“We didn’t want to be associated with that hateful stuff.”

August 16, 2024 1:52 AM

“I tried to give them $20,000 for nothing!” [Tim] Pool said on his show, claiming to be perplexed by the skaters’ ingratitude. But Pool has also described the purchase as a win for the right, saying it was part of “real-world efforts to win a culture war.” Jeremy Hambly, a popular YouTuber associated with Pool who goes by the name “The Quartering,” said in a video that Pool’s decision to buy the land was like “a mini ‘Elon buying Twitter’ scenario.” from The skate park was thriving. Then a right-wing YouTuber bought it. [Washington Post; ungated]
posted by chavenet (64 comments total)

Tim Pool is a pathetic angry weirdo.
posted by whatevernot at 2:49 AM on August 16 [31 favorites]

Thanks youtube.
posted by dumbland at 3:04 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]

Fragile male egos are the second worst force contributing to the state of the world today (the worst is dehumanizing greed). He was rejected from the scene because he tried to buy his way in. So in a hissy fit, he bought the land so they'd have to accept him.

If he had just kept his mouth shut, shown up, and done well, he could have been a part. There'd still be people who despised him for being a right wing hack, but he wouldn't have been run out of town.

The right wing is lousy at creating good culture, as that tends to originate with people not in a position of power. So they keep trying to buy their way in and keep getting rejected. I wish they'd learn.
posted by Hactar at 3:11 AM on August 16 [49 favorites]

I can’t click on YouTube without getting a barrage of hateful bile of the “woke person crushed in argument” variety, so I’m not surprised that this asshat emerged from that website. Fingers crossed for that town.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:07 AM on August 16 [6 favorites]

This is late eighties/early nineties "we gotta save the town" movie-villain stuff. There's probably a skater-movie with this exact plot given how many of those were made.

Also, the degenerates are coming in from Frederick? Frederick?! Sure Frederick as a large town is a bit blue and crunchy but the county outside that is a conservative place. "Fredneck" is tossed around in the suburbs closer into DC. Though as the suburbs expand, it is becoming more and more blue year over year.

(Frederick is delightful and somewhat cheap still but the drive or train are like an hour and change each way into Rockville).
posted by Slackermagee at 5:17 AM on August 16 [9 favorites]

This is sad to see – my son is a train enthusiast so we’ve been through Martinsburg a couple of times to checkout things like the historic roundhouse, and it’s your classic city which has never gotten back on its feet following the hollowing out of American industry. The railroad helped but not enough, and it’s sad to think about what some positive investment could do if the goal was to actually build something rather than score likes on social media.

I am fascinated by the arc from Occupy Wall Street to emulating one billionaire in service to another, all on behalf of Wall Street. One of the great failures of that time was not channeling that energy into anything positive – I think I’ve seen more people try to claim MAGA is the true inheritor of the movement than anything else, which would have seemed crazy at the time.
posted by adamsc at 5:21 AM on August 16 [9 favorites]

Oddly interesting story. A detail that I didn't catch at first is that apparently one of the reasons the skaters rejected the offer of prize money wasn't just because Tim Pool is right wing, but because of the distorting effect that such a huge prize would have had on the event, attracting too many people motivated by the money rather than just wanting to participate.

Reminds me of the difference between soul surfers and competitive surfing.

I suspect Tim Pool genuinely has a hard time understanding how anyone could be motivated by anything other than money. I suppose it makes sense, because understanding that would mean he has to accept that there are things he can't buy, that certain kinds of acceptance, status and respect have nothing to do with money and are permanently out of his reach.
posted by Zumbador at 5:23 AM on August 16 [26 favorites]

Skating has always had a progressive culture. Not everyone but it's there. Maybe because lots of people came to it turned off by traditional sports culture.

I was watching skating during the Olympics with my elderly, baseball and college football loving in-laws and they were struck by the camaraderie and good humour in the competitors. Everyone pushes everyone else on - which doesn't really create a culture of division.
posted by treblekicker at 5:28 AM on August 16 [12 favorites]

I suspect Tim Pool genuinely has a hard time understanding how anyone could be motivated by anything other than money.

Well he is a rich man north of Richmond
(Lord knows they all just wanna have total control)
posted by trig at 5:34 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]

Pool said he would host a Saturday-morning cartoon show at the coffee shop for children — possibly with conservative cartoons created by fellow conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s “The Daily Wire” website.

Oh yeah, the kids are going to love that. 🙄
posted by Servo5678 at 5:39 AM on August 16 [26 favorites]

Pathetic person.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:03 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]

I bet the conservative cartoons will be absolutely hi-larious. Just like the ones the weird Jesusy kid at school was always trying to get you to come and see on VHS at their house.

The great thing about the asshat Pool now being owner of the site is that if anyone gets injured while skating, they can sue him.
posted by scruss at 6:33 AM on August 16 [6 favorites]

I just watched his YouTube short about buying the skate park and even his speaking style is derivative of Tucker Carlson. He's execrable.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:35 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

Speaking about fragile right wing egos, they're currently being triggered by "white guy tacos."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:02 AM on August 16 [14 favorites]

I was watching skating during the Olympics with my elderly, baseball and college football loving in-laws and they were struck by the camaraderie and good humour in the competitors. Everyone pushes everyone else on - which doesn't really create a culture of division.

I mean the nature of the Olympics is the competitors competing against each other, but in reality sports like skating the skaters are competing against the tricks or the course. They're all out there together trying defeat the same enemy. It's a co-op game. Or at least that was my take on the little bit of skateboard culture I took in when I was shorter and my balance was better.
posted by snwod at 7:09 AM on August 16 [9 favorites]

Please do not mock my tuna salad tacos! (They're delish. Grape tomatoes on the side. And a pickle. That's lunch, pal!)
posted by SPrintF at 7:23 AM on August 16 [2 favorites]

I watched the Women's skateboard on TV and it was adorable how all the young women were geeing each other on. They were mostly in the 12-20 range I think, and all super positive about each other's approaches - either success or failure. Honestly, it was one of the most positive of the things I watched - and I watched far too much.
posted by biffa at 7:27 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

One of the great failures of that time was not channeling that energy into anything positive – I think I’ve seen more people try to claim MAGA is the true inheritor of the movement than anything else, which would have seemed crazy at the time.

I thought it did set the table for Bernie's ascension as a leader on the national stage and widespread open cynicism about capitalism among younger people. It seems like there were some guys who started there and turned into either shills or Strasserites, but it's certainly not the entire picture.
posted by Selena777 at 7:28 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

Tim Poole can’t sloppy seems like a great summary of the whole affair.
posted by zenon at 7:33 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Question - is it primarily (or wholly) right wingers, fascists and white supremacists) who are in on the internet audience grift?

I don’t ever actually see left of center folks doing that kind of quasi and real theft. Maybe I’m just in the bubble.
posted by WatTylerJr at 7:39 AM on August 16 [3 favorites]

In sports like football, mistakes are part of the narrative arc of the game. Your opponent throws an interception, and you ran it back for 50 yards! You fumbled the ball, but your teammate recovered it!

In a lot of the Olympic sports, it's much more about each person performing the very best they can. Nobody wants to win gold because her opponent stumbled. The whole point of the Olympics is to compare yourself with the very best the world has to offer. The better your opponents do, the more your own performance shines.
posted by straight at 7:39 AM on August 16 [8 favorites]

> I was watching skating during the Olympics with my elderly, baseball and college football loving in-laws and they were struck by the camaraderie and good humour in the competitors. Everyone pushes everyone else on - which doesn't really create a culture of division.

I mean the nature of the Olympics is the competitors competing against each other, but in reality sports like skating the skaters are competing against the tricks or the course.

So when I watched Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (I had to), I was struck by one moment in particular. The pole vault competition was scheduled for night, and the light in the stadium wasn't good enough for Riefenstahl to capture both the competitors and the spectators. So she leaned into it - she focused only on the competitors, capturing only each jumper as they took their turn and the other competitors sitting nearby and watching them intently. You only heard each jumper panting and their footfalls as they ran up to the pole.

And it was riveting - suddenly this wasn't An Olympics Competition, it was a bunch of athletes having a friendly matchup just for the fun of it. But that's actually what the Olympics are supposed to be - yeah they give out medals, but a lot of it is just for The Love Of The Game. It's when you add in the cheering crowds that you get the high drama of "who's getting the gold" or whatever.

So I think this may be the case for all sports is what I'm getting at.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:45 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

> is it primarily (or wholly) right wingers, fascists and white supremacists) who are in on the internet audience grift?

There aren't really a lot of leftist audiences that would be takers for that kind of shit.

There used to always be a contingent of not-very-knowledgeable people lamenting the lack of a Left equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. There was actually an attempt to make a Left version of AM talk radio, which flopped. Because the D Party has not spent the last 50 years recruiting the greediest, most gullible, ignorant, fear-susceptible people it can find to be its primary voter base.

This is one of those asymmetries that makes bothsides political reporting into bullshit. "Leftist audience that is griftable in the way of QAnon believers" is a category error.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:54 AM on August 16 [17 favorites]

IME the leftish grift is promising that you can retreat into a nice friendly bubble and it will all be okay. (Left vs liberal on a gradient of how much they talk up “new world in the ruins of the old”. )
posted by clew at 8:05 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

Reading truthful sources of information (eg Mother Jones, ProPublica, ever freaking Teen Vogue and Rolling Stone) is NOT retreating into an “all will be okay” delusion.

The question was simply if/why there weren’t left side equivalencies to the Pools and Shapiros that Aardvark nicely answered.
posted by WatTylerJr at 8:25 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

Did we discuss the BLM hype house here?
posted by Selena777 at 8:26 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]

right-wing grifts look like scams and target greedy suckers who think they're smarter than they are. left-wing grifts are more often structured as high control groups¹ which exploit some combination of

1. dreams of a better world
2. desire to do good
3. naïvety
4. low-key main character syndrome

in the target in order to shake all the money out of them and then send them out to find more recruits.

there's cultlike elements on the right, obviously — they've been doing the trumpian cult of personality thing as hard as they possibly can for a decade, and, like, qanon exists — but that stuff is typically structured through loose affiliations between large groups of people with bonkers ideas rather the through small groups that use high control tactics, like, groups wherein leaders aggressively shame individual participants who question the party line and wherein leaders regularly issue targeted threats of expulsion/shunning at those who aren't quick enough at emptying their pockets and then finding fresh new pockets to empty.

1: i.e. political cults
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:51 AM on August 16 [8 favorites]

There are Left wing grift and grifters... remember that a good deal of the early anti-vax stuff largely started in kinda hippy, very otherwise left leaning, well off white people. Vulnerable and desperate people are especially vulnerable to astonishingly unbelievable promises regardless of their politics. Sunk cost fallacy doesn't care who you voted for either.

But yeah this current open grift economy that the right specializes in... it really just doesn't translate well to the left.
posted by cirhosis at 9:09 AM on August 16 [7 favorites]

not to no true scotsman or whatever, but i think it's commonplace by now to note that the kind of wifty hippie-flavored but hyper-individualistic and a little bit prosperity-gospeloid beliefs that fed into the anti-vax movement aren't on any recognizable left, even though the people who hold them often dress and act like they're visitors from the 1960s

but i dunno maybe i'm one true scotsmanning, it is a thing i've been known to do
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:22 AM on August 16 [7 favorites]

The $32 smoothies at Erewhon are certainly grift, although as noted above some of the “health” stuff transcends the left-right spectrum.
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:35 AM on August 16 [3 favorites]

I would count the rash of Twitter “intelligence analysts” that appeared around the Trump-Russia investigations as a grift targeted at left-of-center folks, if not The Left. A little more tendentious but there are some real preachers-to-the-choir on Substack and the like these days, who I don’t think improve the quality of liberal thinking. Further left there have been some pretty grift-y local candidates or people trying to cash in on activist movements and moments.

It’s certainly not a circuit on the same scale, though - it’s much less… a circuit.
posted by atoxyl at 9:36 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Then there's the Krassensteins.
posted by Selena777 at 9:42 AM on August 16 [4 favorites]

But Pool has also described the purchase as a win for the right, saying it was part of “real-world efforts to win a culture war.”

I skate and grew up skateboarding. Love how his analysis is that all the skaters are mad at him because Woke. This stupid fucking poser has zero understanding of skaters, skate scenes, and the DIY spaces they build. Literally no universe where a bunch of skateboarders are going to be thrilled that you bought out their DIY skatepark or welcome some conservative influencer with open arms, but he probably knows this in the back of his mind and it probably burns him up so much. As is the case with these conservative influencers who intrinsically know that everyone who is considered conceivably cool just despises them and thinks they're a giant loser, so they dig their heels in further with this "We Must Win The Culture War" shit as a numbing agent and construct their own little scenes to convince themselves they are gaining ground.

No one is gonna go to your stupid private skatepark or anti-woke coffee shop or West Virginia Soho house for Conservatives. It's just loser shit that is going to stay loser shit, if any of it even comes into fruition which it likely won't.
posted by windbox at 9:49 AM on August 16 [24 favorites]

Yeah, there’s definitely a few lefty Twitter accounts I can think of, but they don’t have the level of monetization that Tim pool or Ben Shapiro do. Medias Touch would seem to be the one that stands out to me.
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:59 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Leftists and progressive liberals aren't intrinsically less gullible than conservatives. But the leaders of their movements tend not to openly embrace grifters the way fascist and fascist adjacent movements tend to. The whole point is to repackage the grievance, entitlement, and bigotry of the populace for profit, so why would you keep anyone capable of bringing the gulls around out?
posted by pattern juggler at 9:59 AM on August 16 [5 favorites]

I just had one of those mental connections that I both feel the need to describe and also know is far too niche to be relatable, but here goes:

ABout a dozen years ago I got into a game called Netrunner. It's a collectible card game kinda like Magic (and in fact the original version was MtG creator Richard Garfield's "second game," though nobody really plays the original version anymore.) It's a collectible card game (technically a "living card game" because you don't buy random packs, but new sets of cards are constantly coming out) set in a dystopian cyber-future that differs from other games of its type in that it's asymmetrical. You build your decks out of available cards, play one-on-one games versus another player, etc., but in each game you play as either the Runner (a hacker trying to break into a corporation to steal information) or the Corp (the aforementioned corporation trying to complete its own agendas.) You build both decks and a typical "game" really consists of two games, because you play both sides of it.

So there are game mechanics that apply to both sides (like credits, which are used to pay for things, and which can change hands pretty frequently between the runner and corp) but most of them only apply to one side. Both sides' primary win-condition is "scoring out," i.e. getting to seven agenda points, but the Corp does this by advancing and scoring their agendas on the board (each of which are worth a certain number of points) and the Runner does this by stealing those agendas from the corp. The Corp can do damage to the Runner, which trashes cards from their hand, and if the Runner doesn't have enough cards in hand to withstand all the damage, the Runner is "flatlined", and the Corp wins. And the Runner can win by "Decking" the corp (meaning that the Corp is in a position where they must draw a card but has no more cards in their deck left to draw.) The Corp generally plays their cards face-down, and the Runner face-up, etc.

But the point is that it's really tempting to compare Netrunner to Magic or other CCGs when evaluating cards and mechanics and stuff, but the asymmetry makes that a pretty useless comparison most of the time. And I think it's very similar to the temptation to imagine a left-right political spectrum in which the two sides somewhat mirror one another, but here again, I think the game is quite asymmetrical.

Much like the Runner can't "flatline" the Corp, for instance, the Left can't beat the Right via pointing out hypocrisy, because the Right doesn't care about it in the way that the Left does. Meanwhile, we're seeing right now that the "Weird" attack only works against the Right, because the Left isn't deeply invested in an identity of being seen as "normal." But these are minor examples.

Basically, it's not like you can't grift people on the Left - anyone can be grifted given the right enticement. But the Grift is an entrenched aspect of the machine on the Right, because the fuel of that machine is fear. Fear (including general insecurity) sells nationalism, fascism, xenophobia and gold investments, dick pills, assault weapons in equal measure. So the Grift and the Campaigns are natural bedfellows, with each helping the other. And because none of the "solutions" from either the Grift or the Campaigns are designed to actually alleviate the fear, they can keep on keepin' on in cooperation.

Folks on the Left can be preyed on by Grifts (Anti-Vaxx and alternative medicines, for one example) but these things don't work in concert with the political aims of the Left, which is fueled by hope, because the Grift still relies on fear. Hope can get a foot in the door for the Grift, but fear is what keeps it going. And because the Left is interested in pushing for actual solutions in terms of policy, it's much more interested in actual facts. And facts and grifting don't cooperate well. In other words, while the Left's political rhetoric might lay the groundwork for a grifter's emotional appeal (necessary to bypass the mark's logical objections), the grifter's game is unlikely to do anything to help the Left's campaigns.

I hope that any of this made a lick of sense. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:10 AM on August 16 [48 favorites]

I have some Israel/Gaza side commentary about the "nobody was using it so I bought it and 'improved' the concrete there" when there were actually people using it.

Growing up in a place where the "skate park" was just an old abandoned factory with a couple quarter pipes and small ramps we made, this pisses me off, because this is precisely the kind of thing we had and it was a place of love. We weren't a huge town, seemingly kinda like this place. I feel for the kids.

I hope the community is able to get something together, but how rural is this? The city for us is about 10k people and they finally got a park (after much work from local activists). Maybe local activists can raise money to buy it back and even improve it. IDK. Fuck Tim Pool. I remember I first saw him during the George Floyd protests at a bridge in NY (is that what made him big on the net or was there something before and I just tuned in later?)

At first I thought he was "one of us" then I realized he was another shitty younger alex jones with nowhere near the bravado and as stupid as Joe Rogan with even dumber questions. He's like a Ben Shapiro if Shapiro huffed Jenkim.
posted by symbioid at 10:49 AM on August 16 [8 favorites]

There's a whole sub-category of crypto-reactionary grifters who at first present as left-leaning, "independent thinkers", who are gadflies to everyone, but then eventually reveal themselves to be Alex Jones/Maga compatriots.

See: Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, RFK Jr.

So many of them have pupated through this cycle now that I am automatically suspicious of "independent thinkers". If someone mentions that "both-sides are to blame" more than a few times, that's a red flag for me.
posted by ishmael at 11:31 AM on August 16 [6 favorites]

I guess Tim Pool qualifies as one of these crypto-reactionary people too, seeing as he started out as a videographer in the Occupy movement.
posted by ishmael at 11:34 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]

Nobody wants to win gold because her opponent stumbled.

Wow is that untrue. Just look at the Jordan Chiles debacle going down.
posted by kjs3 at 11:41 AM on August 16 [1 favorite]

I think politics of fear versus politics of hope is a good framing, and I am sure I’ve seen it. Explored in Obama versus Trump comparisons. One area where I’ve seen some nominally lefty fear driver campaigns is some anti development anti gentrification efforts.

The crypto space -that is just all grift.
posted by CostcoCultist at 11:50 AM on August 16 [2 favorites]

Tim Pool strikes me as the kind of guy who went to the Occupy rallies hoping that he'd get laid with a bunch of hippie activist chicks, but when he struck out got super bitter and decided feminism was the REAL enemy of equality, or some bullshit like that.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:52 AM on August 16 [15 favorites]

I probably don't need to, but just to clarify, by "crypto-reactionary", I meant "someone who is a right-wing reactionary but is presenting as something else" not "someone who is into crypto-currency".

Although to be fair, if you made a Venn diagram there is quite a bit of overlap.
posted by ishmael at 12:00 PM on August 16 [8 favorites]

Leftists and progressive liberals aren't intrinsically less gullible than conservatives.

I'm too busy griftin' to do the heavy liftin' on this, but I think science has consistently dripped out any number of studies that show the a conservative-aligned brain is more conspiratorial, susceptible to misinformation, resistant to mind-changing based on corrective facts, etc. than a liberally aligned brain.

So... yeah, I think conservatives are in fact wired to be more gullible.
posted by Shepherd at 12:10 PM on August 16 [6 favorites]

Nope, there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that suggests that we're all susceptible to conspiracy theories regardless of our political beliefs.

A good exploration of this is the book Suspicious Minds by Rob Brotherton

posted by Zumbador at 12:44 PM on August 16 [3 favorites]

Nope, there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that suggests that we're all susceptible to conspiracy theories regardless of our political beliefs.

WHO TOLD YOU? HOW DID YOU FIND OUT?

/me slinks away
posted by grubi at 1:06 PM on August 16 [3 favorites]

This absolute fucking chud. Think about all the things you could do with EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS besides trying to force people to like you.
posted by adrienneleigh at 1:06 PM on August 16 [7 favorites]

I thought "live your dreams in grad school" was the liberal grift.
posted by clawsoon at 1:20 PM on August 16 [12 favorites]

I'd argue that there's a much broader set of behaviours that "gullible" encompasses with conspiracy theories a small subset, and persist in my conviction that the conservative-wired mind is much more susceptible to these, and to The Grift in general.

Evidence? Waves wildly and generally at the whole thing. Ain't nobody making bank off Leftists buying LET'S GO BRANDON truck wraps, paying a zillion dollars to be a Platinum Sponsor of their Substack, "paying it forward" for weird-ass movies about fake child abduction conspiracies, buying snake oil from Dr. Jones Naturals to prop up a bankrupt hatemonger, buying stock in Trump Steaks, paying for "free thinking water," and I could literally go on all day.

I really, really have to think hard to come up with any left version of the Griftosphere, Like, I'm trying very hard right now and coming up snake-eyes. I guess culturally if you squint and work at it you could say that beloved leftish cultural figures turning out to be creeps is kinda a grift, but stacked up against taking horse worm pills for COVID or buying Conscience of a Conservative hardcovers by the thousands to Own the Libs on the NYT best-seller lists, that's pretty thin gruel.

Why are so many right-wing turds who do nothing but lie outrageously all day making zillions from people who prop them up financially? Because those people are ridiculously gullible. Why aren't there left-wing turds lying all day making the same zillions? Either because left-wing people are inherently more honest, or because the left-wing audiences are less gullible.

My money's on the gullible factor, but if you're going all in on "left-wing people don't lie as comfortably," I'm cool with that too.
posted by Shepherd at 1:24 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

is it primarily (or wholly) right wingers, fascists and white supremacists) who are in on the internet audience grift?

This is my regular citation of Rick Perlstein's 2012 article in The Baffler The Long Con., digging into the long and nefarious history of why right wingers are such suckers for grifts and cons, and have been since before there was Internet.
posted by soundguy99 at 1:27 PM on August 16 [2 favorites]

Ah yes, skateboarding. That famously conservative sports activity that is basically joined at the hip to the most conservative music genre, punk rock. Ripe for right wing exploitation. /s

Somebody needs to talk to Tony Hawk and The Skatepark Project to help these kids.
posted by ersatzsapience at 2:00 PM on August 16 [5 favorites]

Yeah, apparently Tim Pool is technically a perfectly fine skater. Not, like, the next Tony Hawk, but not gonna get laughed at by 12-year-olds for his lack of skills? But skaters don't like the fash.
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:15 PM on August 16 [3 favorites]

I can’t click on YouTube without getting a barrage of hateful bile of the “woke person crushed in argument” variety, so I’m not surprised that this asshat emerged from that website. Fingers crossed for that town.

saying 'don't show me this stuff' does work.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:35 PM on August 16 [5 favorites]

Remember when Tim invited Emma Vigeland to hang at his compound after a "debate" and she declined (because obviously) so he publicly called her a "pedo?"

Yeah, that's the kind of person we're talking about.
posted by klanawa at 3:02 PM on August 16 [4 favorites]

I think the left(ish) get hit more by health/awareness/spiritual grift. Who remembers EST? Or more modern such as Goop? Like one commenter mentioned, grifts of hope. Though I believe a lot of the Productivity Porn has a Venn diagram overlap of both.
posted by aleph at 8:20 PM on August 16 [4 favorites]

The hissy fit of a dude who found out too late that you can't buy friends.
posted by EllaEm at 9:05 PM on August 16 [4 favorites]

But also the hissy fit of a dude who's a professional hissy fit haver. (I mean I haven't watched him, but that's the genre, right? Proportionate, thoughtful responses don't go viral.)
posted by trig at 1:25 AM on August 17 [5 favorites]

I'm seeing a lot of "of course the left is griftable just like the right."

OK, motherfuckers, show me the receipts.

People mentioned left antivaxxers, in as far as I could notice the only post with a specific cite. This is just straight up bullshit grasping at reeds. Where are the D Congressmen and Senators who denounce vaccinations? Where are the opinion leaders of any stripe on the left, who espouse notions like the COVID vax having 5G mind control in it?

Yes there are antivaxx people who identify as left but they are utterly marginal. Citing this is the equivalent of nutpicking the craziest comment from the longest thread with the most heat and least light, and quoting it as "What MeFites believe." I'm not accusing whoever did this of dishonesty, but it's a cognitive error that comes from looking at asymmetry with a determination to find the plane of reflection.

bomastic lower case pronouncements in particular:

> right-wing grifts look like scams and target greedy suckers who think they're smarter than they are. left-wing grifts are more often structured as high control groups1 which exploit some combination of { list of stuff }

Name some names here. Give a concrete example or admit that you're bullshitting.

Too many people have not read The Long Con, or have failed to absorb it.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:24 AM on August 18 [5 favorites]

I got conned into believing that peace and equality are admirable are credible goals, and that the power of the state can be bent towards them.

Fuck me, right? Typical leftist.
posted by klanawa at 4:23 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]

> I got conned into believing that peace and equality are admirable are credible goals

I'd be happy with "less suffering and more fairness" myself.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:44 PM on August 18

is it primarily (or wholly) right wingers, fascists and white supremacists) who are in on the internet audience grift?
I don’t ever actually see left of center folks doing that kind of quasi and real theft. Maybe I’m just in the bubble.

You are in a bubble created in part by yourself and in larger part due to the (now software) selection process. At least you realize there could be a bubble/data observation problem.

The flow of money creates distortions. 'The left' has ideas like keeping monied interests on a shorter controlling leash so the money flows like advertising don't go in that direction. The Powell memo goes into that issue. Rush Limbaugh got mentioned and if it was not for advertising money he'd have not died as rich as he did.

The algorithms driven by advertisers can be shown with Hambly. He has his big money maker TheQuartering and a bunch of other channels. It's still the same drunkard* saying the same kinds of things but those channels don't go anywhere as the software isn't promoting his BS vs the TheQuartering channel. In an advertising/attention economy TheQuatering got attention and gets to keep it VS his attempts to do something else. Hambly is limited by his public drunken past along with his willingness to stab others in the back. Pool is an example of a man with a Hambly knife stored in his back. Odds are good that knife brand is kamikoto.

Paetron and GoFundMe allows for money flows outside of advertising and the grifting happens with 'both sides' due to those platforms when one offers some kind of benefit. Lawsuits for justice being a common benefit claim. Hambly got $37K and then a nice truck once the suit was settled because Hambly was being a drunken ass and got decked. A 'lefty' Hambly got dragged for trying to cancel her sponsorship deals who had a history of saying 'give me a donation and I'll buy drugs' later claimed she needed money to sue people who she felt were wronging her/move from evil stalkers and later admitted the money was used to move from the EX, in part bought drugs, and she stated in private chat if people knew how the lawsuit money was spent they would 'get cancelled'.

A common way for the online streamer to get paid is to read out text that is tied to a money donation. Many times that is a variant of 'Look at me and my thought - and here's a $20 for you to pay attention'. A bar card holder named Reikata is credited with creating the 'read your donation for cash' model and Internet reporting claims he made 1/2 a millon in a month doing that. Said lawyer has a different life these days and can be considered sporting a Hambly knife in his back. Other times it is being an ass like when Tim Pool was being actually SWATed on his livestream Hambly donated a $200 superchat advertising his 'not woke' coffee made by a pro LGBT woman owned roaster in Utah. Didn't know that? You live in a bubble where that kind of BS doesn't enter and your life should be better for that. But drama sells and in a previous time the general manager would say 'run that story' and now it is software who's goal is the same as the older GM model - engagement for advertising cash. A further example of the blissful bubble of not knowing and money for "reading" a message is in real life streaming Ice Posiden/IP2 or Johnny Somali where these, err, people wander the public streets and for under $5 you can have your donation broadcast via text to speech. Ya think followers of Trump are a basket of deplorables? In real life streamers economically powered by the people giving text to speech donation can make you question humanity. Humanity does actually fight back and when that happens it might just enter your bubble because it can be vicariously cathartic.


I really, really have to think hard to come up with any left version of the Griftosphere, Like, I'm trying very hard right now and coming up snake-eyes.

'Tis easy to not see things when one creates or uses definitions that exclude. "Griftosphere" is going to exclude 'left grifting'. If one goes with griftoshere as part of alt-right pipeline then one has excluded the left from the start.

Grift is defined as getting money from the actions being illicit. Now Hambly has openly admitted to being a grifter on video. He's gotten the lawsuit cash along with promising rewards for subscribing that are reported per Internet posts to have went to his video editors brother or never were sent so those would be a grift. Hambly saying 'Destiny defrauded the PPP program' while getting his own PPP loan or saying Tim Pool guest Eliza Blue is a fraud/Tim Pool guest Jack Murphy is a fraud isn't really a grift because what's illicit with those things? Hypocritical - yea. Other than Hambly saying he's a grifter the bulk of his videos are not illicit.

But if distortion of events is gonna be grifting as Hambly does then yea there are left grifters.


*Same drunkard isn't as true as it once was. It seems he's losing weight and not drinking as much because he was gonna have a fist-o-cufs with a different youtubber that doesn't seem to be happening and changed up his lifestyle for the now-dead fight. Drunk Hambly gets you Elon stepping down from the head of twitter is 9/11. Sober Hambly means less other 'we report drama/people saying the stupid' cover Hambly.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:35 AM on August 20 [1 favorite]

It's great to see weapons-grade NYT style bothsidesist handwavium making a home here.

Cosigning on Aadrvark Cheeselog, above:

I'm seeing a lot of "of course the left is griftable just like the right."

OK, motherfuckers, show me the receipts.
posted by Shepherd at 8:05 AM on August 20

I know a lot of liberals in the American sense who have been grifted. But the scams weren't political. They were MLMs, investment schemes, and cults. I really think a reason why right wingers are more likely to fall for political grifters is that right wing politicians embrace grifters.

One thing I have seen is people who were very left wing, but also had fringe beliefs get pulled further and further right because they followed the grifters they were already suckered by there.

I'm talking about out lesbians who worked with planned parenthood and engaged in intensive environmental activism into the early 2000s who think Hillary Clinton is a cannibal and satellites can read your blood chemistry.

So that is another wrinkle.
posted by pattern juggler at 3:38 PM on August 20 [3 favorites]

pattern juggler: One thing I have seen is people who were very left wing, but also had fringe beliefs get pulled further and further right because they followed the grifters they were already suckered by there.

The capture of most of the "fringe" by the Republicans over the past decade kinda reminds me of the way that the Southern Strategy reconfigured American politics. I doubt that the reconfiguration was intentional in the way that the Southern Strategy was - I don't think any Republican strategist said, "Let's work on capturing the Dennis Kucinich vote!" - but nonetheless here we are.

Simultaneously, the Democratic Party seems to have become much more uncomfortable with having those sorts of fringe anti-institutionalists hanging around. Twenty years ago it was "well of course we have some crystal-reading anti-vaxers in the party, come over and meet Debbie." Nowadays, that's a real awkward moment.
posted by clawsoon at 2:52 PM on August 21 [5 favorites]