Why do you mock me? I was just answering your question that I was not joking.
1: No, I did not notice the previous threads about Milo on this bbs. I am not inclined to follow posts about people here, as I rarely know them.
2: Yes, I have heard about Breitbart, and I tried to avoid any activity giving that site more publicity.
In no possible way am I “mocking” you or others. I’m just expressing surprise that frequent BBS visitors wouldn’t be aware of such a commonly-discussed topic.
My question was genuine; there’s a running joke here where people pretend to have never heard of Milo (since he’s all about publicity and being ubiquitous). I take your word for it that you’ve avoided threads mentioning him or the alt-right.
Numbers occurring in nature always have variance. Since internet popularity is self-reinforcing, it seems to vary exponentially. So while most people who try to make youtube channels and only get 5 people to ever pay attention to their content, it just takes a quick scroll through twitch to see that while there are many with 5 viewers, there are some with 500, there are some with 10,000. And on youtube there are some with 100,000, with 1,000,000.
Basically, if you take tens of thousands of nearly indistinguishable sources of content (e.g. people making toy unboxing videos), a handful of them will end up getting enough followers/views/whatevers to make a living on it. Sure, there will be something about the “winner” of that system that is remarkable, but probably only in hindsight. The successful content-maker becomes the template by which we see success.
I’m not saying there is no merit involved. When the west was taken by surprise by Gangnam style, feeling like it was a viral hit out of nowhere, they kind of ignored that the song was from Psy’s 6th album and that he had won Korean music awards. He was an accomplished performer, not just some guy who got lucky.
But a lot of internet stars are actually just randomly lucky people who essentially won a coin-flip tournament. If hundreds of thousands of people are interested in Minecraft videos, one of the community members will essentially accidentally become famous.
So if you want to know who Milo is, just remember, there are millions of assholes who go on the internet just to hurt and to witness people being hurt. Milo the inevitable precipitate of that, but wholly unremarkable as an individual.
In Milo’s case he was sort of a first, in that he was the first semi-mainstream journalist media personality to latch on to gamergate, back in the day. I seem to recall that in a span of a few weeks, he went from denigrating gamers as dateless losers to proclaiming himself their one true champion against oppression or whatever.
And then when Bannon took the same feelings of victimhood that powered GG and turned that into the centerpiece of the republican 2016 election strategy, Milo got to be a political celeb for a bit - that part was pure unplanned lucky timing
Word.
I’ve been frequenting BB regularly for almost 3 years now, and I can attest that Milo’s insufferable ass has been posted as a topic numerous times since then; even though I ardently wish that I didn’t know who he was:
Or Thailand…
I’m not really a fan of eggnog, so I’ll take your word for the fact home made is better than store bought. Same goes for mead.
I’m not a fan of store bought nog. I don’t say that to be a snob, i just thought i didn’t like it until i tried the homemade variety. Also helped a friend make some once and that was quite good… very rich but good.
I did not dispute that there have been articles on BB about that person, I just said I did not read them. Looking at the titles which you posted, I understand why. I try to avoid anything with outrage, agression or alt-right.
At one point, as he attempts to negotiate the transfer of more funds from the Spillers, Yiannopoulos remarks in a message that “I am less financially secure, more panicked and stressed, and more miserable than when we started”, and then says he returned his wedding ring to Cartier to wipe out the debt he had with them.
…he says that “I am really seriously considering a move to Australia in the next year or two. The political environment in the US is insane. So pulling this off well really matters to me”. In another text he worries that a failed tour would damage his earning potential in the country.
I feel a tiny bit silly referring to this excellent Laurie Penny article about Yiannopoulos again, when it’s been featured on BB and in my own comments more than once, but here’s something we should not overlook at this time:
I’ve been following Yiannopoulos’ tour for months, and I can absolutely confirm that he means almost nothing he says, that he will say almost anything for attention, and that none of that matters to those who face violence and trauma as a result.
Second or third parties documenting unpaid debts is one thing (Although seriously, is anyone surprised? Doesn’t that dovetail perfectly with the whole alt-right ethos?) but M.Y. himself crying poor is as likely to be a manipulation as anything else he does or says.
Oh, Thailand is real. “Japan” though…
My grandfather used to ask if I wanted a glass of “boiled custard.” My mom explained that he meant egg nog. One time he asked if I wanted a glass and I replied “yes.” He served me a glass of some sort of dairy concoction that was not egg nog. It definitely had egg in it – as someone who already did not care for custard, boiling it didn’t help any. My mom lectured me (I might’ve been 7) about how real quality came from homemade efforts, not some store-bought substitute. I think it was some time before it was clarified that what my grandfather had made was, in fact, boiled custard and not egg nog at all.
My other grandfather liked to drop a piece of coconut cake in his (presumably store-bought) egg nog.
Again, I have yet to attempt Mingus’s homemade version…
I have tried a beverage called “rumpopo” (that’s how they pronounced it) that was something like egg nog, though with a likeable medicinal quality.
The Venezuelan version takes sweetened condensed milk, it’s been years since i’ve had any but a family friend had some and described the taste as a pleasantly alcoholic white chocolate-y eggnog. I don’t know how accurate that is but if anything i might take up the adventure of finding a recipe to make Ponche Crema.
You want fries with that?
Maybe I should have been a bit more specific. I don’t avoid all threads about the alt-right, I avoid threads about alt-right celebrities. As you wrote, these people are “all about publicity”. Each view makes them richer (although not that much in the case of Milo, obviously) and more influencial. I don’t want that. I don’t want to spend any of my time about them. I especially do not want to feel irritated about whatever they post, because that is what they thrive on.
I think I have grown a reflex where I automatically delete any mention of them in my mind. People like Milo become an indistinct suite of strawmen babbling their hate ideology in my mind.
I was not the only one posting to not know who Milo was on that thread. I can’t talk for the others, but I believe they may also be ignoring alt-right celebrities for the same reason.
Now, if boingboing posts articles about the alt-right in general, for example how it is organized or financed, I will read that, because I want to be informed about what worries me. But that is different.
Unless BB has an alt-right payment system I wasn’t aware of, reading and commenting about Nazis on here isn’t funneling money to them.
I completely understand avoiding news about celebrities – lord knows I avoid wasting a single moment on the lives of the Kardashians, which somehow dominate news cycles – but Milo used to wield a considerable amount of power when he was the news editor for Breitbart and was angling for a position with Trump. His speeches and announcements were key in the organization and formation of the alt-right as it exists now. These days, thankfully, the news about him is mostly about his pitiful downfall, so it’s pure schadenfreude.
I probably should not have written “richer”, because BB is not directly paying them, obviously (unless they link to a youtube video, I suppose). I meant that each post about them increases their audience, as measured by various algorithms which take into account pages talking about them in negative as well. From what I understand about the alt-right nebula, they rejoice about creating negative buzz as well, as long as it is buzz. I think that what they really fear is our indifference.
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