Scott Manion has been putting out consistently good podcasts on his YouTube channel and I’m slowly working my way through them. He did one with Astral Flight Simulator (who himself has a great podcast) and one line struck me as the discussion about frog anons unfolded. Paraphrasing Astral but he said something like
I do this as a hobby. This thing is basically my hobby, instead of flag football or going to the bar. Of course I have normal life with family but this thing is a hobby
Online dissident thought as a hobby - at first it struck me as odd but then I realized that in fact it is the very fact he treats it as his hobby that makes him so effective at the game and running such a good podcast.
Hobbyists often get a bad rap but the more you think about it the more important the hobbyists are in this world. Following Astral’s line of thinking really it is hobbyists who have burst open the Buckley Right and broken down the door, now there are some professionals amongst them (BAP I would argue is a professional) but many are or were hobbyists. This isn’t their main thing, they have other interests, another job, and put food on their table in a more conventional manner.
This matters because the moment someone is doxxed they can often end up becoming what we all think of as a grifter. Depending on just how badly they get burned by the mainstream some of them are genuinely reliant on those super chats and donations. That is not a good position to be in from my perspective but I have sympathy, the threat of doxxing and eradication from the normal world of employment looms over anons but by remaining anon they are able to often be better than the professionals.
There are numerous examples of this in the real world, where the hobbyists lead the way and the professionals are often found wanting. One of those in the USA would be in the sports action shooting community. For those unfamiliar these are a series of sports in which shooting is the key component. They range from the action paced world of USPSA to the more sedate long range shooting competitions. In almost every flavor of the shooting sport it is dominated not by professionals but by the hobbyists.
Local IDPA matches shot on the weekends will see most hobbyist competitors go through more rounds in a few hours than most Police officers shoot a year. It will see engineers, chefs, personal trainers, plumbers, mechanics and everyone in between engage in more challenging shooting than most qualification standards for departments. Of course some dedicated law enforcement officers are there but the majority of keen amateur competitors are not carrying a gun in their professional lives, though many are CCW holders. In fact if you listen closely you’ll hear mention of the value of these competitions from the retired special forces community on their many podcasts. Just the other day I heard a former USMC scout sniper talk about being humbled by farmers and 16 year old girls at his first long range match after sniper school and realized he had a lot to learn. Hobbyists again leading the way.
Hobbyists exist everywhere of course and can have a meaningful impact but it is certainly the realm of the political where it is such a double edged sword. Those who oppose us, the organized woke left, are in fact driven by professionals backed up with an army of hobbyists. Their funding makes the hobbyists harder to spot but they are there and they exist - the identity they have picked out with the blue hair and boring interest in woke politics does not betray anything. They are hobbyists getting their social fix out in the real world and of course at no real risk of personal cost - unlike our many anons.
At some point however we do professionalize - it becomes necessary. Leading figures in our scene perhaps started as hobbyists but have made leaps and bounds and paid a high price to turn this into a professional position. People are making the bulk of their income off of things we do, we write, we talk about. That matters and more professionalization is always going to help propel us forward in many ways but it is important to remember the role of the hobbyist. For me the journal of poetry I publish is still a hobby among many. In many areas of the arts that is all people can be, as much as we want to professionalize and evolve there is a ceiling that is nigh on impossible to break through. Some will do it and some won’t the main thing is to remember that two groups can work together in tandem to advance our goals.
The last point I wish to make of hobbyists, of the anons, is that we exist to function as a pressure group. We see many victories and can sense the changing winds. It is good to see the likes of Rufo having victories against DEI but as hobbyists we need to maintain the pressure that his support of homosexual men play acting a marriage and kidnapping a child - using surrogacy to adopt a child is abhorrent to most of us and does not align with a return towards a traditional world view of sanity and beauty. The hobbyists of the online right are the pressure groups and whilst it can be a difficult line to tread with purity spiraling the anonymity and hobbyist element can keep people focused. The professionals out there, who are heading in the right direction will always need to be reminded of the path.
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