“Milo is actually 44 boys in a trenchcoat” is kind of funny, but the mockery’s missing an important point.

(Assuming the thing’s not a damned April Fool’s joke)

Online publishing’s in an iffy place. A lot of money sloshing around recently but a lot of antsyness, and that’s only going to get worse come the inevitable app crash. If Milo’s gambit succeeds - and that gambit is NOT to get his guy elected or to make his ideas hegemonic, but rather to establish Breitbart as right-Salon or -Gawker by mainstreaming the alt-right and proving that ad-supported conservative content can draw a young audience - people are going to copy him.

People will found Breitbart clones. Institutional conservative media will realize they need some connection with Trump types to maintain their relevance, and the #NeverTrump dinosaurs aren’t going to do it. The investors holding the purse strings to Vox, or whoever owns a majority of Gawker now, are going to point out publishing a left-millenialbait site but not a right-millenialbait one is leaving money on the table, and they won’t stand for that.

And you’re going to need to staff up for that. And where better to find someone to do the Milo thing than people who’ve been doing the Milo thing?

“Milo has 44 interns” means he has 44 proteges loyal not to the Beltway, foundation-funded “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” journalism, but to Milo and the ad-supported punchmouth attention-seeking Breitbart model, and they’re ready to be seeded throughout the media firmament within the year.

Swear to god, if Gamergate turns out to be our Dreyfus Affair and he turns out to be our Zola…