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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.'"
Guess I shouldn't be surprised. Glad I gave up on Oculus the second Facebook bought them.
He's proven himself to be a duplicitous piece of shit since the acquisition. This is not shocking.
Hillary is also a piece of shit, but not one that would immediately alienate 90% of the rest of the planet, and likely plunge us into thermonuclear war within 6 months of taking office.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
They said mean things in private? They stacked the deck for her prior to Bernie running? And you think it is worth fucking-over America (the globe even!) so that she is not "rewarded"?
It will make a yuuuuge difference whether HRC or Trump wins. Remember that people were saying there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Bush and Gore. Does anyone on Earth think that Gore would have been as bad in policy or implementation on any issue?
Trump is Bush with more bankruptcies, less military service, and no discernible interest in anything about the job other than power.
I sincerely hope it is only Theilatans modding you up.
Well then it should never have been allowed to get that way and disentanglement should be the order of the day.
Pretty much a zero sum equation as far as I see it.
Then you aren't living in reality...
Agreed. Neither one is Hitler.
The only comparison I can think of that may be valid is Trump has shown a method of getting elected where truth doesn't matter; where career ending gaffs don't matter; where obvious attempts to court racists don't matter; where blatant appeals to emotions and feel good slogans are the rule of the day, with no real plan to implement any of it works. It is bombast rather than true leadership and wisdom.
Trump is most certainly not Hitler. I'm fairly certain he would never consider anything even on the same planet of that level of evil. That being said, if we, as an electorate allow ourselves to be persuaded by emotions, cheap slogans, lies, and bombast, then the odds of electing some truly horrific people go up considerably.
Lookup unbiased analysis of what we know of their plans and particularly look at who has been more consistent over time. Like it or not with Hillary you know pretty well what your going to get. Four more years of pretty much the same. The stock market has almost doubled under Obama. Osama died under Obama (and Hillary). Jobs are recovering. Despite complaints crime, on average, continues to decrease. Even wages are beginning to increase finally. Do you really want to give that up? So far all the unbiased analysis of Trump's plan are anything but good, and no, "Make america great again" is not a plan. That is part of the job description.
Finally, while a comparison to Hitler is inappropriate, I nevertheless was reminded of this quote:
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
– Hermann Goering (as told to Gustav Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials)
Beware of being led by emotions. They seldom lead to good decisions. To reason alone must be one's first master.
I agree that people have to be all that to be ardent Trump supporters. But as a foreigner that have seem what Hillary has been doing to Americans and to the world, as well as her threats against both Iran and Russia, I'll say you are partially wrong (on the anti-Americanism growth).
If Trump wins we will shitpost on how stupid Americans are, both because many of you are, and to shame you for having him as president.
But we'll be glad if you elect someone that doesn't finance terrorists and start proxy wars with Russia.
He is really embarrassing, but most people I know down here in Brazil think that if Trump wins it will be mostly on the "lesser of two evils" concept. We (the people I talk to) think most Americans voting on him are in a desperate attempt of doing something for your country, but don't really believe on his white supremacy speeches. Specially after the support that Sanders got and the way that the Democrats pushed Clinton. There are plenty of polls that show that most Americans (rightfully in my opinion) dislike both your candidates.
Foreigners opinions are based on discourse only right in the very beginning. Trump's speeches are not inspiring, but we won't become anti-Americans because of that (at least not for long), we'll be more anti-Americans next time you finance armed "rebels" or start a war. Just like we became more pro-Americans when you elected the constitutional lawyer against surveillance and pro-healthcare, but only for a very short time, as we quickly realized it was just another lie (and that he would spy on our entire populations in spite of international agreements and the notion that men are created equal).
Anyway, if you care about anti-Americanism, vote for who you think will actually murder less, it is in direct relation to that, not on how bigoted your presidents are.
Re Question 2: Why is this worse than lobbyists who actually screw us over and make our lives miserable?
Lets say a wealthy person wants free speech but has no real free time in the day to engage in a long online conversation. They hire one person to be that online persona putting in say five hours a day.
What if the message is always been drowned out by facts and reality? Hire 10 people to each be 10 or 100 accounts each with their own story and time zone, ip?
In the end you just go big and go with what a gov enjoys:
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media " (18 March 2011)
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
British army creates team of Facebook warriors (31 January 2015)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
Re 'Really. I honestly want to know."
The "tell" is usually one person with a lot of accounts cleaning up after bad news about a nation, their faith or their side of politics, gov, mil or agency, having a few hours to get their spin over, before going full AC again.
Posting initial news reports or early opinion hoping to sway readers, hoping nobody will actually read the links and follow up with real news.
Virtue signalling is the big slip up most of the accounts just cannot avoid. Eg. a party political personality trait, pushing a "security clearances" past to add validity, patriotism, nationalism, jingoism, the same sob story again and again usually gets past the smart hearts and minds effort. i.e. the person befuddles their role due to their own gov work or some mil experience.
The better way is to set up a left or right think tank and have them hire based on life experience. The jargon, slang, life stories are then indistinguishable from actual account users, the spin can be perfected over years of account use. No needing tens of fake accounts, fake ip's, no fear of linguistic analysis, just perfected astroturfing for hire. The staff are happy and on message and if suited can be rolled out on book tours, public speaking, for comedy.
The better lobbyists are using well funded authors, comedians, public speakers rather than vast amounts of easily detectable online accounts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
But really what did the DNC do do Sanders (who was not a Democrat prior to trying to run for President as one)?
They said mean things in private? They stacked the deck for her prior to Bernie running? And you think it is worth fucking-over America (the globe even!) so that she is not "rewarded"?
Early this year, when Bernie raised $60 million and Clinton had raised only $20, the DNC moved $60 million in funds earmarked for local campaigns directly into Clinton's account.
Bernie and Clinton won popular votes by roughly the ratio of their campaign spending, so the extra $60 million made a huge difference.
Bernie had momentum at the time, and would have outspent Clinton 3-to-1 in political ads. The extra advertizing would have very likely won him many of the early state primaries, and would have likely won him the national primary as a result.
Moving the money as they did is almost certainly a violation of federal election law, likely a violation of money-laundering law, and goes completely against any sense of neutrality in the DNC towards candidates. (Additionally, they short-sheeted all the local campaigns, giving republicans an edge in many areas.)
Effectively, they took all the campaign contributions people gave to Bernie and wasted them.
And you think it is worth fucking-over America (the globe even!) so that she is not "rewarded"?
It's worth standing up and saying "no" to corruption.
The people who gave support to Bernie Sanders should not have had their efforts wasted due to cheating.
So you're going to stop people on the street randomly and tell them to produce papers on the spot? And you wonder why I'm asking?
Oh, and what's "citizenship papers", exactly? There's no such thing in US right now. Closest you can get is birth certificate or naturalization certificate, but many people don't actually have those (since it's not a requirement), and certainly no-one carries them around.
If Trump wins it will be confirmation that democracy is failing in the English speaking world. Brexit happened because the UK has post-factual politics, and it's looking like the US is the same.
The internet and social media were supposed to improve democracy, but they seem to have reduced it to the level of memes and feelings counting more than facts and ability.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Trump is Bush with more bankruptcies, less military service, and no discernible interest in anything about the job other than power.
Obama's administration carried on most of the Bush-era policies that Democrats loathed the most - and Hillary's being billed by everyone, even Obama, as Obama's Third Term.
Have fun with that!