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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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What, someone forced Shapiro and Tucker Carlson to praise Tate? Someone forced 7,5 million guys to follow him on Twitter? I see myself quite a lot of organic praise for Tate and his exploits from what appear to be right-aligned types all the time. Saying that there's no support for him on the right because /pol sneers at him is like saying that, I dunno, Linkin Park was never popular because trve kvlt metal purists sneered at them for being corporate dreck.

Yes, without actually ever having watched a video featuring him, I've noticed from Youtube recommendations and videos by talking heads that he seems to have basically manipulated the anti-woke countercultural entertainment economy much as he manipulates camgirls, so they end up in a position of either defending decisions at odds with their ostensible values or avoiding responsibility by saying "How did he make me do that?" in a sort of post-orgasmic regret haze.

Since I have noticed the right-wing countercultural entertainment economy get steadily populated by increasingly clueless entrepreneurs looking for easy money since the Gamergate years (e.g. vaguely anti-woke women saying "Wow, I didn't know that video games could have stories!") this didn't surprise me at all. And since the mainstream media seems predominated by the woke equivalents, it really, really didn't surprise me. Where there is facilement de l'argent, there will be facile minds, and it's hardly surprising that someone with pimp skills could "play" them.