Tag: Darkstream

If 2018 was an unusually challenging year, 2019 was a year of almost non-stop crushing by the Evil Legion of Evil and the extended blog community. Like the previous year, it was full of deplatformings and bannings, disruptions and disqualifications. Unlike the previous year, it also saw the Legion striking back with a vengeance, including a resolution of the Indiegogo deplatforming and a multi-pronged replatforming campaign on behalf of the Big Bear and others directed at Patreon that is still in process.

And while 2019 unfortunately did not see the publication of A Sea of Skulls, it was witness to the creation of Castalia Deluxe and a stupendously successful campaign to bring the Junior Classics back into print. The Castalia crew also managed to get the 31+ hour audiobook for A Throne of Bones out, which was unexpectedly successful as more audiobooks were sold in five months than the ebook and print editions combined had sold in five years. And 2019 also saw the long-delayed publication of Corporate Cancer, which despite its short length was two years in the making.

In 2019, Vox Popoli had 32,757,068 Google pageviews. The blog is now running at an average rate of 89,745 daily pageviews, up a modest 1.5 percent from an average 88,384 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
2019: 32,757,068

I mentioned that readers should look for further advances on the video front in 2019, but I had absolutely no inkling of the massive enthusiasm that would greet the establishment of Unauthorized.TV. What started as a backup plan in the event of a possible YouTube deplatforming has somehow been transformed into one of the more significant activities in which we are involved. Unauthorized ended the year with 15,032 registered users while the Darkstream closed out 2019 with 33,484 subscribers and 698 channel members. And then, of course, there is the smashing success of the Rebel’s Run fundraising, about which you will no doubt hear considerably more in 2020, as well as SocialGalactic 2.0.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read VP and to everyone who supports one or more of the various penumbras that have emanated from it. Thanks especially to the Infogalactic Burn Unit, the Alt★Hero backers, the Castalia authors and volunteers, the Brainstorm crew (about which more in 2020), the Unauthorized subscribers, the Reprehensibles, the Replatformers, 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, regardless of what form it takes. 2019 was a fantastic year. 2020 is going to be epic.

Sadly, due to the capitulation of John Scalzi, who apparently has given up posting no longer posts his blog traffic numbers, the comparison of VP’s annual traffic to that of the Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction is no longer possible. Sometimes victory is bittersweet.

Regardless, the ride never ends.

UPDATE: I am informed me that there were also 625,200 downloads of the podcast derived from the Darkstream in 2019, which was up from 500 downloads in 2018. I am skeptical that we can maintain that rate of growth in 2020, but then, you never know.

I’m giving Davey Crocko, RealOwenBenjamin, ultrafuzzyforeigner, and the rest of the Unauthorized-hating gamma trolls on Reddit and YouTube 24 hours to come clean, declare their real identities, admit their actions, and thereby avoid having the wrath of the VFM and the Legal Legion of Evil crash down upon their heads.

I have never filed a copyright violation before nor had anyone do so on my behalf, but starting next week, the Legal Legion lawyers will begin filing copyright violations against every YouTube attack video that broadcasts content from the Darkstream without permission. And note that I am not only doing this of my own accord, but also at the specific request of some of our technology partners that these individuals have been contacting and with whose contracts they have been attempting to tortiously interfere.

As for those who say this is a waste of time, rest assured that it is not. Lines – serious criminal lines that consist of state and federal laws – have been crossed and we will no longer look the other way. Instead, we intend to utilize the full force of the techniques and tactics that have been developed and refined by the Rabid Puppies, the VFM, and the LLoE.

And since we don’t know precisely who was responsible for exactly which action against us and we can’t easily distinguish the civil tortfeasors from the felonious criminals, we have no choice but to begin systematically rolling them up and forcing them to admit their deeds, beginning with the most obvious culprits.

If you find the comments here to be sub-standard, you really need to read the YouTube comments to put them in perspective:

Owen banned me for saying something was “pretty funny” when I was laughing my ass off in a public library, after being a fan for a year and sharing essentially my life story with him and desperately asking him to buy me a bus ticket from Colorado to Texas. He isn’t a leader, he’s an entertainer, and I’m a free-thinking millennial with a different vernacular, I don’t fit in, and he doesn’t want that kind of responsibility. He used to ban people for saying lol because it looks like a person drowning so I shouldn’t have taken it too personally, but I did. I’m renouncing my American citizenship anyway, this country and its people have done nothing but oppress me and mock me and act like I’m lucky to even be a free man when that’s to be expected. I’m not a criminal. No one needs me. I get it. I just want to be treated like a respectable dishwasher and get off the streets. There’s no reason that I should have such a hard time demanding the smallest amount of respect. Respect shouldn’t have to be earned, it’s called etiquette, and lack of it should certainly lead to loss of respect. Respecting a fellow American, or Bear, or former Bear in this case should be a given, but it isn’t. That’s why I was banned.

To which I responded:

That is so sad and wrong! I will call Owen at once and DEMAND that you be unbanned from his channel at once. I will also ask him to build you a nice little house on his property with his own hands, constructed with wood from trees he has personally cut down, complete with your own goat to provide milk for your morning tea. No, don’t thank me, it’s really the least you deserve! I am so sorry that you had to experience such horror. Thank you for your service. 

This is the quiz for the Darkstream Book Club: Mere Christianity II.

1. What did the older thinkers really mean by “The Law of Nature”.

• a) The physical laws of Creation.
• b) The Law of Human Nature.
• c) The Law of Tooth and Claw.
• d) Sir Isaac Newton’s three Laws of Thermodynamics

2. What was the reason for the name being given to the Law of Nature?

• a) The law dealt with the natural world.
• b) The law was based on the natural environment.
• c) The law was imposed by human government.
• d) No one needed to be taught it.

3. In what way does Lewis suggest that the Nazis cannot be criticized for their actions?

• a) In the absence of an accepted standard for human behavior.
• b) In the absence of Christianity.
• c) On the basis of moral relativity.
• d) Because Lewis more or less agreed with Nazi principles.

4. Why do some people say the Law of Nature is unsound?

• a) Because the laws of nature can’t apply to artificial social constructs.
• b) Because different ages have different moralities.
• c) Because it contradicts the teachings of Christianity.
• d) Because the Law of Nature is a social construct.

5. What two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves?

• a) I think, therefore I am.
• b) The Law of Nature exists and it is broken.
• c) Right and wrong are illusions in which we must believe in order to have a civil society.
• d) Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, love under law.

Mere Christianity I

I watched the five-part miniseries on Chernobyl with Spacebunny over the last month and it was really good. And while the show did not tie the historical Soviet situation to the current situation faced by the West, it would be hard for any viewer to fail to miss the obvious analogy between the way in which the systematic untruths of the Soviet system led to the meltdown of the reactor and the way the systematic untruths of the West in general, and the USA in particular, are leading to war, ethnic conflict, and societal meltdown.

I addressed this analogy on the 400th Darkstream on Unauthorized. Watch it there, discuss it here.

In which I announce AH:Q #1: Where We Go One is now in print on Unauthorized and discuss a few other tangential matters.

You can pick up a gold logo edition here, but supplies are very limited because the first few hundred are reserved for AH:Q campaign backers.

KG confirms what everyone had already realized about him:

Yes, everyone and anyone that disagrees with you is pedantic and playing secret king and needs to go play elsewhere. Sure guy.

Maybe while you’re responding to reasonable opinion comments with insults, assuming anyone that disagrees is a gamma fag trying to be a smart boy, and making nationalism claims while living in my nation instead of your own, you’ll notice you ran away from your nation to play secret king of a gay blog that just reposts drudge articles.

Was a long time reader/viewer, but I won’t bother your blackpilling gamma rage with my presence any longer. Sorry.

It would certainly be nice if KG would just go away and stay away for good, but we all know he won’t. Because gamma. Speaking of which, “reasonable opinion comments” is the gamma tell here, being a form of the more common “honest and respectful criticism”.

Gammas never realize that it isn’t the fact of their disagreement that enables me to identify them, but the way they go about expressing that disagreement. Notice how rapidly the ever-present anger and desire for revenge boils to the surface, even among purported fans, in response to being corrected and criticized.

As I pointed out last night, Friedrich Nietsche clearly identified the gamma behavioral pattern, although he called them “the tarantulas”.

Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.

Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones!

But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.

Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word “justice.”

Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge— that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”— thus do they talk to one another.

“Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us”— thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.

On a not-at-all-unrelated note, you can see the number of thumbs-down on my recent YouTube Darkstreams. But what you can’t see are the angry, vengeful comments that are spammed and hidden from the channel, of which there are literally hundreds, all posted by gammas alternatively cursing, LOLing, mocking, pretending to be indifferent, and furiously ranting.

The One True and Confirmed Leader of the Alt-Right, Ben Shapiro, has a very important message to his fellow white supremacists everywhere. ANTIFA HAS BROKEN THE CODE!

One of the nice things about Unauthorized is that we can simply save YouTube the trouble of banning certain videos and not bother putting them up there in the first place.