> She is the proud recipient of an orange check mark, signifying that she has hundreds of paid subscribers on Substack
I would be surprised if there aren't political machines in place making sure the important people get a lot of subscribers. It would not be hard to create a bot farm from an NGO that gave paid subscriptions to people with the right opinions. On a positive note, less and less credence is given to popularity signifiers, as most people now understand the game.
Given she's an MSNBC columnist, you can be sure nothing she ever says will be remotely interesting.
Ever hear of Yaron Brook? He's an economist, objectivist and academic with a show on YouTube. I am not an objectivist, but I like viewing and reading sources from across the political spectrum. Anyway, Yaron has always been keen to point out, with some relish, that although Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century is very popular on Amazon, it also has one of the lowest read rates of all time. People buy it, read a few pages and quickly get bored.
A while back, a British quiz show called House of Games featured a question for the panel on how much the average household wasted on subscriptions. It turns out the figure was a whopping £468 a year! Gym subscriptions, Netflix, Product Insurance forever unclaimed. I think substack is tapping a vast market, but there's no accounting for taste.
I also think there is an air of desperation to those who call for the censorship of new platforms. They know their business model is failing and they've seen the repeated carnage of lay-offs. They could try innovating. Instead, they try to sabotage the competition- as though removing the alternative is ever going to facilitate audiences coming back to their failing enterprises.
instead they come over here and realize nobody has much interest in what they have to say. While an essay like this garners 100's of responses. Theyve been fooled and think the robotic click bait theyve been producing, propped up by friendly alogorithms actually meant they were important writers. Censorship is the only logical next step for these people.
It's also magazine subscriptions, gym memberships (they make a packet in the new year), product insurance quickly forgotten and never claimed. Duplicate indemnity is something many people overlook.
Here's a question- I've recently been looking at the UK's anaemic growth figures since 2008. Shameful, really. I've come up with or found several arguments. I think there is an admittedly small effect through labour income transfers by migrants out of the country- lost multiplier effect. The Brexit argument is a good one. I think the OBR projections of a 4% contraction have largely proved accurate, mainly through the loss of two-way reciprocal trading intensity.
One very strong argument I heard made the case that France, Germany the Nordic States all stream kids into vocational/technical training (by varying degrees) at an earlier age. The arguments was that as a result many young people didn't consider or won't do these roles when they are exposed to option at a later point and as a consequence around 20% of the 16 to 24 age bracket have become economically inactive- with employers recruiting off-the-shelf employees from abroad to fill the skills gap (and only exacerbating our housing crisis).
But these points weren't my question. Do you think there is anything to the argument that whilst the introduction of financialised economics might create an initial wave of value adding as waste is eliminated, labour and capital reallocated, after a certain period (around just over 20 years in the UK, it seems) the process runs out of fuel to burn or waste to eliminate and then switches to activities which might produce capital but don't add value to the economy overall? Do you have sources on this effect or have you written any articles?
Do you mean the process through which an increasing fraction of earnings is diverted to the stock market rather than invested in productive capital? Obviously, simply boosting stock market and real estate market valuations to levels never before seen produces nothing other than higher asset prices. I do not think financialized economics played any positive role in economic functioning. That was never its purpose.
As I see it, this is just the current secular cycle crisis period that manifested in what I call the capitalist crisis which began around 2006. The previous one (1907-42) had a different mechanism.
We will eventually resolve this or have a civil war, which unfortunately is a very common outcome in the pre-industrial cycle. Sigh.
I see the real estate asset inflation as fundamentally far more harmful, because it leads inevitably towards rentier economics and a Glided Age 2.0, but yes. I do think financialised economics can play a positive role at the start of its cycle, because it eliminates unproductive labour and releases capital for new enterprise, but the problem is that any given time the number of ways in which capital can be deployed productively is finite, limited by human imagination and timing, and inevitably 'spare' capital will be deployed in ways that simply increase pricing without adding value. I think this in turn creates a negative feedback system, because the capital produced from ventures which only produce capital will in turn be invested in the same type of asset inflation activities, accelerating the distortion of real value.
On the capitalist crisis of 2006, have you read or heard Mark Blyth on the subject? He's a political economist at Brown. I usually get snarky comebacks from 'pure' economists when I quote variations of his ideas because political economics is not economics, but in practice what does it matter if 'real' economics shouldn't have an aim or be steered by politics, the fact remains that political economics has always existed as a bridle to standard economics. Blyth's view is that 2006-2008 should have pre-empted a software change to capitalism. He sees capitalism as running in phases- post-WWII with full employment as an aim, Reagan/Thatcher and the inflation fighting era, and the post 2008 era, when we should have moved on from 3.1, but didn't.
He's also an ardent critic of austerity and even wrote a book about it. Thanks for the link!
Thanks for that- it was really useful. I was of of course aware of buybacks, but I hadn't linked their usage to a failure to invest in internal growth, I instead saw them as a sign of the preference for capital growth over dividends, because of the way current tax structures push towards the former. I also wasn't tracing the macro down to the detail level- thinking about the problem more in terms of new ventures rather than the investment/expansion of existing businesses.
I see we are also both fans of Hyman Minsky! Genius guy.
On the civil war issue, I've been casting a slightly wider net to look for solutions. I came across a John Gray interview on Novara Media, as well as Peter Hitchens on a Times Radio podcast. John Gray is a deep level thinker who tends to contradict the standard 'triumph of liberal markets' narrative on the Soviet Union. Peter Hitchens made the point that Germany/France have probably done better than the UK since 2008 because they both have robust vocational/technical training for kids which starts at an earlier age. The same is also somewhat true of most or all of the Nordic Model states. The Anglosphere, by comparison, still seems to be operating on the lunacy of the Blank Slate, wherein any child can be educated to do anything.
Well said - I have explored some of what I believe is behind this dogged determination to remain irrelevant here just yesterday. Misery may like company, but when the room is crowded, what's left?
What, like Democrats have famously been doing for years on Twitter and Facebook, buying millions of fake followers? Like the Israelis have actual IDF members doing?
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning me. I know it sounds a bit over-stated but for a writer like you to consider me a peer really is a huge compliment and deeply appreciated.
Secondly, calls to action to scrub this platform of any and all "wrong-think" content are intolerably heinous. I've said it before about Samantha Bee's (hopefully now ended) dalliance with this site - these people have the largest jungle gyms on the internet to play on, and the fact that they must come here and they must root out the native user-base and they must turn our little corner into another safe and sterile mouthpiece to regurgitate the same opinions back and forth at one another... it really brings my piss to a boil. I've seen it so many times in so many places, even hobbies. It's the same thing that happened to video games, Magic the Gathering, tabletop roleplaying, comic books, and just about every other "nerdy" or "geeky" hobby or interest. The "mainstream" guys move in to the space, say, "Oh, hey, cool thing you got going on here, guys. I know you guys have been doing your own thing for a while, but you really need to consider how me and my friends feel about it, so you need to stop doing [insert everything that makes the space unique and interesting here] so that it better suits me. Okay?" and when they get pushback, they quite literally bully everyone out to make space for their equally bland, boring, and milquetoast friends. It's as exhausting to watch repeat as the actors repeating it are cruel and petty.
Like Samantha Bee, though, I have no doubt in my mind that her orange check-mark is one that was bought by her handlers to boost her visibility. I just refuse to believe otherwise, and, as the fevered minds that postulated the Dead Internet "Conspiracy Theory" are continually vindicated as more and more revelations come out about the truly staggering amount of bots and hollow accounts pervade the internet, there's no reason to think Substack as a platform is exempt from nefarious means of astroturfing.
I've come to really enjoy this place and the company of users like you and everyone you mentioned. It's the kind of frontier spirit that made the internet interesting to begin with, and the spirit that's becoming near impossible to find. I'm not sure how we can fortify this place against malicious actors like this. It's also, like, one of the last places with even a semblance of long-form content in a world that seems increasingly moving to short, bite-sized, mind-melting clips that shred one's attention span, and I'm sick to fucking death of it. I don't know much about the founders and owners of Substack. I've heard their on the level, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, but even if they are, the site is only one hostile take-over or Wordpress/Yahoo/X purchase away from being turned into another glorified corpo ad platform.
I'd like to get around to it one of these days, but, in the immortal words of Charlie Kelly: "I start thinking about it and... and it just makes me so ANGRY!" Followed by manic laughter and feral growling. It's hard to stomach long enough to write an entire essay about, though, whenever I inevitably bring myself to write a full piece on Gamergate or Comicsgate or any of the various Nerd Culture -gates that have pretty much destroyed all sense of cohesion among them, it'll come up.
Real life community has always been the standard model for societies, communities and civilizations. These new tech, cool, hip, woke, sleek, empowering, equitable, perverse, corrupt, monitored, manipulated and controlling platforms are what the opportunists created and sold us...because we asked for them.
We traded the very real, appropriate and critical responsibility, to personally interact/connect with our fellow citizens - for a bevy of detached, faceless, unaccountable, inauthentic, easy and convenient simulacra, the masses now live in, minute by minute.
Unfortunately we are all guilty of this, to some degree, unless you could ditch your cell phone and computer (for good) and not miss a beat. The reality we generationally choose to ignore - The ever evolving labyrinths of Comfort, Convenience and Entertainment we find ourselves "trapped" in, are of our own making.
Think how much some worry about digital surveillance, me included. And the solution is leave your phone at home and meet in pub. Kind of absurd. Real life surveillance is a major hassle.
I do appreciate the great strength of the interwebz is you can contact the like-minded all over the world, which is amazing. But I do wonder what it would feel like to just ditch it all and only use devices to upload to Substack and then walk away.
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
Yup, I'm with you. I always come back to the premise, that we allowed (excitedly) the monster to outgrow our ability to control or kill it, WHEN needed - because it's always eventually needed, at some point.
We've basically reached a point (societally) where the capture is complete - there is no going back, on the whole. Individuals will be able to - and should, to the extent possible - but the tech/digital hive, cloud, borg, verse etc. is baked in to the last 3 generations. It will only be excised, through a catastrophic event. I constantly hope for a survivable high energy solar flare or Gamma ray burst.
Till then there will be a minority of dissidents, of varied degrees, but the majority will live in the cloud - not out of necessity - but because to them it will be a right.
Mu understanding is the founders are fairly Left. Plus if this gets seriously popular I have no doubt it will be purchased and the Right Stuff will be shitcanned. I think everyone should plan for this.
That said, there is clearly a need for a place for longform writing. I too am sick of short Tweet-like content. I only use Notes to promote and help boost others as it is all they have. No idea if it does any good as their display algorithm is a mystery to me.
I would argue if this goes Pete Tong then it will have demonstrated a need for a site like this for people who love free speech and cleanly formatted longform writing.
I fear you are right, no pun intended. I never underestimate the pull of the "cool kids." Substack is not immune to it, and there's no shortage of funding out there that will be thrown away in an effort to shut it down.
I suspect as much myself. I've long considered the possibility that practically no site on what we'd consider the "surface web" is really safe in any meaningful way. It may be open now, but, yes, as platforms grow and become more popular and attract the vying eyes of the mainstream media and corporations, it's really only a matter of time before it folds. I'd like to see Substack be the exception but more high-minded individuals with better sites (Seriously, the notes feature is pretty janky, as are notifications) have bent the knee in the end, one way or another. I think until either decentralized social media (think Mastadon) or some sort of parallel network independent of what we call the "surface web" akin to what most call "the dark web" (or maybe the dark web can be an alternative itself), anyone outside of the increasingly narrow Overton Window on the right or the left will always be playing against the clock.
I do sense something different here though. There are many likeminded people here. Even those that don't write are keen on this kind of material. So the final assessment for Substack may be this. Demonstrating a group of us do exist, and we are not Conservatism Inc.
We are also demonstrating what polite, reasoned, civilized writing and commentary actually looks like. It is a far cry from the insurrectionist, neo-Nazi, Klansmen image the mainstream are desperate to promote. Interesting thought pieces, insightful discussions and novel ideas. None of this happens in the mainstream.
I found the 'Orcs are Racist!' meme particularly fascinating. It said more about the racism of the people making the claim than those who had happily played in parties with half-orcs for years. As an interesting side note, although many online sources cite 'orc' as referring to an evil spirit or an ogre, it's highly probably that Tolkien borrowing the word from the old Anglo-Saxon for foreigner or outsider 'yrrc' or 'yrrk'.
There was an old dramatized pre-woke BC documentary on the subject dealing with the Norman Invasion. Of course, Wikipedia would beg to differ- but, then again, even the main founder of Wikipedia has bitterly complained that the site has been taken over by culturally progressive censors....
Oh, that was one of the most egregious cases of the phenomenon - a bunch of sanctimonious pricks coming into the fandom and basically telling everyone, "You're racist, your hobby is prejudiced, and everything you like about it is problematic. You didn't know it, but we know better than you about what you think and what's in your heart, and, actually, you're racist."
Patently absurd. And, yes - of course no one was saying anything about orcs being disparaging depictions of blacks until they showed up. Don't even get me started on the Goblin/Jew debacle.
Do you watch Critical Drinker on YouTube? He's absolutely hilarious. He's even inspired a number of Black American content creators to make reaction videos. Talk of 5 foot 6 women beating 6 foot 225lb men to a bloody pulp goes down particularly well.
I watch a lot of Black reaction videos. One can find Black women reduced to tears by Portishead live videos, and enthusiastic endorsements of the message articulated by Tom MacDonald. There is something about appreciation for music in particular, which defies the notion that humans can be placed into easily defined identity categories. For decades, the legacy media has presented an image of a particular type of milquetoast Black activist who enthusiastically endorses the Democrat agenda, when nothing could be further from the truth. I've been telling my American conservative friends for a number of years that there is huge potential to draw off Dem support amongst the Blue collar class, and the potential is not just limited to Latinos...
African Americans have played a prominent role in the grassroots pushback against gender ideology in schools and aren't particularly enthused about their community resources being squandered on emergency provisions for mass migration...
The Karen Migration reminds me of the US blue state refugees going to red states and promptly demanding the same policies that led to their migration in the first place.
The bot argument is a strong one and helps explain the banality of their opinions.
All of you excellent and engaged writers/thinkers here caused this by making Substack too awesome. They were always going to come for it. Let's hope "management" is sufficiently decentralized to handle the screeching of the harridans.
You're right, the collapse of Jezebel will mean they flood in. And then have a collective breakdown when they realize no one wants to read them here, either.
Between that and being very easily predictable, there really is no reason they couldn't be replaced with LLMs. As indeed you suggested they might already be doing.
Nor would you need to read more than one of the essays of the single NPC writer you chose. Pick any one of these Marxcissist pundits, and every post consists of the same unhinged emotional reaction, same overused cliches, same shrill conclusions that do not follow from the same fallacy-ridden "arguments," same straw men being torn into the same identical shreds, same projection and DARVO tactics, same everything, wash/rinse/repeat. Their essays are to writing what advertising jingles are to music: designed to be so annoying they get stuck in your head, in order to sell you something without ever once addressing the merits of the thing being sold, but rather to put your critical thinking and higher faculties into some kind of a trance so you'llbe easier to manipulate. These people are Satan incarnate.
One might hope that they acclimate themselves to the new state of things and learn to have conversations with people with whom they might not always agree in every particular, but that’s me; the eternal optimist.
I’m a fan of Virginia Woolf and agree with her that a woman needs a room of her own. (It is my opinion that everyone in a cohabitating household needs a room of their own.) I commit here the heresy of believing that women and men are fundamentally different — which is OK — and that we may best resolve our differences through mutually respectful dialogue.
Jezebel shut down? I didn't even know she was sick.
Skimming through the nag's articles, it's exactly the kind of midwit brain-rot that I ached to escape until I found Substack. The orange tick signifying "thousands of paid subscribers" is an interesting note. Whilst I can see how someone like Hersh has the purple "tens of thousands" signifier, like you, I struggle to align this shrill's content (though there are always droll minds to consume droll tripe), and more importantly the lack of traction, with her supposed legion of paying eyes. There's very likely some artificial boosting at play, hopefully from without rather than within Substack itself.
In terms of the Attack on Substack, it was only a matter of time, and I predict that as the Substack-lockdown narrative gains traction there may be some anti-deplatforming battles to win ahead. Luckily, Substack makes it's money through subscription fees, rather than advertising. I'd still highly recommend multi-platforming any content even if just for posterity.
For any readers, I would recommend subscribing to your favourite writers if you haven't already. If Substack sees that the subscribers (if authentic) of Marisa Kabas and her ilk are providing significantly more financial value to the platform than the "Nazis", they may be swayed to restrict and deplatform the latter to appease the lunatics. Nothin' personal, just business.
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
yes, its important to realize that platforms can always delete you. Save your writings elsewhere if you want to be guaranteed they won't ever get erased.
Did you ever read the old Quillette articles about progressive cancellations in knitting circles There is an article from early 2019 called A Witch-Hunt on Instagram.
So, even when they get a hobby it doesn't stop the Cancel Culture.
The behaviour described in the article reads like a Nurse Ratched convention...
“ Her prose is what you would get if a fair-trade pumpkin-spice latte could type.” <- This made me laugh. Thank you. Women like pumpkin-spice-latte girl are so very tedious and, though I’m quite fit and energetic (even overly bouncy at times, according to my husband), they absolutely tire me out. The worst part is that most of them truly believe the drivel they tap out on their keyboards and via their chattering at the company cocktail hour.
Yours is one of my favorite Substacks, my friend. I am grateful to have found such a place -- a refuge -- but after my first few weeks here, I knew the “identity-intersectional-virtue signaling class” would move against it before long. Hopefully, they won’t succeed.
Dec 1, 2023·edited Dec 1, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
At this point I think most of the opposition to people on Substack is orchestrated.
Seriously, who goes on social media, and seeks out [non famous] people to deride? Nobody does that, because that's just not what people do. If they're paid, they do it. Otherwise, people will stick to whatever social circles they usually haunt. That's just human nature.
The leftists *Substack has brought to Substack* always seem to have a huge following right off the bat. Which makes little sense, because they are still on the platforms they came from -- where people might actually agree with them and want to read their opinions.
Similarly, their large and unlikely legitimate following, are seeing all of these strange restacks of random bigoted nonsense, from some account that nobody has heard of. As they cry, "See look! Here be racists… Arghh!" It's just so obviously orchestrated.
In other words, if Substack is full of racists and Nazis, where are all the racist Nazis with a massive subscriber base? There's just not.
As a result, they are left trying re-frame what it means to be a racist or a Nazi.
It's not working, because the people with large subscriber bases are read by people who are not persuaded by nonsense, nor is anyone who actually reads what they write.
They're to go after Substack like they did Rush Limbaugh. Whine and cry that he's terrible, he's the worst thing ever, so on and so fourth. But what did it result in? It resulted in many leftist people actually listening to Limbaugh’s show, and realizing that they have been lied to the entire time! Their efforts resulted in more Rush fans in the end.
So, I'm not worried about this in the long run. I'm more worried about Substack using algorithms to push down content. Maybe having a few “issues” with their mass emailing service here and there. Things that are hard to "prove" are being done. Maybe changing people’s feeds. We know that’s been happening because I keep seeing stuff from leftist goons that I would never subscribe to.
Keep in mind that pretty much every time the left "finds" racists and Nazis, they're fake. They're paid actors.
They know that there aren't a bunch of racists and Nazis on Substack -- because they can't even find these "ever-present" racists and Nazis when they "need" them.
It's like their constant cry of Trump using dog whistles to incite and communicate with the racists and Nazis. They had to claim that he had some secret means of communication with them because a) the racists and Nazis had to exist, or their world view was wrong; b) they had to be what was propping up Trump, because no sane person could support him (all of this is from their perspective); c) on its face, Trump didn't incite racists or Nazis through what he said and did; so d) there had to be some secret communication going on that couldn't be heard by people (like them) not attuned to that frequency.
Remember, they have a little model in their head. It is all based on their programmed prejudices they are told they lack and some undesirables possess. When they see some thing they are told is related, like Trump, it triggers their racism/Nazi/genocide alarm. It is impervious to reason. NPCs are real.
I was just thinking this morning that the Jezebel spirit (the biblical queen, not the magazine) is the new spiritual direction that we are up against. The Karens are retiring and it is the fierce Jezebelisch that are taking their places.
Part of the reason why these people freak out about supposed "nazis" is that they are utterly helpless when they have to actually think through and articulate their positions. They are so used to having everything (soft-)censored that challenges their hard-wired assumptions that they can't do much other than shrieking when faced with it. But this won't do anymore. If they actually cared about their causes, they would realize this.
Don't worry man, I'm just enjoying your writing and I'm glad you are gaining some traction. Well-deserved! Also didn't know that you started out as a commentator on John's, great story.
I do think this is true. I think they seek comfort in their echo chamber to such an extent any deviation from their broad position really is seen as some extremist position. They never hear any real pushback on their ideas.
People who subscribe to the climategeddon extremism are often shocked when you disagree with them. Even better when you tell them you don't care, lol.
"People like this are simply an irritating menace, and their longing for purpose, authority, and the moral formation of obedient inferiors would better be served through raising children, or failing that, some sort of small animal."
Bite your tongue! No child or animal deserves that fate!
Or perhaps barely conscious concerns. Not everyone who drinks the feminist kool-aid lives to embrace it. The demographic taking the most antidepressants are childless women in their 40s. I wonder if along the way some of them realize they are on the wrong path. If so that may manifest as hate and bile. Misery loves company.
The old adage live and let live seems to have been replaced with you can only live if you agree 100% with my dogma. What kind of outsized ego must you possess if you think your code should be jammed down the throats of all. Bullying, cancelling others who don’t conform seems to be a pretty Nazi thing.
I would argue this is about social capital harvesting. So it is worse that mere intolerance. It is indifference to the harm caused to others while pursuing your own ambitions, damning others to get on in life. She is aiming for brownie points among her set and, ideally, her betters.
Now we know where they got all those concentration camp guards from.
I'm not surprised to see this happening here. These people are status-seekers, and Substack has a reputation for hosting interesting thinkers and writers (a reputation they feel entitled to). Now that Twitter has been captured and their own outlets are haemorrhaging views and donors, they're looking for the next place to infiltrate and turn into the equivalent of a Guardian journalist's pillow fort.
I agree to a point. I believe with de Maistre that rights are concessions from sovereigns, and a man (or woman) has exactly as many rights at any moment as he or she is prepared to defend to the greatest extent possible. Given that there are no real sovereigns left, we must be our own sovereigns, Anarchs answerable to the higher things.
Indeed, rights are illusory much like democracy, so we have to create them ourselves and make ourselves sovereign. That’s the only way to prosper in this environment. Thinking these fairy tales of rights are somehow going to protect us from the nature of mankind is naive. It is only our actions that have meaning, in this sense.
I have always thought that the concept of personal sovereignty is really about agency.
“Agency is the sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. Your sense of agency helps you to be psychologically stable, yet flexible in the face of conflict or change.”
> She is the proud recipient of an orange check mark, signifying that she has hundreds of paid subscribers on Substack
I would be surprised if there aren't political machines in place making sure the important people get a lot of subscribers. It would not be hard to create a bot farm from an NGO that gave paid subscriptions to people with the right opinions. On a positive note, less and less credence is given to popularity signifiers, as most people now understand the game.
Given she's an MSNBC columnist, you can be sure nothing she ever says will be remotely interesting.
I second John Carter on that.
I’m not on any social media. I came to Substack to test the waters, and I’ve found truly interesting and thought-provoking content.
likewise. And the comment sections are full of some very interesting back and forth.
This is precisely my guess, given the shocking disparity between their subscription counts and organic engagement.
Ever hear of Yaron Brook? He's an economist, objectivist and academic with a show on YouTube. I am not an objectivist, but I like viewing and reading sources from across the political spectrum. Anyway, Yaron has always been keen to point out, with some relish, that although Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century is very popular on Amazon, it also has one of the lowest read rates of all time. People buy it, read a few pages and quickly get bored.
A while back, a British quiz show called House of Games featured a question for the panel on how much the average household wasted on subscriptions. It turns out the figure was a whopping £468 a year! Gym subscriptions, Netflix, Product Insurance forever unclaimed. I think substack is tapping a vast market, but there's no accounting for taste.
I also think there is an air of desperation to those who call for the censorship of new platforms. They know their business model is failing and they've seen the repeated carnage of lay-offs. They could try innovating. Instead, they try to sabotage the competition- as though removing the alternative is ever going to facilitate audiences coming back to their failing enterprises.
Very good points. You might consider expanding this into a full essay.
instead they come over here and realize nobody has much interest in what they have to say. While an essay like this garners 100's of responses. Theyve been fooled and think the robotic click bait theyve been producing, propped up by friendly alogorithms actually meant they were important writers. Censorship is the only logical next step for these people.
The 468 quid a year seems like a tiny sum. How many people subscribe to multiple streaming services? That could amount to that sum all on its own.
It's also magazine subscriptions, gym memberships (they make a packet in the new year), product insurance quickly forgotten and never claimed. Duplicate indemnity is something many people overlook.
Here's a question- I've recently been looking at the UK's anaemic growth figures since 2008. Shameful, really. I've come up with or found several arguments. I think there is an admittedly small effect through labour income transfers by migrants out of the country- lost multiplier effect. The Brexit argument is a good one. I think the OBR projections of a 4% contraction have largely proved accurate, mainly through the loss of two-way reciprocal trading intensity.
One very strong argument I heard made the case that France, Germany the Nordic States all stream kids into vocational/technical training (by varying degrees) at an earlier age. The arguments was that as a result many young people didn't consider or won't do these roles when they are exposed to option at a later point and as a consequence around 20% of the 16 to 24 age bracket have become economically inactive- with employers recruiting off-the-shelf employees from abroad to fill the skills gap (and only exacerbating our housing crisis).
But these points weren't my question. Do you think there is anything to the argument that whilst the introduction of financialised economics might create an initial wave of value adding as waste is eliminated, labour and capital reallocated, after a certain period (around just over 20 years in the UK, it seems) the process runs out of fuel to burn or waste to eliminate and then switches to activities which might produce capital but don't add value to the economy overall? Do you have sources on this effect or have you written any articles?
Do you mean the process through which an increasing fraction of earnings is diverted to the stock market rather than invested in productive capital? Obviously, simply boosting stock market and real estate market valuations to levels never before seen produces nothing other than higher asset prices. I do not think financialized economics played any positive role in economic functioning. That was never its purpose.
As I see it, this is just the current secular cycle crisis period that manifested in what I call the capitalist crisis which began around 2006. The previous one (1907-42) had a different mechanism.
We will eventually resolve this or have a civil war, which unfortunately is a very common outcome in the pre-industrial cycle. Sigh.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-capitalist-crisis
I see the real estate asset inflation as fundamentally far more harmful, because it leads inevitably towards rentier economics and a Glided Age 2.0, but yes. I do think financialised economics can play a positive role at the start of its cycle, because it eliminates unproductive labour and releases capital for new enterprise, but the problem is that any given time the number of ways in which capital can be deployed productively is finite, limited by human imagination and timing, and inevitably 'spare' capital will be deployed in ways that simply increase pricing without adding value. I think this in turn creates a negative feedback system, because the capital produced from ventures which only produce capital will in turn be invested in the same type of asset inflation activities, accelerating the distortion of real value.
On the capitalist crisis of 2006, have you read or heard Mark Blyth on the subject? He's a political economist at Brown. I usually get snarky comebacks from 'pure' economists when I quote variations of his ideas because political economics is not economics, but in practice what does it matter if 'real' economics shouldn't have an aim or be steered by politics, the fact remains that political economics has always existed as a bridle to standard economics. Blyth's view is that 2006-2008 should have pre-empted a software change to capitalism. He sees capitalism as running in phases- post-WWII with full employment as an aim, Reagan/Thatcher and the inflation fighting era, and the post 2008 era, when we should have moved on from 3.1, but didn't.
He's also an ardent critic of austerity and even wrote a book about it. Thanks for the link!
Thanks for that- it was really useful. I was of of course aware of buybacks, but I hadn't linked their usage to a failure to invest in internal growth, I instead saw them as a sign of the preference for capital growth over dividends, because of the way current tax structures push towards the former. I also wasn't tracing the macro down to the detail level- thinking about the problem more in terms of new ventures rather than the investment/expansion of existing businesses.
I see we are also both fans of Hyman Minsky! Genius guy.
On the civil war issue, I've been casting a slightly wider net to look for solutions. I came across a John Gray interview on Novara Media, as well as Peter Hitchens on a Times Radio podcast. John Gray is a deep level thinker who tends to contradict the standard 'triumph of liberal markets' narrative on the Soviet Union. Peter Hitchens made the point that Germany/France have probably done better than the UK since 2008 because they both have robust vocational/technical training for kids which starts at an earlier age. The same is also somewhat true of most or all of the Nordic Model states. The Anglosphere, by comparison, still seems to be operating on the lunacy of the Blank Slate, wherein any child can be educated to do anything.
Well said - I have explored some of what I believe is behind this dogged determination to remain irrelevant here just yesterday. Misery may like company, but when the room is crowded, what's left?
Bingo! I've often thought that Substack subscriptions could be a nice way to funnel NGO/TLA money to stooges & useful idiots.
What, like Democrats have famously been doing for years on Twitter and Facebook, buying millions of fake followers? Like the Israelis have actual IDF members doing?
Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning me. I know it sounds a bit over-stated but for a writer like you to consider me a peer really is a huge compliment and deeply appreciated.
Secondly, calls to action to scrub this platform of any and all "wrong-think" content are intolerably heinous. I've said it before about Samantha Bee's (hopefully now ended) dalliance with this site - these people have the largest jungle gyms on the internet to play on, and the fact that they must come here and they must root out the native user-base and they must turn our little corner into another safe and sterile mouthpiece to regurgitate the same opinions back and forth at one another... it really brings my piss to a boil. I've seen it so many times in so many places, even hobbies. It's the same thing that happened to video games, Magic the Gathering, tabletop roleplaying, comic books, and just about every other "nerdy" or "geeky" hobby or interest. The "mainstream" guys move in to the space, say, "Oh, hey, cool thing you got going on here, guys. I know you guys have been doing your own thing for a while, but you really need to consider how me and my friends feel about it, so you need to stop doing [insert everything that makes the space unique and interesting here] so that it better suits me. Okay?" and when they get pushback, they quite literally bully everyone out to make space for their equally bland, boring, and milquetoast friends. It's as exhausting to watch repeat as the actors repeating it are cruel and petty.
Like Samantha Bee, though, I have no doubt in my mind that her orange check-mark is one that was bought by her handlers to boost her visibility. I just refuse to believe otherwise, and, as the fevered minds that postulated the Dead Internet "Conspiracy Theory" are continually vindicated as more and more revelations come out about the truly staggering amount of bots and hollow accounts pervade the internet, there's no reason to think Substack as a platform is exempt from nefarious means of astroturfing.
I've come to really enjoy this place and the company of users like you and everyone you mentioned. It's the kind of frontier spirit that made the internet interesting to begin with, and the spirit that's becoming near impossible to find. I'm not sure how we can fortify this place against malicious actors like this. It's also, like, one of the last places with even a semblance of long-form content in a world that seems increasingly moving to short, bite-sized, mind-melting clips that shred one's attention span, and I'm sick to fucking death of it. I don't know much about the founders and owners of Substack. I've heard their on the level, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, but even if they are, the site is only one hostile take-over or Wordpress/Yahoo/X purchase away from being turned into another glorified corpo ad platform.
This is the kind of thing it would be great to see in a full essay.
I'd like to get around to it one of these days, but, in the immortal words of Charlie Kelly: "I start thinking about it and... and it just makes me so ANGRY!" Followed by manic laughter and feral growling. It's hard to stomach long enough to write an entire essay about, though, whenever I inevitably bring myself to write a full piece on Gamergate or Comicsgate or any of the various Nerd Culture -gates that have pretty much destroyed all sense of cohesion among them, it'll come up.
Our best bet is real life community.
I totally agree.
Real life community has always been the standard model for societies, communities and civilizations. These new tech, cool, hip, woke, sleek, empowering, equitable, perverse, corrupt, monitored, manipulated and controlling platforms are what the opportunists created and sold us...because we asked for them.
We traded the very real, appropriate and critical responsibility, to personally interact/connect with our fellow citizens - for a bevy of detached, faceless, unaccountable, inauthentic, easy and convenient simulacra, the masses now live in, minute by minute.
Unfortunately we are all guilty of this, to some degree, unless you could ditch your cell phone and computer (for good) and not miss a beat. The reality we generationally choose to ignore - The ever evolving labyrinths of Comfort, Convenience and Entertainment we find ourselves "trapped" in, are of our own making.
Think how much some worry about digital surveillance, me included. And the solution is leave your phone at home and meet in pub. Kind of absurd. Real life surveillance is a major hassle.
I do appreciate the great strength of the interwebz is you can contact the like-minded all over the world, which is amazing. But I do wonder what it would feel like to just ditch it all and only use devices to upload to Substack and then walk away.
Yup, I'm with you. I always come back to the premise, that we allowed (excitedly) the monster to outgrow our ability to control or kill it, WHEN needed - because it's always eventually needed, at some point.
We've basically reached a point (societally) where the capture is complete - there is no going back, on the whole. Individuals will be able to - and should, to the extent possible - but the tech/digital hive, cloud, borg, verse etc. is baked in to the last 3 generations. It will only be excised, through a catastrophic event. I constantly hope for a survivable high energy solar flare or Gamma ray burst.
Till then there will be a minority of dissidents, of varied degrees, but the majority will live in the cloud - not out of necessity - but because to them it will be a right.
Yes. But I can also see a group partially detaching. Using digital tools in a disciplined way. I'd like to get there myself.
Mu understanding is the founders are fairly Left. Plus if this gets seriously popular I have no doubt it will be purchased and the Right Stuff will be shitcanned. I think everyone should plan for this.
That said, there is clearly a need for a place for longform writing. I too am sick of short Tweet-like content. I only use Notes to promote and help boost others as it is all they have. No idea if it does any good as their display algorithm is a mystery to me.
I would argue if this goes Pete Tong then it will have demonstrated a need for a site like this for people who love free speech and cleanly formatted longform writing.
I fear you are right, no pun intended. I never underestimate the pull of the "cool kids." Substack is not immune to it, and there's no shortage of funding out there that will be thrown away in an effort to shut it down.
Agree. Although the damage is done. We exist. We are more than a website.
Feminism: A Jewish Psyop to Demonize White Women
MGTOW = Mostly Gay Transgendered Or Wimpy
http://www.renegadetribune.com/the-psychological-operation-to-blame-white-women/
I suspect as much myself. I've long considered the possibility that practically no site on what we'd consider the "surface web" is really safe in any meaningful way. It may be open now, but, yes, as platforms grow and become more popular and attract the vying eyes of the mainstream media and corporations, it's really only a matter of time before it folds. I'd like to see Substack be the exception but more high-minded individuals with better sites (Seriously, the notes feature is pretty janky, as are notifications) have bent the knee in the end, one way or another. I think until either decentralized social media (think Mastadon) or some sort of parallel network independent of what we call the "surface web" akin to what most call "the dark web" (or maybe the dark web can be an alternative itself), anyone outside of the increasingly narrow Overton Window on the right or the left will always be playing against the clock.
I do sense something different here though. There are many likeminded people here. Even those that don't write are keen on this kind of material. So the final assessment for Substack may be this. Demonstrating a group of us do exist, and we are not Conservatism Inc.
We are also demonstrating what polite, reasoned, civilized writing and commentary actually looks like. It is a far cry from the insurrectionist, neo-Nazi, Klansmen image the mainstream are desperate to promote. Interesting thought pieces, insightful discussions and novel ideas. None of this happens in the mainstream.
I found the 'Orcs are Racist!' meme particularly fascinating. It said more about the racism of the people making the claim than those who had happily played in parties with half-orcs for years. As an interesting side note, although many online sources cite 'orc' as referring to an evil spirit or an ogre, it's highly probably that Tolkien borrowing the word from the old Anglo-Saxon for foreigner or outsider 'yrrc' or 'yrrk'.
There was an old dramatized pre-woke BC documentary on the subject dealing with the Norman Invasion. Of course, Wikipedia would beg to differ- but, then again, even the main founder of Wikipedia has bitterly complained that the site has been taken over by culturally progressive censors....
Oh, that was one of the most egregious cases of the phenomenon - a bunch of sanctimonious pricks coming into the fandom and basically telling everyone, "You're racist, your hobby is prejudiced, and everything you like about it is problematic. You didn't know it, but we know better than you about what you think and what's in your heart, and, actually, you're racist."
Patently absurd. And, yes - of course no one was saying anything about orcs being disparaging depictions of blacks until they showed up. Don't even get me started on the Goblin/Jew debacle.
Do you watch Critical Drinker on YouTube? He's absolutely hilarious. He's even inspired a number of Black American content creators to make reaction videos. Talk of 5 foot 6 women beating 6 foot 225lb men to a bloody pulp goes down particularly well.
I watch a lot of Black reaction videos. One can find Black women reduced to tears by Portishead live videos, and enthusiastic endorsements of the message articulated by Tom MacDonald. There is something about appreciation for music in particular, which defies the notion that humans can be placed into easily defined identity categories. For decades, the legacy media has presented an image of a particular type of milquetoast Black activist who enthusiastically endorses the Democrat agenda, when nothing could be further from the truth. I've been telling my American conservative friends for a number of years that there is huge potential to draw off Dem support amongst the Blue collar class, and the potential is not just limited to Latinos...
African Americans have played a prominent role in the grassroots pushback against gender ideology in schools and aren't particularly enthused about their community resources being squandered on emergency provisions for mass migration...
Bravo.
I had to exit modern D&D and create my own...
The Karen Migration reminds me of the US blue state refugees going to red states and promptly demanding the same policies that led to their migration in the first place.
The bot argument is a strong one and helps explain the banality of their opinions.
All of you excellent and engaged writers/thinkers here caused this by making Substack too awesome. They were always going to come for it. Let's hope "management" is sufficiently decentralized to handle the screeching of the harridans.
Heinrich Himmler on How Bolshevik Christianity Spreads Homosexuality and Hatred of Women...
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/heinrich-himmler-on-how-bolshevik-christianity-spreads-homosexuality-and-hatred-of-women
“Piss to a boil”, I’ve never heard that phrase and it made me giggle. That’s pretty mad.
You're right, the collapse of Jezebel will mean they flood in. And then have a collective breakdown when they realize no one wants to read them here, either.
The thing is, even if you wanted to read them, you wouldn't need to read more than one of them, since there's no meaningful difference between them.
Between that and being very easily predictable, there really is no reason they couldn't be replaced with LLMs. As indeed you suggested they might already be doing.
LITERALLY NPCs?
Nor would you need to read more than one of the essays of the single NPC writer you chose. Pick any one of these Marxcissist pundits, and every post consists of the same unhinged emotional reaction, same overused cliches, same shrill conclusions that do not follow from the same fallacy-ridden "arguments," same straw men being torn into the same identical shreds, same projection and DARVO tactics, same everything, wash/rinse/repeat. Their essays are to writing what advertising jingles are to music: designed to be so annoying they get stuck in your head, in order to sell you something without ever once addressing the merits of the thing being sold, but rather to put your critical thinking and higher faculties into some kind of a trance so you'llbe easier to manipulate. These people are Satan incarnate.
One might hope that they acclimate themselves to the new state of things and learn to have conversations with people with whom they might not always agree in every particular, but that’s me; the eternal optimist.
I’m a fan of Virginia Woolf and agree with her that a woman needs a room of her own. (It is my opinion that everyone in a cohabitating household needs a room of their own.) I commit here the heresy of believing that women and men are fundamentally different — which is OK — and that we may best resolve our differences through mutually respectful dialogue.
Jezebel shut down? I didn't even know she was sick.
Skimming through the nag's articles, it's exactly the kind of midwit brain-rot that I ached to escape until I found Substack. The orange tick signifying "thousands of paid subscribers" is an interesting note. Whilst I can see how someone like Hersh has the purple "tens of thousands" signifier, like you, I struggle to align this shrill's content (though there are always droll minds to consume droll tripe), and more importantly the lack of traction, with her supposed legion of paying eyes. There's very likely some artificial boosting at play, hopefully from without rather than within Substack itself.
In terms of the Attack on Substack, it was only a matter of time, and I predict that as the Substack-lockdown narrative gains traction there may be some anti-deplatforming battles to win ahead. Luckily, Substack makes it's money through subscription fees, rather than advertising. I'd still highly recommend multi-platforming any content even if just for posterity.
For any readers, I would recommend subscribing to your favourite writers if you haven't already. If Substack sees that the subscribers (if authentic) of Marisa Kabas and her ilk are providing significantly more financial value to the platform than the "Nazis", they may be swayed to restrict and deplatform the latter to appease the lunatics. Nothin' personal, just business.
All good points, hmm this means I should take my chivalry essays and fantasy fiction analysis ones once finished and publish them soon.
Get it done!
Thanks and I will! X)
yes, its important to realize that platforms can always delete you. Save your writings elsewhere if you want to be guaranteed they won't ever get erased.
The subscription model is the saving grace, if there is one. Shitcan the most popular writers, and all that subscription money just disappears.
Good comment, but I believe you mean “dull” (boring, not sharp) rather than “droll” (wryly amusing).
I might be associating the word with "a jester or entertainer; a buffoon." in my mind. Glad the point came across regardless!
Insufferable bint. These women need a hobby.
They have one. It's called being insufferable.
https://guildcrestcathospital.ca/guide-to-vacation-with-cat/
The specific hobby they need is making license plates for the rest of their lives.
Her husband gets sex once a year if he's lucky.
Zero times a year (with her) if he’s really lucky.
Did you ever read the old Quillette articles about progressive cancellations in knitting circles There is an article from early 2019 called A Witch-Hunt on Instagram.
So, even when they get a hobby it doesn't stop the Cancel Culture.
The behaviour described in the article reads like a Nurse Ratched convention...
or a hubby (though I wouldn't be inerested in taking on the job myself)
“ Her prose is what you would get if a fair-trade pumpkin-spice latte could type.” <- This made me laugh. Thank you. Women like pumpkin-spice-latte girl are so very tedious and, though I’m quite fit and energetic (even overly bouncy at times, according to my husband), they absolutely tire me out. The worst part is that most of them truly believe the drivel they tap out on their keyboards and via their chattering at the company cocktail hour.
Yours is one of my favorite Substacks, my friend. I am grateful to have found such a place -- a refuge -- but after my first few weeks here, I knew the “identity-intersectional-virtue signaling class” would move against it before long. Hopefully, they won’t succeed.
Thank you very much and I'm honored.
You’re so welcome, but it is I who is honored.
*am* <- sometimes I’m in a hurry 😉
At this point I think most of the opposition to people on Substack is orchestrated.
Seriously, who goes on social media, and seeks out [non famous] people to deride? Nobody does that, because that's just not what people do. If they're paid, they do it. Otherwise, people will stick to whatever social circles they usually haunt. That's just human nature.
The leftists *Substack has brought to Substack* always seem to have a huge following right off the bat. Which makes little sense, because they are still on the platforms they came from -- where people might actually agree with them and want to read their opinions.
Similarly, their large and unlikely legitimate following, are seeing all of these strange restacks of random bigoted nonsense, from some account that nobody has heard of. As they cry, "See look! Here be racists… Arghh!" It's just so obviously orchestrated.
In other words, if Substack is full of racists and Nazis, where are all the racist Nazis with a massive subscriber base? There's just not.
As a result, they are left trying re-frame what it means to be a racist or a Nazi.
It's not working, because the people with large subscriber bases are read by people who are not persuaded by nonsense, nor is anyone who actually reads what they write.
They're to go after Substack like they did Rush Limbaugh. Whine and cry that he's terrible, he's the worst thing ever, so on and so fourth. But what did it result in? It resulted in many leftist people actually listening to Limbaugh’s show, and realizing that they have been lied to the entire time! Their efforts resulted in more Rush fans in the end.
So, I'm not worried about this in the long run. I'm more worried about Substack using algorithms to push down content. Maybe having a few “issues” with their mass emailing service here and there. Things that are hard to "prove" are being done. Maybe changing people’s feeds. We know that’s been happening because I keep seeing stuff from leftist goons that I would never subscribe to.
That’s how I see this ending up.
Maybe they just like to read and write and think, as we do, and as we were all made to.
Perhaps... But I doubt it.
Keep in mind that pretty much every time the left "finds" racists and Nazis, they're fake. They're paid actors.
They know that there aren't a bunch of racists and Nazis on Substack -- because they can't even find these "ever-present" racists and Nazis when they "need" them.
Why is it the so called left can find Nazis on SS but not in Ukraine ?
It's like their constant cry of Trump using dog whistles to incite and communicate with the racists and Nazis. They had to claim that he had some secret means of communication with them because a) the racists and Nazis had to exist, or their world view was wrong; b) they had to be what was propping up Trump, because no sane person could support him (all of this is from their perspective); c) on its face, Trump didn't incite racists or Nazis through what he said and did; so d) there had to be some secret communication going on that couldn't be heard by people (like them) not attuned to that frequency.
Remember, they have a little model in their head. It is all based on their programmed prejudices they are told they lack and some undesirables possess. When they see some thing they are told is related, like Trump, it triggers their racism/Nazi/genocide alarm. It is impervious to reason. NPCs are real.
Write on, librarian!
I was just thinking this morning that the Jezebel spirit (the biblical queen, not the magazine) is the new spiritual direction that we are up against. The Karens are retiring and it is the fierce Jezebelisch that are taking their places.
That is awesome you are getting that kind of support. You deserve it.
That's very kind.
Part of the reason why these people freak out about supposed "nazis" is that they are utterly helpless when they have to actually think through and articulate their positions. They are so used to having everything (soft-)censored that challenges their hard-wired assumptions that they can't do much other than shrieking when faced with it. But this won't do anymore. If they actually cared about their causes, they would realize this.
Absolutely true, and my apologies for not shouting you out.
Don't worry man, I'm just enjoying your writing and I'm glad you are gaining some traction. Well-deserved! Also didn't know that you started out as a commentator on John's, great story.
I do think this is true. I think they seek comfort in their echo chamber to such an extent any deviation from their broad position really is seen as some extremist position. They never hear any real pushback on their ideas.
People who subscribe to the climategeddon extremism are often shocked when you disagree with them. Even better when you tell them you don't care, lol.
"People like this are simply an irritating menace, and their longing for purpose, authority, and the moral formation of obedient inferiors would better be served through raising children, or failing that, some sort of small animal."
Bite your tongue! No child or animal deserves that fate!
True, but my basic point was that I believe there may be some misdirected instincts here.
Or perhaps barely conscious concerns. Not everyone who drinks the feminist kool-aid lives to embrace it. The demographic taking the most antidepressants are childless women in their 40s. I wonder if along the way some of them realize they are on the wrong path. If so that may manifest as hate and bile. Misery loves company.
She might learn some humanity.
The old adage live and let live seems to have been replaced with you can only live if you agree 100% with my dogma. What kind of outsized ego must you possess if you think your code should be jammed down the throats of all. Bullying, cancelling others who don’t conform seems to be a pretty Nazi thing.
I would argue this is about social capital harvesting. So it is worse that mere intolerance. It is indifference to the harm caused to others while pursuing your own ambitions, damning others to get on in life. She is aiming for brownie points among her set and, ideally, her betters.
Now we know where they got all those concentration camp guards from.
Bravo !
I'm not surprised to see this happening here. These people are status-seekers, and Substack has a reputation for hosting interesting thinkers and writers (a reputation they feel entitled to). Now that Twitter has been captured and their own outlets are haemorrhaging views and donors, they're looking for the next place to infiltrate and turn into the equivalent of a Guardian journalist's pillow fort.
Yes, that's precisely what I've been thinking myself since I got started on substack and xould immediately sense Twitterati posters here.
Freedom of thought and freedom of expression must be preserved.
I agree to a point. I believe with de Maistre that rights are concessions from sovereigns, and a man (or woman) has exactly as many rights at any moment as he or she is prepared to defend to the greatest extent possible. Given that there are no real sovereigns left, we must be our own sovereigns, Anarchs answerable to the higher things.
Indeed, rights are illusory much like democracy, so we have to create them ourselves and make ourselves sovereign. That’s the only way to prosper in this environment. Thinking these fairy tales of rights are somehow going to protect us from the nature of mankind is naive. It is only our actions that have meaning, in this sense.
I have always thought that the concept of personal sovereignty is really about agency.
“Agency is the sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. Your sense of agency helps you to be psychologically stable, yet flexible in the face of conflict or change.”
https://www.ppccfl.com/blog/take-control-of-your-life-the-concept-of-agency-and-its-four-helpers/#:~:text=Agency%20is%20the%20sense%20of,face%20of%20conflict%20or%20change.
The enemy has enabled mentally unwell individuals and weaponized them against Us.
The best advice for dealing with toxic people is to avoid them. Failing that it’s time to fight back or let the jackals eat you alive. Fight back!
Tell them (Kabas ancd her like) that Hitler was transgender....that should confuse them!
He was also a vegetarian and banned smoking.