So the filthy rich 24-year-old founder of Oculus — you know, the tech company with the virtual reality goggles — has apparently been secretly funding a propaganda outfit attempting to take down Hillary Clinton with a barrage of dank memes.
According to The Daily Beast:
A Silicon Valley titan is putting money behind an unofficial Donald Trump group dedicated to “shitposting” and circulating internet memes maligning Hillary Clinton.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey financially backed a pro-Trump political organization called Nimble America, a self-described “social welfare 501(c)4 non-profit” in support of the Republican nominee.
Luckey sold his virtual reality company Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, and Forbes estimates his current net worth to be $700 million. …
Nimble America says it’s dedicated to proving that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real,” according to the company’s introductory statement, and has taken credit for a billboard its founders say was posted outside of Pittsburgh with a cartoonishly large image of Clinton’s face alongside the words “Too Big to Jail.”
“We conquered Reddit and drive narrative on social media, conquered the [mainstream media], now it’s time to get our most delicious memes in front of Americans whether they like it or not,” a representative for the group wrote in an introductory post on Reddit.
There’s a weird and elaborate Reddit backstory to all this, featuring bitter infighting, accusations of con-artistry, and even a cameo from Milo Yiannopoulos, all of which I’m too lazy to summarize, so you’ll have to read about it over on The Daily Beast.
H/T — TZer0
dawww, thank you everyone <3 You guys are great. Especially you, EJ, holy noodle. That is some orphic lizarding there. Makes me want to tear my longsword off the wall and hit things. I wonder if they’d let that be my thesis?
(In reality, my thesis is probably gonna be a slice of the qualia problem; work’s sort of leading me down a road of trying to dig out some actual meaning from semantics. Might have some interesting things bubbling up from that.)
Ariblester, yeah, I caught that too, and it’s no surprise. In reading Mark’s blog, it’s pretty apparent that he’s one of those bootstrappy-libertarian-conservative dorkuses. So, pretty darn head-in-the-clouds. Or head-in-somewhere, at least.
Fishy Goat, my heritage does not come from the icy isle, tragically, though I’ve considered moving there! No, my family’s split – half are from southwest England, first generation, whereas the other half are emigrants from the french migration out of Acadia and Quebec. Dig back far enough and I’m a whole lot of Saxon, really. (I kinda really want a seax, too)
numerobis and Kat asked me about my life – gosh you guyse, you’re makin’ me all embarrassed. My life story would be really, really boring. I made it sound super cool, because Mark can go to Hel, but honestly it isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Spent 16-25 bouncing around between low-paying labour jobs, slowly accrued enough of a resume and experience to earn myself a little office (didn’t supervise anyone, was just workin’ a desk). Saved up enough money to go back to school for a computer science degree, now I work in the university’s research lab and oversee one of the research projects while I work on my own project on the side. Lots of little bumps and diversions along the road, lots of mistakes and things to be embarrassed about.
But, see, that’s the thing. Everyones’ life is an adveture – yours is too. No one gets through life unscathed; there are dangers everywhere. You don’t just coast through your life, so don’t ever let anyone diminish your accomplishments, no matter how pedesdtrian they might be. You tore your life from the poisoned grip of Jormungand, and you wrestle with it every day. Don’t let anyone take that from you and make you think you’re small. You’re not small, not one of you reading. Even you, MGTOWs and MRA’s reading this. You’re not small. You’re titans. That’s my biggest beef with masculinity – it’s all about belittling others. That can go to Hel too. I can hunt my own damn mammoth.
http://i.imgur.com/coV9wSW.jpg
@Oogly
I didn’t know you lived so close to me! It’s more like an hour and a half from me, depending on traffic. I wouldn’t be too worried, though. Maybe avoid malls today. :/
@Scildfreja
Oh, Hel yeah!
*loads up Through the Fire and Flames*
Edit: autocorrect, my old nemesis…
Nah, Axe;
(They’re so fun live)
@Scildfreja
Bawss! Reminds me of 2 songs:
1)edgier version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZFl88eZcCU
2)this one… just reminds me is all 🙂
I recall there were a number of complaints when Time Magazine did a cover feature on Oculus Rift and had a shot of Luckey doing what can only be described as prancing while wearing a Rift unit. People thought it made nerds look like doofuses. I’m now inclined to think that the Time staff knew something about him that most of us didn’t. (Although I sort of suspected with his rather juvenile swipes at Apple.)
It’s not your thesis, but I’m confident a longsword is acceptable as a method of defeating the thesis defense snake.
@Scildykins:
If both you and your supervisor are of noble birth, then you can challenge them to a duel. That might give you an opportunity to use your longsword to defend your thesis.
@ scildfreja & EJ
Duelling and trial by combat were definitively abolished here in the 19th Century (by Wellington if you can believe that)
A judge expressed regret about that in a recent case about which boxer was entitled to a particular champion belt.
(He had raised the serious point as to why they hadn’t themselves used the obvious solution; it was a Don King money thing though)
oh god the thesis defense dragons
One day (year and a half ago or so?) I was sitting in a fairly large internal conference. We had gotten the whole research lab together, which was no small feat since we have members from India to Nigeria, the long way round. We were all presenting our work; for some of us this involved presenting the stuff they were working on in their doctorate or masters’ theses in progress. (For my part, I had just come up with a model of student self regulation which I was pretty chuffed about) . It was a lovely experience, lots of encouragement and support and cooperation on all fronts.
One of the team, whom I will call Sadie, was working on a method for early recognition of ADHD (and autism spectrum stuff, to a lesser extent) to allow for faster and more accurate diagnoses. She’s presenting, and the Voices from the Heavens (The university deans had been skyping in through the teleconference system) all of a sudden started tearing her apart. Just vicious, brutal comments that no one else had to weather. She was practically in shock by the end of a half-hour public excoriation. Only after did we find out that she was getting close to her defense, so the deans had decided to just do it there, impromptu and without warning.
I felt so bad for her! She fortunately had time to retool her work and is now happily working with some major hospitals to test her ideas, but wow. There was a trip to the pub after that one, let me tell you.
Respect the thesis defense dragon. It can attack at any time.
(Maybe I should bring my sword… humm.)
@ scildfreja
Adding to the love train and slightly off topic but asking, as someone who writes fiction, can I borrow your voice for a character sometime?
Not your story, because heavens knows you would tell it better then I. But I would still love somewhere down the line to have a character that just sounds and talks like you cause reading your posts has been a real delight even though I have no real idea where I would use her. (Also because I need to move past my apocalyptic horror series cause I already feel bad enough about all the cool characters I need to kill off in that one and don’t want to add another.)
Odd and off topic request I know but I would feel guilty just wholesale stealing your voice for a character. (That I reserve only for people I have at least shaken hands with in RL) I could even give you your own Marky/Mike-Dash to verbally beat down with logic and graciousness in whatever story I do.
http://orig08.deviantart.net/6997/f/2014/069/4/c/blushing_fluttershy_by_arti22-d78vahs.png
Bawwww. Sure you can. I have no idea why you’d want to, but I’m super flattered. Thank you, and I’m glad you like the tone I use. Though, if you’re gonna kill my character, make sure I go down swingin’! I wanna make sure I get to Folkvangr after all.
Back to the shooting, someone listening to the police scanner says they have a suspect and a motive. Apparently it was a guy who decided to shoot his girlfriend for rejecting him. Of course, this is based on information that hasn’t been confirmed yet.
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153743018231875&id=317119086874
And back on the original topic, I was curious whether he was the same guy behind the extremely unethical “study” where a VR dev harassed a woman to see how traumatized she would be by it. He’s not, but yet another reason not to invest in VR right now.
@kupo
…
mother-fucking-jackass-techbro-assholes!
I gladly go through ethics applications the size of books to do something as innocuous as looking at anonymized test scores, and this jagoff decides harassment is fine as long as you write a fucking blog post or two after it?
I hate this industry.
@ scildfreja
Gladly! If anything I think maybe a contact for my Faerie bounty hunting Dullahan story I have planned after I am done with the horror.
As for the VR thing… I am just glad I can like Occulus without giving this guy any money. Don’t want to have it be like Ender’s Game where I can only buy used copies.
@Scild
Agreed. They decide they can skirt around taxi and hotel regulations, think the sociologists who could actually help them build better products are junk science (while they do half-assed attempts like this at their own studies), and they treat women as inferior. I wish I had a different calling. :/
In related news, Amazon is patting themselves on the back for offering $10/hr to work from home when that’s lower than the minimum wage in Seattle, so it’s really just a way for them to get away with paying less than the new minimum wage.
@kupo, don’t be mad that this is your calling. Be glad. We have a glorious battlefield. Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j’attaque!
As for Amazon, I finished giving those jerks money a long time ago – I only use their services when I absolutely have to these days. Reminds me of my time working in forestry, really. After camp fees and whatnot, I ended up earning a measly $3.00 hourly. But noooo, government work is all lazy fat-cats doin nothing and eating lobster on the taxpayer’s dime. grumble grumble
@Sinister Pigeon, ooooh, have me show up at opportune moments with a big ole raven named Suninn. Sounds awesome.
@Scildfreja
B-but that’s in Canadian dollars. That’s like no dollars! How’d you survive?
For serious tho, books and things always have the USD and CAD price on the back, so, when I was a mite, I always felt a bit bad for Canadians. How’re they supposed to read cool stuff if they hafta pay $12 instead of $10? Surely, that’ll add up. Took a while to really understand how exchange rates work. I thought it was just price gouging on international trade. Could be some of that too actually…
@Axecalibur: if you remember when the two dollars were at par a few years ago, books were still twice the price.
I think stores eventually started selling them at US cover prices, just to move product. I wonder what role that had in the whole ebook thing, the two kind of coincided…
@Scildfreja
Yes!
I get excited about my little victories all the time. I compost now! IOW I got a plastic pail from the city and put my eggshells, etc., into it. My boyfriend takes the stuff down to the compost bin. I’m totally jazzed to be helping the environment.
Also, we’re now basil farmers. IOW I bought a basil plant that we keep in the window. We water it and such and pick some leaves off occasionally. Another victory for the environment. When it dies we’ll — drum roll — compost it!
*****
I tore my life from the poisoned grip of my father — and yeah, I still wrestle with it every day.
*****
I’d still love to read your autobiography to date. Or a short story based on it.
Kat:
Basil is the best!
To harvest basil, don’t pluck its leaves. No, you must decapitate it! Chop it just above where you see a pair of leaves coming out of the stem, and like the hydra it will come back with twice as much new growth. Using a longsword is optional.
Eventually it gets too tall and it becomes spindly; whack it back to prevent that. “Too tall” depends on how much soil it has; in some of my pots, it gets too tall at 6″ tall, in others it gets to a foot (those are deeper and have more compost in them).
I’ve got one last harvest left from my basil plants on the balcony outside. They grow fine indoors too, but they need heat and sun to grow, and basil that merely survives is kind of pointless. Rosemary or mint are better choices for the winter.
@Rhuu
Shenanigans!
Well, once the internet finds your industry, your shenanigans are the 1st thing to go. The internet don’t mess around…
For a long time, I only knew the Oculus Rift as a thing Gamergaters weirdly associated with their SJW enemies. See, it was conventional wisdom that hardcore gamers hated the Oculus, so, by the transitive property, SJWs and Fake Geek Girls must love it. Right, ladies? It went so far that, when Gamergaters created a wicked feminist harpy character to square off against their waifu Vivian James, they named her Occu-Lass Rift. (No, really. Google it. Or, more wisely, don’t.)
I’m darkly amused that the creator of the Oculus has turned out to be a far-right douchebag who probably digs the hell out of Gamergate.
@John
@Jack
Nor me and my 24 year old ass. I mean, I have my asshole moments, everyone does, but I try my best not to make a habit of assholery.