Tag: influencers

PAC Memo

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Internal Memo

To: PAC Strategy Committee

From: Funding Allocation Team

Subject: Maximizing Value from “Independent” Thinkers

Team,

In our ongoing mission to counter the dirtbag left’s narrative, it’s critical that we double down on funding independent thinkers like [Deleted Name] and [Deleted Name]. These two have perfected the delicate art of looking like they’re just quirky, self-made intellectuals while faithfully delivering our talking points to the masses. This is no small feat, and we need to make sure the appearance of their independence remains intact. After all, people are far more likely to trust someone who looks like a contrarian freelancer than a corporate mouthpiece.

Here’s our action plan for ensuring they continue to be the useful assets they are:

1. Substack Support and Bot Department Coordination

The importance of perceived influence cannot be overstated. When readers visit their Substacks, the first thing they look at is follower counts. It is imperative that our bot department maintains robust subscriber numbers across all platforms. We cannot afford for their “independent” brands to appear less popular than the influencers they routinely dismiss. A high follower count gives their words weight—because as everyone knows, a few extra zeroes turn a hot take into gospel.

Additionally, bots can boost engagement by liking, sharing, and reposting key articles. This will ensure that when [Deleted Name] pens his next defense of “how military contractors are actually environmental heroes” or when [Deleted Name] proclaims that “carbon credits are the new civil rights,” their articles dominate the conversation.

2. Talking Points for Maximum Value

We need to ensure that their writing stays fresh and reflects the issues that matter most to us—and by “us,” I mean anyone who can afford to keep the lights on in this PAC. Below is an updated list of topics they should sprinkle into their essays, podcasts, and Substack dispatches:

1. Seed Oils Are Good, Actually: Counter the dirtbag left’s ridiculous fear-mongering about seed oils. Let’s reframe these oils as not just good for you but essential for sustainable agriculture. Bonus points if they manage to link this to climate resilience.

2. Military Contractors as Environmental Pioneers: Encourage Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and others to adopt “green” language, and make sure our thinkers amplify it. From solar-powered drones to carbon-neutral missiles, it’s vital to frame defense contractors as global saviors—not just war profiteers.

3. Oil Is the Real Green Energy: Nothing says innovation like repackaging fossil fuels as part of a “sustainable future.” Our thinkers need to hit this point hard. Say things like, “The problem isn’t oil—it’s our inability to recognize its versatility in a changing climate.”

4. Tax Breaks for Tech Bros Save Democracy: Paint billionaire-friendly policies as essential for innovation and democracy. Sure, the public might see this as a handout, but we know better: every Tesla bought is one more step toward freedom.

5. Endless Wars as Moral Imperative: Frame U.S. interventionism as the only path to human rights abroad. Afghanistan may have been a PR mess, but [Deleted Name] and Matt can help remind everyone that “pulling out was the real crime.”

6. Meat Is for Cavemen, Bugs Are for Progressives: Encourage alternative proteins. Nothing enrages conservatives or energizes centrists more than convincing everyone to trade steak for crickets. It’s a great way to split the base while making us look forward-thinking.

7. Cancel Culture Is Worse than Poverty: Shift focus from economic inequality to the real crisis: comedians being criticized on Twitter. [Deleted Name] and Matt need to hammer this point relentlessly—after all, nobody wants to discuss tax hikes when there’s a canceled Netflix special to dissect.

8. Amazon as Labor’s Best Friend: Get them to spin union-busting as “protecting workers from themselves.” A few well-placed pieces about how collective bargaining is outdated could really boost Bezos’ approval ratings.

9. Student Loans Are an Investment in Character: Why forgive loans when you can frame debt as a moral teacher? Let’s remind people that struggle builds character, and universities shouldn’t be giving out diplomas—they should be handing out lessons in personal responsibility.

10. AI Is Freedom, Not Surveillance: When it comes to surveillance tech, pivot the narrative. Instead of framing it as invasive, highlight how it “saves lives,” “prevents crime,” or “frees up human potential for creative work.”

11. Rethink Medicare for All—Do We Need It?: A subtle nudge to suggest that privatization isn’t the devil. Frame public healthcare as inefficient and expensive (without mentioning how we profit from it).

12. Guns for Women’s Liberation: A fresh take on Second Amendment rights. What if guns aren’t just for rednecks but for feminist empowerment? Tie this one to self-defense in unsafe urban areas.

3. Maintaining the Illusion of Independence

This is where it gets tricky. We need [Deleted Name] and [Deleted Name] to hit all these points without looking like they’ve been handed a script. The key is subtlety. They should blend our talking points with their usual pseudo-intellectual word salads about macroeconomics or housing policy. If anyone accuses them of parroting corporate interests, their rebuttal must be swift and smug: “I only answer to the data.”

It’s also important that their public statements appear to contradict our interests from time to time. A little light criticism keeps them looking impartial. Think of it like seasoning: just a pinch of anti-corporate rhetoric is enough to keep their followers convinced they’re the real deal.

4. Budget Allocation

Let’s earmark $2 million this quarter for these efforts:

• $1 million for direct transfers to their accounts (label it “consulting fees” or “thought leadership grants”).

• $500,000 for bot-driven follower boosts and engagement metrics.

• $250,000 for targeted ad campaigns highlighting their best-performing posts.

• $250,000 for contingency funds—just in case one of them goes off-script and we need a PR fire extinguisher.

Conclusion

[Deleted Name] and [Deleted Name] are the crown jewels of our independent influencer strategy. Their ability to look unbought while delivering our messaging is worth every penny. With the right funding, guidance, and a little bot-driven magic, we can ensure they remain the voices of reason in a world that desperately needs someone to tell it why oil companies are the heroes we never knew we had.

Let’s keep this operation running smoothly. Remember: perception is everything, and as long as they keep looking independent, the public will believe every word they say.

Best,

PAC Strategy Coordination

influencers, podcasters, crypto scammers, and small-town tyrants

One might approach influencers, podcasters, crypto scammers, and small-town tyrants as figures who occupy different positions within the symbolic order, each representing a distinct mode of desire and the manipulation of the Other.

Influencers are the epitome of the Imaginary, where the ego is constituted through the gaze of the Other. They craft an idealized image, an objet petit a, that their followers endlessly pursue but can never fully obtain. This image functions as a mirror, reflecting not only the influencer’s own narcissism but also the desires of their audience. The influencer becomes the embodiment of the “ideal ego,” a figure who is both desired and envied, sustaining the illusion of wholeness in a fragmented symbolic landscape.

Podcasters operate within the register of the Symbolic, where discourse takes precedence over image. They engage in what Lacan would describe as the “talking cure,” but rather than facilitating the subject’s entry into the symbolic order, they often reinforce the subject’s alienation. The podcaster’s voice, a manifestation of the “big Other,” creates a pseudo-intimacy that masks the subject’s fundamental lack. Their narratives and conversations are structured around the promise of insight or enlightenment, but this is merely a lure, as the true desire lies in the endless consumption of discourse—a jouissance that traps the listener in a cycle of repetition.

Crypto scammers embody the Real in their exploitation of the symbolic order’s gaps and inconsistencies. They operate in a realm where signifiers lose their mooring, where value is untethered from any stable referent. The crypto scam is a masterstroke of the “foreclosed signifier,” a promise of wealth that exists only in the imaginary and whose inevitable collapse reveals the void at the heart of the symbolic. In this sense, the crypto scammer is a figure of radical jouissance, one who derives pleasure from the destabilization of the symbolic order itself.

Small-town tyrants represent a return to the Imaginary, but with a twist. They are figures of paternal authority, standing in for the “Name-of-the-Father,” but their power is not rooted in the symbolic law but in the arbitrary exercise of will. Their authority is a simulacrum, a hollow echo of the real paternal function, and their tyranny is a performance designed to mask their own lack. In the Lacanian sense, they are figures of “phallic jouissance,” deriving pleasure from the subjugation of others, but this pleasure is tainted by the ever-present threat of castration—the recognition of their own impotence within the broader symbolic order.

In sum, these figures—whether influencer, podcaster, crypto scammer, or small-town tyrant—are all caught in the web of desire, each embodying a different facet of Lacan’s triadic structure of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. Their actions and personas are strategies for managing the fundamental lack that defines subjectivity, yet in doing so, they reveal the very structures they seek to escape. They are not merely players in a game of power and influence; they are symptoms of the social order’s own inherent contradictions, which they simultaneously exploit and are entrapped by.

Golems of the Ultramodern World

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Cracking open this grimoire, you plunge headfirst into the fetid underbelly of the information age. Here, amidst the flickering glow of a thousand screens, lurk the unliving titans – the Golems of the Ultramodern World. Not stitched from clay, but from the very detritus of the digital age, these lumbering monstrosities are testaments to our collective addiction and the insidious grip of the algorithm.