Tag: build your own platforms

The Means of Production – Part 1

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So, what to write about tonight?  Tucker?  Elon?  The Biden Crime Family’s Congressional investigation?  Trump and his various legal problems.  The Republican presidential contenders?  Dementia Joe’s sinking ratings?  The crime-drenched cities?  The invasion at the southern border?  The collapsing banks?  Stagflation?  The Ukraine War?  Bud Light’s ongoing sales freefall?

Meh.  Just not in the mood.  Maybe it’s the crazy local things I’m involved in.  Maybe it’s too much same old, same old.

Well for whatever reason, let’s talk about something different.

I was reading recently about a studio that has been producing family friendly movies.  Mostly Christian movies but not exclusively.  Let’s call them Christian friendly.  They recently had a hit with a movie called the Jesus Revolution, “a feel-good movie about hippies who returned to Christ during the 1970s, starring former “Cheers” and “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer – has grossed more than $52 million since its debut just a few weeks ago, making it the most successful film released by studio heavyweight Lionsgate since 2019.”

Many years ago, I remember watching a few of the movies produced by Christian churches and other organizations.  And although it was refreshing to see entertainment that stressed religious values and themes, they were notable for very simplistic plots and amateurish acting.  I guess the cast was more living the moments of the plot rather than acting them.

““The biggest critique on Christian art of the last thirty plus years, is that it’s not good, or it hasn’t been good,” said Terence Berry, COO of Wedgwood Circle, a nonprofit that connects investors and creators to develop projects that are informed by their Christian faith. “And I do think there have been huge strides made in people creating content for the faith market.””

Move forward twenty years and the producers now out there like Wedgwood and Angel Studios are producing movies that can be viewed by mainstream audiences without eye-rolling.  Berry calls it “a third way.”

““Can you offer stuff that is not perceived as faith market, and that is really well done, and it’s good, true, and beautiful, and it’s speaking to larger questions and it is aligned with your faith,” he asked, “but it is done so in a way that allows other people from outside the faith to engage and like that content?””

In the article the writer mentions that these producers are producing movies and arranging theater distribution using both investor and crowd-funded capital.  And the products include movies, music, books, television, and radio shows.  In fact, there are even animated movies in the works.

So why is this interesting?

I think because Hollywood is melting down.  Other than super hero movies Hollywood has only had a very few actual blockbuster hits in the last ten years.  Tom Cruise in Top Gun is that exception that proves the rule.  And it’s especially relevant because it’s one of the few movies that bucks all the stupid trends that have cost Hollywood its audience.  It’s patriotic.  It doesn’t pound away at woke tropes.  It doesn’t replace entertainment with an agenda.  It doesn’t denigrate its audience.

So, with Hollywood marching into the ocean and at the same time starving audiences for wholesome content.  And with streaming and the lower price of computer-generated imaging making fantasy and other genera movies orders of magnitude cheaper than just a few years ago, this is the perfect time for small production companies to provide people with entertainment choices they sorely lack.

And I think it’s finally, finally beginning to happen.  I’ve watched some short sci-fi movies on YouTube that come close to Hollywood level special effects.  And because of how Hollywood is using “diversity, inclusion and equity” there are many unemployed straight, white, male actors, writers, directors and other creatives that could use work.  In such an environment I think we’ll start seeing more and more breakout productions that owe their success to giving people the entertainment that Hollywood refuses to produce.

But here’s the point.  All of these people trying to produce this content didn’t get into it because they always wanted to build their own movie studios.  They’re doing it because the movie studios told them that the content they wanted was wrong and shouldn’t exist.  So, they had to become movie makers.  Same thing with book authors.  The books we like are so evil that the publishers are retroactively changing the text of old classics like Roald Dahl’s children’s books.  Same for music, same for art.  Same for education.  If we want what we think is right we’re going to have to make it ourselves.  Internalize that and employ it as needed in your life and you’ll start changing things for the better.

If you don’t like the crap on display in woke world then search out something better at the fringes.  And if that doesn’t exist, then do it yourself.  That’s the lesson.

I intend to start looking for some of these movie projects and try them out.  I’ll report back on what I find.

Supporting the Revolution

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Every aspect of our lives is touched by the division that splits the people of the United States into two almost completely non-overlapping groups; the Left and the Right.  Sure, there are people who claim they are outside these two groups but they’re wrong.  And that’s because the Left will not let you be exempt.  You’re either inside their orthodoxy or you are a pariah whose destruction they will pursue doggedly.  And for those of us on the Right, we have to struggle to survive this pursuit.

But no one just wants to survive.  We want to enjoy all aspects of life.  We want family, friends and things we can do to make our lives enjoyable.  And we want to forget about the Left and their lunacy whenever we can.  Now I won’t delve into the problems of avoiding the governmental controls that the federal government imposes or the even more onerous controls that blue states force their citizens to endure.  Let’s save all that for another day.

Instead let’s talk about what we can do as individuals to create the options we want in our lives.  A trivial example is the recent outrage over Anheuser Busch and their fake spokeswoman.  Here is an opportunity to use your status as a consumer to punish a company that went out of its way to antagonize its patrons and you can make a statement to the rest of the beer companies that you value a company that at worst stays neutral in the culture wars.  Even better would be finding a company that openly supports traditional values.  But neutrality will do.

Now look at that example.  And translate it into as many other choices and decisions that you make in your life.  The bank you keep your money in, the stores where you buy your groceries, the places you shop for your hobby supplies, the browser you use on the internet, even the social media sites where you interact with the on-line world.  All of these are potential choices.  Of course, some of them will be non-starters.  Amazon, Walmart, Target and the rest of the retailers are hopelessly left-wing.  The best you can do is occasionally try to shop directly from manufacturers who you know to be non-leftist.  That’s not such an easy thing.

But in other cases, there are choices.  Recently, Elon Musk has significantly reduced the anti-right activities on Twitter.  He’s un-banned numerous people on the Right and openly refused to silence even outspoken right-wing voices.  As an experiment I’ve recently decided to pay him his eight bucks a month to get the controversial “blue check” and I’m not saying it’s been some kind of golden ticket to viral success but I do enjoy some of the content I find on Twitter and I feel like I’m supporting a platform that doesn’t hate me.  So, if you have a choice between using Twitter or Facebook well that should be easy.    And I feel a hell of a lot happier with what I pay Twitter compared to the cable bill that supports the likes of CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the lefties that inhabit the various cable networks.  One of these days I’ll cut the cable and just use the channels that don’t hate me.  That will be a big day.

For another example, I use the Brave and DuckDuckGo combination as my browser and search engine respectively.  They respect privacy and block a lot of the ads that usually follow you around the internet.  As for news I use the sites that at least provide both sides on current events.  Real Clear Politics balances their articles about 50/50 between Left and Right.  It’s not ideal but I can just pick and choose based on the sources.

In the future I’m expecting that there will be a major dedicated right-wing news site on the internet with some free and some paywalled content that I will be willing to pay for.  That’s because I expect that Tucker Carlson will be participating in some kind of a larger news/opinion project with some of his more ethical colleagues.  Maybe it will be on Twitter, maybe on substack, but I suspect soon there will be a service that will be worth a few bucks.

And I expect in the future more companies and platforms will start trying to brand themselves as friendly to the Right or to conservatives or traditionalists or some other words to that effect.  Now it’s going to take some vetting to eliminate the phonies and the grifters who just want to jump on a bandwagon.  Probably word of mouth from trusted sources will be most helpful.

But in general, I think it’s a good idea to go out of your way to find a product or service that is produced by people who don’t openly despise you and buy it.  Don’t get ripped off doing it.  The premium for patronizing someone on our side should be reasonable.  Is that 10 or 15%.  Sure.  But not 100%!  And the quality should be comparable, not noticeably inferior.  I remember I tried using a coffee brand because they advertised their sympathy for the military but the coffee wasn’t any good.  So, I had to drop that.

Anyway, you get the picture.  It’s time for us to start putting our money where our mouths are.  Look for worthwhile products on our side and support them.  And if they pan out, pass the info along on social media.

Fight the power baby!

Catering to the Twenty Percent

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Capitalism is all about finding an unfulfilled need and then providing that need at a profit.  Well right now there is an unfulfilled need out there that’s dying to be fulfilled and anyone who provides it will make money hand over fist.  What the Right needs is someone smart who wants to capture our entertainment business.  Look at what the Left has been doing.  They’ve talked corporate America into backing their brand.  Professional sports leagues; the NFL, Major League Baseball even the NHL have kowtowed to BLM, the rainbow mafia and now men in sundresses.  Bud Light, the epitome of normal American consumerism has put the face of a TikTok crossdresser on their beer cans.  Taking the creepiest, most off-putting representatives of the Left and demanding that America embrace them is the standard operating procedure for the Leftist-Industrial complex.

Surely providing people with an alternative to this should be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.  And it’s not like we have to win over the whole country.  We don’t even have to be the majority.  We just want someone to harness the natural market that exists for normal, healthy entertainment.

Think about it.  Without a doubt, there is easily 20% of the total population of the United States who, while they’re trying to relax and be entertained, would pay good money to forget about sexual deviants, BLM, girl bosses or any of the other depraved things that the Left bombards them with.  That’s an enormous market and it’s a motivated one.  Think of all the things you could sell them.  Sporting events, music shows, movies, books, video games, news services, tourist services, conference services, dating services, wedding services, branded apparel, beer and on and on and on.  And all that’s really required is to develop a marketing campaign that captures the imagination of the target population (us) and then delivers the promised services.

But so far no one has attempted this trick.  And that’s probably for a variety of reasons.  You see, none of the existing entertainment companies want to antagonize their leftist friends so they wouldn’t dream of providing services that appeal to normal people.  And those who are interested in doing it don’t have the deep pockets and independence needed to buck the multitude of roadblocks that the government and the woke corporations would throw in their way.

Now interestingly, someone like Elon Musk might just be the perfect combination of entrepreneur, multi-billionaire and contrarian to accomplish something like this.  And the way he would accomplish it would be somewhat different.  Instead of catering specifically to the Right he might try to provide an à la carte approach that allows people of different persuasions to purchase specifically the services and entertainment they prefer.

For instance, imagine if there were a streaming service that provided all the movies and shows that can’t or won’t be made by Netflix or Amazon.  And imagine if all the commercials on that channel were completely devoid of sexual deviancy, anti-whiteness and, in general, left-leaning causes.  Now wouldn’t that be worth more than a couple of bucks a month?  There’s nothing I would enjoy more than to take the money I currently have to hand over to my hated cable provider and instead give it to someone who could arrange that kind of service.

And that’s the point.  If instead of supporting the leftists at Amazon and the other studios and media companies, we could deprive them of all our business and instead reward someone who wants us to have our choices it would impoverish these terrible people.  Think of what would happen if suddenly we stopped sending monthly checks to Amazon and Netflix and ESPN and Disney.  The twenty percent (or more) of the country that would be shutting them out is the difference between those companies thriving and struggling.  In fact, without that group a lot of the worst offenders like Disney and the NFL might just go out of business.  Or possibly they’d have to give up their infuriating behavior and try to lure that 20% back again.

So far no one has jumped into the breach.  The closest that anyone has come to this is Fox News.  And basically, it’s Tucker Carlson that makes up the only mainstream content that speaks to the 20%.  And even Fox is full of leftist content and doesn’t provide much in the way of choice.  But at some point, there will be someone who decides that there is a lot of money being left on the table and picking it up is as easy as saying out loud that men and women are different and that it’s alright to be white.  Now that’s not so hard.

Elon and the Deplorables

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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.