The Boomer's Guide to Blackpilled: A Field Manual on the Internet Right.

THE BOOMER'S GUIDE TO BLACKPILLED – A FIELD MANUAL ON THE INTERNET RIGHT

So, you're hearing more and more unfamiliar terms as you learn about mass shooters, misogyny, internet culture, and other strange and unfamiliar things from the headlines. I'm not here to judge, I'm here to help.

Along with my colleague, who shall remain nameless for now (something she'll probably consider hilarious for reasons), we have spent decades happily splashing about in the internet's various cesspits, sewers, and assorted human drip pans. We have wound up bizarrely ingratiated into various circles (especially her) and have had a worm's eye view of the worm tunnels.

I'm here to be your Swamp Sherpa, guiding you through the foulest reaches of the internet and giving you the benefit of my...let's call it “wisdom”.

Believe me, nobody is more surprised than us to be in a position where this sort of knowledge has become not only useful, but perhaps even vital. Dear God above, it might even end up being a matter of national security for people to understand this stuff (and I at least would argue it already is).

The two of us have discussed agricultural and mining policy, new programs to revitalize the Appalachians on the scale of the TVA, overhauls to emergency resilience, decentralizing communications and media to restore the public forum and true community connections...we could be writing about such better stuff for all of you.

Instead, we're talking about the sort of things that we always expected to have blown over and been forgotten any day now for over 20 years. This timeline is the worst.

This will be a series, focusing on the history of the modern right, from the early days when it began to diverge from traditional conservatism and old-guard Republicans through to now. We will discuss the major trends, events, and personalities that shaped, guided, and molded the movements that are now bearing toxic fruit from the seeds sown so long ago. This particular diary will also be updated at the end to serve as an index; I’ll add links to future articles here, and link back to this index in future articles so new readers in the future can easily catch up.

If you value the work I do and want to support and encourage it, the easiest and most direct way is to donate to my Ko-Fi here: you can make a one-time donation or become a subscriber for just $3 per month.

TRIGGER WARNING: Over the course of this series, we'll be taking you through a peculiar, particular part of the internet's worst subcultures. There's going to be some truly vile things written here, and while I'll do my best to keep it from being overly vulgar or crude the fact is some level of it is unavoidable.

This is a subculture for whom the word “fag” is quite literally a catch-all suffix for a compound word. The offensiveness and vulgarity of the language is itself a secret handshake among members. If you're serious in learning about this world, you're going to need to be prepared for some offensive language.

I've often thought of the work in bringing people back from the extremes of this world not unlike deprogramming and intervening with at-risk youth anywhere else. Just as with Muslim extremism and ISIS, to inner city gangs and urban youth, this is a movement that preys on lonely, vulnerable, often hurt young men and boys who are confused and looking for connection and role models.

It is quite literally a Lost Boys' world.

This isn't meant to paint a sympathetic picture, but rather the opposite: too often we dismiss these overlapping subcultures of angry boys and man-boys as sex-starved bigoted right-wingers who are just mad that life is unfair. Which many of them are, but there are two problems with that summary:

1. It's grossly and unfairly one-dimensional. If you want to solve a problem, you need to understand it. This is a human problem, which means understanding the humans. Reducing them to a cardboard cutout we can throw tomatoes at is easy, but it’s only useful for making a target. We won't learn anything about how to solve the problem of what keeps creating them.

2. It may skew heavily white, male, Christian, straight, and conservative, but it has its members who are only some or even none of the above. In fact, despite the outwardly hostile and hateful tone this culture takes towards women and minorities, the bonds forged here can be shockingly deep and strong. These people aren't a monolith, and the differences really are just skin deep.

The purpose of this series is to help you understand the inhabitants of these various parts of the internet: who they are, why they are the way they are, how we got here, what role society played vs. their own role in getting here, and perhaps most importantly the steps those of us who have seen this world from the inside since the beginning think we need to take to get back from the brink.

We'll start this week with a simple primer to this world: a rundown of the main factions/flavors of right-winger you'll find in this world. Do note that categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive or inclusive: it's possible to find yourself drifting from one category to another, or a blend of them.

WHITE NATIONALISTS/SUPREMACISTS

Most famously visible during the Unite the Right rally of tiki-torch bearing fame in 2017, this is a loose amalgamation of different factions ranging from old-timey racists like David Duke and old school “White Kindred” survivalists/compound dwellers to modern White nativists like Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys' “Western chauvinism”. If you're wondering about the strange “Valhalla” references recently (from Kash Patel, no less), this is partly why: the modern White Right is very fond of Norse pagan iconography. This is the latest trend of historical images and icons from the Golden Age of White Culture, whatever it happens to be at the time, as a fad with White Supremacists (right now the Norse pantheon with its cast of pale warriors is en vogue, but Middle Ages Crusaders, Ancient Sparta, and the Roman Empire have all been used at times by this movement, depending on the faction, sometimes at the same time). The unifying thread is powerful, masculine, White warriors making right via might.

GROYPERS

The rude, crude, and brasher version of your Prayer Breakfast Dominionists, these are what most people probably think of when they think of a classic internet troll (though there's plenty others out there): slurs, naked hostility for leftist/progressive values, America First-style populism, probably a cartoon frog in there somewhere if you're dealing with an image post of some kind. While not as explicitly racist as the White Supremacists, Groypers still very much have a vision for an old-fashioned isolationist America – one nation under the Flag and Cross, with similar values and beliefs for all, whether you like it or not. Despite what sounds like a longing for the good old days, you'll rarely find love for the Bush or Reagan era here: these aren't Young Republicans practicing tying their bowties. That would be the...

ALT-LITE

Fratty, smirky, provocative, and not overtly white-supremacist. By the standards of the right they're practically liberal wusses in that they're content to merely insult POC rather than outright call for their ejection or elimination from the future White Ethnostate. Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA are the quintessential example here: taking borderline hard-right views, laundering them into the mainstream, and trying to build a new youth movement to fight back against the ascendant left and the past few decades of social progress. These are the kinds of rightists who will make you want to scream at them not because they used slurs or hate speech, but because they twisted statistics to mislead people.

Despite the closer ties to the establishment, there's still very little respect for old school Republicans here. This is definitely a movement built around shaking things up and fueled by resentment and backlash against the Obama election and the rise of liberal cultural dominance (at least as they perceive it). Their lack of overt hatred is because they view their bigotry not as hate but a course-correction for PC culture and liberalism run amok. They don't hate Black People when they cite warped crime statistics, for instance: in their mind they're just speaking truth that liberals have suppressed because it sounds bad to say out loud. They very much consider themselves warriors for old school constitutional values like free speech, vigorous debate, and mutual respect for different cultures; the fact their views of those values are warped or informed by ignorance or a fundamental misunderstanding of things like what “free speech” actually means is what keeps them from being a proper right-of-center faction to engage with. However, they still can be the easiest for mainstream people to approach, which gives them an edge in perception. They're definitely the most respectable subgroup.

REDPILLED/MANOSPHERE

The Redpill/Manosphere world owes its existence, broadly, to two trends: the Pick-Up Artist community and the Angry Internet Ranter Era (best exemplified by “I am Better Than Your Kids” author Maddox). Very broadly Maddox’s humor (and those like him) could be described as satirical masculinity: over the top brashness, rudeness, rage, and hyper-masculinity taken to cartoonish heights. The humor was in rejecting the general liberal trend in men and popular culture in an extreme, exaggerated manner. This spawned copy-cats who were less cerebral and more overtly sexist to varying degrees. This ecosystem was eventually dubbed “The Manosphere”, a term Maddox himself despised when he was first interviewed about it. “Redpilled” is a term referencing the Red Pill/Blue Pill scene of the Matrix. Late 90s/Early 2000s Pick-up Artists (self-proclaimed experts in seducing women) helped popularize the concept that women secretly long for rude, “Alpha Male” types. Redpilling, or having taken the red pill about feminism and gender roles and thus knowing the truth, meant being aware of the truth of the lies of feminism.

The two combined, over time, into a stew of misogyny, glorification of toxic gender roles, and desperate machismo that is the modern Redpill world. Exemplified best by Andrew Tate, this is today the faction young boys are most likely to stumble across first: like all swindlers looking for an easy mark, these prey on young boys and men struggling to find romance and happiness in life, promising they have all the answers. For young boys especially, simply seeing someone with muscles, a beautiful woman, and a nice car and clothes is enough to completely convince them. Before you judge too harshly, know that the Andrew Tates of the world are most successful with teen boys in high and middle school: they're most successful targeting literal children who know the least about the world (and thus are the easiest to trick into thinking Andrew Tate is an expert on women, for instance).

BLACKPILLED/INCEL

So, what happens when life sucks for so long, and you fail so many times, that your “true awakening” after taking the Redpill begins to feel like another false hope? It's failed for so long that now it's just a different delusion where instead of one kind of happy ending you never had a chance at, you're now chasing a different, equally impossible happy ending? Maybe the very notion of happy endings is total bullshit.

That's when you become an incel, and/or find yourself blackpilled (the term a riff on “redpilled”, but instead of waking up in the real better world, you wake up to the reality that there never was a better world, just a differently-awful one).

While “incel” (meaning “involuntarily celibate”, i.e. someone who desires a sexual relationship but is celibate due to their failure to find a partner rather than conscious choice like a monk) was originally coined by a woman to describe her situation personally, the term has become so synonymous with men and specifically men that the term “femcel” was coined later just to cover the concept of a woman who is an incel. Aside from that minor distinction (and some gendered differences in stereotypes), there's a lot of overlap with one another and the wider blackpilled world.

Being blackpilled isn't just about sex (though there's a lot of overlap with incels and blackpill culture), it's a deeper despair about the futility and pointlessness of living these days. It's born of the frustration and despair at working a job that you know won't pay enough for you to retire, in a world where the climate gets worse every year and nobody is fixing it, food goes up in cost no matter who's in charge and raises come slowly or more often not at all, again regardless of who's in charge, and if you speak out you're lectured about why everything wrong in your life is your fault. The refusal of seemingly anyone to validate these very real struggles and feelings (even if the frustration or anger about their status quo is misdirected) is what reinforces their bonds with one another: your fellow “doomers” (exactly what it sounds like) are the only other people who believe you, who understand and hear you. They’re your only source of validation in what feels like an empty, callous world where success isn’t just an illusion, it’s a jeering taunt.

The declining birth rates and pessimism of younger generations is a bright waving red flag – many go from dark jokes and making the best of it and teeter over the knife-edge into full-on blackpill. This is where mass shooters are most likely to come from: they're angry, hurt, isolated, and feel betrayed and hated by a society for unjust and unfair reasons. A fair number of trolls are found in these ranks as well: if everything is pointless and the system is built on callousness and cruelty, it gives people justification to do all sorts of things. You spend enough time in these parts, you will find some truly detailed philosophical debates and arguments. You'll also find people referring to shooting victims as high scores to be broken and making jokes, memes, and remixes of mass shooters' final moments, writings, and posts. More than a couple have even hopped online one last time to tell everyone goodbye and what they're planning. Sadly this is a world so steeped in irony, meta-irony, and layers of faked and real stupidity, it can be impossible to tell who is joking about doing something awful (or encouraging it) until after it's already over. If the modern right is a slowly decaying orbit into a black hole of hate and self-destruction, blackpill culture represents the last few spaces before the event horizon.