> publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction
Denounce those stories by making $30k a month as a spammer ? that's how this guy "denounces the alt-right" ? and NPR buys that argument just like that ?
I guess a lot of people don't know the type, judging by the accusations that his "this was to troll the alt-right" was a lie.
Seems obvious to me, he started with that intent, thought that obviously the stories would be discredited and the people who bought it would be shamed.
It sometimes happens to organizations that promote an Onion article as real. It does a lot of damage to their reputations.
Then that didn't happen and he made a lot of money. He was disgusted by how stupid everyone is, liked the money and justified it to himself that he's conning money from gullible rubes who are bad people.
I don't know this guy, but I know more than one person just like him.
Considering all of his examples were top boogeymen of the alt right, I'd be surprised if there was any deeper reasoning behind it than parroting talking points.
> "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.
Listening to the audio of the interview, I couldn't help but hear him say the above with a sneer. He claims to be a registered Democrat, maybe it's true, but since this is how he makes his living, he clearly doesn't give a fuck in either direction. It's something I detect from a fairly large portion of supposed alt-righters online: they don't actually believe that the racism and fascism they're espousing is righteous or good for them/humanity, but they just don't give a fuck. Years of living with their main source of socialization coming via disembodied interactions in the ether of memes, cynicism, shock material, etc of 4chan and reddit has driven many to a deep and true nihilism. This guy is the one eyed king troll in the land of the emotionally blind.
I mean, looking at the content, that's a heavily conservative, definitely alt-right, if not outright right-wing, channel.
And the segment immediately prior to him proclaiming the white privilege is "a garbage concept" is him proudly relating the story about how he triggered and trolled people by "identifying as a female powerlifter" and all the alt-right people who covered it...
His tweet is pretty dumb on pretty much every level. People publishing uncoventional and unpopular ideas on twitter get booked on speaking tours, collect money from patreon and publish best-selling books. Being an alt-right provocateur is a pretty good gig, all considered.
The idiots getting fired for stuff they said on twitter are almost all out and out racists and bigots who had nothing interesting or important to say.
> His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it.
Which alt-right media did he reach out to? I've been paying pretty close attention and I saw him being interviewed by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, but they are not alt-right media. They are both classical conservatives.
> As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)
Then all we have to go on are theories and the question: what's to be gained from him lying about this?
That's not even close to the main issue. The issue is he is spreading false stories involving far right-wing conspiracies, in this case involving neo-nazis
His very first interview was with Stefan Molyneaux, a self-described "fighter for men's rights" (yeah, I know.)
> what's to be gained from him lying about this?
I don't think he was outright lying, I think he was just uninformed and made a lot of assumptions and drew
conclusions (biased by his own political views) out of those assumptions. I do think his inflammatory approach to accusing Google and Googlers of "leftist bias" was a way to get attention.
About what's to be gained? Well... he's been interviewed by the New York Times and he'll probably get a book deal out of it, plus whatever money he might get if he manages to successfully sue Google.
A “controversial” Patreon-account was banned over content not posted on Patreon.
To be fair, he does try to be controversial, and he says some hair-raising things. Basically, imagine that you went into a den of literal neo-Nazis, and you were trying your best to say things to shock and insult them. I don't think that's very smart of him to do.
Edit: This was actually discussed on HN until flagged (like too many interesting discussions).
This does seem to be a pattern around here of late. There's a lot of pushing of narratives all across the Internet, which amount to "this person is [something horrible] don't even read their material." Much of that is false. At the same time there are genuine [something horrible] going around in much larger numbers in the past few years than the decades before.
I think the real target is rational discourse itself.
Is it really 'dishonest tarring' to point out how silly it is to point out how he criticizes the Alt-Right and White Nationalists, when the method he uses to criticize them is to tell them they act like n... ers?
No. What's dishonest is to call people like Sargon of Akkad, Tim Pool, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, or Steven Pinker "Alt Right" in an attempt to silence them purely by association. All of those people oppose the alt right! Really, no one should be getting away with those cheesy 80's Moral Majority tactics. If just using the n-word makes one alt right, then my creole ex-girlfriend's transvestite creole musician brother is "Alt Right" -- NOT!
Is it really 'dishonest tarring' to point out how silly it is to point out how he criticizes the Alt-Right and White Nationalists, when the method he uses to criticize them is to tell them they act like n * * * ers?
The man literally hired a professional to write fake content signaling virtue. Quite a bit of content. I don’t think it’s a political affiliation thing.
>I’d received the second-most abuse of any Jewish journalist on Twitter during the campaign cycle. [...] As a result, I’ve become something of an unintentional expert on alt-right trolls and their tactics.
Red flag: Blind man about to describe elephant.
Not to be hasty, I didn't stop reading there.
I stopped reading once I found out the author thinks he's moving the needle by ineptly fighting a blatantly-obvious disinformation campaign. On Twitter.
Denounce those stories by making $30k a month as a spammer ? that's how this guy "denounces the alt-right" ? and NPR buys that argument just like that ?
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