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.'"

Comments

Anti-Hillary is not Pro-Trump

[SuperKendall]

There are a LOT of good reasons to be against Hillary without being for Trump.

A big one is this - after what she and the DNC did to Sanders, you all plan to reward her by voting for Hillary? Do you think the DNC will become more, or less corrupt if Hillary wins.

In the end it will not make that vast a difference in Trump or Clinton wins, two arms springing from the same body politic. So don't vote to destroy whatever shred of goodness was left of the DNC by rewarding corruption and massive corporate backroom deals which will be rewarded lavishly during her time in office (just as they were while she was secretary of state).

Re:Anti-Hillary is not Pro-Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-Hillary is not Pro-Trump

[ooloorie]

this is certainly a fine opinion from the perspective of a privileged white male but the rest of us see a vast difference when it comes to the rights of minorities.

Yeah, you're right: if Clinton wins, she'll continue to wreak havoc in minority communities with her corrupt and dysfunctional social policies. She'll continue lying to the LGBTQ community about her support and support homophobic, misogynistic, and racist regimes if they only pay her enough. And she'll continue pandering to illegal immigrants while legal and skilled immigrants have to deal with a dysfunctional immigration system. And while she's at it, she'll hurt the economy a bit, start a war or two, raise taxes, and drive up medical costs to pay off her buddies in the insurance and medical industries. That's just the kind of woman she is. And, of course, she is a favorite with privileged white male voters.

Re:Anti-Hillary is not Pro-Trump

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Re:Anti-Hillary is not Pro-Trump

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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.

So Palmer supports a fascist demagogue.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

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.

Re:Incoming liberal asspain

[plopez]

Trump may be the president America deserves.

Really? Why?

[Okian Warrior]

We complain about lobbyists... but this is so much worse

I'm curious why you think this is.

We've just had an article about lobbyists that prevent Tesla from selling in Michigan without going through dealerships (which are universally hated), another recent article where lobbyists caused a town to lose it's working gigibit fibre internet.

For contrast, note that the democrats put up a billboard of Trump kissing Cruz, and naked statues of Trump in several cities.

Question 1: Why is this worse than what Democrats do, and

Question 2: Why is this worse than lobbyists who actually screw us over and make our lives miserable?

Really. I honestly want to know. Why should this be of any concern to anyone?

Re:Really? Why?

[guises]

Well I'm not the grandparent, and I don't agree with the grandparent, but I'll respond anyway:

Your first question is flamebait. The non-trollish way to phrase that would be something like: "How is this qualitatively different from other campaign propaganda?" And the answer would be something along the lines of: It's true that campaign ads and other tactics can be flat-out deceitful, but there is some measure of difference between deceptive ads and astroturfing. Neither are good, both are working against us, but one exploits our trust in the honesty of our peers and in doing so sabotages our basic ability to communicate with one another.

For your second question: I don't think it is worse. It's not better either, it's basically the same - lobbyists are doing exactly this, constantly. They deceive constituents and organize campaign contributions all in an effort to get their legislation passed. What is this doing? Deceiving constituents in an effort to get someone elected, who will then go on to pass legislation. No difference.

Your last question though, "Why should this be of any concern to anyone?" is... what? This should be of tremendous concern to everyone. The fact that it isn't is part of the problem.

The Daily Beast is a Clinton Mouthpiece

[Anonymous Coward]

Chelsea Clinton is on the board of directors of their parent company. Go look.

Slashdot, do better. Put a disclaimer in next time.

I remember when...

[stillpixel]

When posts on /. were intelligent and the users replied with equal intelligence. Now it's no better than comment sections on any other website on the internet.

Re: Yeah but there's a whole world out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone who claims what Trump would do as a president is lying. Including Trump.

Re: Yeah but there's a whole world out there

[Dahamma]

Are you serious? Trump has stated 1) he wouldn't necessarily honor NATO commitments and 2) he is a "big fan" of the leader of the country NATO was created to resist. You better believe the rest of the world is acutely interested in the results of this election.

Besides, it sounds like you are an American - and the typical American who makes broad assumptions about the rest of the world without actually ENGAGING with it. Pretty much every non-American friend I have is interested - sometimes literally fascinated - with what's going on right now in American politics.

The DNC are cheaters

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Re: Echo chamber

[Zontar The Mindless]

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.

Re:Not bad

[wheelbarrio]

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.