By Colby Malsbury

Ah, those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. You can thank Canada for the ‘hazy’ part. When a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of….

….online clout.

And, really, why wouldn’t it? Isn’t there an exceedingly memeable culture war to be waged out there, and isn’t Captain Normie Conn, Web Warrior Extraordinaire all set to deploy? It’s not like he managed to land a job back in June, anyway. There is a plethora of fronts out there for him to open a salvo upon: The continuing incongruity on a meta scale of the entire Barbenheimer phenomenon, the championing of former gun control advocate Jason Aldean’s artificially intelligent anti-woke anthem ‘Try That in a Small Town’, the inevitable jeering against the said Aldean after his inevitable capitulation to the tender mercies of the woke mob, a flurry of interest in the sudden separation of globalist god Justin Trudeau from his stage prop Sophie and the Rite’s hypocritical bleating refrain of ‘let us forbear casting stones against our enemy during this difficult time of his’…..oh, the possibilities are endless.

The skill set in amalgamating these various strands into something resembling a coherent and consistent Christian worldview, though, remains decidedly limited. So what else is new and exciting?

Ergo, let us look at five fundamental rookie mistakes the online Rite continues to make, even though they ought to have twenty years’ combined experience of message boards and social media by now.

1. Misunderstanding the Online Rite’s Telos

Chief among the sins of naivete committed by those benumbed by their poli sci professors into accepting the Hegelian Republican/Democratic dialectic as the only conceivable reality is their failure to understand why their favorite non-woke personality posts all day, every day to begin with. Are they there because they are dedicated and tireless seekers of truth, justice, and the prewar American way, determined to wake up the slumbering sheep to reach a few lions who forgot to set their alarm clocks last night? Is that why Alex Jones used to do his thing? Or why Joe Rogan currently does his?

Nope, nope, and nope.

There is one reason, and one reason only, that any institution exists: to perpetuate itself. This is why families beget children. And why corporations beget shareholders. And why governments beget both mindless regulations and acts of concerted violence. And why the Holocaust begets miraculously long-lived survivors.

Three guesses as to what online influencers are trying to beget. They’re called that for a reason. Although, yes, we would also have accepted ‘shares’, ‘likes’, and/or ‘followers’.

How, then, do you garner attention and reposts from a benumbed and otiose generation that will drop fifty, seventy-five, a hundred bucks a pop on ‘character upgrades’ within their favorite livestreamed video games without blinking? How did they manage to do so during Scarybug? You scare the living spit out of them. Go with what works, always.

This is why the Internet, Version 2.023, is All Apocalypse, All the Time. Hashtags come and go among the autistic and ADHD crowds, but an underlying sense of Doompill is forever. #nuclearwar, #globalboiling, #dementiajoe, #leprosyinflorida, #massstarvation – what Baalite idol will you be prostrate in front of in fear and trembling today???

Ergo, anyone with any cyber-presence is going to be opining for the moment, not for the ages. If you’re looking for the latter, best stick to your copies of the classics in the theological, historical, and philosophical realms. Your hard copies – not to worry: free PDF files can and will be ‘selectively’ edited with nary a modern-day scholar noticing.

Closely related to this first point is:

2. Monetization, and the Lack of Understanding Thereof

Older generations who were active in the pre-2008 workforce and thus were:

a) much more likely to retain their jobs after the catastrophic financial meltdown and subsequent ‘re-structuring’ of the economy that transpired, and

b) had a sufficient reference base to remember a world in which economics as we used to know them even existed

are in no position to comprehend what the primary means of schlepping for a dollar today entails. Sorry, Boomers, but this most certainly includes you above all else.

It’s not like the old days of re-broadcasting Major League Baseball games – express written permission not only does not need to be obtained without risk of fines and/or jail time, but is expressly discouraged. Nothing does not get shared online that the poster of such does not want shared widely.

This applies to right-wing clickbait just as much as it does to entitled brats speaking directly into the camera opining about how all landlords ought to be murdered and how they ought to receive hourly royalties for existing. Shares = wares.

One can see this even in the thumbnail portraits and hysterical headlines the Right, aping their legacy media counterparts, use to garner attention. I can’t tell you how many thumbnails I have see with descriptors along the lines of THE COLLAPSE IS ALREADY HERE AND YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE, flanked by a mushroom cloud on the left and a screaming woman on the right, only to discover that the vid itself is a report on how inflation once again did not drop during the month just past. Complete with an unskippable ‘paid promotion’ in the middle of the report for VPNs or something. Even respectable podcasters stoop to this tactic, so if you’re betting on calmness and sober propriety making a resurgence on your computer anytime soon I, for one, will gladly take your money.

3. Living in the Now/No Sense of History

How can you possibly hope to successfully wage a culture war if you have no presuppositional basis for what your own culture is? You can’t. Most ‘conservatives’ today have a Hegelian synthetic worldview combining a mishmash of the Reaganite 80s thesis (or even a Clintonian 90s thesis if they’re late Millennial enough) with a ‘we welcome all colors, faiths, and orientations into our ranks’ antithesis. The result? A carping, whining miasma that will settle for the utopia of 2019 if nothing better comes around. They have no real conception of the triumphs and tragedies of their own volk, and refuse to probe into any depth of that matter. Any historical musings they ever do attempt come across as hopelessly juvenile – along the lines of ‘all slaveowners were Democrats’, ‘Covid protocols violate the Nuremberg Code’, ‘no patrons of the Stonewall bar would ever support pedophilia’, and the like.

Even in the much-vaunted celebrity sphere, these people display an amazing dearth of depth. Anyone pandering to them in the moment receives their full-fledged and entirely unwarranted support. We have mentioned the case of Jason Aldean already. Steven Spielberg is another prominent example. Because he has “dared” to toss forth some exceptionally weak criticisms of Woke lately – most notably, if you can call it that, his regret over editing all firearms out of the director’s cut of ET: the Extra Terrestrial – the Right is willing to acclaim him their own defender in the vein of Charles Martel, and all his previous hostility the way of Western Christendom, in everything from the Indiana Jones movies to Swindler’s Mist to Munich to the very recent remake of West Side Story is all forgiven, if his corpus of past work is even retained in their limited memory banks anymore.

Tom Cruise is another stellar example. Once the loopy Scientologist bete noire of anyone who had to earn a living outside of blockbuster stardom, notorious for his brainwashing of multiple wives and bouncing all over Oprah’s couch as though he had the jungle fever, today he has been lauded as the Poster Boy for Manly Men for headlining the neocon throwback Top Gun:Maverick and reaping Hollywormwood many shekels for his efforts. He has also garnered a dubious reputation as an anti-vaxxer, despite his notorious pro-lockdown measures meltdown on the set of the latest Mission Impossible movie two years ago. The Right’s disconnect between perception and reality in this case is particularly stunning, and is fully representative of their growing desperation to find themselves a released Kraken to come and save them from drowning. Yet again. Little wonder Trump retains his relevancy as he approaches the age of eighty.

4. They Use TikTok. For Any Reason.

If I’m going to be perusing informative vids, I will be turning to either podcasts or properly put-together documentaries. I am not going to be uploading some aberration crammed full of emojis, illiterate text, extremely annoying “funny” sound cues, and sub-Jackass stunts or sub-public access monologues delivered directly to the camera running for a duration of two minutes or less. Any conservative who thinks he can do wonders with this format is just a waste of space.

On that note, let’s touch on the hideous Manosphere, shall we? These bald, bearded, bitter bachelor Bacchanalists have carved out lucrative careers through their endorsements of hedonism and muscle cars, and they have found as receptive an audience on the existential crisis known as TikTok as they have ever known. Everybody’s favorite Muslim convert, Andrew Tate, for one, had set up shop over there to exhort your son who hasn’t found any kind of employment since finishing up community college five years ago all about the joys of rapine and human trafficking. While supposedly banned from the site, his content is still readily available and is circulated among young men determined to be ‘edgy’ in their own little self-insulated cocooned corner of the metaverse. Some motivation to marry and rear families, isn’t it?

If the medium is the message, the message of the internet is a masturbatory one. Nowhere is this more evident in a forum that is concerned with showcasing porn loops, and the Right has no business competing with such swill whatsoever. Let Xi Jinpeng harvest his data elsewhere.

5. Stridency of Tone/Arrogance of Demeanor

No man knows it all. This man certainly doesn’t. And the modern Right doesn’t either.

So it ill-behooves them to adopt a petulant hectoring persona wherein they imply that they and they alone didn’t just emerge from the Matrix yesterday. This is especially insulting considering they’re just preaching to the choir.

A prime example of this comes as a result of the populist response to another conservative focus this summer – the smash anti-child trafficking hit movie Sound of Freedom. One ‘Thomas A. Moore’, author of a tract entitled Killing America; the Death of Our Republic, was apparently extremely jealous that an independently-produced bit of media could possibly eclipse his literary masterwork in the Right-cultural zeitgeist, and he felt compelled to engage in a bout of spite. His analysis, while lengthy, is worth quoting in full:

OK folks… I’ve done my research… Have you?

1.) No children have been “rescued” from the ”tunnels” of the child traffickers… nor will they be. (They may fake a “rescue” soon to make you think they are doing something about this tragedy)

2.) No sexually perverted child traffickers have been arrested… nor will they be. (They may fake an “arrest” soon to make you think they are doing something about this tragedy. This is called “cosmetic window-dressing.”)

3.) None of the political leaders in this nation (GOP or Dems) who have participated in sex trafficking, sexual pedophilia, sexual perversion, or luciferian rituals of sacrificing children to satan have been arrested… nor will they be.

4.) Your own government leaders (on both sides) are participants in child trafficking, sexual abuse of children, and satanic rituals involving the killing of children. (Why do you think the southern borders are still open? Where are all the children going? They have to be taken somewhere by our government… right?)

5.) The CIA and the FBI are subsidiaries of the NWO and most of their members are participants in child kidnapping, child trafficking, and the sexual abuse and murdering of children.

6.) The studio that produced “The Sound of Freedom” is owned and managed by the luciferian Mormon cult. (Angel Studios)

7.) Both Mel Gibson and Jim Caviezel are members of the luciferian secret societies called “Free Masons” and “Jesuits.” They are members of satan’s church— “The Roman Catholic Church” whose leader (Pope) welcomes and embraces sexual perversions of all types… including pedophilia.

8.) The CIA agent portrayed in this film (Tim Ballard) is not a “hero” in real life. He is a participant in child trafficking, child molestation, and child sacrifices to satan.

9.) This film is a psyop— controlled opposition— to play upon the emotions of every parent and to get them extremely angry about this evil injustice done to children.

When everyone begins to make demands of the government and to pressure the government to put a stop to this perversion and murder, the government will respond to this predesigned and preplanned reaction from the public by microchipping every child “for their safety and protection.”

Once your children are microchipped, the NWO government will own your children exclusively. And they can do whatever they want with your children— including child trafficking, child molestation, sexual perversions, gender changing surgeries, and… child sacrifices (murders) to satan.

10.) This movie exposes the “dark side” of the final global beast system of the NWO government…and then presents the dialectic “light side” of the very same luciferian NWO government. (Just like the “white witch” or “good witch” in the “Wizard of Oz”… and just like the two sides of the same “force” in the “Star War” movies). Both sides are diabolically evil.

Remember, satan can (and does) appear as an angel of light.

Hence… the name “Angel Studios.”

Can it be any more clear to you than this?

I’ve done my exhaustive research… have you?

They put their “partial truth bait” in their “evil trap”…

and many of you quickly took it!

Granted, he does bring up some viable points, albeit extremely obvious ones for anyone who has played this game for any length of time. Of course no conservative is going to be counting on any wide-release movie to blow the lid off things sky-high. And of course Christian conservatives are going to look at anything Mormon with a jaundiced eye.

But my good word – does this guy ever wonder why ‘Solutions only, please’ has become a buzzphrase? So the movie is a cesspit of lies. OK. What does he proffer as a solution? Certainly not national repentance and a return to Christ in sackcloth and ashes. No, apparently we’re supposed to hang onto every word of his wisdom and insight, because “I have researched more than thou.”

Oh, for the days of Ron Paul, when dissidents were capable of showing passion and vigor for their beliefs and were able to present them in a dignified manner. Which, incidentally, the Good Doctor is still doing on podcasts to this very day. Think Moore will be doing that in his late 80s? Doubtful. Very doubtful.

In conclusion: the amateurish streak of the online Right is indeed wince-inducing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Rank amateurism reigns supreme, but there is the more diligent and dutiful brand of amateurism that discovers the migratory habits of birds and newfangled chemical reactions in the garage by accident one night. Those are the competent non-commissioned officers that any Christian army cannot function without.

Problem is: that takes a heady combination of purpose and discipline in order to make a dint in the enemies’ lines. Barring a small remnant, I have seen scant evidence of this coterie existing anywhere on social media. Ah well. Back to message boards for the warriors, I suppose.