Tag: media

Mike Cernovich explains social media

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.

Anti-GamerGate bias in the media

That’s not exactly a surprise. What is a little surprising is the way in which so-called journalists at The Guardian couldn’t even bother to hide the fact that they were taking sides from the very start:

The Guardian put out a piece of trash journalism, calling for the rest of the media to stop giving positive coverage to our consumer revolt. You see, when the SJWs start getting their asses kicked, like GamerGate has been doing, their go-to response is to change the rules of the game. So, they put out editorials designed to shame the few non-biased colleagues they have into not covering us objectively. I can guarantee you that Ricky Camilleri, of HuffPost Live, has gotten a lot of shit for even doing the segment on us yesterday. That’s how they control the narrative.

Earlier this evening, I was provided with an internal email from the technology editor of The Guardian, Jemima Kiss. She thought she was sending it to her staff, but instead unknowingly sent it to an associate of TheRalphRetort.com. After reading it, you can see that we never had a chance with her, or The Guardian. They’ve had their minds made up for quite sometime (at least as far back as Sept. 23rd).

If I had to guess, I would imagine there are many more emails like that, stretching back even further. She shows a clear disdain for our consumer campaign. I don’t think such a woman could ever be impartial. Outright dismissing our claims as “idiotic?” That’s not how a professional journalist is supposed to behave.

This is a cultural war, people. Show them no mercy and give them no quarter. They’re not going to play fair-and-balanced, so they don’t deserve even a modicum of restraint from us.

Notice how they actually brought in Leigh Alexander, of all people, to explain to their reporters what #GamerGate was really about. That’s like bringing in Charles Manson to talk about Sharon Tate.

Good… and the conclusion would be?

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.

You heard it here first

From our Eastern European friends:

It’s official, foreign relations minister Péter Szijjártó announced that tonight at midnight Croatian border will be shut down.

UPDATE:

Funny thing is happening, probably this news really appeared first on
your blog in English, there is almost no coverage of this. Now it is 19:44, the announcement was at about 15.00 hungarian time. I was checking news pages many times today, both Hungarian and English/American. Now
it is on front page in the Hungarian ones, but it wasn’t like this a
few hours before, and for example on very popular liberal news page
ORIGO, you can barely see it between the first 10 bullshit/less
important news.

Just now it is on the front
page of CNN, hidden between a lot of other news, it is not even on the
front page of BBC, you can only find it if you search. Same with
Reuters, only if you search. One of the “news line” short news on
RT.com. For some reason, they are not enthusiastic covering this.
With
the serbian closure, it was all over the place, because people were
expecting riots and finger pointing poor treatment of migrants. They got a little of what they expected.
Croatian
interior minister Ranko Ostojic just announced that they will take
people to Slovenian border, and another Slovenian politician said that
they are prepared for the influx, until countries further north keep
their borders open (Germany). So they will basically continue the same organized transport of migrants to Germany, only through Slovenia. 
 
I don’t expect riots, neither does mainstream media. So
they do not want to tell people, that Hungary just quietly but surely
stuck to its plan, closed the borders, and is not doing it
alone, but in cooperation with 4 other countries.
The
other day I wrote that Czech soldiers already arrived, Slovak soldiers
and policemen will arrive, and the Poles will probably help with
something also. Well, Ewa Kopacz Polish PM announced today, that they
are sending to Hungary 70 border police officials, many jeeps, including
5 that have night vision devices built in.

The coverage of the first border closing backfired on the multicultis. Nearly everyone applauded the Hungarian action. That’s why they’re keeping the cameras away from this one.

Media with a spine

Ocala Post appears to be one of the few media outlets not infested with SJWs attempting to conceal black criminality:

 Ocala Post recently received several e-mails and Facebook messages from individuals complaining about the names and photos of juvenile criminals, drug dealers, and a recently arrested business owner, being used in some of Ocala Post’s recent articles.

One Facebook message called an article slander, defamation of character, and made mention that it was causing “pain and suffering.” An e-mail also asked; “WYA?” Which is street slang for “where you at.” A common phrase used by criminals and wannabe gangsters when they intend to inflict harm upon another person.

Oddly enough, one e-mail even accused an Ocala Post article of fueling an arrestee’s drug addiction.

Some of the threats have included lawsuits, burning Ocala Post to the ground, and, in so many words, the loss of life.

This is not the first time Ocala Post has dealt with these types of issues.

RESPONSE FROM THE EDITOR:

It is not only absurd, but also very unlikely that Ocala Post contributed to an individual’s drug addiction.

In order for an article to be considered slander or defamation of character, the contents of the article would need to be false.

Ocala Post will stop printing names in articles, and stop using photos, when criminals stop breaking the law. As long as Freedom of the Press is protected by the United States Constitution, and Florida allows the press access to public records, Ocala Post will continue to print the names and photos of criminals in all articles. Ocala Post staff are instructed not to leave out any details from official reports, unlike other media outlets. And Ocala Post always strives for accuracy.

Marion County residents have an absolute right to know who is living next door.

We’ve now reached a state where the media is more concerned about hiding news than reporting it. If they’re not going to report the identities of the newsmakers, why report the news in the first place? Why not simply announce daily that neither crime nor homosexuality exist in the Glorious Democratic Republic, which has always been at war with Eastasia?

I particularly enjoyed this brutal rhetorical beatdown: “If you do not wish to have your child’s name or photo published on Ocala
Post, perhaps you as the parent should be more aware of your child’s
behavioral problems and know their whereabouts at 2 a.m.”

Never apologize to SJWs

Or to the media, as both Donald Trump and Ann Coulter, among others, have repeatedly demonstrated:

Appearing with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show, Donald Trump was in the mood to tweak his own persona — to a point. “I think apologizing’s a great thing,” he said. “But you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

It’s funny because it’s true: Trump’s steadfast refusal to apologize for his controversial antics may be the most striking thing about him. A significant portion of the Republican base craves it, and a handful of pro-Trump conservative pundits does, too. None of them looms larger, perhaps, than Ann Coulter.

It makes sense. Trump has given political expression to a model of conservative discourse perfected by Coulter and subsequently emulated by Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and others: 1) Say something controversial or provocative and get a ton of attention in the process. 2) When the media and the Left inevitably demand an apology, adamantly refuse to provide one, driving your critics batty and burnishing your conservative credentials with the base. It’s been Coulter’s modus operandi for her entire, lucrative career, and now Trump has brought it to the campaign trail: A real conservative never says he’s sorry….

Coulter has made a fine living with the same mantra for decades. “Never apologize, at least not for what liberals want you to apologize for,” she advised in her 2004 book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). It’s a rule her critics know she follows all-too-well.

During the George W. Bush years, Coulter’s use of the terms “raghead” and “faggot” in speeches at CPAC generated some furious reactions but no public contrition. In 2012, the Today Show spotlighted a father who was demanding that she apologize for using the term “retarded,” and cease using it in the future. She insisted she wasn’t really referring to the mentally handicapped and said, “screw them!” when asked about her critics in a radio interview with Alan Colmes. (As recently as this May, Coulter wrote a column entitled, “Knowing What We Know Now, Would You Say Jeb Bush Is Retarded?”) Later that year, a Latino GOP group demanded she apologize for a column entitled, “America Nears el Tipping Pointo.” She declined to do so.

Coulter’s remarks have attracted the ire of bigger fish on the right, as well. A few months ago, Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren called on her to apologize for saying that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is of Indian Sikh heritage, “is an immigrant and does not understand America’s history.” No such apology was forthcoming.

What I find remarkable is the way that despite the clear and conclusive evidence that a public apology always does more harm than good, people are STILL dumb enough to offer up public apologies. Matt Damon is only the latest to learn this very simple and obvious fact; Brad Torgersen learned the same thing when he made the mistake of apologizing to John Scalzi. As will not surprise anyone who has read SJWs Always Lie, Scalzi immediately took Brad’s apology and turned it into a weapon he used to launch an attack on the Sad Puppy leader.

Look at it this way. An apology is a confession. And what do prosecutors do with confessions? They use it to prosecute the person who gave it to them. 

If you’re ever being put under pressure to apologize for something, ask yourself this question: What are the real objectives of those who are putting pressure on me? If they happen to be your critics or political opponents, you can be confident their real objectives don’t happen to include your best interests.

Cucky doesn’t like “cuckservative”

David French, a National Review writer who really, really, really wants you to know that HE HAS AN ADOPTED BLACK SONDAUGHTER, doesn’t think the “cuckservative” term should be used. Because, ah, well, it helps the far Left?

I understand frustration at political correctness. In fact, I’ve done something about it, filing more lawsuits to protect students and professors from campus PC tyranny than perhaps any other lawyer in the United States. I agree with the incredulity and rage at elites’ unwillingness to secure the border and their insistence that every immigration debate has to be racialized, with conservatives constantly accused of bigotry. In their frustration, I’ve even seen conservatives I call friends deride those they deem insufficiently devoted to the cause as “cucks” and “cuckservatives.”

In addition to being a derogatory, insulting slur, the word provides aid and comfort to the trolls whose tweets I’ve posted above. Just as bad, it enables and feeds the Left’s own engine of racial grievance.

Conservatives should reject those on both extremes of the spectrum. We defend a culture, not a race. The foundation of that culture is a faith that makes no distinction among races but rather declares, unequivocally, “All are one, in Christ Jesus.” Shunning the slur disempowers the trolls and forces the radical Left to confront the race hatred that fuels its own rage.

Look, this isn’t that difficult. Now that whites are no longer an overwhelming majority in America, they have to play the same racial politics game that everyone else in every other heterogeneous country has had to play for centuries. It’s not an accident that people like David French and Jonah Goldberg, decent conservatives who genuinely subscribe to the now-outmoded abstract ideals that the Left rejected in the Sixties, haven’t grasped the fact that the demographic changes to the United States have not only changed the way the political game is played, but have changed the game itself.

It’s rather amusing to see French attempt to play the Christian card in the secular context of U.S. politics. Yes, all are one in Christ Jesus, does that mean French supports expelling all non-Christians from the USA? If not, then what is the relevance of spiritual equality among Christians to the culture in which white Americans would prefer to live?

Diversity+Proximity=War. What used to be, and what French still believes is, virtue-signaling, in a mostly homogeneous white majority culture is now increasingly despised in a much more heterogeneous culture. What was praised 20 years ago may well get people killed 20 years from now. Just look at how the culture of Rhodesia has changed as a direct result of the changing racial demographics. Cuckies don’t understand that non-whites have never played by white rules except when forced to do so, and they never will do so by choice.

What is feeding the Left’s engine of racial grievance is the increasing size and number of competing racial identities. Trying to play the now-irrelevant “colorblind” game is as pointless as playing by touch-football rules in the NFL.

While it is true that race is not culture, neither are the two distinct concepts entirely unrelated. And culture certainly is much more intertwined with race than it is with geography; it’s more than a little ironic that those who claim race has nothing to do with culture also assert their belief in the culturally transformative qualities of magic dirt.

Moreover, the idea that it is the Alt-Right that is somehow feeding the Left is ridiculous, when the cuckservatives are attacking the same people, using the same tactics and terms, that the Left does. We all know why self-styled conservatives hate being called cuckservatives. It’s because the term strikes too close to home and cuts too deep.

It’s not the word “cuckservative” that has to go. It’s National Review cuckservatism. Isn’t 60 years of unmitigated failure enough to conclude that it isn’t working?

Pseudo-dialectic posturing

It’s more than a little bizarre to see a professional rhetorician at the New York Times affecting dialectic in attempting to criticize Donald Trump’s superior rhetoric that has dominated this election campaign to date:

What did Trump think of something mean that someone else on the stage had said about him? What did someone else think about something nasty that Trump had said about him or her?

Trump had insulted Jeb Bush’s wife: Discuss! Trump had insulted Carly Fiorina’s business career: Respond!

So it went, somewhat tediously and surreally, for many stretches of the debate on Wednesday night and especially for the first half-hour, during which Rand Paul took the precise measure of — and raised the correct question about — the egomaniacal front-runner.

“Do we want someone with that kind of character, that kind of careless language, to be negotiating with Putin?” Paul asked.

“I think really there’s a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump, but I am worried,” he added, and I nodded so vigorously at the “worried” part that I’m going to need balm and a neck brace tomorrow.

Paul went on to single out Trump’s “visceral response to attack people on their appearance — short, tall, fat, ugly. My goodness, that happened in junior high. Are we not way above that?”

No, we aren’t. Or at least Trump isn’t. And “junior high” is too easy on him, too kind. Trump comes from, and belongs in, the sandbox, as he demonstrated the second that Paul paused and Trump fired back: “I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.”

How lovely. And how adult.

I look forward to Frank Bruni’s next columns: WE MUST DO X BECAUSE I AM GAY AND I AM SAD. Followed by WE MUST DO Y BECAUSE WOMEN ARE UNHAPPY and WE MUST DO Z FOR THE CHILDREN.

You know, communicating the way adults do.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump will review Bruni’s column, smile, and promptly announce that the New York Times has declared him the official frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

Facebook moves into speech policing

I don’t even use it, but I’m shutting down my Facebook account. This is why:

Facebook pledged Monday to combat racist hate speech on its German-language network amid an upsurge in xenophobic comments online as Germany faces an unprecedented influx of refugees.

The US social media network said it would encourage “counter speech” and step up monitoring of anti-foreigner commentary, as company representatives were due to meet German Justice Minister Heiko Maas later Monday.

Facebook said it would work with other organisations in Germany “to develop appropriate solutions to counter xenophobia and racism and to represent this online”.

It also urged users to report offensive postings and announced a partnership with the group Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers (FSM).

As Germany faces a record influx of refugees and a backlash from the far right, social media such as Facebook have seen an upsurge of hateful, xenophobic commentary.

Big Brother being corporate rather than government doesn’t make it any better. This is Orwellian in the extreme.

Doxxing and outing is bad

Unless the SJW-infested media does it to an anti-SJW. Then it’s news.

 ‘Julia Caesar’, an anonymous right-wing blogger who has blasted Swedish journalists for writing an “epoch of lies” about the benefits of immigration, is herself a former reporter for Sweden’s biggest broadsheet, Dagens Nyheter, according to a Swedish tabloid.

The controversial writer, who has sought to keep her identity secret, has been causing a huge stir on social media since 2010. Her blog posts lay into mainstream politicians and what she describes as “the corrupt media” for promoting what she argues is an “epoch of lies” about immigration. They also praise the rise of the nationalist Sweden Democrat Party.

“It simply isn’t possible to lie about the blessings of multiculturalism or mass immigration forever when citizens clearly see with their own eyes how their country is being dismantled in front of them,” reads one of her recent posts, which has also been translated into English on a separate blog by one of her supporters.

On Wednesday, Sweden’s Expressen tabloid revealed that the blogger – who has also published three books – is herself a former journalist for Dagens Nyheter (DN), a Swedish newspaper.

The reason SJWs are always so desperate to out and doxx people is because they want to be able to exert social pressure on them, discredit them, and disemploy them. This is why the protection of anonymity is vital, and why it is always a wise idea to establish more than one online identity if you are going to stand up against SJWs in any context.

And this is also why it is very important to offer public support to those the SJWs have successfully identified and targeted. Not everyone is psychologically suited to deal with direct targeting, but as for me, I laugh every time I see my given name “revealed” again in a blog post or news article.

I always wonder how the writer justifies it in his head. Does he ever refer to Bono as Paul Hewson? Or 50 Cent as Curtis Jackson? Or Brianna Wu as John Flynt? It’s useful, though, as whenever I see my given name appear, I know the writer is an SJW who is hoping to increase the social pressure on me, as if just a little more will finally do the trick.