In Defense of Grifting

One of the funniest, and true, parody videos on YouTube regards the contrast in sponsors for the left and right wing podcasters.

It’s about as on-the-money as you can get, with the right-wing guy working with all sorts of dubious and strange sponsors while the left-wing has the full power of mega-corporations on their side, all the more hilarious because the left-wing podcasts are, on the surface, far more anti-corporation and wealth.

There are, of course, exceptions, like Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire empire that rakes in over 200 million a year. They get advertisers that sound somewhat non-schizophrenic, funded by libertarian and right-leaning billionaires. You will, however, never find a more ineffective rhetorical campaign than those guys, and outside of a couple movies, one of which dealt with old and stale jokes from ten years ago while refusing to be anything edgier than “men who dress up as women are actually men.”

There is some light, as some truly right-wing and illiberal thought is slowly creeping into the mainstream in large outlets like The Blaze and The American Mind, showing the gatekeeping abilities on ostensibly conservative outlets, with all sorts of popular outlets showing once hard-right ideas breaking containment. Stil, those outlets are few and far between, and anyone not under their protective umbrella are not going to fare well when the mob smells blood, especially for an unmasked anon.

This came to mind when seeing the saga of Stonetoss unfold this week. A genius off getting attention from judo-ing the anger from his enemies against themselves, he has long been a target of the left who have sought to take him down. This week, they thought they got a dox (not sure how valid the dox was, as the evidence was spurious) and the radicals were salivating, waiting for him to close his account and flee into obscurity. Suffice to say, it didn’t happen that way.

Stonetoss, on top of being funny, is a premiere marketer, and sold over a million dollars in flurk NFTs from people who mostly wanted to support his work. The money he made him bulletproof, and his adoring popular support allowed another judo-throw, selling more merchandise while giving the middle finger to his enemies. Instead of stories of Stonetoss getting, doxxed, losing his job, and closing his social media before fading away, it’s just galvanized him, and his base of support.

The usual tactics didn’t seem to work.

You can see the anger and seething from the left, as Stonetoss has not only weathered the storm, but is once again making his enemies look like petty, vindictive tyrants who don’t actually have any power outside of tut-tut shaming.

Now, things could go differently in the next few weeks, and maybe a character like the man behind Stonetoss can decide enough is enough and disappear, or maybe there is a way to hurt him to the point he can’t afford much of anything. It takes nerves of steel to traverse through a brutal pressure campaign, and few are made for the fight. The more who come out the other side, however, the easier it is for those who come in the future.

The point here is, support those who support you. Whether this is through “respectable” means like a subscription, or buying their dumb, Alex Jones tier merchandise, the more guys who make a living, the easier the stigma of one’s beliefs is broken in general society. The strongest pressure point the Left has on normal people is their ability to destroy your livelihood. The more people who are bulletproof and can build patronage networks to give stability to dissidents, the easier those threats evaporate.