@MentORPHEUS I'd meant to post on this earlier this week after I saw Joker's and PJW's videos on it, but I forgot.

It's pretty unbelievable.

As much as I dislike Lauren Southern (lying-ass chameleon whore) and Benny Johnson (more on him in a moment), the very idea of them being Russian Agents is laughable.

If anything, by the FBI's own phrasing in their allegations, these "influencers" were deceived about the origin of the money, and yet none of their content actually changed.

I got a good laugh when Joker shared Tim Poole's official response, which was something like "Russia sucks, and Putin can kiss my ass".

A'ight, back to Benny Johnson.

who I considered a snarky condescending prick

Well now, I see you've gone and taught yourself a very big word! Good job!

Ball-busting aside, I'll watch some of his shorts occasionally because his source materials can be good fodder. He himself, when he's right, it's usually for the wrong reasons, and when he's wrong, he's the sort of religious conservative Whisper used to warn about.

Benny also got soundly roasted in manosphere circles a while back for his gay little speech at the RNC. like many talking heads, there's not much inside, and he got swept up in his feels and in the elation of being on stage and applauded by so many people, ending his speech with his eyes closed, his arms spread out, and yelling "have kids you can't afford!" which is some of the worst advice possible in so many ways I barely know where to start.

He's pretty much a chick.

I'm not sure what to make just yet about this breaking "Russian Disinformation" scandal through Tenet Media. Reportedly, six prominent right-wing social media personalities: Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, Taylor Hansen and Matt Christiansen; were paid something like $100,000 per month each, to basically continue making content they were already making, with no exclusivity strings attached.

The only person on this list whose content I've caught (I'm not in the target audience for Right Wing Media) is Benny Johnson, who I considered a snarky condescending prick and quickly selected Don't recommend channel. One of the alleged motivations of this operation is to sow controversy and division into American political and social discourse, and Fuck Face Benny seems to excel in this capacity.

That said, on the face of it, this sounds like such an utterly piss-poor value proposition for the sheer volume of money getting shoveled out that I have a hard time the DOJ et al are telling the whole story. The only thing approaching a specific narrative they "pushed" was a vague reference to Ukraine is evil and the actual aggressor which is a position that many Right-leaning commentators like retired CIA analysts do a good job of expressing and backing up with strong specific details, for FREE.

I wonder if Scott Ritter's recent run-ins with 3 letter agencies are tied to this case in any way? If it WAS part of the same investigation, it appears they didn't find any dirt on Scott, even though he is open and transparent about writing content as an independent journalist that appears on RT.

Anyway, LOTS of the details surrounding this breaking story don't add up well when one tries to take the DOJ's case at face value and look closely at the merits of their allegations. It's one of those subjects that I find it wise to watch and see how it proceeds before getting invested in a specific position or narrative.

@Stigma

Video games 2024!

Anecdotally, I found myself in a warhammer store a few days ago as I wondered around town. I spent about 30-45 minutes in their browsing and chatting to the manager about how far the game had come since I played 20 years ago. In that time, and I kid you not, no less than three trannies came in. One was incredibly standoffish to the other assistant when spoken to. The others just milled about looking like blokes in dresses.

More than anything, that put me off ever wanting to touch Warhammer again. If we had to guess, what is it about Warhammer that appeals to the mentally ill? That was some serious trans over representation, and I can only assume that during the week there would be even more.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about live and let live, if that’s the hobby they’ve chosen to partake in then that’s absolutely fine, but as I said, I don’t want to be associated with mental illness by proxy. It was just very weird.

I don't think that Warhammer holds much appeal with people in general. Role-play, board, strategy, card, and gaming in general has mostly appealed to kids, teens, and some young adults. If you're seeing men in drag gaming, they were likely already doing it before they had their genitals cut off and they likely saw no reason to stop gaming after they had their junk jarred and pickled.

Frankly, with so many franchises having been out for decades, and product already on the market, with 3d printing options and shopping going online, there's little reason to go to a physical shop for things other than groceries. As for why so many game developers and publishing executives have decided to appeal to a near non-existent minority at the expense of their core customer base, I can only come to one conclusion as to what prompted that.

cc: @Nightingayle