Know where you're getting your information from: Activists, entertainers, or grifters.

Yes, it matters.

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Your source matters.

I do my very best to break down the cultural revolution we are currently engaged with in the United States, make it easy to understand, explain why people seem to be acting crazy around you, and teach you things you can do to advocate for what you want in the world.

I’ve learned all this by being immersed in the land of the woke left for between 10-15 hours a day almost every day for over three years. Understanding it is my obsession. Teaching it to others is how I am trying to serve the world.

My goal is nothing less than creating a grassroots army of people who understand what is going on in the world and are committed to stopping it when it shows up in their lives.

I’m not the best teacher for everyone. Some people can’t get over my tone, others hate my haircut, still more are looking for an academic perspective rather than a practical one. All that is fine. There is no single teacher that can reach every type of person in the world and that is certainly not a limitation that I’m going to overcome. We need as many different types of people teaching what is happening as possible so that we can wake more people up.

So, make no mistake: I’m not opposed to as many people talking about this information as possible.

We need as many teachers as possible.

But a problem I run into continually is the need to unteach people the information they’ve learned from influencers in the online spaces who are not really hinged into what is going on, but are several steps behind. Sadly, those people often have large platforms and, when they teach their audiences incorrect or outdated information, it causes problems.

I believe this is because people who are consuming information do not understand the difference between the different types of content creators that exist, and what type of information they can expect from each variety.

When I first got started in this space, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information to learn.

For a long time, I took everything at face value, assuming that if someone had a following and was talking about similar content each day, they probably knew what they were talking about.

Boy, was I wrong.

Some of the best-platformed people have absolutely no clue.

This isn’t the fault of the audience, mind you. It’s the fault of the creator for not doing their due diligence. But what happens is that when the creator teaches the audience incorrect information, they might come over to a site and hear something different (and always more accurate) and they start to argue and get disruptive because it’s contradicting what their favorite influencer told them.

The information about the woke ideology is complicated, and one can excuse disagreement and differences of opinion. They happen. We’re all figuring out this information together.

But there are levels of quality in terms of the sources you’ll find information from.

Activists, Entertainers, Grifters

There are three basic types of content creators in the online news/culture space: Activists, Entertainers, and Grifters.

Activists are the most valuable source of information.

The word activist is rather loaded, but I think it needs to be reclaimed: It just means someone who is TAKING ACTION, working day in and day out to make change in the real world. They are looking for solutions to real problems that people care about.

Myself, Gabrielle Clark, Paul Rossi, Frank McCormick, and Nicole Solas - we’re all activists. If you don’t know some of those names, look them up. They do excellent work.

Activists are the absolute best source of information because they are the closest to what is actually going on. They’re at the school board meetings, working with normal people, looking at documents directly, all in the weeds day-to-day. It’s not a glamorous job, but someone has to do it.

Activists are usually the least well-known type of creator, but that’s not exclusively true. I consider James Lindsay and Christopher Rufo to be activists, and both of them are very well-known and are excellent sources of information.

But most activists are just normal people, just like you. They aren’t someone who you look at as a celebrity or someone with a polished production. They’re usually someone who is just doing their best with usually very minimal resources. But they know EVERYTHING.

Entertainers are the next best source of information…but are always getting information from activists.

Entertainers are usually the most well-known type of creator, but just because they are the most well-known does not mean they are the best informed. They are typically political commentators or pretend journalists. By “pretend journalist,” I mean they don’t actually do any journalism directly, they just report on other people’s journalism, oftentimes without giving credit to the original source (although sometimes they do, it just depends).

Now, because these people don’t actually do their own journalism, it’s kind of like a game of telephone: Sometimes it translates well and other times it doesn’t translate at all. And, oftentimes, entertainers can be weeks or months behind the times with the most current information, so you should never assume you’re getting 100% up-to-date information unless it’s truly breaking news. This is especially true with cultural commentaries. Oftentimes, the activists see the things the entertainers write and we say “yeah, duh, we knew that a year ago.”

Better late than never.

The biggest difference between activists and entertainers is this: While entertainers do care about the issues they are discussing, their primary goal is never to solve the problem.

Their goal is to make money and maintain their status.

Now, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with wanting to make money and maintain status. If that floats your boat, go for it.

But here’s the problem: Because the goal is to make money by getting likes, clicks, retweets, views, subscriptions, followers, etc… entertainers are

• (a) always going to present information in the most extreme ways possible, which usually distorts the actual context, and

• (b) they are never going to try to solve the problem because solving the problem would take away their cash cow.

People who are making money talking about a problem are never going to actually try to solve the problem.

Ordinary people are confused at this because they really think their entertainers are going to save them. They think that just because they see them talk about a problem means that they care enough to do something about it.

Entertainers are not going to save you.

They may attend an event here and there (usually only the ones they’re paid to go to) but that’s about all they’re going to do, and we need to be honest about this.

Their job is not to solve problems…it’s to ENTERTAIN.

And finally, we have Grifters.

Grifters are a real thing, and they are a very big problem because they can literally be the dumbest people in the world and still amass a platform that gives them undue influence over people. They provide the lowest quality information by far, mostly relying on opinions that will make their audience feel good rather than what is true. Whether or not it’s true makes absolutely no difference. And when you try to tell someone that something a grifter taught them is wrong, they oftentimes lose their minds.

It’s a little unhealthy how attached people get to their grifters.

Grifters are people who pretend to care about a problem...but in reality, they don't care about it at all. They just claim to in order to become famous and make money.

And because of those goals, they have absolutely no incentive to tell you the truth. They will literally say anything you want to hear, even if it directly contradicts something they said a few hours before this.

And forget trying to solve the problem. They only way they do something is if it benefits them directly, and they’d rather get drunk on coors light while wearing a low-cut top (or no top at all) in Content House then spend their time doing anything productive.

It’s easy to spot a grifter because they are obsessed with followers (theirs or everyone else's), they are always reading other people’s work with no original journalism of their own, and they live and breathe on outrage.

They are the reality TV segment of the internet. Would you take advice from your average reality TV star? Probably not, if you’re smart. Then why would you let them teach you what’s happening in the world and what to do about it?

Proceed with caution

There’s nothing wrong with liking what you like. But just be aware of the type of creator they are. If you want to watch grifters for the cringe value, who am I to judge? Please, just don’t come here and tell me their information is more accurate than mine because I will laugh in your face, and I won’t feel badly about it.

Here’s my rule of thumb:

• Support the activists, because they solve the problems.

• Support the entertainers if they entertain you...but be really clear that they will never solve the problems they talk about.

• Avoid the grifters at all costs. They provide nothing of value to the world and we’d be further along in the battle for the culture if they did us all a favor and focused on movies or fashion or something vapid rather than getting in the way of the adults trying to do the real work.

What do you think?

Have you looked at your kid’s teacher’s social media lately? Leave a comment and let me know! And please share this with your friends and family who need to learn this information.

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Fight back against the woke and support my work

I believe the woke - on the left and the right - are an existential threat to our values as Americans. Some of them know it, most of them are just useful innocents. Regardless, fighting back against this woke cultural revolution is my full-time job. I’m dedicated to exposing the woke ideology in our country, helping people to understand what’s going on, and providing spaces for non-woke people to connect, support each other, and plan ways to fight back.

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