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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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The line between retarded and crazy is thin. But the point I'm trying to make is still that Candace Owens had to actually hone her craft as a professional liar in the open marketplace of ideas lies. She had to develop soft skills, coping mechanisms, how to navigate the ecosystem and network. How many times has Owens been caught peddling bullshit? How many times has she lost her patron and had to find a new audience? I think she might be the singular personality from the Gamergate era that is still keeping up a grift. It's honestly astounding, and speaks to a reserve of grit and work ethic that is rather impressive, being a crazy/retarded liar aside.

Compared to Ardey who never failed in his life, no matter how outlandish his lies were, because he was being kept as a pet by his betters. Then suddenly he encountered the real world despite their best efforts, and the shock was too much for him. It was cruel to gas up a retard that much.

I think this is an interesting point, and it sounds to me like you are probably correct, but it raises a question: Why didn't Candace Owens just join the Left? As a reasonably attractive black woman, she surely could have gotten some kind of reasonably well paying public intellectual position. Or she could have stayed with the Daily Wire if she had just stayed silent about Israel. (As a side note, I strongly suspect that Matt Walsh has pretty strong negative feelings about Jews but is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.)

Why didn't Candace Owens just join the Left?

Her incomprehensible Gamergate origin story was that she had developed a service that would unmask sock puppet accounts, to fight harassment. Then Zoe Quinn anonymously contacted her, threatening her if she went forward with it. And this cemented in her world view that leftist were pro-harassment.

Even then she was obviously a retarded liar. There were no details as to how this sock puppet unmasking service worked, not even a whiff of a hint that she was remotely capable of creating such a service, or even outsourcing it to people who were. The utility of such a revolutionary technology has not diminished in the least, and yet it has still yet to materialize from her now that her grift has moved so far past anyone even remembering her fantastical origin story.

And yet, somehow, she has still managed to embed herself in the ecosystem of online right discourse. Frankly it's astonishing. She's like some sort of meat LLM that has gradually learned what mouth sounds to make to secure infinite attention, with little understanding of what any of those mouth sounds really mean.

Why didn't Candace Owens just join the Left?

She did, originally. The competition for black female influencers was too stiff, so she jumped ship.

The left wing grift industrial complex is large and well funded, but the barriers of entry are high. The right wing one is much more modest, but with less competition (at least a few years ago).

The meta right now seems to be go right at first to build up an audience, and then try to pivot left as a David Frenchian figure to secure the leftbuxx.

See also: Richard Hanania

Why didn't Candace Owens just join the Left? As a reasonably attractive black woman, she surely could have gotten some kind of reasonably well paying public intellectual position.

Well, there's plenty of demand on the right too for black women and less competition. Mainstream rightists are but progressives driving the speed limit, and are also desperate to have blacks and women as allies so they can say "see?! look! we're not racist/misogynists," not that their meek protests are effective. Lots of two-soyjaks-pointing at Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, and MLK too. Plus, the online right leans male and is not immune to simping whenever a reasonably attractive chick comes along (see the ecosystem of rightoid/TradCon e-thot grifters).