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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Young people want their TikTok and will do what it takes to get it, including installing and configuring VPN.

Social media platforms are entirely different than fashion. If 1% of kids have black market jeans, they are fashion trendsetters. If 1% of kids install a VPN to watch videos, they are dorks. Think about it. Are 4Chan users considered cool?

The second that installing TikTok isn't as easy as clicking a button on the App Store, usage falls to near zero. Network effects work both ways.

And yet every Russian videoblogger keeps mentioning their Instagram despite Meta being banned in Russia as extremists and available via VPN. Not that their followers access any other info via this VPN.

4chan isn't cool but it has been influential. A lot of the memes (in a broader sense than just image macros) that end up on Reddit or Facebook started on 4chan.

It's true. Never underestimate the power of laziness.

Stefan Molyneux's videos get something like, 99% less views on bitchute than they did on youtube? Maybe even 99.9% less. All because his audience couldn't be bothered to type a different url into their browsers. And this was a group of people who were already primed to seek out "controversial" material from alternative sources.