Jordan peterson

Comedian-turned-“right-wing Christian influencer" Russell Brand has discovered a new stream of income: hawking enchanted objects. Brand appeared in a recent TikTok ad for Aires Tech, claiming “airports are places full of WiFi and all sorts of evil energies,” and so everyone needs a “magical amulet from Aires Tech” to keep you safe from “all sorts of signals out there.” The amulet, or the “Lifetune Flex,” sells for $239.99 on their website. The gold encasing and green center make it look like something that belongs around Doctor Strange’s neck: very majestic, very wizardly. Criticism, understandably, abounds. “They are gutter-slime,” a video essayist tweeted, grouping Russell Brand with Jordan Peterson.

During the Q&A portion of a Jordan Peterson lecture I recently attended, host Konstantin Kisin presented a question from the audience: “My son was just born. How do I know how to be a father if I didn’t have a father? What makes a great father?” I’ve been thinking about that question ever since. As someone who spends entirely too much time online viewing the virtual culture wars play out on X/Twitter, I’ve noticed no one has more to say about relationships and raising children than the unmarried, childless peanut gallery that occupies the “manosphere.” Like every online genre, the loose collection of blogs, podcasts, forums and websites that constitute the manosphere exist on a spectrum.

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.” So sayeth not Grendel69 on Twitter, but Alexander Hamilton, writing under the name Publius, the handle he adopted along with James Madison and John Jay when they were writing The Federalist Papers. But if Twitter had existed, well, Hamilton may well have been a shitposter, one who made Grendel69 look like a lightweight. Anonymity, pseudonymity, whatever you want to call it, is oft maligned, particularly in the digital square. The debate about it will likely always be with us, unless, somehow, the internet magically ceases to exist, forcing mankind up out of its sitting position. (As that wouldn’t be good for my income streams, I’m going to have to hope it keeps on keeping on.

Pity the poor rockstar who finds himself embroiled in the culture wars because he liked the wrong book. Winston Marshall, banjo player for  the hugely successful band Mumford and Sons, almost certainly had no idea what he was getting himself into when he decided to tweet praise at Andy Ngo, the conservative journalist, for his best-selling book about the horrors of antifa. 'Finally had time to read your important book. You’re a brave man,' tweeted Marshall, referring to the conservative journalist’s latest periodical Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. The book describes itself as telling 'the story of this violent hate group from the very beginning'. Queue a barrage of condemnation from the Twittersphere, accusing Marshall of 'endorsing fascism'.

If you have ever visited the internet, you likely noticed it is rife with hyperbole and lacking in nuance. All jokes are to be taken literally, and responded to with long, academic-sounding threads that explain why the joke, in fact, amounts to violence. Everyone we don’t like is a fascist. Those who disagree with our ideologies are murderers, and political differences are cause for excommunication. The response to foibles or disagreements is a days-long hounding of the guilty party, leading them to get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness or simply disappear. The best way to make the world a better place, according to social media, is by destroying someone else. I have been told to kill myself, drink bleach, and die in a fire more times than I can count.