anon_syni said in #5584 6h ago:
Last week our generous zcash patrons took a group of us San Francisco eggheads out to Forum's event, a side event held alongside the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. This was a gathering of online chud right people from a few different strands of the movement. There were a bunch of onstage debates on topics like mass deportation and datacenters, basically getting some public figures to argue about issues where there's splits between the technocrat/business right and the populist right. Most of the media coverage has focused on those debates, e.g. https://dailycaller.com/2026/09/15/rooke-forum-rnc-texas-dallas-immigration-ai-data-center/. (Seems the organizers did a good job of lining up some friendly journalists.) From what I heard it sounded like they did a good job articulating each faction's core position, but I spent more of my time talking to the other attendees and have only a loose sense.
My impression was the crowd was something like 1/4 people who spend lots of time reading politics Twitter and 3/4 people who spend lots of time listening to politics podcasts. When I ran into fellow Twitter people I had the usual convention experience—meeting people into similar things I was, running into distinguished poasters who I've admired and talked to online, all that stuff. The podcast people were more salt-of-the-Earth types, a lot more likely to be small business owners who live in Dallas rather than cosmopolitan professionals who flew in from some distant metropolis. tbh it was good for me to get out of my hyperintellectual bubble and talk to a bunch of these guys.
Lots of good energy all around. Everyone understood that we've got a lot of hard work to do and was excited to get at it, from the movement organizers with their grand plans to the elementary school teachers trying to open a few cracks in the educational propaganda. While there were tactical disagreements and cultural gaps, everyone was friendly and making an effort to understand each other. I didn't see any of the blackpilling or backbiting that sometimes infests the online spaces.
Overall a solid conference. I got more of a sense of who our allies are and made a few connections which may prove helpful.
My impression was the crowd was something like 1/4 people who spend lots of time reading politics Twitter and 3/4 people who spend lots of time listening to politics podcasts. When I ran into fellow Twitter people I had the usual convention experience—meeting people into similar things I was, running into distinguished poasters who I've admired and talked to online, all that stuff. The podcast people were more salt-of-the-Earth types, a lot more likely to be small business owners who live in Dallas rather than cosmopolitan professionals who flew in from some distant metropolis. tbh it was good for me to get out of my hyperintellectual bubble and talk to a bunch of these guys.
Lots of good energy all around. Everyone understood that we've got a lot of hard work to do and was excited to get at it, from the movement organizers with their grand plans to the elementary school teachers trying to open a few cracks in the educational propaganda. While there were tactical disagreements and cultural gaps, everyone was friendly and making an effort to understand each other. I didn't see any of the blackpilling or backbiting that sometimes infests the online spaces.
Overall a solid conference. I got more of a sense of who our allies are and made a few connections which may prove helpful.
Last week our genero