Founder supported trolls who hijack conversations with white supremacist memes, then explained that support by declaring, “Money is not my issue. I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time.”
> "If he's just trolling then he's really, really dedicated to the cause."
Weev's written extensively about his white supremacist views in the past, I don't think where he actually stands is in any way under contention.
I'd also argue that "dedicated troll" and "true believer" is a distinction without a difference, especially when it comes to the people who are being harassed.
He's obviously been infected with all the online right-wing anti-wokism ideas about tech companies. What's surprising to me is that I thought a lot of those people were in on the troll, but apparently he was a true believer.
The dude plays footsie with white supremacists. https://www.mediaite.com/tech/elon-musk-skewered-for-posting.... One of his first act upon taking over Twitter was to reinstate white supremacists. I don't know if he is a full white supremacist, but he really seems to like them. And that type of person is getting none of my respect or money.
It's not just his tweets, likes, or his support of Trump. It's proven in detail now that he is actively funding a fringe alt-right group that peddles bigoted/racist/xenophobic crap.
Most of us want to live in a world that says this is not ok.
I don't think the main issue here is that he is supporting or giving money to Trump. It's that in a time of awful political discourse, he is bankrolling an organization whose mission is literally dedicated to proving that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real.”
It's dumbing down discourse even more to stupid memes and caricatures and shitposts.
Elsewhere in the thread, I've posted a link to screenshots of their official Twitter account making anti-Semitic comments. Here's an image of their founder using a white supremacist hand sign: https://web.archive.org/web/20190530190836/https://inshorts....
> "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, wouldn't be surprised if the CEO has an alt. Have you seen how much shit he got for that one joke that was quoting another joke that was slightly anti-white?
Yeah, I talked with Matt about it at a party around the time he was going into lawsuits with Alex Jones and some alt-right people. He's a really nice dude. He hadn't been very familiar with 4chan before Pepe became a meme and was bummed that Pepe was being branded a hate symbol since he's writing children's books now. #savepepe
For what it’s worth, there’s a picture of me wearing a MAGA hat out there on the internet too. Ironically, of course, but I do sympathise with the guy. I do think it’s out of order for the Linux Foundation to ban him for this (although they claim there are other reasons).
That aside, this doesn’t mean I think he’s a good guy. From what I gather he seems like a normalish dude, maybe a little troll-ish, but I mean we all enjoy a good troll every now and then. I can’t hold that against him. But there’s no chance he wasn’t aware of the symbolism of posting that picture when he did. He pretends he doesn’t, but you’d have to be a fool to accept that.
I doubt he’s a Trump supporter or a racist, but even if he was I don’t think that’s good enough grounds to ban him unless there was good reason to think he was going to be a disruptive presence.
I decided to put all my cards on the table here because I’m a bit disturbed by the idea that you think that he was banned because he’s a white man? Banned by an organisation that is run largely by white men? Just trying to figure out how this works in your head.
Is it the white men on the board that hate him for being white? Is it the Asian men on the board that hate him for being white? Or is it the white women on the board that hate him for being white?
Yep, in fact he supposedly supports Ron Paul, but Nimble America is definitely a more Trump-ish, alt-right-ish type of thing.
According to Luckey, they made some memes that he liked. Maybe they were not racist memes, but I do not know. Maybe Luckey did not know about some of their worse memes. Anyhow, he threw them a chunk of money. We can infer without greater evidence that Luckey is racist simply because he donated to something.
All of that said, the one and only attack on free speech is censorship. Censorship comes in many forms, including the form of shaming people. I think what the alt-right does is dumb, but at the same time, they hide in their own dark corner of the internet and I never have to interact with them so I am fine carrying about my business. Luckey donating to Nimble America had a similar lack of effect on me.
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.
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