Author: VD

The Gilded Path

Last night’s Darkstream was on the media’s made men, including Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro:

As evidence that I’m not simply conjuring these observations out of thin air, consider this graphic on Ben Shapiro’s “gilded path to prominence”.

Following his departure from Breitbart. Shapiro quickly founded the Daily Wire with funding from its owners, brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, Texas fracking billionaires who supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. The brothers and their wives combined to donate $15 million to a pro-Cruz super PAC in the early election season.

YAF has “Young Americans for Freedom” student chapters at colleges and universities around the country. The nonprofit helps organize and sponsor campus lectures, and Shapiro is one of YAF’s most prolific college speakers. Since 2015, YAF has organized over 35 Shapiro speaking gigs, according to the organization. In November 2017, YAF announced that it would be the “exclusive home” of Shapiro’s 2018–2019 college speaking tour, funded by Fred R. Allen. (It’s unclear who Fred Allen is, and YAF did not return an inquiry about his identity.) The group announced on July 25 that six universities will host Shapiro this fall with the headline, “LOOK OUT SNOWFLAKES.”

The chart below clearly demonstrates the difference between organic popularity and manufactured fake popularity. Or, as one commenter noted, the difference between those who have sold their souls and those who have not. Keep in mind that the yellow line represents Stefan Molyneaux, who has 889,759 YouTube subscribers compared to Ben Shapiro’s 444,386. It’s difficult to see from this graph, but note that for 11 years, from 2004 until early 2016, my Google Trends profile was reliably higher than Shapiro’s despite the best efforts of those propping him up.

And no, I’m not envious at all. I’ve been calling out Shapiro since 2005. Why would I ever envy a cowardly little creature who couldn’t compete with me without selling his soul? I know the price of “success” like that and it is not one that I would ever be willing to pay.

Curiouser and curiouser

Holding Space Films is a boutique production company based in Toronto. Director Patricia Marcoccia began working on a documentary film about now famous public intellectual Jordan Peterson in spring 2015. A year and a half later, he became embroiled in a public controversy about human rights and political correctness. Our first film, SHUT HIM DOWN: The Rise of Jordan Peterson, traces this contentious period with behind-the-scenes footage and multiple perspectives. The film hit the number one spot for 2018 on CBC Docs POV in Canada. We are now working on an extended version of the film for theatrical release.

The end of an era

We are rapidly approaching the end of the Carrier Age with regards to sea power:

They’re the pride of the US fleet: enormous 100,000 tonne, 333m long nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. But Beijing thinks they’re Washington’s achilles heel.

Rear Admiral Lou Yuan has told an audience in Shenzhen that the ongoing disputes over the ownership of the East and South China Seas could be resolved by sinking two US super carriers.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) reports Admiral Lou gave a wide-ranging speech on the state of Sino-US relations. The high-profile, hawkish military commentator reportedly declared the current trade spat was “definitely not simply friction over economics and trade,” but was instead a “prime strategic issue”.

His speech, delivered on December 20 to the 2018 Military Industry List summit, declared that China’s new and highly capable anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles were more than capable of hitting US carriers, despite them being at the centre of a ‘bubble’ of defensive escorts.

“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” Admiral Lou declared.

He said the loss of one super carrier would cost the US the lives of 5000 service men and women. Sinking two would double that toll.

“We’ll see how frightened America is.”

I don’t think it’s an accident that both Russia and China have developed carrier-killer missiles. It’s not so much that they want to get into a conventional war, it’s that for the first time since the end of World War II, they appear to possess the ability to keep the US military from exercising air superiority or even supremacy and controlling the oceans wherever it pleases.

One carrier sinking will forever change the balance of power. And even a shift in US strategy that clearly reflects an awareness of the new vulnerability of its carriers will probably be enough to alter it substantially.

Traffic report 2018

2018 was an unusually challenging year. It was full of deplatformings and bannings, disruptions and disqualifications. It saw the end of Alpha Game due to a lack of interest on my part and it failed to see the final publication of A Sea of Skulls due to a lack of time and focus on my part. It saw the collapse of the Amazon ebook market and a concomitant step backward for Castalia House. On the plus side, it also saw the publication of nearly 30 new comics from Arkhaven and Dark Legion and forced us to take structural steps that should provide a stronger foundation for future growth.

In 2018, Vox Popoli had 32,260,094 Google pageviews. The blog is now running at an average rate of 88,384 daily pageviews, up from an average 85,524 last year. The running annual pageview totals are as follows:

2008: 3,496,757
2009: 4,414,801
2010: 4,827,183
2011: 5,422,628
2012: 6,098,774
2013: 9,340,663
2014: 11,236,085
2015: 16,211,875
2016: 25,817,343
2017: 31,216,357
2018: 32,260,094

The biggest blog news in 2018 was the unexpected retro-cancellation of the successful Alt★Hero:Q crowdfunding campaign by Indiegogo, which not only led to the creation of our own comics site complete with a store and crowdfunding engine, but a successful replacement campaign that raised 42 percent more net than the original cancelled campaign as well. Thanks very much to all 1,657 backers who made that possible!

Another success was the return of Voxiversity and the development of its ancillary Darkstream, which is now averaging 8k views per stream. Look for further advances on the video front in 2019 thanks to the strategery of the Foundation.

We will have some very big announcements in the first two months of the new year, including the introduction of Infogalactic’s first social component. On a personal note, I expect to publish Corporate Cancer by March and A Sea of Skulls in print before June. And I’m very, very pleased to be able to announce that Jeremy Daw has literally just completed the massive task of narrating A Throne of Bones; the audiobook, which we anticipate will exceed 40 hours in total, should be available on the Arkhaven store before the end of March if everything proceeds according to plan.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read VP and to everyone who supports one or more of the various endeavors that have emanated from it. Thanks especially to the Infogalactic Burn Unit, the Alt★Hero backers, the Castalia volunteers, the Brainstorm crew, and the Arkhaven team, all of whom have come together in a spirit of creative cooperation to make these various projects viable. Your participation in these things is invaluable and very much appreciated.

Of course, it would not be an annual traffic report without that old standby, the comparison of VP’s annual traffic to that of the Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction. Some things never grow old. And the ride never ends.

We could hardly blame him

Bridget Phetasy@BridgetPhetasy
I just read the word “pedophobes” and well, I think we are done here, society.

This is what happens when you run away from being called wizard words. The wizards just create more words to control your behavior.

Deus vult.

Sparks flying at Arkhaven

Jon Del Arroz’s superhero romance comic FLYING SPARKS is now available in high-resolution CBZ format at the Arkhaven Comics store.

Due to many requests from our readers for higher-resolution digital comics than the 1280×800 resolution utilized by Amazon Kindle format, Arkhaven and Dark Legion Comics will be releasing all of their new digital editions in 2048+ resolution DRM-free CBZ format for better-quality reading on tablets and smartphones.

Unfortunately, due to Amazon’s requirement of exclusivity for Kindle Select, this means that our digital editions will no longer be available on Kindle Unlimited. They will still be available on Amazon as regular Kindle ebooks.

In other Arkhaven news, the AH:Q 2.1 campaign has been very successfully concluded with 279 new backers. Thanks to all of you who force-multiplied the project. We anticipate the initial release of AH:Q #1 to all the backers by the end of the month. We can also announce that 176 of the original AH:Q backers will submit their joint request for arbitration to Indiegogo next week. The rubble will be bouncing.

Industrial scale wizardry

From Jordan Peterson to The Last Jedi, you simply can’t believe anything that the media tells you about what is big or smart or successful or popular anymore. Because it’s all just corporate gaslighting for profit.

Director Kyle Newman: You look at The Last Jedi, and honestly, I don’t know anybody out here, maybe two people in my life, out of hundreds of people that I’ve talked to, who liked the movie. All the filmmakers I know that won’t talk about it publicly. All the people I know internally, there’s all these people that won’t, even journalists who gave it positive reviews are like, I do that because I need to maintain my access. Privately, there’s a lot of people who really don’t like it.

Geeks and Gamers: So you’re saying that the ones who gave it good reviews really are phony reviews.

Newman: 100 percent. I can’t name them, but yes, 100 percent.

I find it interesting that despite the constant encouragement to “think different” and “question authority” and engage in “critical thinking”, the media devotes an incredible amount of resources to convincing those who consume its products to do precisely the opposite. This would appear to be the inversive wizardry that Owen Benjamin describes, albeit on a giant industrial scale.

That was unexpected

The Bengals finally part ways with Marvin Lewis:

The Bengals officially announced that Marvin Lewis is out as their head coach on Monday morning and the statement from the team called it a mutual decision to part ways.

Cue the drums beating for Eric Bienemy, whether he is ready to make the leap to head coach or not. Affirmative action destroys a lot more people than it helps.

Gase is out at Miami too. I suspect seeing the rapid success of Doug Pederson, Frank Reich, Sean McVey, and Matt Nagy is influencing a lot of owners these days.

The sacrifical Fake Indian

Elizabeth Warren tosses her headdress in the ring:

With a mere 673 days until the 2020 US presidential election, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has announced the formation of an “exploratory committee” to consider a run for the highest office in the land.

In American politics jargon, this means the Democratic senator is most definitely running for president. Warren had repeatedly been named as a possible 2020 candidate since 2016 and even earlier, so her candidacy has come as no surprise to pundits.

(sniff, sniff)

Do you smell that? That’s what TRUMPSLIDE 2020 smells like!

The Hollywood line holds

The Hollywood Mafia managed to kill the Esquire story on director Brian Singer:

J.Michael Trautmann@JMACdaKID
Whatever happened to that @esquire piece??

AJ Benza@RealAJBenza
I’m gonna talk a little on it on the next show (1/2). But, it seems to me what I feared. Possibly a major studio that Singer has either worked for or will be working for soon (Red Sonja perhaps?) stepped in and stopped it. I fear this became a war between lawyers. And Singer won.

But the line won’t hold forever. There is very good reason to believe that #MeToo is a controlled burn meant to protect the serious predators in Hollywood.