Tag: media

Don’t pay any attention to these online fraudsters. Mike Cernovich explains why:

As you can see, Sawhorse Media has an interest in having people with large social media followings promoting its contest. They use the online presence of me and others to draw attention to its popularity contest.

I received enough votes to be number 3, which means I earned my Shorty Award nomination in Healthy Living fair and square.

(Michael Cernovich was among the top three vote getters in the Healthy Living category of the Shorty Awards.)

I expected Shorty to have some integrity. I can be a controversial person and I would have had no issue with the Shorty Awards pulling my nomination before the nomination period ended.

Yet Sawhorse Media decided to commit fraud on me and my Twitter followers. The Shortys were fine with having me in their contest when I was promoting their contest. When the nomination period ended and I was no longer of use to them, they deleted my nomination and removed me from their website.

After winning enough votes for a nomination, my official Shorty Award page was 404’ed.

The Shorty Awards did not give me any reason for its actions. They simply deleted my page, pretending as if I did not win a Shorty nomination by using my considerable social media presence to promote the Shorty Awards.

The reason you haven’t hitherto seen me write anything about these “awards” is because I figured out they were some sort of weird promotional scam on the basis of their mixed nomination system. They don’t actually want to honor the real social media presences, they just want to have an excuse to give awards to conventional celebrities in order to try to attract mainstream media attention.

I have no doubt that the Ilk could have gotten me on the list, but what would be the point? They simply would have found some lame excuse to DISQUALIFY me, just as they did to my two GGinParis co-hosts, Mike and Milo.

Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos observe that the mainstream media is increasingly unwilling to permit the public to talk back for fear that their lies and inept arguments will be exposed.

It’s no accident that so many of the loudest voices against online comments sections are also political zealots. Jessica Valenti, Arthur Chu, Tauriq Moosa, Anita Sarkeesian: all have come out against comment sections. This isn’t an accident, of course. Psychologists have long been aware that political extremists have the most negative reactions to contrary information. Combine that with a disdain for free speech, a core cultural authoritarian value, and you get a frantic rush to remove the opinions of ordinary people.

But there are also more sinister, elitist motivations. A study conducted by The Washington Post and USA Today found that readers who viewed articles with comments sections were more likely to develop a negative opinion of the news media. Curiously, this effect was seen even when commenters praised the article in question. In other words, when the opinions of journalists and the opinions or ordinary members of the public are placed close together, it leads readers to question the competence of the mainstream media. What horror!

Another study found that reading assertive, aggressive comments could actually sway the opinions of readers. “Don’t read the comments,” warned Ars Technica, “they can make you mistrust real experts.”

It’s a piece of advice that captures the war on comments sections perfectly. Having initially cheered on the death of the “gatekeepers of information,” cultural elites are now scrambling to reinstall those barriers. Too late, they have discovered that people don’t always agree with them – and now they want to push that disagreement into the wilderness of the internet.

As most of you are aware, I am very pro-comments and pro-talking back. And while I have had to go to a higher level of moderation of late due to an unfortunate incident or two, it’s always been my intention to return to unregistered commenting. Which I am doing so now.

However, I would strongly recommend continuing to comment with a registered name as any attempts to abuse the more open system will be met with an immediate response, which will include, but is not limited to, turning the registration requirement on for extended periods of time without warning. This is the last time that I will announce the status; in the future it will be simply turned on, or off, as the moderators and I see fit.

Free speech is important. So is complete anonymity. Respect and support that by refraining from trolling, from “just having fun”, from “making a point”, from “playing a role”, and just as importantly, from responding to the occasional troll.

If I learned one thing from having dinner with Mike in Barcelona, it is that he really knows what he’s talking about with regards to social media. I am absolutely convinced that if he was an attractive, thirty-something blonde woman, he would already have his own show on Fox.

Here is his response to people requesting links from him:

Book reviews by me have led to sales of:

    500 copies of Get Serious
    250 copies of Launch by Jeff Walker
    500 copies of Choose Yourself
    100 copies of SJWs Always Lie
    50 copies of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

The average book sells 250 in its first year. A review from me can sell that many by itself.

Those reviews also sell books forever, as many people find them after Googling, “[book title] review.”

Those are direct sales. Once you factor in word out mouth from your recommendations to your friends, the numbers are much higher.

I’ve sold more pre-sale copies of Essays on Embracing Masculinity in a few days than most authors will ever sell.

That’s not bragging. That’s simply reality.

Be honest. You want links from me because you want money for yourself. You want my links because you want money in your pocket or fame, or whatever.

That doesn’t make you a bad person. Be honest about your motivations when asking me for something. You’re not fooling me.

One reason that Mike, Milo, Roosh and I get along so well in spite of our many obvious differences is that we understand and respect what the others have accomplished in gradually building their platforms. I respect Mike’s mastery of social media, Milo’s incendiary star quality, and Roosh’s dogged courage. But above all, each of us comprehends the importance of being straightforward with the others and presenting a consistent allied front in the face of attacks from enemies and moderates alike.

As Mike notes, most people are short-sighted and self-serving. Such people can never be regarded as allies, not even if they share your beliefs and objectives, because they will turn on you the moment they believe, rightly or wrongly, it is in their immediate interest to do so. There are plenty of people who are regarded as “good” or “nice” who I do not trust at all and with whom I would never ally simply because I have seen them turn on someone for inconsequential reasons.

So, to expand on what Mike is saying a bit, if you want links and if you want assistance from more influential people in social media, you have to demonstrate your credibility and why you merit any such assistence and attention. First, show that you’re useful. Second, and perhaps more importantly, show that you’re loyal to your existing friends and allies; if you can’t demonstrate that, then how is anyone supposed to believe that you will behave any differently with them once they’ve given you what you want?

Translation: if you not only haven’t reviewed Mike’s book, but can’t point to your reviews of anyone else’s books either, why should he review yours? I haven’t been stabbed in the back as often as Mike has, but I have certainly been disappointed to see an individual show his true colors on more than one occasion. Then again, I am more pessimistic about human nature than Mike, so perhaps that is why I am less often surprised to the downside.

Regardless, as Mike says, “You must show you are a man of integrity and loyal.”

Anyone with even a modicum of social media influence is already under a constant barrage of requests, demands, and “hey, I just thought you might be interested” from more directions than you can probably imagine. I’ve lost track of how many new social media platforms alone contact me several times a week, to say nothing of the online advertisers and authors who want me to review their books when I am already behind on Castalia submissions.

Neither Mike nor I are complaining; we are big boys and this comes with the territory. But perhaps it is useful to put these realities into perspective if you’re wondering why you don’t have similar alliances.

In any event, I know I am very, very fortunate to have such a battle-hardened, enthusiastic, and loyal group of readers, regulars, tifosi,
or however you might prefer to label yourself. A few social media
stars have emailed me to express their amazement and awe about the Dread
Ilk, and ask me how they can similarly energize their followings. I
don’t know if my answer, “be very, very evil and show neither mercy nor
remorse to the contemptible foe” was particularly helpful or not, but we Supreme Dark Lords are
nothing if not obliging.

Also, I would be
remiss if I failed to note that the VFM are now 450-strong. And if you hear nothing but silence for months, fear not. Your summons will come in time.

Fredrik de Boer takes a few faltering first steps towards understanding the media:

People often think I instinctively hate political journalists and writers. This is not the case. I’m friendly with some, and a few I consider close friends. I dated a political writer and journalist for years. And I know many to be bright, committed, decent people. That’s why I find it so perplexing that the average professional political commentator is so deeply out of touch, and so unaware that they are. The only thing I can figure is that the professional necessity of being constantly plugged into the news cycle, particularly on Twitter, just gives people an extremely skewed vision of what politics means and is for most people.

What else to make of this piece by Jake Flanagin or this piece by Amanda Marcotte, both of which have the same absurd idea: that the biggest problem that Bernie Sanders faces, politically, is the online conduct of his biggest online fans. The biggest problem! A Jewish socialist from Brooklyn in the land of Reagan, and his biggest problem is a few dozen people on Twitter!

Let’s think about some likely Democrat primary voters. Like, say, a white woman who lives in the greater Cincinnati suburbs, who can’t get enough hours at her part-time job organizing records for a oral surgeon, and whose ex-husband can’t pay her child support because his only income is disability payments. Or a black bus driver in Maryland who’s worried about what’s going to happen to his pension in the next union contract negotiations. Or a Hispanic first grade teacher in Florida who doesn’t know if her school’s funding is going to get cut yet again. Or a retiree in Pennsylvania whose economic security is dependent entirely on Social Security and Medicare. Or a Laotian immigrant in the Bay Area who’s struggling to bring her mother into the country.

Now: which of these people, do you think, is going to vote based on the conduct of Bernie Sanders fans on Twitter?

See, that’s just it. They’re not “bright, committed, decent people”. They’re narcissistic, solipsistic, maleducated, and of barely above-average intelligence. They’re also snobbish, tribal, clueless about any subculture but their own, and possess less self-awareness than the average rock.

Spacebunny and I once had dinner with a pair of legitimately famous journalists. I mean, one name you would recognize and the other is on a first-name basis with Hollywood’s A-list. After dinner, she commented that she couldn’t believe how shallow their knowledge was. And that’s the dirty little secret of the media: they have a surface knowledge of many things and that knowledge barely scratches the surface.

Ask them about anything, from Swaziland to the internal mechanism of the Austrian Business Cycle and they will claim to “have heard of that”. In their world, this passes for fluency, if not perfect mastery. There are few things I enjoy more than addressing a journalist who claims to speak another language in that language. It’s like waving a cross in front of a vampire.