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Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey Is Secretly Funding Trump's Meme Machine (thedailybeast.com)
The founder of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, has backed a pro-Trump political organization called Nimble America that is dedicated to "shitposting" and spreading inflammatory memes about Hillary Clinton. In 2014, Luckey's virtual-reality company, Oculus, was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. Forbes estimates his current net worth to be $700 million. The Daily Beast reports: "The 24-year-old told The Daily Beast that he had used the pseudonym "NimbleRichMan" on Reddit with a password given to him by the organization's founders. Nimble America says it's dedicated to providing 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. Potential donors from Donald Trump's biggest online community -- Reddit's r/The_Donald, where one of the rules is "no dissenters" -- turned on the organization this weekend, refusing to believe "NimbleRichMan" was the anonymous "near-billionaire" he claimed to be and causing a rift on one of the alt-right's most powerful organizational tools. Luckey insists he's just the group's money man -- a wealthy booster who thought the meddlesome idea was funny. But he is also listed as the vice-president of the group on its website. In another post written under Luckey's Reddit pseudonym, Luckey echoes Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who used his wealth to secretly bankroll Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. The Daily Beast adds: "'The American Revolution was funded by wealthy individuals," NimbleRichMan wrote on Saturday. Luckey confirmed to The Daily Beast he penned the posts under his Reddit pseudonym. 'The same has been true of many movements for freedom in history. You can't fight the American elite without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy you by any and all means.'"
Chelsea Clinton is on the board of directors of their parent company. Go look.
Slashdot, do better. Put a disclaimer in next time.
Trump is better on all of those than Hillary.
Blacks? BLM has done more damage to black people than any supposed "white supremacy".
Hispanic? 30% support deportation of illegals.
Immigrant? Legals ones are usually insulted by illegals since they are jumping the queue.
Muslim? See BLM. They can't admit their societies have problems and that reasonable protections need to implemented.
Woman? Trump wants maternity leave.
LGBTQ? Trump's okay with them and vigorously mounted a defense against the jihad in Orlando.
Student loan debt? Trump's expressed concern about mounting debt for young people unable to find work thanks to insane trade and immigration policies.
Poor? Trump's not against welfare and wants trade policies that will help them.
Health care? Trump wants to replace it with something better.
Labor protections? We need to protect all labor from unfair trade and a massive influx of cheap labor.
Random wars? Ask Hillary about Libya, Syria, and (now) Russia.
The fact is Trump is a populist. The establishment is terrified of him because he'll break the system that has existed for decades.
Not really, what makes it hard to take Italy seriously are prosecutors who during a single trial advance motives ranging from normal sociopathy to crazy sex games to devil worship and do so completely seriously.
I like her as a candidate AND I dislike Trump.
Should have used checkboxes.
But I liked her more as a candidate than I disliked Trump. But if I didn't like her as a candidate, I can't imagine disliking any candidate more than trump short of a 3rd world dictator or a serial killer or a mafia don. So it's a toughy.
Clinton will be a moderate left wing candidate with experience as a u.s. senator and secretary of state.
Clinton will continue the ACA and even start fixing it.
Clinton will see that lower income families have less expensive college educations (which is good for the entire country).
Clinton will nominate moderate left wing candidates for the supreme court.
Clinton is respected by world leaders and disliked by Putin.
Clinton is a classic politician willing to work with the opposition for negotiated deals.
Clinton is a bit of a wonk.
Clinton is more cold and rational.
Clinton puts the good of the party and the good of the country ahead of her personal gain.
Clinton cares strongly about womens issues.
Clinton dislikes racists and neo-nazis.
Clinton is willing but not eager to pull the trigger.
Clinton listens to her advisors and often adjusts or changes her opinion based on their advice.
Clinton can make the tough calls when they are needed.
Clinton has shown genuine empathy for people thru her charity work and donations (which I had to dig into deeply due to repeated (4 times!) misrepresentations by conservatives here).
I could go on.
But.. Clinton for president. Trump for the Dump!
----
That said, if Trump is elected while he plunders the U.S for his personal fortune like a 3rd world dictator and tho I may disagree with him on many issues I will give him the respect the office of the president of he united states of america warrants for as long as he is president.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The stock market has almost doubled under Obama.
That isn't hard to do when you're printing money like it is going out of style... They are hiding the inflation well, but it is coming...
You don't print $5 Trillion and hide it forever... (and it isn't "hidden" so much as they have covered up the effects for awhile)
Jobs are recovering.
U6 is more interesting than U3, as it work force participation rate... how is growth in the US economy? How is wage growth going?
Do you really want to give that up?
Yes, because they all suck right now, they should be far better... Everything from food stamps to health care has been a disaster under Obama... You think this is good? I'd hate to see what you think is bad, because this is terrible... It should be much better...
Beware of being led by emotions. They seldom lead to good decisions. To reason alone must be one's first master.
Yes, which is why I don't want Clinton in charge of a Lemonaid stand, much less America... She is pond scum... Actually, as a human being, I don't like her at all. Moving past her policies, she is not a nice or good person.
Trump is actually the more reasonable of the two choices... He isn't married to any one position, he has already shown flexibility when it comes to various points during the election. He is more more of a moderate than Clinton is.
I too work daily with an international crew. And you know what the weirdest thing is? Almost every one of them thinks Trump is utterly dangerous to the US and the rest of the world and doesn't understand how he got to where he is when there were a half dozen actually qualified Republicans running.
Sorry. Guess there's an echo in here today. ;-)
The non-echo part: My Russian colleagues don't seem to like Putin much, either, but they are very cagey about it when it comes to saying so online--even the ones who don't actually live in Russia. They're much less reticent about it in person. Gee, I wonder why.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Trump and his supporters are white supremacists.
Oh boy, here we fucking go again. More buzzwords, more fear, zero evidence.
They clearly think that "mexicans", i.e. anyone who is poor and speaks Spanish, doesn't belong in the US no matter where they were born.
Citation needed. He has ONLY expressed that he doesn't want ILLEGAL immigrants here. You know, people who break the law?
They think that all Muslims are terrorists.
Citation needed again. He has never said this.
And if you don't or won't acknowledge that reality then you are just as much of a racists scum as Trump himself.
"Agree with me or I'll call you names like racist!"
This is why so many people are getting sick of the left. Too many buzzwords, everything is an -ism of some kind, which only helps to divide the country further. It's an endless game of the oppression Olympics.
Not that the right is any better, I'm getting sick of both sides lying through they teeth, it's just a matter of which bullshit annoys me more.
He is also friends with white supremacists, and wants one in the supreme court.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
By attacking the person and not the message you are just being stupid, but since you implied that the current state of my country of origin makes me less qualified to talk about the subject, I'll answer.
Your government meddles with ours. Your country implanted a dictatorship some time ago when we were getting better, huge setback, but we got out. We had a pretty good run for 14 years (just go check anywhere), even between two world economic crises. But when our president complained (2013) that your country was violating our constitution and our human rights, your president appointed a coup specialist as ambassador. Three years later, our president was taken out of office in the same way Paraguay's one was taken when this American coup organizer was working there (through a flaw in the law that permitted legally removing the president as long as enough congressmen lied together).
So yeah, we were fixing our government but America keeps fucking us. So don't complain when people talk about it, and don't blame us for everything that happens here, we are pretty shit alone, but you help a lot. As you should know, fixing broken governments is really hard, I'm working on it too.
But if you read my previous post, that's not even the reason I care the most about your politics, personally I really dislike murder, as most people I know (including several Americans). Considering your poor options as candidates, something I relate to, I wrote "who you think", as not to give an absolute opinion on the person you should vote to, but on one issue I think you should consider to be top priority (not that employment doesn't matter). To make it clear I wasn't telling on who to vote, I also gave a very conditional advice:
If you care about anti-Americanism, vote for who you think will actually murder less
I babbled a lot in my comment, but in the end the advice that I gave was that one. Do you think it is a bad advice? Do you think the US will become a banana republic if voters think about that? If so, isn't it worth becoming one? And in the end it was a conditional advice, so if you don't care about anti-Americanism, or about murdering less, it's ok, you can do whatever you want. But I will not restrain from speaking.
You really think that?
Or, rather, you really WANT that? You really want to pay more for your groceries, for your deliveries, for your repairs, for ... well, pretty much anything?
Before you cry "they took ur juuubs", ponder whether you'd WANT that job, or whether that job is done for you, and realize that if it's the latter, the price for this will go up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You make some accurate and yet irrelevant rhetorical criticism while missing (or ignoring) the point. Consider responding directly to your interlocutor's arguments with a less patronizing, more emotive style, I think you'll find people are less likely to mistake you for an asshat.
Beware of being led by emotions. They seldom lead to good decisions. To reason alone must be one's first master.
Scott Adams, who you might know as the Dilbert creator, has been saying for a while that humans make decisions on emotions and facts don't matter much or any. In fact, he argues that appealing to reason and laying out facts is actually counterproductive when faced with an opponent who appeals to emotions. I am beginning to wonder with some concern that he might be right. Recent studies have shown that if you take someone who holds a wrong belief or opinion and you can prove with evidence that the opinion is wrong, most people will actually double down and cling more stubbornly to the wrong belief. This is part of why Trump appeals to so many people. A lot of what he is says is very simple emotional arguments. Hillary has been trying to get off the facts in her speech and get more emotional as a result of this. Don't be surprised if the first debate has very little in the way of concrete ideas and a whole lot of name calling directed at the other person. People will complain that it lacks substance, but it may just be that humans in general are pretty stupid and we're just getting what we deserve with a bunch of name calling because we ignore the substance when we're given it.
His opponents are all about violence. They openly advocate it. Trump's rally in Chicago had to be cancelled, because of the threats of violence. A US President better be ready to respond to violent threats with overwhelming violence of our own. The era of apologizing and paying off the little bullies is over.
Now, has Donald Trump used violence in personal matters? Evidently not...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'll add that the Clinton campaign has been proudly touting its Twitter and social media strategy ahead of the debate. They are happy to tell you that they have their affiliated PACs and supporters coordinated in a campaign to influence debate moderators to "fact check" Trump during the debate, producing an advantage for Clinton.
They also proudly tout their strategy to have an army of supporters and astroturfers alike live-tweet the debate to create the impression that Hillary is winning the debate. They are specifically targetting the reporters and pundits who cover the event to ensure that they get the early buzz as winning the debate and have a quick declaration that "the election is over" following the debate.
This story, with labels like "Shitposting" would appear to be cover for this strategy, designed to neuter any criticism of the Clinton strategy, which has been fairly openly discussed at least since the Matt Lauer national security forum.
So we have moved into a new era of political ground game - where social media is used in increasingly sophisticated ways by the campaigns to influence the election. They both seem relatively hamfisted about it at this point, but that doesn't mean it isn't having an effect.
Exalted Cyclops Robert Bird was Hillary's Mentor. If you want to point to racist KKK people, you might actually point to one that actually was a Racist KKK member. ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.