Tag: build your own platforms

Elon and the Deplorables

photog 6 Comments Uncategorized , , , , ,

Elon Musk has jumped into the middle of the culture war with both feet you could say.  He’s spent fifty-five billion dollars buying a company that the Left thinks must belong to them and that has ticked off the powers that be.  He’s refused to disenfranchise the various deniers; COVID, climate, election, you name it.  He’s even pardoned Donald Trump.  And now he’s unbanned everyone who hasn’t broken the law getting kicked off.  He’s a heretic and must be punished!

Essentially, he’s embraced the deplorables.  Why?  I have a theory.

I think Elon Musk sees an opportunity.  The cultural divide in the United States is a powerful force.  And power, if harnessed correctly is one of the most valuable commodities there is.  The endless conflict between the Left and Right on Twitter is far from a useful activity.  Nevertheless, it is an energetic process.  It doesn’t produce much light but it does produce heat.  And heat is a kind of energy.  And it attracts attention and in some ways that was the main product that Twitter sold during the Trump presidency.  Even with the biased treatment of the two political sides there was an active interest in the antics on Twitter.

And yet Twitter never made any money.  And as the field of battle on Twitter became more and more tilted against the Right it lost more and more money.  I think Elon realized that Twitter was run by very stupid people that had no clue how to harness the tool they’d been given by the government.  After all, the big tech companies exist because the intelligence agencies subsidize their operation in order to use their data feeds as surveillance resources.

I think he realized that if someone smart were running things a profit could be extracted from the operation.  And I’m only guessing, but I suspect he would like to use the outsider status of the deplorables as a marketing mechanism.  Here is an enormous pool of people who have been demonized, mocked and whose purchase preferences have been the target of a campaign of eradication.  Think about it.  Hollywood, television and the major corporations have outlawed anything that doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace and display the woke message.  Old movies and shows have to be remade just to insert abnormal sexual lifestyles and minority characters.  In fact, Hollywood has an actual quota system for actors and production crew.  Straight white men need not apply.

Suppose Elon has decided that this large unappreciated market that is just sitting, waiting for someone to embrace it could make him a lot of money.  Wouldn’t he be the obvious person to take advantage?  And the beauty of it is he doesn’t even have to lose the other part of the market.  He doesn’t have to reject the woke.  All he needs to do is provide an option for each side.

Door Number One could be the present woke system.  It would have all the rainbow and BLM flags flying in the breeze.  There would be trans this, trans that and trans the other thing as far as the eye could see.  Basically, he just links to Disney and Amazon.  But to take advantage of the other half of the world it would require Door Number Two.

It could be a tiny button with a huge warning label that cautioned the general public that down this path are forbidden things.  Books and movies where the cowboys are the good guys and Thomas Jefferson isn’t a monster.  There would be historical dramas about Rome and Greece, Tudor England and the Age of Exploration, where all the actors were (gasp!) white.  It would have an explicit bias toward normalcy and it would be unabashedly proud of the western tradition.  Even Christopher Columbus would still have a place of honor.  Every boy meets girl plot line would feature a real boy and a real girl.  Oh, the horror.  Someone alert GLAAD.

So, Elon Musk is positioned to take advantage of almost half the population looking for someone to sponsor them and sell them things that somehow are now forbidden.  He could be the Jeff Bezos of the Right. His Lord of the Rings series wouldn’t have to have trans-hobbits and boss-girl Galadriel.  He could just follow the books.  His payment system could be PayPal or it could be his own.  And it could be a bank and a crowd funding platform too.  As he’s said he could have his own cell-phone company too.  None of this stuff is rocket science and he is a rocket scientist!  All these things could be packaged to people who currently feel left out by the woke business world.  All he has to do is take our money and get richer.

So, think about it Elon.  Currently you’re losing a billion dollars a year catering to woke snowflakes who spend all their time complaining about their feelings and are too cheap to pay eight dollars a month to be certified on your website that they spend all their time on.  Or you can sell things to people who like to pay cash, believe two plus two equals four, can tell the difference between a man and a woman and only ask for the minimum of respect.  It’s a pretty easy choice.

ZMan Talks About Supporting Your Own Community

photog 2 Comments Current Events , , ,

The ZMan walks the talk in that he supports some dissident friendly businesses on his website.  In this week’s podcast he expounds on why this is going to be more important as the gulf between progressive America and non-progressive people becomes insurmountable..

The quote I liked was:

“For dissidents, the only way forward is to develop a counter-culture, which means politicizing our own lives fully. How you spend your money, where you spend your money and on whom you spend your money must be political. How you live, where you live and with whom you live is political. In order to build a counterculture, the dissident must become a fully political animal.”

Let’s Get Small

 

Forget Politicians, We Need a Huckster

photog 0 Comment Current Events, Trump , ,

One of the reasons that Donald Trump did so well with the American public is that he’s a salesman.  He knows how to talk to people and he knows what they want to hear.  Can you imagine listening to a speech by Mitch McConnell?  Not only is he a hopeless boob of a speaker but he doesn’t have a clue about what the voters want.  And he doesn’t care.  So even in politics you need someone with people skills.

But my point is that politicians can only fight a battle against the Left in Washington and the state capitols.  And, no doubt, winning the political wars is important.  But what is just as important and what has been completely neglected is the social life of the Right.  Currently we are not served by any of the corporations that provide cultural products and services.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Books, movies, games, music and entertainment of all sorts are specifically and intentionally curated to exclude anything that might appeal to the Right.

Go to Amazon and look for books that appeal to you.  You’ll be fighting an uphill battle even if you already know the names of some.  And when they recommend other books (as they always do) they seem to be selected from the LGBTQ Book of the Month Club.  And forget movies and tv.  The number of tolerable selections is miniscule and also hard to find.  And that goes for music, games, comedians, dating services, sports channels and on and on and on.

Recently a very few social media outlets like Rumble and Truth have come into existence.  But these are primarily political outposts that currently have only a small following and don’t fill much of a niche in terms of “social impact.”  And I think the reason for this is that no one with a true huckster’s skills has arrived on the scene.  What is needed is a showman to orchestrate an exciting and engaging social experience.  Someone has to look intelligently at this enormous underserved market and identify a way to make a ton of money serving it.

And honestly, there’s no reason why someone doing this wouldn’t be able to make money off of the rest of the market that isn’t right-wing.  Maybe the blue-haired cat ladies and LGBTQ freaks would boycott it but regular progressives are just as interested in getting stuff at a reasonable price as we are.  You can sell the same dog food and toilet paper to everyone from Karl Marx to Ronald Reagan.  All you have to do is make sure that you have an aisle in your “store” that has our stuff too.

I’m surprised that supposed geniuses like Elon Musk and Peter Thiele haven’t recognized the opportunity to go head-to-head with Bezos and Hollywood.  They could make a fortune.  And all they’d have to do is package it all with some glitz and showmanship.  There’s a demand for wholesome entertainment for children.  And it could start small.  A small studio and a small publishing operation but one that has invested in talented creative types could do extremely well.

This could be a lot more profitable and a lot less expensive than buying Twitter.  Taking money away from Disney and Amazon with their lame Star Wars and Rings of Power franchises is a no-brainer.  They’ve abandoned tens of millions of fans by making blatantly woke and boring products that ignore the underlying stories that these fans value.

So, Musk, Thiele and anyone else who has money and wants to make more of it, open your eyes and put on your ringmaster’s hat, tails, boots and whip and address the “ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages” to pay their ducats for a chance to enter the tent and be entertained.  Just make sure the female trapeze artists are actually women.  And while you’re at it, we wouldn’t complain if they were pretty.

In the Bright Light of Day

photog Current Events, photog's Corner ,

So, I’m finally over my jetlag from the Yellowstone trip.  I lost ten pounds during my trek and I think that discombobulated my system.  I felt low energy and a little bit down.  But last night Camera Girl killed the fatted calf (she made spaghetti, meat balls and sausage) and I feel back to my old self.

And with this physical restoration my mood has improved and I can face the world of Creepy Uncle Joe and his incompetent version of a neo-Stalinist rainbow new world order.  The thing to remember is that we are in a new world.  For example, worrying about the consequences of blue city crime is a waste of time.  Instead, anticipate where you can escape from this problem and in that way prosper despite their dysfunction.

Trying to shore up a dying civilization is a fool’s errand.  When Rome is falling look for Byzantium or the Franks as a new haven of stability.  Or maybe you join the Huns or the Vandals.  At least you’ll have some freedom and a share in the loot.  That’s better than being another Roman serf being worked to death by a Roman or barbarian master.

So that’s my brave talk for today.  The thing for us to do is look for advantage wherever we can find it.  Look for leaders who want to provide a local environment that’s better than the cataclysm that’s Joe’s New World Order.  I think Ron DeSantis is trying to show Floridians that he can do things to counteract the feds and their dysfunctional social agenda.  That’s the kind of thing we need to be looking for.

The order of the day is work arounds and ad hoc solutions to the break down of just about everything.  When the power grid stops being reliable, we’ll need generators and battery back-ups.  When schools become woke grooming academies, we’ll set up educational collectives in our neighborhoods that will evolve into new schools.  When gasoline stations start disappearing, we’ll be like Mad Max in the wasteland looking for the last fuel depot to get us out of the fiefdom of the Lord Humongous on our way to a better place.

It seems bleak but the alternative is just acquiescing to the mindless degradation that our opponents seem fixated on rolling out.  In reality it’s still easier than the precarious existence that was the 18th century American frontier or the nightmare that was the European middle-ages.  We need to begin the process of separating from and building up an identity distinct from the current “America.”  Apparently, there is an enormous group of people who believe in the woke America and being trapped in an environment with them is incredibly painful and unhealthy for us.

Build our own things.  That sounds simple but it will be a full-time job and it will be a continuous battle.  We’re starting to see some results from the conservative Supreme Court.  The decision on religious schools in Maine is the first step in prying education out of the hands of the Left.  More decisions like that will start to turn the tide.  Of course, the Left isn’t just sitting there.  They’ll try to pack the court.  Maybe they’ll win.  If they do then we look further afield for relief.  Maybe we find a state to push back against the feds.  Or maybe we leave these shores if there’s no alternative.  But giving up is not a choice.

How’s that for a more up-beat attitude?

How Do Things Get Better?

photog Current Events , , ,

Even though it’s clear that Biden’s presidency and by extension, the Left’s management of the blue cities and states, and the Left’s social hegemony are all demonstrably crashing and burning around us, it’s not clear to me how we reverse the course we’re on.

For example, the Supreme Court has ruled against Biden’s corporate vaccine mandate.  Okay, but how do we go from there to getting our lives back from all aspects of the COVID regime.  When can we stop pretending that being forced to wear a mask is a normal part of living in a free country?  When will forcing people to have their children injected with an unsafe vaccine be recognized as a crime?  When will we prosecute government doctors for lying about the actual numbers of people being harmed by COVID?  Currently none of those things seem even remotely close to happening.

I won’t even go into the crime wave engulfing the blue cities.  With leftists firmly entrenched in the city governments, there is not even a possibility of those places returning to normalcy in the foreseeable future.  Those areas will become no-go zones for normal people who don’t want to risk life and limb.

I’m afraid the answer to my question is they don’t anytime soon.  We will have to wait until November of this year to see the first chapter to the road to recovery.  When the Dems lose control of the Senate and House that will deprive Dementia Joe of one of his levers of power.  We will no longer have to depend on Joe Manchin to protect us from unlimited looting of the treasury by pork-filled trillion-dollar bills that line the pockets of “green” lobbyists and their Congressional clients.  And it should put an end to corrupt judges that Biden has been seating on the federal judiciary.  But think of it.  We have three more years of this nightmare.

So, what that tells me is the only way things get better is when we make them better ourselves.  And that begins when we stop pretending that we can depend on the federal government and their woke cronies for anything.  Lies and betrayal are their stock in trade.  Look over your assumptions on how you live your life.  For instance, if you live in or near a blue city do you assume that the police department in your area will keep you, your family and your possessions safe?  In the wake of the 2020 riots and looting is that a realistic assumption?  And if not, what is your smartest realistic option?  Should you move?  Should you buy a gun?  Should you make changes in the way you live your life?

These same questions should be asked about the state you live in.  If you’re tired of wearing a mask and being injected with unsafe medicines maybe living in a place like Florida might make more sense.  And that goes for other problems with blue states.  The high cost of living and the restrictions on freedoms are quite oppressive for some people’s tastes.

Look at who your friends are.  Can you depend on them?  Do they believe in what you do?  If not, maybe you need to find some people who do.  Seek out like minded people and get to know them.

And how about the way you spend your money?  Are you supporting the worst corporate offenders when it comes to Woke capitalism?  Coca Cola, Nike, and a whole host of corporations spit in your face every day.  Don’t you think you should go out of your way to seek out the few companies that at least stay neutral on the culture wars and reward them with your patronage.  Maybe you can make it a goal of finding one good company or website or movie every year and spending your money with that thing.  Here’s something easy.  Stop using Google for your search engine.  Use DuckDuckGo.  That will be helping them, hurting Google (infinitesimally) and helping yourself by avoiding Google’s prying eyes.  And most importantly tell ten conservative friends to check out Orion’s Cold Fire.  What better way is there to stick it to Dementia Joe?

My takeaway is things only get better when you act to make them better.  I’m not saying don’t vote for the better candidate.  You must.  But it’s not enough.  Your life has to reflect the things you believe in and that may mean making some changes.  And then maybe things will get better.  At least for you.

Trump Says He’s Preparing to Enter the Social Media Arena

photog Current Events , , ,

Donald Trump is setting up to unveil a social media platform called Truth Social in early 2022.  The company will be a publicly traded entity and will have a some kind of streaming option akin to what YouTube provides.

Well, this is what I said I wanted so let’s see how this goes.  I wish all the success in the world to this enterprise and if it has value I’ll gladly join up.  And if it causes Facebook and Twitter to suffer, then all the better.  Let’s wait and see.

Outcompeting The Left

photog Current Events , , , , , , , ,

Millennials aren’t patriots.  And they aren’t individualists.  They’re mostly sort of like grade-school children.  In fact, grade-school children that went to a really artsy-fartsy grade school.  There’s no way we are going to turn them into revolutionaries, ready to storm the barricades in search of liberty.  They don’t want liberty.  They want a latte.

But millennials will someday soon be the majority of voters in this country.  So even if they don’t believe in what we believe in we can get them to follow us if we can outcompete the woke option.  “What the hell is photog talking about?” you’re probably saying to yourself.  Let me explain.

Currently Silicon Valley is almost entirely composed of woke companies that have been telling millennials for twenty years that they are not only smart but also good.  Google famously had a motto “Don’t be Evil.”  Facebook, Twitter and all the other social sites spend half of their time just banning anyone who won’t acknowledge the need to worship the cult of pronouns.  Undoubtedly that sort of mean girl social selection activity has a definite demographic cohort that will relish that environment.  We call them Karens.  And right now, they seem to be the dominant life-form on planet Earth.  But as powerful as they are, I think there is a very large chunk of the millennial population that would like something more interesting to look at and talk about than Karen’s latest battle against accidental misgendering.

So how hard could it be to come up with a site that’s more interesting than that.  Look at what Substack has recently done.  They provide a platform for (among other things) journalists who are too normal to survive in the woke media environment.  Guys as liberal as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi were hurled into the outer darkness by the likes of Rolling Stone and The Intercept because they thought that journalism should be factual.  Not unbiased mind you, but just not completely fake.  Now they’re making more money than they did previously by committing actual journalism and providing a service to readers who are tired of being lied to.

Other social sites have slowly begun to appear to compete head-to-head with the likes of YouTube and Facebook.  Rumble, Gab and BitChute are tiny players but they provide a service that isn’t available from YouTube.  The market for their product is growing and will continue to do so.  And it is attracting people with deeper pockets like Peter Thiele.

These are the beginnings of competition.  They barely register on Big Tech’s radar.  But that will change.  Better product will draw customers.  And honestly the entertainment value of Facebook and Twitter is pretty low.  I can easily imagine someone monetizing the audience that exists for reality-based news and entertainment.  It will happen and when it does it will attract more than just a right-wing audience.  It will attract everyone except for the left-wing ideologues.  A good example of that is the recent news that Greg Gutfeld was now the “King of Late-Night Comedy.”  Greg Gutfeld isn’t a conservative.  But he’s a libertarian who doesn’t alienate the conservatives who enjoy his humor.  He is vague enough about his own personal beliefs that Trump fans and normies think of him as their guy.  And that’s good enough.  I’d like it better if there were an even more right-wing guy who came on after Gutfeld on Fox News.  Someone a little more edgy but it’s a beginning.  If Fox News were smart, they’d give the Babylon Bee guys their own show too.  Of course, they currently have a YouTube channel of their own but I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube eventually shut them down.  They’re that funny I assume they’ll be considered a threat.

And that’s my point.  The Left has become “all fake all the time.”  In the long run that becomes quite boring.  It can be outcompeted in a marketplace of ideas.  So, all we need to do is create that marketplace and let reality do the rest.

That photog Guy Was Really Smart

photog Current Events ,

I was listening to a podcast on the American Mind where Michael Anton is discussing with one of his colleagues, Machiavelli’s ideas and how they relate to our war with the Woke Left.  And he talked about how this was going to be a long war and nobody should think that taking back the Congress in 2022 or taking back the White House in 2024 will solve all our problems.

And that reminded me of something I wrote back a year ago.  So I went back and reread it.  And I’ll be darned if I wasn’t pretty sharp that day.  And that dove-tailed with something I found today.  It seems that Andrew Torba over at Gab is working on his own version of PayPal.  If he can make that happen he will be in line for canonization as a saint on the Right.  Being able to monetize web content without having to kowtow to the Left is sort of the Holy Grail for folks on our side.

So let me end by quoting my younger self and bask in the glow of my former eloquence….

Once you acknowledge where we currently are, you can begin to adapt to your environment and then thrive in it.  Situational awareness is very important.  Never play to their strengths.  Unless you have an armed bodyguard of special forces men you probably shouldn’t show up at an antifa rally in Portland, Oregon and declare your political beliefs.  If you want to start a fraternal society then make it a religious society that has protected status that can’t be shanghaied by social justice warriors and turned into the next Boy Scouts.  But be sure not to do it in a blue state.  In those areas everything will have to be on a clandestine personal basis.  And a personal basis is the best way to live your personal life anyway.  Know your friends and spend your time with them.  And it doesn’t even have to be your next-door neighbors.  You can make friends on-line and enjoy that experience too.  A shared point of view makes a good basis for association.  Nowadays free association only exists on a personal basis but you can make that work very well for many of the interactions you can choose to have.  This website is a perfect example of free association.  It’s very unlikely that Leftists would want to spend much time here since they’re not interested in the things I like and disagree with more or less 100% of what I believe.  Whereas people who hold similar beliefs with me will feel as though they belong here.  By congregating here we get to spend time with like minded individuals and also pass information back and forth.  Some of it is trivial like a book or a movie that’s interesting.  But maybe one day you hear about a job opportunity or a place to live or a politician that’s helping our side.

Boy that young fellow seems really smart to these old eyes.

Hat Tip to Vox Day for this Link to the Boy Scouts Alternative

photog Current Events, photog's Corner , , ,

Trail Life USA  is a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts of America.  This article that Vox linked to sounds like a hopeful start to an organization that wants to avoid all the mistakes that the Boy Scouts have fallen into.

But just as with the Boy Scouts parents would be taking an enormous risk if they put their children in the hands of people that they don’t know are 100% reliable.  Pedophiles lurk in the shadows of any organization that has access to children.  Mothers and fathers, guard your children and take the time to get involved with all of their activities.  In fact, the correct way to look at one of these organizations is a way to leverage their organization to enrich the outdoor experience you share with your own family.  You have to get involved.  At the very least you must have someone involved who you would trust with your children’s lives.

Arkhaven Comics – A Review

photog Book Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , , , , ,

Vox Day is an idiosyncratic guy who will be remembered, if for no other reason, because he waged the hilarious Rabid Puppies War against the pink science fiction doofuses of WorldCon in 2015 and 2016.  But he is also the proprietor of a book publishing company, Castalia House and recently he has branched into comics with a company called Arkhaven.

Last month Arkhaven started up a comic site that publishes the various stories on-line for free at  https://www.arkhaven.com/  .  I’ve never been a comic book guy.  I did watch a few of the Marvel tv shows when I was a kid and I did bring my grandsons to watch the Marvel movies until they started getting too woke.

But there are at least a couple of comics on this site that I can appreciate.  One is Ben Garrison’s Editorial Cartoons.  Ben’s editorials are from the right and his drawings are clever.

The other that I just started following is a dark fantasy (supernatural) comic called Chicago Typewriter.  It’s very well drawn and the story so far is entertaining.

Anyway, if you have any interest in comics, check out Vox’s site.  I think he should be congratulated for jumping into a field that up till now has been more than dominated by woke publishers who have made their former readers unwelcome.  I hope this venture is a great success and Vox makes a pile of cash.  Vox is one of the few people on our side who has walked the walk and built his own platform.  Kudos to him.