Curtis Yarvin’s Pre-Election Advice to Elon Musk

Hey, Upstream listeners. Today on Upstream, we're releasing a conversation I had with Curtis Yarvin earlier this year on Turpentine's show, Moment of Zen. We discuss media, journalism, power, and more. Yarvin also offers some advice to Elon Musk regarding Twitter that is interesting to consider in light of Elon's recent political activity. Please enjoy the episode.

We ended our last conversation talking about your upcoming debate with Richard Hanania. You've since had the debate. This, this, this will be released after you release the, the audio of the, of the debate. Did the debate go the way you hoped? Any reactions or commentary that you'd follow up with before getting into some of the—

Oh, I don't know. It was fun.

I, you know, I thought You know, I mean, it's it's always a little difficult, I think, to prepare to to to to talk to me because my views are so landish, and so it's sort of like any debate with me is inherently in a way kind of unfair almost, I would say, because you know I probably if your views are sort of more conventional, like I've. Probably been exposed to them more than you've been exposed to mine, even with someone, you know, who's as, uh, as wide-ranging and curious as Dr. Hanania. And so, yeah, I thought there were some ways in which maybe he could have been better prepared. Um, I think, you know, I do have video of the debate. Uh, you know, I think I have some concerns about releasing it because I'm a little concerned that there's a little bit of the Nixon-Kennedy In 1960 issue where everyone, everyone who heard it on radio knew that Nixon had won, whereas people who saw it on TV had the illusion that Kennedy had won. I think just because his, his, his, his hair and makeup people did a better job. I would say the real—

Who's who in this situation?

Well, the real—

no, the real problem I had in that debate is that, uh, simply, uh, you know, um, how can I say it? I'm fatter than Richard. I'm just fatter.

And, and, and, you know, and I think that gives him kind of a physiognomy—

physion— physiognomic advantage in terms of how he's perceived as a sort of more, more dynamic individual that I think I'm gonna have to struggle to, to, um, to compete with.

And, uh, so yeah, so, so, so, so I think other than, than that aspect, which is, you know, it's really nothing.

I mean, you know, you know, Richard himself has has this, this great piece on how he used to be fat, you know, and, um, imagine being fat and, and looking like that. And, and he conquered it.

Sorry, I'm the worst.

And, and he conquered it, and now, you know, he's, he's like, he's pretty presentable and he has this, you know, really fine figure.

So, so yeah, I think that's kind of my main concern with the debate.

I thought, I thought Ana as the host did an amazing job. And, and I thought it was, you know, it was a lot of fun. And the venue, by the way, learned who we are, I think, who, you know, not who we were. We didn't lie about who we were. We just didn't bring it up really. And so they, I think they, they learned who we were just as the event was about to start, which, you know, um, and so I, I don't know if we'll be— it was an excellent location and I don't think we'll be coming back to it now.

Now you, you, Erik, were present.

You were present at this event. Uh, what did you, what did you make of it? I was present.

I was present. I thought it was very entertaining. I thought you guys both brought good energy. And it was very funny. It was funny. It was insightful. And it was a great moderator. It was a great crowd. And I think everyone had a great time. I hope, I hope you guys make this, or I hope you, you know, do debates semi-regularly because—

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fun people that I'd like to do that to.

Not, you know, as, as in, as, as, as, as with sex, and I'm not sure everyone would consent, but, you know, I certainly have, I have, I have fantasies of debating a lot of people.

Well, maybe Chris Rufo next?

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Uh, you know, Chris, Chris, you know, really, uh, as you may have seen, Chris, uh, with Chris and I, I was at Chris's event in Manhattan.

And he took a selfie with me and posted that, and he got a lot of flack for that, which really, you know, sort of demonstrates a kind of a mensch, a mensch character in Chris.

Yeah.

Although I've, I've abused him terribly.

But, you know, the thing is that, that, you know, when, when the, you know, it's, it's just like, you know, how can I say this?

You know, when, when people abuse you terribly for something that you have in fact done, You know, it's just like your duty to sit there and take it like a man and have good spirits about it.

Either that or—

and, and, you know, that's, that's like what I would like to think was going on there. Maybe he just considers me kind of a clown, really a comic figure, and therefore doesn't care. But, uh, you know, uh, when someone's willing to take, take flack to be connected to you, that always, that always says a lot to me.

Yeah.

Cool. Well, I want to point to a quote in the debate that you had towards the end, and then we can unpack it a bit further. So let me briefly read something you said. You said, you can't have Harvard or New York Times-shaped holes in society. You need a shared collective truth and a shared educational base. The real energy that's positive and productive comes not from burning down the old institutions, but by building the new institutions of the new regime. And those institutions can be built within the current regime. How else are you going to have the new regime? So you need to build the next regime as a real thing, somehow existing in this bizarro world with Harvard and New York Times already existing. So what is the— say more about this, or what is the roadmap to building the new regime?

What is the roadmap to building the new—

well, so, so, so, yeah, yeah, we could, you know, you sort of accurately pointed that to to that as kind of a trapdoor beneath which lays, you know, hidden and unfathomable gulfs, you know. And, and some of these gulfs, you know, have to be veiled from you, frankly, frankly, frankly, frankly, for your own protection. But I'm just kidding.

But, you know, the, the, you know, there's sort of the—

within, within this space, once you've basically determined that You're thinking in terms of creating a new world and you're imagining a new world. And then of course, obviously your first step is to say, what parts of this new world can be built within the old world? And how can these parts existing within the old regime help us create the new regime? So one example would be, and this is, this was kind of a popular perspective in the United States even 20 or 30 years ago, and I'm so old that I remember this, one possible way to approach this question would be, well, you know, one of the things that really makes a state a state is the military. So let's start a militia.

Right. So, you know, the thing is that, that, and, and, and that's been, you know, like, like that's, uh, That's a time-honored praxis in, in American history.

But, uh, times, whether we like it or not, and some of us do and some of us don't, uh, times have changed. And, uh, you know, even in the 1980s, uh, you know, or the '90s, what was the golden age of like the Michigan militia? Uh, you know, that approach seemed a little tired, a little sort of developmentally delayed, and it sort of ends up in this kind of LARPy world of January 6th, where, you know, literally, I think actually some of them had like collapsible batons. And then there was, of course, the Viking helmet. That's arms in a sense, you know, but, but, but, you know, sort of, so the, you know, the, there, there are various approaches to this sort of interesting question of building the next regime as a legitimate institution within the current regime. And one of those clearly is that actually, because you're doing this kind of crazy thing, and, and, you know, and the only reason you can sort of even think in anything like those terms is really the thing that very few of the opponents of this regime sort of notice and therefore can take advantage of, which is its decentralized quality. You know, everyone who is basically kind of Because we're all Americans here, when we want to basically get mad at our government, we're always looking for King George III. Like, where is King George III in this? You know, is he hiding? And, you know, so, so we're like basically like, you know, oh, I don't like this whole vaccine COVID thing. Uh, let's get Fauci. Yeah, sure. Okay. Uh, you know, it's kind of crazy that he, you know, sort of created this and then was called on to clean it up.

Uh, you know, but, uh, you know, it's like, did you see that, that, uh, The miniseries Chernobyl.

But, you know, uh, you know, I mean, someday all those little EchoHealth meetings and all the stuff on that Slack thread will be, uh, that, that'll be on a miniseries, we hope.

But in any case, you know, point is there's 10 guys who want to—

there's 50, there's 100 guys who want his job and can have it.

And, you know, so the, the— when you're sort of looking for centralization, you're doing the wrong thing. But when you're taking advantage of Decentralization, you're doing the right thing.

Because actually, there's sort of nothing in this system where the whole reason why you can have this sort of avenue toward creating a new world is that you don't— you're actually not up against any kind of centralized structure. You're not a Soviet dissident. You're not a Chinese dissident, right?

So, and, and because you can do that, you can do H.G.

Wells had this wonderful term. He actually had this great description of kind of the modern system of government in this thing he wrote in the '30s called The Open Conspiracy. And so, you know, the sort of the open conspiracy was the kind of conspiracy of intellectuals to take over the world, which in case you hadn't noticed, you know, happened, right?

You know, and, and so, so, so from like aristocrats and politicians basically.

And So, you know, to the extent that we have sort of an open conspiracy of our own, in a way, perhaps we're getting a little warmer. And you say, okay, well, what's really even more central in a way to the nature of, of a regime than the army? So one example where you go further down is you get to the intelligence service. And, you know, there's, in a way, I think there's, you know, arguably like some continuity between like the modern, between like James Bond, English intelligence service, and like Cromwell's spymaster or something. These threads sort of go way— there's a lot of continuity in intelligence services. And so it's clearly something that's sort of core in government. But what does it mean to have a private intelligence service?

Okay, well, you know, open source information, you know, You've got Stratfor, whatever, whatever, whatever.

These are things that exist. And when you look at sort of the theory of intelligence, the theory of intelligence is very much that sort of you're making the correct sovereign decisions because you have sort of really true information that isn't being twisted by policy on the way in. Of course, it always is twisted by policy on the way in, uh, but it's not supposed to be.

Uh, and so moreover, there's an interesting—

if you go back and you read, as we sort of get warmer and more realistic— I'm not saying this is the sort of the right way to do it, but as we get warmer and more realistic, as you remember, we started with a, with a militia idea, which we're not going to do. Um, and as we get warmer and more realistic, we realize that if you read the book that's in a way the kind founding document of 20th century government by media, which is Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion. There's something that he does there which seems very weird to a modern reader, which is that he equates journalism with intelligence. And you're just like, whoa, journalists aren't—

well, they're, uh, I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're exfiltrating information from the government without, uh, any specific permission to do so.

I, uh, you know, it's like when sometimes, you know, a journalist will sort of run awry of some other power within the government, like Judith Miller or James Risen. And there was some description in the James Risen trial— I think he pissed off the NSA or something— and there was some description in the trial of the methods that he used to get information from sources.

And these were very much the methods of Espionage, like dead drops, like all this crazy-ass shit, right?

You know, and I'm just like, oh, I see, right?

You know, and so actually, like, when you go from intelligence to journalism and you're like, in a way, wait, if intelligence and journalism are the same thing, you know, at least we're starting to have something that resembles a business.

Because, you know, one of the biggest problems with starting with a militia is how does a militia fund itself? Right. Is a militia a business? What are you gonna do, like loot and pillage and like then, you know, sell the stuff on— drop ship it on Amazon?

You know, um, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to make this kind of startup pitch for the Michigan militia.

At most, it has to be like kind of member supported, like NPR.

You know, it's a tough slog.

Mm-hmm.

And, and, and so then when you get to like intelligence, you're like, okay, Stratfor, Bismarck, something something.

Companies will pay money for strategic intelligence again. It's like it's kind of niche, but then when you get to journalism, you're just like, "Whoa, yeah, media barons, right?" You know, somewhere around here are like media barons. So this can be something that isn't. We can start to imagine something that's in some way self funding or self self subsisting.

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Now, you know, then we're like, okay, so really, In a sense, what you're saying is if you're founding, say, a new newspaper— now, this is still not quite right, we'll go on, we'll fix it more— but if you're founding, say, a new press outlet, a new media company or something, what you're really saying is that the ultimate goal of your media startup is to become the state media company. of the next regime. Sure. And so, like the TASS or the New York Times or NPR or something like that, right?

You know, to become in a sense, whether formally or informally, official, right? And so, you know, that's a sort of an enormous pretense.

It's an enormous ambition. It sort of imposes things on your potential ambition that, like, it's just sort of like, you know, in Silicon Valley terms, it's maybe just like one of these, you know, shoot at the moon things. Like, you know, did the founders of NVIDIA imagine that one day they would be a $3 trillion company?

Maybe it didn't completely surprise them. I don't know, you know. And, and so, you know, you, you know, when you're— when you certainly—

when you're doing a startup, especially if you're looking for startup-type funding, you really have to have a sort of vision this large and this broad. In your mind, because maybe you won't hit it, maybe you'll hit something else. But you know what, like, at least you're hitting the ball as hard as you can.

So, you know, to the extent that basically you're like, okay, societies can, you know, we have these amazing communication technologies in the 21st century.

Society is always organized on the basis of like, you know, a modern industrial society is organized on the basis of sort of communicating ideas and having at those ideas create consent in what Gaetano Mosca called a political formula. So, you know, you're sort of also imagining, not only are you imagining this as a major agency, formal or informal, of any kind of next regime, it's maybe also in a sense helping you get there.

Sure.

Okay.

But, but it, but it's, it's doing this, of course, in a very, very, very legitimate way.

Right. And, and the, the even, you know, it's like, it's notable, for instance, that, you know, I don't think, for example, James O'Keefe, you know, I respect O'Keefe.

I don't know that he's going about it in entirely the right way. But you'll notice that when James O'Keefe breaks the rules, it's sort of like the January 6th demonstrators breaking the rules. Like, you know, they'll, they'll get, you know, fined for like, you know, carrying a, you know, carrying a cane into a, you know, I mean, it's just like they'll, they'll, uh, Or Alex Jones.

Who said—

who said— you're Alex Jones, you know, who—

or Donald Trump, uh, you know, who was it who, you know, um, who, who, who said, you know, for, for my friends, mercy, for my enemies, the law. Um, I mean, what they're doing with Trump now goes way beyond. It's insane.

It's amazing.

It's like, it's mind-blowing. It's like just, uh, uh, um, and, and, and, you know, it's, it's like, uh, it's delegitimizing in a sense Where, where they don't sort of see the level of damage that it's doing to their legitimacy. Like, you're really gonna go out straight out and say that Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million and that saying it's worth more than $18 million is like fraud.

And like, you know, I'm just like, you know, you can see pictures, right? You know, like, uh, and, and, and so, you know, in any case, you know.

Mm-hmm.

There are many, many things that are sort of grievous, grievously wrong with the present powers that be in kind of public communication. However, again, when you take this kind of libertarian standpoint and say, wow, the lying New York, New York Times, the lying New York Times, the mainstream media, go woke, go broke, right? You've heard these mantras before.

Do they feel— Do they feel to you like this is working?

You know, do you feel in charge?

You know, and, and so like, like I've seen a lot of conservative media in my time.

I've consumed a lot of conservative media.

If like, you know, conservative media was, was crack, I think I would have put as much time into it as a lot of, a lot of crackheads, maybe even a lot of crack dealers. Okay. So, so like, I know the crack business, right? You know, and I'm just there to tell you, I don't think it's accomplished much.

And I think it has many, many structural problems with it. And so, you know, I think it's sort of interesting to say, to derive when you're saying, okay, you know, we're creating sort of the organs of the new state before there is a new state. Okay, that's super interesting. Don't know who's had that idea before. Um, I'm pretty sure you don't want to dig around and look for who's had that idea before. But the, the, um, uh, but, but, but like, you know, implicitly that sort of dual status of like, here is something that's going to be a pillar of a future order and also kind of a spear that will help us get to that future, future order in the sense of like information warfare, that is actually, I think, fundamental to sort of all conservative or dissident media ideas. I think it just helps to state it sort of more explicitly in a way. And, and when you state it more explicitly, of course, when you state, you know, anything explicitly, uh, you know, on the internet, you, you attract ridicule, especially if you're fat.

But, but, um, The, the, the—

But, but, you know, I think stating things explicitly has value in that it allows you to understand their logic. And so, you know, what you're really doing in a sense when—

if you're saying, hey, we would like to sort of create this thing that can stand on its own in the present hard times, but we'll sort blossom into the sort of the trunk of a kind of new information system in, you know, some imagined utopia, but will still be pretty cool and present. There's a number of ways you can go about that. So one of the sort of most straightforward ways to go about that is to say, well, okay, media is a business, and our goal in a business, as with any business, Is to make money, right? Very true.

Now, I think it's more true to say that's not really true.

Their goal is to maximize the capital value of the business. And the thing is, in a lot of businesses, if you think in a short-term way versus a long-term way, you can do really well in the short term in ways maybe that keep working in the long term, but that are really sort of limit the horizon of where you can go with that. So for an example of this, recently I went down to Phoenix to go be on the Charlie Kirk Show.

Okay.

And I have the utmost respect for Charlie Kirk.

I was very impressed by his performance. I thought he had a very different strategy than Tucker Carlson when doing me, because Tucker just let me talk, which was kind of cool, whereas Charlie really worked to make sure it was still an interview. And Charlie really understood what he was talking about. He really got it. He didn't necessarily agree, but he got it as much as I could. Of course, I sort of moderated my message. I'm not going to go on Charlie Kirk and question the American Revolution. Oh my God. You know, still less the Glorious Revolution. You know, it was glorious. It was definitely glorious in the American Revolution.

King George III, bad.

Okay.

Right. So we didn't really go there, but, but, but, you know, that's about as far.

But the thing is, I couldn't help but notice when I was on Charlie Kirk that there's sort of this interesting relationship because I'm. I'm 50 and Charlie is 30, and I would say on average, this may be a bit of a caricature. It's probably a caricature on both ends, but it might well be true that his average fan is older than me and my average fan is younger than him. And because, you know, what he really does very, very well is he speaks to the boomers and, oh my God, what a great generation. We love our boomers, don't we?

Right. You know, it's funny, I was just watching, for a short digression.

Uh, you know, my son who's 13 is into watching war, war movies, war things, right? And, and we watched, uh, we watched, we started to watch this new series, The Pacific, and which is about, which is sort of a remake of Band of Brothers in, in the Pacific theater, right? And, and done in the same kind of way. And it was just like, no, we have to watch the original Band of Brothers. We watched the original Band of Brothers. It's amazing. It's like so, it's so accurate.

It's so real. So like, even I don't think they could be—

honestly, I don't think they could be as respectful of Nazis now as they were then.

But also, like, you know, you watch Band of Brothers and the soldiers look like soldiers. They look like they're actually like, you know, people would stand this way, they would walk this way, you know.

Whereas basically you watch The Pacific, even their technical advisors, you know, seem to have forgotten how a fucking soldier would fucking stand or fucking salute in World War fucking 2.

Yeah.

Right? So great generation, wonderful generation. On the other hand, love you guys, boomers, all you boomers out there.

On the other hand, you know, basically that's not a leading indicator when your fans are boomers, right? And, and so what you're looking for, if you're looking for maximizing sort of, if you're looking for going in the direction to the level Of trust that a state media company should have in a strong state. And obviously you want your state to be as strong as possible by definition, right? Your state media company should have 2 qualities. One, it's always fucking right, and also everyone fucking believes it. Okay, that's your optimal state of like infallibility. Like everybody always believes you, not because they're brainwashed, but because you're actually always right.

Right.

Very, very, very—

a regime that's got this going on is very, very difficult to resist, let me tell you, right?

You know, and, and can be done, uh, has been done, takes a lot of energy, right? And so, you know, both of those things are also very reasonable goals for a private media company. Now, the thing is, when you're looking for—

to get people to believe you completely, to maximize their trust in you, There's again a number of different ways to do this. For example, you could say, why do people trust the New York Times? Well, you might observe, for example, that the New York Times has a brand which is written in a black-letter English font. So you might call your— you might adopt the same graphic design model. You might call and you might say, we're journalists, we have a newspaper. And you would call your newspaper something like, I don't know, the Post Millennial. Sorry, Matthew.

And and and and it would have it would attempt simply through sort of brand you know brand you know mimicry.

You know you'll buy these like cheap you know Chinese no-name products that will be like Hyundai or something.

Like it's not a Honda. It's not a Hyundai. It's like Hyundai. You know and and and so you could sort of able keep those signals at a very low level.

I think there was one election in Massachusetts in like the '60s or the '70s where there were actually like 3 or 4 candidates named John Kennedy running, running for office, you know.

So, so you can mimic the sort of branding style.

You can say, hey, we're just like this. And in a way, you know, so much of, you know, for even, even for people to say when they're competing with these organizations, to call themselves journalists is, I think, a huge, huge error. You shouldn't do anything like that. You shouldn't LARP or imitate journalism. You shouldn't pretend to have that. You certainly shouldn't say, oh, I think I have the privileges of journalism, so I can do like undercover operations where I like sneak in and whatever.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's really, really bad. Don't ever do that, right?

Because you're, you're, you're sort of— it's very beta. It looks fake.

No one will actually take you seriously in that. Everybody knows the New York Times and the Washington Post are real newspapers. The New York Post and the Washington Times are not real newspapers. One of the dumbest things that was done in right-wing media of all time, really, I think, but also in the 2020 election, was this handling of Hunter Biden's laptop where they're basically like We're going to like write stories based on them and we're going to publish them in the Post, the New York Post, the highly influential New York Post.

Right.

You know, and, and, and like, you know, it would have been far better, far more powerful, far more effective to just use 4chan. Right. You know, and, and so, so like far more effective and, and I'm not saying it would have been the best thing. Right. But it was just, it was just, it was like developmentally delayed. You know, at just an unbelievable level, right? You know, and and the the and that's that's because of this kind of larping instinct, right? And actually, like if you're looking to sort of be and become the real thing, in my view, you're actually you're not you should understand the.

the sort of the strategy that the Pulitzers and the Sulzbergers and the old sort of barons of the press used to create the system in their time. You can't LARP it. You're not doing the same thing over again. You know, people, you know, will come and they'll say dumbass shit like Elon Musk should buy the New York Times.

Well, first of all, Elon Musk cannot buy the New York Times.

It is not for sale. Even the special magic, uh, shares that, the, the, that run it. Um, You know, I always like to say that, um, our country is still, in fact, actually is a monarchy in the most important sense because its most powerful government institution, the New York Times, is a 5th generation hereditary monarchy.

Point is, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. He doesn't own the Post.

He sponsors it. He can't interfere with the news desk. The Sulzbergers are the last of the old press dynasties that actually have influence over the paper. And I think actually some of the like 2020 woke-splosion problem is that the current Sulzberger is a little bit of a weak king, right?

You know, and, and—

Why couldn't Jeff Bezos do to the Washington Post what Elon did to Twitter?

You know, because he would just reduce it to the status of the Washington Times.

He would basically— he could kill it. He could buy it and burn it down. That's actually probably what he should do. No, actually, I have a better example. He would reduce it to the status of—

are you ready? Newsweek.

Right? Newsweek used to be part of the mainstream media, and now it is a fringe publication.

Done.

You know, like, okay, you might remember it from your dentist's office, but it's not the same Newsweek that was in your dentist's office. That Newsweek was part of the government.

This Newsweek is basically a bunch of cranks, with all due respect to the wonderful cranks who are trying to make a go of it.

Right?

And so, you know, don't do that. Don't buy Newsweek, right? Don't become Newsweek. Don't use the Newsweek font, right? Okay, these things are all mistakes, right? And so when you're looking at, you know, again, we've kind of—

we've gone from like mistakes in, in the category of mistakes not to make, we've gone from Startup Militia, um, to Newsweek.

Okay, so we're getting better. Like, this is the kind of, you know, this is kind of Idea Maze kind of, you know, pitch.

Obviously.

So I'm pitching you. This is the kind of idea maze pitch where you're starting very, very, very long distance from the pile of gold, right?

You know, and, and, and you're working—

we're working through progressively less stupid ideas that are still stupid, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so, you know, I think we're hopefully now in a position to almost leave the area of stupid ideas and get into non-stupid ideas.

So, okay, what's not stupid? Well, 2 things. One is that if you look at why people believe things, you want people to believe in you, right?

Belief is power by definition. That's what it is.

You want people to believe you.

So there's 2 ways, basic ways, that you get people to believe you. One is the way in which sort of liberals believe it works, is, uh, you have be right, and then people will believe you. Okay.

I mean, it certainly helps. And the thing is, not only does it help, you know, I think that although I, I don't want to lie, and so I wouldn't say it's necessary—

it's not in all cases necessary—

the, the people can be lied to.

I just don't think that from this position there's ever a situation in which not being right— and I'm not just talking about being technically right, I'm talking about being like really deeply right, uh, you know, it's, it's, uh, I don't think there's ever a position in which it's actually useful in sort of a business sense from the perspective of you're doing something like this to not just be telling the truth.

Okay, so good start, good start.

You're right.

You're not just sort of technically right, you know, in the way that somebody's ex-wife might be technically right. You're actually like deeply right, you know, in the way that your own divorce filings are right, you know.

And, um, the, the, um, and, and, and, and, uh, And so that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good.

Okay, but, but is it, is it, is it enough?

No, it's definitely not enough because actually it helps. But if you're looking—

and it helps with all sorts of unsubtle things, all sorts of subtle things as well as these unsubtle things. Like, it's really useful and important to always be right.

And, uh, and, and in fact, I would say that if you're trying to do something like this and And clearly the more people do it, the better.

For example, if there's one thing that still works in modern journalism, in a sense, in its own sense, it's fact-checking. With that piece that Vanity Fair did on me, I had an experience with the Condé Nast—

I spent hours on the phone with the Condé Nast fact-checkers.

They went very deeply into the question of whether I could be considered a Jew. This is a fact.

And, and the, the, the answer is no.

Um, and, and the, the, uh, you know, but, but like, so, you know, don't, don't have a black letter font and a word like Poster Times in your name. Um, but maybe have fact-checkers, you know, or something like that. Something even like that, right? So, so the thing is, you know, yeah, actually to be You know, you should obviously be much less careless with the truth than the New York Times.

And that goes for both the sort of technical dot all the i's and cross all the t's truth and the broader, more abstract Leopold von Ranke as it really was truth, where you're not actually being, uh, you know, as I said to someone in, in the context of, of who was having one of these, you know, court, uh, you know, disputes, really, you know, to lie is to do anything that causes someone else to have a misimpression of reality, right?

And, and, and there's a lot of ways of lying, you know.

Yeah. And, and so, okay, tell the truth.

But really what's important about if you want your ideas to win, that is tautologically identical with saying that you want your ideas to be fashionable.

Because tautologically, by definition, influences, ideas, fashions flow from the point of most—

more fashionable to less fashionable. They only flow downward. Another way to say this sort of somewhat more provocatively is something I often say, which is that the quality of a social network can only decline.

So because of that, if you want to maximize the size of your network, it's actually a very bad incentive to maximize the initial size of it.

Because what you actually want to be doing is a breadth-first search, you know, where you're basically filling the pyramid downward and you fill every level before you get to the next level down. And by the time your platform has to learn how to deal or your network has to learn how to deal in a productive way with the scum of the earth, you already have everyone in there. So on a social network, for example, initially you're filling the top of the pyramid and you have no moderation at all, um, because your only moderation is user quality. And by the time you're down here, you basically need, you know, sort of the tools of like Django Unchained to keep the bottom of the pyramid in line, right?

You know, and, and, and the, the, uh, Shadow banning, you know, hell banning, like literally using the word hell, right? You know, and it used to be considered unethical, but it's now it's sort of more thought of as normal, right? And the, the, that's the, that's the life course of a social network, right?

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So entering at the top is really, really important.

And so basically, you know, it's like, for example, you know, for, for a concrete distinction between these 2 ways of doing alternative media, There was a film that came out last year about— what was it called? It was about child sex trafficking.

Um, I can't remember.

Uh, you can't remember? I can't remember either, but it was about child sex trafficking.

It made, I think, solid 8 figures.

It was a solidly profitable movie.

That's— that ain't no easy thing to do.

It was about child sex trafficking. You know, there's a friend of mine who says child sex trafficking In a way, it's like the, uh, police killing unarmed Black men of like conservatives. Like, it happens, but, but maybe it's not as often as you think.

Not every 2,000. And so there's that, right?

You know, but, you know, more to the point, right? You know, this is a, this is a profitable market to milk. Fox News has made a lot of money, but the thing is, basically, because you're not really penetrating into the core of the elites, you can never go upmarket.

You can only go downmarket. So you're this kind of like ghetto, in which case, if you kind of remember your original kind of political goals, because remember, you're kind of aiming for world domination, or at least national domination here, right? You're basically saying, well, We're gonna sort of acquire the consent of like this like sub-pyramid of the pyramid, which doesn't even contain the top. And then this sub-pyramid of the pyramid is gonna, um, um, you know, rise up and, uh, you know, dominate, uh, the, uh, others by, uh, you know, uh, I don't know, you know, with its Viking horn helmet or something, right?

You know, and, and so the thing is, it's, it's just, it's very limiting when you take that direction. And if you take the reverse direction of saying, you know, why did Facebook kill MySpace?

Because MySpace had, you know, 50 million users, but Facebook was started in the bike room of the Porcellian. If they'd been started at Harvard with the Porcellian being the most elite, what is it called, final club, you know, at Harvard, I think it would've been started upstairs in the Porcellian, probably, you know, even your cereal would be Facebook branded by now. You know, and so the thing is that basically, When you're building something that you intend to be a very, very, you know, low time preference, long-term, long arc thing, you're not just looking to get in and cash out quickly. You know, you make a movie like the child sex trafficking movie, let's just call it child sex trafficking.

Sure. Uh, you know, you're in and out, you have a profit, the checks, you know, all those checks from that movie have landed now.

They've come into people's mailboxes, right? You know, whereas when you're basically building something thing that is a, you know, to borrow a phrase, um, a novus ordo seclorum, which I believe is new order for the centuries. Um, and it's on your dollar bill. Like, that's the kind of ambition that founders should have.

Founders of anything should be building a novus ordo seclorum, right?

You know, and, and, and so not least when you have sort of ambitions of this scale, certainly the people who created the New York Times as it is, Um, were— I don't think they would be at all surprised that the Times has the position and importance that it holds today.

I think they'd be like, yeah, we were, we were trying to do that.

Pretty good, pretty good. You could touch it up a little here and there. Pretty good.

Yeah.

You know, and, and so, you know, that's, that's the kind of, that's the kind of ambition that you have. And so then you basically are like, okay, you're kind of narrowing this down.

You're like, I need to build really high trust and really high engagement among in the sort of highest status context that there is. I need to be shooting.

Fuck it. I need to be shooting at the art world. I need to be shooting at the fashion world. I need to be at the Biennale, right? You know, basically, like like you know there's absolutely nothing wrong with shooting those people.

They're very disaffected, in fact, you know, and and and they they just like don't come up and be a fucking Fucking prole.

Like, don't bring the peasants and the pitchforks in. Don't talk about child sex trafficking.

They probably do child sex trafficking, you know. Sorry. And, and, and, you know, the, the— it's not what you think, you know. Uh, but, uh, in any case, you know, like it or not, right, you know, you're there to actually win, right?

You're not there to— And, and so actually essentially seducing the most elite elite, and seducing, not like convincing, not coercing, but always seducing basically the most elite elites that you have is sort of always the best and most powerful move.

When you look at basically what brought down the Eastern Bloc, it was basically, it was not the workers and the peasants.

It was not Orwell's proles. And in case Orwell in his book says the future belongs to the proles is not true, right? So the future does not belong to the proles.

And, and what brought down the Soviet Union was basically more or less a dissident art scene.

For example, in the, in the Czech, you know, Charter, uh, what was it, Charter 88, Charter 77, sort of had this, has this name like an AOR group, right? Uh, you know, a major, a major, you know, impulse in the in the whole Czech dissident movement was this band.

It was this—

it was called Plastic People of the Universe, and it was a Frank Zappa cover band, right?

Sure.

And so basically, like, you know, the Frank Zappa cover band idea actually has a lot more sort of political relevance and pedigree than let's get Americans really disturbed about child sex trafficking and then, you know, tell them how, uh, you know, uh, Leon Panetta, or no, it wasn't Panetta. Well, who was the guy who had the Dahmer, uh, thing in his freaking hallway?

Um, you know, right, whatever, whatever, right?

You know, they're all, they're all—

I mean, it's horrifying. They're all doing it. You know, Pizza Kid is real, right? You know, but the, uh, tell me what a pizza-related, you know, handkerchief map is. Tell me, tell me. And then, uh, you know, once I'm like, oh yeah, of course, of course, a pizza-related handkerchief map. Yes, yes, yes. I'll admit that there's nothing at all going on Yeah.

Uh, you know, and, and the, the, um, um, but, but yeah, you know, so you're basically like, okay, so you need content that's like, you sort of deeply true in a way that like actually that appeals to the most sophisticated people basically on the planet and the most fashionable people on the Planet. That's got to give them.

It's got to give them in a sense, a sense of you know, like when you look at the actual behavior of our of our elites, the I mean our whole society is incredibly ironic.

But of course, the higher up you go in it, the more ironic and frivolous you get.

People like to be shocked. They like to be surprised. They like to you know, épater le bourgeois is absolutely a thing.

And the thing is, once every bourgeois housewife has a Black Lives Matter sign in their lawn, of course you're just seeding all of these opportunities for répéter le bourgeois in a direction that is not the traditional one.

Right. And so actually, like, targeting sort of the best people with, like, really sophisticated shit that basically couldn't be made for whatever reason, couldn't be made by these institutions as they are, or couldn't be produced by these institutions as they are, that creates really deep kind of personal engagement. And so you sort of, you want to create deep personal engagement. You want that engagement to be with the institution, not the individual. That's really important.

You know, when you read the New York Times, you're engaged with the New York Times. You're not engaged with, you know, Andrew Rosenblatt or, you know, whoever's writing your piece today, right?

You know, and, and the, the, like, uh, the Economist, by not having bylines, does an excellent job of that. And so you basically want, you want really deep engagement.

You want really deep connection that biases you to more toward, it sends you more in sort of subscription directions, for example. Because, you know, what a lot of this boomer conservative content, for example, does is very light engagement with very large numbers of boomers.

And the—

and, you know, I mean, a movie like Child Sex Trafficking, I'll just call it childsextrafficking.com. A movie like childsextrafficking.com, you're like, you go, you spend your $11, you get super disturbed about the child sex trafficking, you go home. Um, you know, there's no— you don't join an anti-sex trafficking, like, league, you know, go around late at night beating up sex traffickers.

I don't know, uh, you know, and you're not taking direct action against child sex trafficking, right?

Going up to random, you know, um, parents and children in the airport and being like, are you really his father?

Uh, you know, um, and it's just no engagement, there's no commitment, there's sort of no And so you want, basically, you want to build, you know, your audience is the audience of any sort of media thing that you're doing is itself a social network.

That social network can be sort of a passive social network in terms of it's just the people who experience this thing, or you can actually organize it to some extent that creates even more kind of cult energy.

Hmm.

And you basically need to make sure that this cult kind of does not grow, sort of retains its sort of eliteness and its quality.

And, you know, the best way to maintain, of course, perceived— the best way to maintain, you know, the perceived quality of content is for your content simply to be excellent.

And, you know, excellent sort of gatekeeping. in kind of that sort of community is excellent.

I mean, if you look, for example, at like, like what you're essentially doing in terms of kind of non-ideological media strategy in something like this is you essentially have a crossover strategy.

So if you look at sort of both the punk world and the hippie world, these were both very successful. They were not really ideological.

Well, the hippies kind of were, of course, but not in the end, but maybe in the end.

Um, you know, they certainly had a lot of ideological success, they had a lot of cultural success, and they had a lot of commercial success. I mean, you know, the reason why David Geffen has a yacht the size of the battleship is he basically got in the—

into the hippie world when it was just a subculture, and he made some very shrewd commercial decisions regarding that. And so So when you're basically imagining kind of building this thing, which is, you know, sort of the official media of the future regime, that makes it in a way the official media of the subculture before everyone in the future says, gosh, we don't really know what to do, and sort of turns to the subculture for, and has that subculture sort crossover and either infect the mainstream, become the mainstream, or whatever. And if you want this to work in a commercial sense, and I don't see why you shouldn't, uh, you should basically see your subculture-targeting institution become a mainstream institution through that. So it's as if like Wax Trax was now like a major— or Sub Pop was like now like a major recording label, right?

Um, which sadly it don't think happened. But, uh, what happened to Sub Pop?

Do you know the fate of Sub Pop?

No.

But it was—

that was Nirvana's album, of course, uh, or label.

Um, and, and so you're basically saying, okay, this subculture has to be sort of elite enough that joining it is not downscale, and its content has to be not just in truth but generally in quality, has to be superior to the sort of existing sources of content.

And, you know, and it has to generate very, very deep attachment or commitment or connection. The subculture has to have kind of high asabiyyah, high engagement. You know, you're essentially starting a church that, you know, people are gonna one day give their I mean, not— definitely not.

But, you know, the—

definitely not. Okay, not that time. Different period in history. Not gonna happen. Uh, no.

And you're gonna pay $10 a month for it.

Yeah, right, right, right, exactly. Yeah, you're gonna give $10 a month.

Um, and, um, which will not put their names on any kind of a list that will—

I mean, and, and the, the, the, um, these lists are never collected anyway. Anyway, you know, and the, yeah, and I mean, it's not a place that like, yeah, I mean, no one would never mind, you know, and I wouldn't worry, just don't worry, you know, like, and send Bitcoin, Bitcoin, I'll take Bitcoin, you know, and tornado cash, tornado cash, right?

And so in any case, I would say that having arrived, having sort of gone through that Mm-hmm.

That sort of makes you arrive at a set of parameters for that, I think, govern anything successful that you would do in those areas.

And I think those parameters are still pretty broad.

And I think, you know, a lot of people out there, if they've followed this long, um, and somewhat convoluted discourse, who are are talented and energetic might feel an urge to say, okay, what can I, what can I build within these parameters? And I think there's, there's a lot of things you can build within these parameters, right?

You know, it's, for example, like one of the ideas that I've always been— I think maybe Rootclaim is the closest thing to this that exists right now.

I don't, I don't know how good it is, but, um, is basically just sort of the problem of like specifically of truth adjudication could get a lot better than the methods used by New York Times or even by Wikipedia.

And if you imagine basically, Bill, or even community notes, and, you know, if you imagine basically a truth machine that, that worked, you know, that for example, you could connect Wikipedia to a truth machine that worked instead of saying, instead of just literally connecting it to reliable sources.

And by the way, if you go to the, the, the Wikipedia page for, um, Reliable sources, and you ask, you're like, okay, wp:reliable sources, wp:sources, what is a reliable source?

And you go in and it will explain in somewhat more words than this that a reliable source is a source which is reliable, right? You know, as to like how I become a reliable source, how I achieve the status of the New York Times, how we could like maybe demote the New York Times if it's not being, you know, as reliable as maybe it used to be.

We demote the New York Times. Maybe the Postmillennial is actually more reliable.

Totally silent on the subject, right? You know, and, and really entirely punts, you know.

And, and, you know, um, I mean, it would be neat if like Catholics could take over Wikipedia and basically be like, a reliable source is a source approved by the Pope.

Yeah.

Um, and that would be much more straightforward and everyone would know what's going on.

Of course, if you want that, you already have that.

It's the Catholic Encyclopedia. It's a great site, but I think it was last updated in 1911.

But the— not kidding, Catholic Encyclopedia is an impressive thing, you know, and it's totally online too because it's so old. But, you know, yeah, I mean, so the thing is, when you're imagining—

when you're imagining literally, you know, okay, so, so, so far, you know, we're imagining here are the parameters which Define the set of things which correspond to this sort of amazing heroic journey from like, I start my little media company to like, I am the deputy chairman of TAS, right?

And it's a long arc.

It goes through a lot of complicated things. And if we move sort of to the end of the arc, and again, and I think this tells us a lot about sort of regime change as it happens, is like one sort of fun way to think about regime change when you get yourself out of the 20th century is like to say, what happens with Wikipedia? Right. And so your answer for what should happen with Wikipedia, basically, to me, first of all, if you haven't thought concretely about this, how are you thinking about power at all?

Because actually the power, it's very interesting.

If you went to Wikipedia 20 years ago, it was still in the golden age of the libertard. It flourished. It was believable at that time. And you could go to the Wikipedia page on, say, like race and intelligence, and it was just full of like truth bombs from like real science everywhere, right? You know, now needless to say, science, you know, race science, as some of us call it, is very much banished from Wikipedia.

And what happened is that Wikipedia basically attracted people who cared about power more than it attracted people who cared about And, you know, that's what happens when you have a power vacuum. That's what happens when you were a libertard or even just liberal, and you actually believe that the marketplace of information can be used to guide the state.

And what happens when you decide that the marketplace of information can be used to guide the state is that the state is essentially leaking power back into the marketplace of information, which distorts the marketplace of information and causes these horrible basement-dwelling parasites. that currently edit Wikipedia to basically take control. And so when you say, okay, I don't believe in this anymore, you really have to go all the way and say no. Like, really, the mindset— if you want a liberal-approved mindset for like a really thorough regime change— okay, can I hear you?

We've—

you've been a little quiet, Erik, so let me ask you, let me quiz you a little bit.

Sure.

You know, what is, what is, What is a regime change that happened in the lives of those now living, is completely approved of by libs, and was so radical that it involved literally destroying all the books then in print? Starts with a D and ends with -ification.

Uh, denazification.

Denazification.

That's right. They literally pulped the books.

They didn't burn them. That was just a publicity stunt done outside the Institute for Sexual Research. Like, you know, that was a, you know, like, no, they pulped them.

They made them into toilet paper. Like, you know, and, and they, they also, you know, melted down the book plates of, you know, non-approved books in the US, but that's a different story.

Um, and very few people know about that.

And The, the, but, but that was, you know, the, the, like, I think you will agree that denazification was a success.

I think you will agree that the German tiger has been thoroughly gelded. You know, there's just smooth skin there. It wasn't even a sex change, right? You know, this is a completely peaceful animal and, and, you know, They will never cause problems. They're just basically, but they're always there for an orgy, right?

You know, and that's the Germans of today, right?

So this was a successful regime change. And the thing is, basically, was it a little draconian?

It was a little draconian. Was it a little rough and ugly?

Yes.

So maybe regime change in Japan is a slightly better example. We don't want to go into the Reinweissenlager, you know, any of these like really disturbing historical directions, right?

But, but, but Point is, it worked.

And you know, now imagine the Allies are occupying Germany, 1945, but it's an alternate world. We got the internet, we have Wikipedia. But because Wikipedia is created in Nazi Germany and editors like to be powerful and don't like to get sent to Dachau, right, Wikipedia is in fact Nazi.

Right?

Everything in it is Nazi, right? You know, like the page on Jews, right?

The whole Jew page. There's probably a whole complex on Hebraic studies. Whole area needs to be completely reworked, right? You know, and so when you think about sort of the answer to this question, of course it's completely obvious. Let's say, you know, you know, obviously they didn't do this in Germany, but let's say you're retaining freedom of speech. You're like, okay, we're gonna do this, but we're gonna have freedom of speech. So like, what that means is that, you know, we're gonna have freedom of speech, but we're not gonna compete on a level playing field, still less a playing field which gives the inertia of the old regime a special advantage. So as far as the domain, Wikipedia.org.

We're taking that. Okay, now that doesn't mean the old Wikipedia editors, these like blob-like, you know, um, um, sort of, uh, gender monsters in their, in their, in their basements everywhere, uh, you know, with their sort of tremendous intelligence and energy and they're like, you know, extremely pallid complexions, like cannot revolt against us and create A fork of Wikipedia, right?

But here's what's gonna happen to Wikipedia.org, which is basically like, we're gonna seize it and then we're gonna hire all the right-wing intellectuals to fix it.

And they're gonna do it faster and harder and better than the old Wikipedia editors. And like, we need an army.

We need to employ an army because we actually have an army.

We're gonna use this army and we're gonna do a better fucking job. than the old editors. And actually, if they want to have a fork that will compete with us, they won't have the funding, they won't have the feeling of power, they won't have— eventually they'll just sort of drift off into being another like weird crank clone of Wikipedia, like Metapedia, which actually exists, which is the Nazi, uh, Wikipedia.

Oh, wow.

Like you've seen like Metapedia, Conservapedia, uh, I think Vox Dei had his thing, Encyclopedia Galactica, something something something. You know, the thing is that, that basically the failure of those things sort of shows you that kind of taking liberalism seriously and just saying we're competing on a level playing field in the marketplace of ideas and we're just going to be like truer or whatever is like a complete non-starter.

Like, those projects don't—

they just don't have the energy to compete.

Yeah, it's a complete—

sorry, go ahead.

Would your advice to Elon Musk be that he should instead of— that he should be as censorious as the old regime, but just in the opposite way? Or what would your advice to Elon be?

What would my advice to Elon be?

Wow, that's a difficult question.

Uh, you know, the, the, um, what would my advice to—

like, you know, obviously I've never met, uh, you know, Elon Musk. Uh, you know, I don't think his, his bodyguards would allow it.

In fact, I don't think his bodyguards' bodyguards would allow it, but The, uh, in any case, uh, what would my advice—

I mean, I think that basically there's a problem that the great American right-wing billionaire, many of whom are very— not that I know any of these or not really know any of these people, but like the, the, that, that, uh, you know, many of them are very great people, but they have, um, a problem, which is that they're— many of them are Gen Xers. Like such as myself and, and Elon. And, you know, I have spent a life involved with many dilly-dallying pursuits that have not been entirely successful, and these people have been winning, right?

So when you're winning, right, in a way you kind of get a little bit frozen in time because when you're winning, you don't really have any time for anything but like winning, right? You know, and, and so you're kind of frozen in amber in kind of like '90s world.

You have like '90s libertarian head.

And, and, you know, I'm from that time as well.

Like, I remember sort of its greatness. I remember it's like, you know, in a way I was looking back on this and sort of the last doomed stand of like '90s libertarianism on the internet. Were like the Reddit wars of 2015. And like, because Reddit was sort of itself a kind of, in a way, a recreation of the only really great internet network, which was Usenet, which in the '80s and '90s, which was my, my long-lost love. I will always consider myself an exile from Usenet. You know, it's like, it's like one of the things Joseph Brodsky said about being an exile. Like, you, once you're an exile, you will always be an exile. And when you're an exile from a lost, destroyed country, you know, like Yeah, that's me and Usenet. So anywhere else on the internet is only second best, right? But Reddit was an attempt to create Usenet on the internet, on the web, of course, as a centralized website. And all of these centralized web things, the whole Web 2.0 social network world was generally created by people that had this kind of techie '90s light libertarianism kind of viewpoint. And, you know, the problem is that by doing these things on centralized servers, they created a pressure point. They created a point in which power could act. And once you have a point in which power can act, it basically finds a reason to act, whether that reason is childsextrafficking.com or Russian misinformation, or like, you've, you know, you've heard all, all these things. or, you know, some kind of mix of both. I mean, is Putin involved in child sex trafficking?

Wouldn't, wouldn't put him past him, you know, and wouldn't put it past him, you know. And the, the, uh, and, and, uh, the, the, the, the, uh, you know, or as I should say, I should really say Putler when I talk that way. Yeah.

But, um, the, the, the, that's the accepted location. But, you know, in, in any case, they sort of created this Pressure point and like force, like the opera, you know, power will sort of find its own outlet and sort of it creates in the sort of the way that ants will create a bridge to like cross a stream or something. Like, I'm not talking about the ants we know and love, I'm talking about like freaky Amazon, like army ant shits, right?

You know, and, and like it's just sort of finds this way in this sort of horror movie kind of way.

And so it's suddenly everyone realized that allowing just like unfettered speech on the internet was just wrong and bad. And I was reading basically in 2015, the, the management of Reddit, the, the civil war of Reddit was basically management realized that the times were changing and they were gonna have to ban a number of Reddit forums that really symbolized the edges of the Reddit Overton window.

And the Reddit Overton window was a bay window.

It was a dome. It was just, you could could see anything, you could do anything. And the Reddit, you know, management decided that advertisers— I forget if this is before Condé Nast or after— advertisers were not going to like it. And so they had to ban in particular r/fatpeoplehate and r/coontown.

And I'm reading this sort of begrudging explanation by, you know, whatever it is, you know, the CEO of forget Hoffman, Hoffman, you know, Hoffman, you know, and, and of, of why, you know, like, no, you know, I realize this is the bridge's freedom of speech, but, you know, we are gonna have to go ahead, you know. First, they didn't ban Coontown. They didn't ban Coontown. They, they put it behind, uh, um, um, you know, like a, a firewall. They're like, this is dangerous, you know, but if you really want, you know, the uncensored R Coontown, you can still go. And as far as, you know, obviously this is long lost, all this data has been wiped from the internet, but I saw this and I'm like, okay, I have to go look at Raccoontown. And the only thing I remember from Raccoontown, which is of course the, you know, vile, vile, like makes Mos Eisley look like the Vatican, right? You know, um, you know, all I remember is one username, which was, and I quote, Heil Hitler, 420, blaze it. So, you know, there was this kind of this lost world, you know, basically like, like, you know, if, if your solution to the media—

like, time can never go backward, okay?

The '90s had their greatness, right?

You know, but the idea that you're gonna roll times backward so successfully at x.com that you're gonna roll back to 2015, turn back the clock, time Wile E.

Coyote, you know, goes back up the cliff or whatever. And, and even Reddit will turn back and, you know, I mean, I'm sure they still have the tapes. That data is somewhere, probably been provided to the FBI, and reopen, you know, Raccoon Town and Heil Hitler 420 plays it.

Like, up here and start posting, uh, I don't know, whatever you posted, right? You know, I hear she posted. And, and the, the, um—

No way it's a she.

Yeah, yeah, I kind of doubt it, you know. And, and the, the, um, you know, uh, there are various ways.

I mean, math, chess, you know, men excel in certain areas, uh, you know.

And, and the, the, um, uh, but you never know.

But, but the, the—

I'm just, I'm just Trying to you know celebrate diversity here, but but in any case, you know, not only is it not going to happen that sort of the world is turned backward in this way, but also if you turned it backward, it looks like it would probably just turn forward to turn forward again.

And so you know the whole approach of when you kind of think of this '90s libertarian approach is. Like we're gonna open up the barriers.

We're gonna let everyone speak except Arkunyan. They're still banned, you know.

But like we're gonna like and and it just doesn't work. It's just like you know. And so for example, there was something that Elon here's here's an example of this.

So something Elon tweeted once, and he's like when he was in the midst of his like war against the old blue checks where he's like.

You know, in the, you know, in the new Twitter, we don't want to have lords and peasants anymore. Everyone will be equal because this is America, right? And I'm just like, hey, we're like, you know, like, like, like, you're so like, you know, I mean, it's like, it's, it's just so sad that nobody knows anything about history now because, you know, it's like the idea of a king, you know, what you have here is basically a classic king versus nobles, you know, sort of, um, issue, right?

You know, and if in like, you know, let's say like the Fronde in France or something, you know, and, and, or even, you know, most people sort of think of the English Civil War as like, you know, the Cavaliers or the nobles, but actually the parliamentary body were the gentry, really. They were not like a rabble of like Viet Cong and black pajamas or something, right?

So, you know, but the thing is, you know, there were like dukes in the, you know, but, but the thing is, you know, king versus nobles is like an old thing, right?

You know, but something that's sort of never really tried in the old king versus nobles dynamic is for the king to say, oh, I'm, you know what, I'm gonna cancel all your noble titles and, uh, instead I'm gonna sell dukedoms for £8 a month.

You know, and it just doesn't work because you you're basically doing. You can't actually take the power away from the blue checks. You can't actually say. Moreover, what you've done with these blue checks is you've done something very very useful, which is that you've taken their informal status as basically nobles of the regime, which is.

Much bigger than Twitter, or x.com as you call it.

Yes, Twitter is aspiring to be a pillar of the regime.

It may be even, uh, you know, could you imagine Twitter as a pillar of the next regime? Uh, yeah, but it'd have to do a lot better, um, than it's doing right now.

Um, you know, Elon keeps coming on and saying, well, you know, we have more eyeballs than ever.

Uh, you know, one of the reasons Twitter doesn't work for links anymore is basically the algorithms are optimized to keep you on the site, and a link You know, I'm like, you know, right, right.

And so the thing with, for example, with the blue checks is, okay, you formalized the status of a blue check. That's amazing. Okay, take that and formalize it even a little bit further, saying, okay, we're gonna decide what the institutions in the mainstream media are, and if you're one of these, come to us.

What's a reliable source?

What's a reliable source? Simple. We're gonna have a list. It's actually a very revolutionary thing to say we're gonna have a list, because rather than aspiring them some godly quality, it's actually this arbitrary and contingent and human thing. It's like, we have a list. You know, what's it mean to be a journalist? Oh, it's an official title that says you can steal information and sell it.

Okay. You know, you know what?

That's what it is. That's what it is. That's how it works. Let's stop trying to talk about citizen journalism and pretend that everybody can steal information and sell it. No, that's not how it works. Not everybody can steal information and sell it. Guess what?

You know what?

You know, this is a system of privilege. It's the way it works. Like, suddenly you don't have an invisible government anymore.

You have a visible government.

Okay, and, and making these people visible— and not only are you making these people visible, you're making this very valuable and essential actual professional credential that starts to mean more when it's actually like verified in some way.

You know, I was talking to a founder in some company and they had a blue check and it surprised me that this company had a blue check. And I was like, how did you get your blue check? And he was like, well, we threw a party once in like, you know, 2015 and there was a drunk guy who was like, man, I love you guys. I can get you a blue check.

And we're like, nah, but like, sure, whatever. Right. And then we looked at our account, it was blue.

Right. So, so Clearly, there was a lot of like you know I think Elon pointed out that there was a lot of shit going on and maybe even some people were taking kickbacks and certainly you know he can't be faulted for hire for firing three quarters of these people you know and and and making the site you know far more capable but in terms of the impact of of Twitter which is what he spent forty four billion dollars for in terms of the impact of it to say. That the impact of it should be measured by the number of eyeballs on the site is just so profoundly stupid that it's like building a rocket powered by milk, right? Because like, you're basically like, if your goal is to make an impact, you're basically just looking around for something that's measurable. Moreover, the only reason why you want to measure that number is to show it to advertisers. But guess what?

You drove all—

drove all the way— drove away all the advertisers. So the only people advertising on my fucking feed are Cheech and fucking Chong, right?

You know, So like, then there's that, right?

You know, and by the way, if you're starting a new media company, great outlet for your work, x.com, because not only are they looking for content really hard, guess what you can buy really cheap on x.com?

Ad space.

Ad space, right?

So brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. You should be a venture capitalist, young man. Ad space, right?

So, so, uh, um, uh, so yeah, you know, but the thing is, here's the thing, okay? It's— it would be amazing to like formalize these credentials and basically make Twitter the primary intermediary for reputation capital. Basically, people are already entrusting their fucking reputation capital with your fucking bank. You shut the fucking bank down and you burned their capital in their face. All right, it's traveler's checks. They can get it back.

They work for the New York Times.

But the thing is, you fucked that up, okay?

So like, you know, the, the, the—

and, and, you know, moreover, like, this idea of saying I basically have a share in everybody's valuable reputation capital— you know what, if I'm a doctor and I'm on Twitter, I should have a little red check saying I'm a fucking MD. I should be able to get that by, you know, showing a picture of my DA license, whatever, right? I should be able to read medical advice from only doctors on, on, on x.com, right? That's a no-fucking-brainer. And instead you have this fucking blue check which says, I paid $8 to Elon, you know, a month, which is like this like negative piece of UI clutter that isn't even useful to the people reading the site. It's the most developmentally delayed thing I've ever heard of, right? You know, I mean, I said a rocket powered by milk. Milk has energy. It's a rocket powered by water, right? You know, like, and, and, and And, and so moreover, the thing that actually you could do with that that would be even more amazing, especially if community notes, which will shortly be gamed into nonexistence because it's very primitive algorithm, needs to be constantly updated once people actually care about it working. Wikipedia's dispute algorithm used to work too. Um, you have to actually turn community notes into something that works as well as a fucking court, if not better. And, you know, then you're developing real power. If you're developing— if you're saying, okay, hey, you know what, we have a blue check aristocracy, but maybe we also build our own aristocracy.

Maybe Bronze Age Pervert gets purple check because everybody realizes the Bronze Age Pervert is like the dawn of this world, as well as a man who can, you know, pronounce ancient Greek in with the proper accents and tones and, and tell you all about Plato, um, in his inimitable accent, right? And okay, um, maybe we have some way of figuring out that this is a person for whom people have great respect in the same way that people have great respect for the New York Times, but in a different way.

So maybe there's a different color check there. You don't want to see content from fucking Twitter frogs. Click a button, you'll never see it again, right? But the thing is, you're actually— you're building structure. You're building, and you're building sort of a reputation capital structure which is tied up with your capital structure at x.com. So you're profiting also over off of this thing that you're creating. You know, you have basically a fight that's been going on on twitter.com since COVID started Between these fucking Chernobyl shills who created this, this virus and like real virologists who've been investigating— basically the Drastic team who's been actually investigating the source of a— of an accident that killed 20 million people while basically the people who were in power are trying to cover it up. This is the story of the fucking century. And you're not making money off of it. And you're not doing anything to basically amplify the people that should be winning and you know defeat the people that should be losing, right? And and so you know there's a zillion trillion if you thought of of of x.com as an elitist thing rather than a democratic thing, or you or for example one of the things is you know these these fucking tech people all hey.

hate.

They love their algorithmic curation. They hate, like, human factors.

This is why— one reason why Hollywood keeps kicking your ass, because Hollywood knows actually human curation works and is actually necessary and essential, or all you get is fucking cat videos, right? You know, and I like a good cat video as well as anything, but what is a cat video? What impact does a cat video have on the world? It doesn't even have an impact on cats, you know?

And And so, so like, well, you know, what are you doing with your $44 billion?

Like, you spent money to buy power, but you're not using it to build power. What the fuck, right? So like, yeah, you know, um, you know, for another example, the whole— is the whole punishment side of Twitter. The punishment side is very important. I remember when people, uh, you know, the Twitter start banning started happening.

I guess this is around the time that um, you know, our Coontown, you know, um, went, went to join Rhodesia in the sky.

Uh, the, uh, uh, you know, oppressed have to pay respects. Um, the, um, and, you know, I'm sure Heil Hitler 420 Blaze It is still out there somewhere too.

Uh, you know, and, and, uh, you know, uh, that, that they started, uh, you know, people started being banned, uh, from Twitter for, for WrongThink.

And it was—

people were like, wow, you know, I joined this like, you know, really cool, amazing like cafe, and then suddenly it became a cafe with mysterious midnight disappearances, right?

So, you know, one of the things that astonishes me about the mysterious midnight disappearances is that this— and, and they sort of disappeared all of your previous content as well as this, you know, fascinating unpersoning, Right? Totally destroyed, like, links, whatever. Like, imagine linking to x.com now. It's pathetic, right?

I know the—

Elon, Elon, I know the web is dying.

I know the web is dead, but you don't actually have to kill it. It's like, you know, you don't need the eyeballs. Stop with the eyeballs. Get the quality and the eyeballs will follow. Uh, but you know, the, the, um, and get the fucking marijuana ads off my—

You know, and, um, the, the, um, But also, you know, in terms of again having a punishment process, if you basically think in this sort of classic American sense, we want to defeat the state, we don't want a state, we don't want a government, you know, government bad, bad, bad. And then the thing is you hate this thing and you end up doing it, so you do it badly, right? And whereas if you actually believe that human in original sin And that human beings are a fundamentally flawed species, and we evolved, you know, original sin and evolutionary psychology obviously are telling you basically the same thing, right?

You know, you know, Catholic dogma and science are like, like this, you know, right? So then you believe that man needs to be governed, and especially he needs to be governed, you know, in real life, but especially he needs to be governed online. And when he's governed online, you know, of course he can be, you know, in addition to hellbanning, there's some things that I think Hacker News used to do this where they hellbanned you by making the site so slow it was unusable.

You know, like, like, this is, this is the, this is the, you know, the, the online punishment equivalent of like the Iron Maiden, right? You know, and, and just a horrible, horrible thumb-cracking devices, right? You know, and, and, and absolutely brilliant, right?

And so, you You know, as the king and supreme lord of x.com, as the sultan, all of these powers are within your command.

Like, you could, you could absolutely have the client, you know, hellban people by being so slow it was mercilessly unusable, right?

You know, and, and you wouldn't have to do it on the client, just, just throttle, right? You know, and, uh, and so again, basically, if you aspire to be a king, you should think like a king and not like a fucking bandit chief, right? The bandit chief is like, there should be no law, there should be no order, let's loot while we can, let's steal stuff.

The king is like, you know, no, we have come to this land to restore justice, right?

You know, and so for example, when you ban users, some motherfucker shows up, registers an account, it's his first tweet, right?

How are you going to decide whether that first tweet should be shown or whether the— this foreigner should be banned eternally.

Well, I think AI would do a pretty good job of that. I think basically if your first tweet doesn't pass an AI filter, that's fine. If I've got 250,000 followers and I maybe— I maybe do a little shitposting right now, maybe post a little shit, right, you know, and you know, the process that I should go through to determine whether that is an acceptable or unacceptable shitposting deed or violation that I committed can be more expensive. It can be more complicated. It can be more transparent. It can be more open. It can be more public.

It can basically be saying, you know, no, like, we are gonna have a curator, a judge, you know, a man of wealth and taste look at if you're gonna ban the lifetime output of Bronze Age Perverse. Okay, which was done several times under the old regime.

Like, you should have someone who's really a judge, who really has a judicious heart, and who, of course, in the traditional monarchy, the king is the chief judge. You can appeal to the king if this guy gets it wrong, you know.

And your Bronze Age pervert's last-ditch appeal, save me from the axe, would land on Elon Musk's desk with a brief, and he would scan that brief and he would say, No, this guy should post too much. He's got to go, or he'd be like, you know what? I love this stuff.

You know, and he can say either of those things, right?

And the thing is basically like if you have again, if you're doing that and you're comfortable with the idea of power being like a you know one of the problems I have is that there isn't really a word as good as shit lib, but for libertarians, people say libertarians.

It's just not doesn't have the like.

But if you're a fucking libertarian and you don't believe in power, then you can't use these mechanisms to build power.

And you see instantly that especially if this, you know, the Romans, as you may know, had these 2 words for power, which are a little confusing because they're, they sort of translate into English wrong. They're imperium and auctoritas. And imperium is the right to do whatever the fuck you want, like Elon banning the account that's tracking Elon's jet, that's fucking imperium, right? You know, and like, I applaud that. Like, you just, you don't fuck with the king, right?

You know, and like, ideally the laws are enforced saying you don't fuck with anyone, but also you definitely don't fuck with the king, right?

But, but the, the auctoritas, which means, is translated, is transliterated as authority, means informal authority. It means respect. It means consent.

Ideally, the judge rules not just because he has the power to tell the cops what to do, and the cops can do anything to you because he has guns, but the judge is also deeply respected in the community, right? You know, and when you have—

when you combine these sources of power, when authority, when imperium and auctoritas come together, then you have really a mighty force. And, and, and like, and, and it's sort of like when I see Twitter kind of going in the not quite in the direction of Truth Social or even Gab, you know, going sort of downscale, like I don't think it will go downhill as far as those things. I don't think like the like toxicity or whatever on it is too bad. And I think also it's sort of interesting to observe the like Mastodon Blue Sky, like, as competitors, because I think Blue Sky in particular is very technically well done. Mastodon's kind of old tech, but the guys behind Blue Sky, very, very competent. And, and yet basically, and, and it's as close to, and, and, you know, the sort of strategy of like, we're going to build a decentralized protocol, but it's going to start out as centralized and kind of evolve to decentralization.

Also very well done.

Um, also very solidly thought out. And yet basically from my casual observation, um, does anyone use this, this word anymore? The decentralized Twitters, which have no involvement from the federal government whatsoever, do not violate Biden v. Missouri or whatever, actually seem much more paused than Twitter ever was. And, and which is a very interesting effect and involves the audiences It involves the moderators because of course these are both moderated services in its own way.

Bluesky has gone so far that it's built a very interesting kind of stack moderation thing where you can actually substitute different moderation things of different perspectives.

Very, very— but of course anything that uses the built-in Bluesky client has to use Bluesky's official moderation services service, which is needless to say Paused.

And the—

yeah, it's kind of an archaic— do people still say paused? Do you hear that?

Not in common parlance, no.

No, no, no, no, no.

But you kind of know what—

you know what I mean.

It's really—

it's old.

It's like old 2015 Twitter discourse, really.

Like, um, and, um, yeah, but, but it's, you know, uh, uh, yeah.

And, and let's just say it's the opposite of based. And, and so let's So, like, you, you kind of see where, I think, where the, the, the fundamental identity of liberalism and libertarianism basically makes libertarianism just this extremely ineffective weapon against liberalism.

Because actually it's, it really is just the same thing.

Yeah.

You know, it sort of reminds me of, you know, when I first got into not thinking, you know, the New York Times was everything.

I was reading these like kind of modern— I think they still exist— like moderate, like light libertarian blogs.

Like, remember Instapundit?

Do you ever go back to Instapundit?

Instapundit?

Wow, it's been a long time.

The blog father, you know, Glenn Reynolds.

He's a law professor at the University of Tennessee. Instapundit.

Wow.

I'm still— he's— I think he's still out there. He was microblogging before microblogging was a thing. And he's amazing, you know, and, and, you know, amazing hard worker. indefatigable, intelligent, curious, you know, all of these things, you know. And, and he was really, uh, he was, he was, he was really enamored of this book that came out. I think there was a, um, there were 2 books, uh, one of them was called Army of Davids, right? And the other one was called A Starfish, Not a Spider.

Because you see, like, David is, is small and like a blogger.

And, and a starfish is completely decentralized, and you can pull off any leg of a starfish and it would regenerate into a new starfish, right?

And, you know, I was looking at this and it's something, something about this sort of way of thinking seemed a little self-satisfied.

Because of course, you know, needless to say, your army of Davids is not organized like an army.

It doesn't—

there are no commands, you know, there's no like cell. It's not a fucking militia. Like, no, it's like we're all all, you know, the Tea Party is—

remember the Tea Party?

Remember the Tea Party?

Yeah.

That was a real army of Davids. That was like the army of David.

And these guys love the Tea Party, and, and, and they really believed in the Tea Party.

And, and, and, and, you know, I remember, and I remember just thinking once about, you know, the title of this book, you know, A Starfish, Not a Spider. And it kind of came to me, you know, I had this moment of insight Almost as devastating as in Apocalypse Now when Colonel Kurtz was like, and then they cut the children's arms off, and I realized that they would win.

And I was just like, I see this whole starfish thing, but on the other hand, what if we just built a fucking spider? Something like Stab, you know, with like fangs, you know. And the, uh, so there's that, right, you know. And I'm not saying start a militia, you know.

And, um, the, the, the, uh, but, but there's kind of this wrong attitude in like the let's, let's non-build, uh, like this non-organism like a starfish, right. And, and I think that when you have basically a sort of when you escape from '90s libertarianism and are basically like, no, the problem is not how do we bring down the regime? The problem is how do we replace it with something else? That's such a deeply different problem. And they have some things in common, but only some things.

And frankly, one of them is realistic and the other isn't.

And so you can do many seemingly realistic things like making movies that make $15 million or whatever. You know, childsextrafficking.com. You know, but fundamentally, you're trying to do something unrealistic, which is you're operating this unreal space where like King George the Third, but a child sex trafficker is like in charge, right?

You know, and and it's just not like that.

It's not like that at all. And if you're actually operating in the real world, you basically have some.

Like actual chance of success.

And even though it seems like what you're doing is much more difficult, if you imagine all—

taking all of the resources that are invested into operating in unreality and putting them into operating in this realistic— some tiny fraction of them into operating in this kind of realistic way where you try to build authority, auctoritas, where you're trying to build power rather than just like, you know, spit in the face of power.

Uh, because, you know, it's just the American tradition that spitting in the face of power is the way to bring it down.

And, uh, no, that is not even in my mind a correct reading of the American Revolution, much less the world that we live in today.

Make sense?

Yes. I, I wanna be mindful of your time. Is that a great place to, to wrap in terms of—

It would be, it would be a fun place to wrap. Do you have any more Any other quick and obvious questions that come to mind?

Well, maybe just any plugs you want to leave our readers, our audience with. This has been a great deep dive into how to build the next New York Times, advice from Elon. Any breadcrumbs you want to leave our audience with?

Come on, come on, come on. Well, you know, I think despite everything I've said about Elon, you know, I'm really attracted by this new platform, X. And you may see me there actually at some point.

Excellent.

But for now, but for now, you can find me at graymirror.substack.com.

That's gray with an A, the American way. And thank you so much for tuning in.

Yeah. Hey, Curtis, thanks for coming on. Excited for what's to come.

All right.

Thank you so much, Eric.

Take care.

Upstream with Eric Thornberg is a show show from Turpentine, the podcast network behind Moment of Zen and Cognitive Revolution. If you like the episode, please leave a review in the Apple Store. Hey everyone, Erik here. At Turpentine, we're building the first media outlet for tech people by tech people. We're the network behind the show you're listening to right now. We have a slate of hit shows across a range of topics and industries. From our AI and investing cluster of podcasts to shows that drive the conversation in tech with the most interesting thinkers, founders, investors, and influencers like Econ 102 with Noah Smith. We're launching new shows every week and we're looking for industry-leading sponsors. If you think that might be you and your company, email me at erik@turpentine.co. That's erik@turpentine.co and let's partner together.