So Parler has been in the news a lot lately, as a number of prominent conservatives and far-right figures have been talking up the “free speech” platform as an alternative to Twitter, which they think is too quick to censor their terrible tweets.
There is a just a teensy bit of irony in the fact that so many of these right-wing celebrities — I’m looking at you, Paul Joseph Watson and Mike Cernovich — are talking up Parler on their Twitter accounts. So far at least, they’re not devoted enough to Parler to give up their still much bigger audiences on Twitter.
Anyway, so I thought I’d take a little tour of Parler and see how things are going over there. And the answer is pretty much as one might expect: the site is flooded with far-rightists yelling about the things that far-rightests like to yell about.
But if you’re still curious I thought I’d save you a little time by presenting you with an impressionistic survey of the Five People You Meet on Parler — or, at least, the five people I met.
The MAGA Who Speaks Entirely In Hashtags
The Lovesick Nazi
Here’s one Nazi fella who thinks he’s found the girl of his dreams in the form of a proudly pale-skinned young woman who made a little video of herself singing a song about how Hitler was right. Nazi boy just doesn’t know how to contact her to profess his endless love.
The Jargon-Spewing MGTOW, with a meme no one but other terminally online misogynists (and those who monitor them) will understand.
The Proud-Boy-loving Tradwife Who Don’t Want No SImps
If that’s impossible to read, try this:
Momma don’t let your babies grow up to be #simps
Mom teach your girls that it’s just fine to be a wife and a mother
Dad teach your boys to #veneratethehousewife and be #proudboys
#MAGA#MakeFamilyGreatAgain
And then of course there are The Trad Dudes Who Are Trying to Start an Intentional Community for Dominant Men and Submissive Women Though it’s Really Not Going to Be All About Spanking Though it Maybe Sort of Is.
I’ll let the fellows at the Enlightened Men’s Club explain:
We’re a small group of Men and women who’ve had enough of the toxic feminism and misandry that is destroying Western countries today.
We’re creating a new #club for #EnlightenedMen and #submissivewomen who prefer Men to lead society in more traditional roles.Our goal is to start a new #IntentionalCommunity and a timeshare “Red Pill Resort”, where eventually Men and women can meet others who share their beliefs and values.
This is not as much about sexual submission as it is in other areas of life, even if sexual submission is often a natural consequence in these type of relationships.
Instead of trying to change society from within, which we believe is an almost hopeless task at this point, we are simply “walking away”.
However, unlike the #MGTOW movement we are not walking away from women.
By offering financial support and the ability to live in fairly luxurious accommodations completely for free we will invite and select only the highest quality women to join the community.
But it’s NOT going to be all about spanking, though maybe it partly is, they explain in a followup post, except this time it seems to be a woman posting:
People interested in our Enlightened Men Club often assume it’s purely about #sex and #bdsm and #spanking etc.
Although for us #submissive women in the club this is part of the appeal, it’s far from everything.
I want to find a Man to lead me, guide me and care for me in life. And yes, I want him to discipline me also, (when he thinks that is appropriate), but mostly I just want to feel safe, protected and loved and cared for by a good Man
This is the general feeling of all the #women who’ve joined our club so far. The motivations of the Men varies, but yes there is a lot of request for sex and #sexual #submission for sure
Glad they got that all straightened out!
Despite the, er, variety of people one meets on Parler — from Nazis who admit they’re Nazis to Nazis who won’t admit it — I rather doubt it will end up being a serious challenge to Twitter. Why? Because it basically only attracts far-rightists, and far-rightists are rarely content just to talk amongst themselves, unless they’re outright plotting terrorism or something — they want a steady source of liberals and leftists to troll, and the only places that provide those reliably are Twitter and Facebook and other mainstream social media sites. And if they don’t have that, they end up fighting amongst themselves, as they did on Gab.
And for that reason I wish Parler all the best. The more these guys troll and attack one another, the better.
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Ah, Parler. I remember when they started and were trying to pretend not to be Nazis and offered big bucks to progressive pundits to start accounts. AFAIK nobody took them up on that. Anyway, I imagine it will become Trump’s main platform when Twitter bans him on January 21.
The one of the girl singing is almost sickening. That girl is probably underage and already is singing Nazi songs–not a good sign.
As for the MGTOW meme dude, what on Earth do mushrooms (at least that’s what I think the objects in the background are) have to do with it?
This sounds like a horrible place. Unfortunately, there are probably a lot of people who would pay for it. Though, given the average Red Piller’s skill for organizing it would probably collapse before it got off the ground.
I’ve heard this one before.
Who is going to bankroll this?
Who wants to bet this is a man cosplaying as a woman to make his idea seem less misogynistic?
I remember when Parler got started the founder said that leftists and liberals would get bored without conservatives on Twitter. He was obviously projecting, I wouldn’t miss them.
@Naglfar: the mushroom background is a crop of a wallpaper from Digital Blasphemy. Somehow I very much doubt that Ryan Bliss would approve.
The “Red Pill Resort” sounds like some Gorean thing.
No, no, no. Just walk away. Walk away now.
That luxurious resort for the practice of (often but not always) sexual dominance and submission wouldn’t happen to be called Roissy, by any chance?
Why can’t people just like say they want to be spanked and like being submissive during sex instead of trying to create a whole culture about that being one genders purpose in life.
I like a good spanking and bondage as much as the next sub, But I don’t try to make a whole culture about it and try to force that life style on everyone.
@Lainy
And “forcing your sexuality down my throat” is supposed to be something the LGBT community does…?
Ah yes, the Hunter Biden “scandel”.
@Etymologist
And it wouldn’t happen to be a chateau, would it?
@Lainy
I think it’s a consequence of their worldview that everything ties back to some essentialist idea usually in bullshit evo psych. They can’t just like what they like, they have to have some sort of essentialist narrative to back it up. It doesn’t sound like a fun worldview.
To me “not *always* sexual” hemming and hawing about the “resort” sounds as if they’d unironically tried to float the idea of a real-life Stepford, only to realize that BDSM roleplayers were the only ones interested who also had money to invest?
Everyday I read mgtows get worst and more violent calling to have women be all killed because mgtows aren’t able to live a consequence-free life. More of them are being honest now and say that they’re only mgtow because women “made them” go for being undesirable. Fits right in nicely with other nazi incels calling to kill everyone and anyone that isn’t them.
But I hardly ever believe that those posts by “trad women” are real tho. R/Redpillwomen (reddit is such a cesspool in general; only place I think are decent are skincare subs) is made up of mostly men larping as such. I think the same is said on parler, just Nazis trying to attract racist white women to their groups.
@Naglfar
I was wondering the same thing.
And like Lainy said, it really bothers me that they chose to assign specific genders to BDSM roles.
@Moon custafer
And most actual BDSM enthusiasts are more knowledgeable about consent than the general population and would probably be averse to this whole resort scheme.
The first half of this sentence has no logical connection to the second half. Anyone can “invite” and “select”, whether you live in a crumbling shack or the luxurious opulence of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
I imagine the “Red Pill Resort” will end about as well as that town in NH that went libertarian and got taken over by bears.
@Naglfar and Etymologist
Or located in DC?
@Buttercup
If Roosh has anything to do with it, more likely a basement in the DC suburbs.
The cynic in me would say that the BDSM community have to know about consent for the same reason homosexual community have to know about AIDS. There have been a tons of … colorful … incidents in the past. They might have continued. There’s plenty of guenuingly caring person in that community, but the scenario “an abuser try to see if abuse count as BDSM” seem to just be a common enough one that poeples need to know how to mitigate it.
I wonder if he purposefully avoid talking about BDSM because he know the long time practicionner would see his real goal, or if it’s just because he consider that distasteful.
Also, in a rather typical far right bend, he don’t try to sell him or his friend as being “worthy” of being a dominant male. He just hope that it will be self evident enough.
So, basically a link farm for Nazis. Mkay.
And they will discover what Jean Auel failed to grasp in her world building with baked in Neanderthal libelz: very small groups do not have the resources, nor can afford to, waste time/effort oppressing half the population. In any emergency it will be ‘all hands on deck’, which requires trust and mutual respect to work….and it is also very easy for would be abusers to have “accidents”.
But who are they kidding? This will be some low rent, low stakes, Red Pill LARPING. If they were serious, they’d rent an island and live there…for 6 months. If they we’re lucky, most of them might survive without being sued for something.
@[email protected]
Ah Goreans. The Ur-RedPillers. The author still insists his softcore “controversial” bondage porn is not Author Tract. Yet is very invested in the “controversy” for book sales.
( I consider him a con-man. He could market his stuff as erotica and clean up $$. But he insists it’s fantasy adventure because he’s an attention getting wanker)
@Ohlmann
I remember being told about an incident where a sex party was being held and supposedly after a certain time it was announced anyone who stayed was agreeing to a group sex thing with kidnapping/rape play.
Okie dokie. Not my thing. As in ick…nope. I like enthusiastic, assertive,but basically vanilla sex. But I can see how it’s possible to do this safely. However, that did not happen in one case. A young woman apparently did not hear or understand the “last call” and…well you can imagine.
AND the people organizing did not take this as a sign they had no clue and should stop. Nope, the prevailing opinion was SHE had been dumb.
Did I report this? If I’d known the people involved I would have. But I heard it third hand and it took years for me to have enough information to believe it actually happened.
Separately, a decade layer, another person active in the community went on social media bragging she never used safe words because she could “tell just looking into someone’s eyes”.
HOLY SHIT.
So, yeah, I can totally believe there are still reckless and unsafe practices. I believe most of these communities behave responsibly, but individuals suffer from the “I’m too awesome to do anything wrong” syndrome. It’s hard to catch before damage is done.
@nobody : in your example, it could very well be actual abusers trying to pass as BDSM, and not just people who are reckless. The second one seem particulary egregious ; I have an hard time explaining it, but it give me real rapey vibes.
I notice that Men get a capital letter, but women don’t.
@Ohlmann
In the first case, I have reason to believe it was mostly dumbness from naivete, incompetence, etc. This was years ago, when these communities were just forming with a very mixed crowd. But I have no doubt abusers were also involved, because statistics. And they would argue strongest for less safety guidelines, exploiting people’s investment in “freedom! mind reading! magical thinking!”.
There was a VERY strong gLibertarian streak at play.
In the second case, that person lost their job at a local left community outfit, after 3(?) decades for sexual harrasment. Definitely bad boundaries involved.
@Ohlmann, nobody
There definitely are bad people who get involved and that’s a reason to think more about consent, but I think it is also just in the nature. When you’re doing things that many people would find unpleasant and/or are potentially dangerous without appropriate knowledge on safety, it’s very important that everyone is on the same page. I’m not currently involved in BDSM, so if anyone knows better please correct me.
I do know that the “abuse posing as BDSM” thing does happen, and most people in the scene hate it. I recall hearing about a huge rise in it after 50 Shades of Grey came out because a lot of women with no knowledge of BDSM or safety assumed that it was exactly like the book and so a lot of abusive men posing as doms took advantage of them.
It could also be that BDSM would be viewed as deviant in some way, so they have to disguise it with weird evo psych/essentialism nonsense.
@Moggie
I didn’t notice that at first, but it seems analogous to how white supremacists tend to capitalize “White” while leaving the names of other groups lowercase.
I have less patience than usual with manospheric whinging.
It’s been a week where I’ve had to deal with COVID-19 problems at work. (Not sick, just working in healthcare.)
You know what? I’ve worked pro-bono in a small firm solely dedicated to helping out people with little to no resources, and the whole “family law is designed to maximize women’s hypergamy” pisses me the fuck off.
Literally 99% of the people that would come by to ask for legal advice were women seeking alimony for their kids. And each and every time the divorce or separation happened because the deadbeat cheated, or had two or even three families on the side. If there was any hypergamy involved in any way whatsoever it was the man’s.
It’s not even an exaggeration. I volunteered there six months and in that whole ass time of dozens of people coming in each day, 99% of them were women seeking alimony, and 100% of those cases involved a cheating husband.
Seriously, fuck that shit. Kids who didn’t even have anything to eat because these deadbeat assholes wouldn’t so much as pay one red cent.
What is going on at Facebook lately?
Something upsetting happened earlier: I checked an art group there and found a familiar name had suddenly begun spewing white nationalist crap, ranting about “blm c-words”, and suchlike.
There have been several recent instances of people, mostly group co-members and acquaintances, abruptly turning into Fox mouthpieces or similarly as if a switch had been thrown.
Is there some fascist group going around hacking FB accounts or something? Given the number of instances I’ve personally witnessed, it seems like a disturbingly large number of accounts must be affected — likely in the millions or more.
Of course, tens of millions voted for Trump, but how many of those are hardcore, activist white supremacists vs. being random suburban white people who have “always voted Republican” because lower taxes, etc.? (Not that such people are very good people — at the very least, they do not give a shit about other people’s oppression so a candidate being a frothing racist isn’t a dealbreaker for them — but they aren’t the people likely to actively troll online, or pick up a gun and sew on a |||% patch to go march at a fascist rally, either.) Also, if it’s not hacking, then what is “throwing the switch” to turn a user who didn’t used to post anything political into vigorous activists out of the blue? If anything that’s even scarier as it suggests some sort of Manchurian Candidate shit where millions of people have been programmed to suddenly go full MAGA when they hear some specific phrase or something … if Fox News or Sinclair Broadcasting or OANN or Rush Limbaugh or someone like that has that kind of brainwashing technology, we’re all fucked.