In the early 2000s I encountered Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein and the “juicebox mafia” through some random link, I was like “shit, these new millennial pundits are gonna be important, I need to pay attention to this” and turns out I was right

And through Yggy’s comments I found Steve Sailer and through him like Paul Kersey and Richard Spencer and this whole scene of New Internet Racists and I was like “shit, this is gonna be important, I need to pay attention to this” and turns out I was right

And then I noticed the rise of “feminist blogging” in the mid-late 2000s and I paid attention to that.

(Like DAE remember when Jezebel started with Moe Tkacik and Tracy “Slut Machine” Egan editing, and then it was a scandal when some “Thinking and Drinking” speaking series, that was an excuse for the girls-in-NYC-media guests and audience to let their wine mom out, invited them? And they showed up smashed and were like “yeah by your legalistic standards we’ve been ‘raped’ a dozen times since moving to New York but we have better shit to spend our time caring about, like getting drunk”)

But it’s not like I actually cared about what fucking Feministe or Feministing or Shakesville said, Amanda Marcotte made her name on insulting at a 7th-grade-boy level. I found Sady Doyle and Twisty “I Blame the Patriarchy” Faster through random links*

And through random links in the latter’s comments found Cathy “Bug” Brennan and the Twanzphobic blog, and they were like “we all need to prepare for this pushy new transgender movement” and I was like “this seems like it’s gonna be important”, and it was

* at some point in here I also noticed Rod Dreher and Freddie de Boer before they were things, but I forget how.

Wasn’t half a week after Trump came down that escalator that I was on the horn to everyone I know in the DC establishment that he was gonna be president.

Like, I could be wrong this time but you really want to bet against me?