\n\n\nIn the early 2000s I encountered Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein and the \u201cjuicebox mafia\u201d through some random link, I was like \u201cshit, these new millennial pundits are gonna be important, I need to pay attention to this\u201d and turns out I was right
And through Yggy\u2019s 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 \u201cshit, this is gonna be important, I need to pay attention to this\u201d and turns out I was right
And then I noticed the rise of \u201cfeminist blogging\u201d in the mid-late 2000s and I paid attention to that.
(Like DAE remember when Jezebel started with Moe Tkacik and Tracy \u201cSlut Machine\u201d Egan editing, and then it was a scandal when some \u201cThinking and Drinking\u201d 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 \u201cyeah by your legalistic standards we\u2019ve been \u2018raped\u2019 a dozen times since moving to New York but we have better shit to spend our time caring about, like getting drunk\u201d)
But it\u2019s 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 \u201cI Blame the Patriarchy\u201d Faster through random links*
And through random links in the latter\u2019s comments found Cathy \u201cBug\u201d Brennan and the Twanzphobic blog, and they were like \u201cwe all need to prepare for this pushy new transgender movement\u201d and I was like \u201cthis seems like it\u2019s gonna be important\u201d, 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\u2019t 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?
How many things that you thought were important turned out not to matter?
Well in the late \u201890s I was very insistent that the next decade\u2019s wars would rely on mercenaries, as a result of post-Cold War drawdowns, and honestly you could say the contractors of the sandbox wars and the \u201clittle green men\u201d with Crimea
But honestly that wasn\u2019t my vision, I was influenced more by the Hammer\u2019s Slammers books (which were very post-Vietnam, it was like \u201cWhat if mercenaries on post-colonial Africa stand-in planets? But also what if proper war, with artillery advanced to the point it fires AA and \u201csmart\u201d rounds, and tanks firing HEAT shells so hard they\u2019re railguns? And also what if the gap between a romantic warrior spirit and war as an instrumental act of state keeps getting played up?)
@trickytalks said: how are you not just cherry-picking stuff you were right about?
Admittedly, I probably don\u2019t remember shit I was wrong about as well. I mean I\u2019ve been wrong in expecting things, but I\u2019m blanking on shit I predicted, I preserve my reputation by not attaching it to shit I\u2019m not sure about. Same kinda perfectionism by which I don\u2019t hit on people I don\u2019t already expect a positive response from, might not be the best.
But even that\u2019s probably self flattering, so
I ANNOUNCE A CONTEST
Counting Chickens 2019
Read back through my archives, find the dumbest shit I\u2019ve been wrong about, and send it to me by the end of September 2019 in an ask with [COUNTING CHICKENS]
(and like some sort of unique identifier, like [IMNOODLEMAN] or whatever if you want to send it anon but be recognized)
At the end of the month I\u2019ll pick a winner and the first to send it in gets recognized as humbling me