but seeing videos of them chimping out – mostly with each other, too – has really changed how i think of them. to me they are a bestial sub-species that really should… Read more »

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

PA was hypothesizing this morning that perhaps Adams had made his own personal peace with the reality that the v@xxx is gonna ki11 him, and so Adams had simply decided to DNGAF anymoar.

[PA World & Times]

Certainly as I was watching Adams, I was thinking that there can’t be more than an handful of newspapers in the USA which would continue to publish the adventures of Dogbert.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Bourbon
1 year ago

yah, he’s going to be getting a lot of blowback for his latest diatribe. i think he’d already lost most of his syndication, so maybe he doesn’t have anything left to lose (as the song goes).

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Bourbon
1 year ago

Wow, I didn’t see that video coming. To your point, Bourbon, I kept waiting for Rush Limbaugh to start addressing uncomfortable truths while he was running out the clock. He had a chance to do us a great service. But I should have known better than to expect anything from a guy who prided himself on hiring a fudge packer to sing at his wedding.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

KGB: “kept waiting for Rush Limbaugh to start addressing uncomfortable truths…” Towards the end, you could tell that Rush knew what was happening – several times I heard him refer to “whomever it is who is actually calling the shots behind the scenes”, or words to that effect. It was obvious that Rush understood the ostensible protagonists of public life were in fact being managed behind the scenes by private actors & entities whose names we do not know. For some reason, though, Rush declined to push it any further. Maybe he was trying to exist Stage Left gracefully? I… Read more »

miforest
Member
Reply to  Bourbon
1 year ago

rush was almost a decade older than me. he had been an adult during the late sixties amd early seventies. truly americas salad days. given he got his information mostly from mainstream sources he probably did the best he could . I think the realization that politics is just theater to keep us occupied wasn’t real for him until the very last.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

Is that really true? Do you have a link to said video?

Robert
Robert
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

White people have been trying to get away for 60 years – White flight. But the federal government has programs to chase us doen no matter where we go.

Neon_Bluebeard
Neon_Bluebeard
Reply to  Robert
1 year ago

This is my position. They view us as “enemies” and white flight seems to trigger their predator instinct and thus they will pursue us no matter where we flee too.

What is needed is a good old fake retreat… mongol style.

A guy can dream…

C matt
C matt
Reply to  Neon_Bluebeard
1 year ago

Not enemies – prey.

WCiv911
WCiv911
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

Tis a case wherein a majority of rotten apples spoils the whole barrel.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  WCiv911
1 year ago

rotten bananas/bunch more apropos?

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  WCiv911
1 year ago

WCiv911: Poor analogy; implies there’s a plurality of ‘good ones.’ Not so. Better analogy is the tried and true one of how much shite are you willing to mix into your ice cream and still eat it, and still call it ice cream.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  3g4me
1 year ago

@3g4me – “Better analogy is the tried and true one of how much shite are you willing to mix into your ice cream and still eat it, and still call it ice cream.” I nearly spit out my drink. LOL. There is no such thing as a “good black”. There are some “less bad” than others, but every one of them will always take up for one of their own when it comes down to it. Their entire identity is construed of their “blackness” and they hate you. Every black person has closed door discussions about how much they hate… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Tired Citizen
1 year ago

“but every one of them will always take up for one of their own when it comes down to it” This is the point that many friendly race realist overlook. Ramzpaul is a good example. Most of the times that he criticizes black criminality, he will mention than most blacks are good people that he likes. But almost all of these good blacks will support the worst of their race over the values that you believe that you share with them. Tribalism. Ethnocentrism. For those old enough to remember, the OJ verdict of innocent was a lifting of the veil.… Read more »

WCiv911
WCiv911
Reply to  3g4me
1 year ago

White race traitors like FJB, the Clintons, the white Presidents of 100 American Colleges, the Pope, the white Soros selected DA’s in many of our lawless cities have done more to dispel the notion that it’s OK to be white than Justice Clarance Thomas.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

There is no better feeling for me now than when fantasy world people finally have a head on collision with reality. It is absolutely stunning to see how they react. It is an amazing spectacle because they are just dumbfounded. “This isn’t supposed to happen!”. That’s what happened with Clot.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

“… if they were all to go away, mankind would be improved by subtraction…”

What’s the old saw, “…if we sent them all back to Africa, that would raise both country’s IQ’s…”. 😉

RealityRules
RealityRules
1 year ago

Shapiro was very coy in his double-sided play of the vaccine. For a guy who rails on about identity politics he sure is into parading about his identity. Ba-dats Ba-dats Ba-dats All Folks!

Clown World!

KGB
KGB
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

You may not have known this but his sister is a doctor. No really. He doesn’t mention it often, but it’s true. So I’m sure he was getting the “safe and effective” spiel over shabbat dinner.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

all of israel went in big for the vaxx. and they have the increased mortality stats to show for it! shapiro won’t be able to talk his way out of the adverse effects, if he got the vaxx himself.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

Yes. Israel is an interesting case. They went all in. However, once it became apparent it didn’t work and that it might just be harmful they removed their Covid police state pretty quickly. Israel really is a model for what the US should be. Does the govt. there abuse its power? Of course. But in the end, they are a people and they need their people healthy, smart and protected from population replacement migration to survive. In the early days there were a lot of Ha-aretz articles promoting how it was Jews who had been at the forefront of the… Read more »

C matt
C matt
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

Difference is Israel is a government of their people by their people and for their people.

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

Is that the one with the rack?

KGB
KGB
Reply to  BigJimSportCamper
1 year ago

Whoops, it’s his wife, not his sister, that’s the MD. The rest still stands. Odds are she fell in line with the rest of the medical charlatans.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  BigJimSportCamper
1 year ago

I’m playing through Skyrim for the first time and one of the tavern wenches is an Argonian (i.e., lizard) with big breasts. Now, why a lizard would have breasts…I dunno, but sissy Shapiro reminds me of the lizard woman, some weird combination of revolting and hot.

Ploppy
Ploppy
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
1 year ago

Considering the ridiculous proportions of human breasts relative to other mammals, one could argue that humanoid creatures tend towards sexual selection for such characteristics as bipeds find it inconvenient to sniff each others’ assholes in order to determine sexual attractiveness.

If they are reptiles they shouldn’t have nipples though. That would just be silly.

The Other Vince
The Other Vince
Reply to  KGB
1 year ago

His wife is a doctor. And he has admitted to getting vaccinated, if that’s what is being discussed here. Otherwise, he just really wants to win debates, in an academic sense. He seems to think the world is just one giant debate club, truth or consequences be damned. Which it is, for a certain group of people who hold no real allegiance to the country they live in, because they have this other little country they can flee to if things get too hairy. Because they have a special handshake to get in. He is wrong about things quite often,… Read more »

Wkathman
Wkathman
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

“Identity for me but not for thee!” Ben Shapiro is basically a used car salesman of conservatism. He talks fast, in a remarkably irritating tone, pitching talking points that usually sound outdated, as if he’s stuck in 1993 or something (only when he bangs on about trannies does he come a little closer to our current year). Plus, Shapiro seems overtly calculated, as you hinted at in regard to his vaccine stance. Everything he says and does appears exclusively designed to pad his own wallet and enhance his brand. It comes off as soulless. One wonders if the man truly… Read more »

imbroglio
imbroglio
1 year ago

Ben Shapiro’s prominence puzzles me, leaving aside the content, because the guy talks so fast and swallows his words so badly that it’s near impossible to get what he’s saying. Same with Candace Owens. I don’t understand why their handlers don’t get them to take much needed vocal training.

This virtual reality also account for the rise of cardboard (if there’s still cardboard) characters like Mayor Pete and Kamala. Why wouldn’t a digital visit to East Palestine (such irony in a name) be just as good as an in person visit? Same with the Southern “border.” And why the rush?

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  imbroglio
1 year ago

Everything about Shapiro is fake and manufactured, except his Jewishness…
But I think the internet has caused public figures, in many cases, to reveal who they really are…conmen and grifters can’t resist the impulse to be themselves, while the minority of pretty honest and straightforward types stand out in contrast…The main separator of grifters and legitimate people being that the latter will admit that they have been wrong sometimes…..

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  imbroglio
1 year ago

About 15 or 20 years ago, I started wondering why all the young actors & actresses in hollyweird & ta1mudvision couldn’t speak properly anymore. You could blame it on the s0d0my & the sapphistry – the dykes whistling their S’s and the ph@gz lisping their S’s, and everyone sounding as though they have about 8 oz of saliva gurgling in their mouths. But more recently I’ve been toying with several different explanations, such as: 1) The Sanhedrin of the Frankfurt School believe that words no longer carry the power they once did, and that visuals & musical sound effects now… Read more »