The Conservative case for the Machine God - w/ Lomez
Lomez joins Plausibly Deniable for a long conversation on the old internet, the rise of online politics, academia, Gamergate, Twitter, AI, prediction markets, publishing, and the strange incentives of modern work.
We talk about Lomez’s path from an early remote job at Google to academia, how 2014-era campus politics pushed him online, the evolution of the dissident right, the social justice warrior era, the shifting meaning of “woke is over,” and how internet subcultures moved from fringe jokes to real political force.
We also get into Passage Press, Lomez’s publishing company, including its role in preserving online writing, publishing controversial or neglected work, and building something closer to the “real economy” than most internet projects. Check out Passage Press and use promo code PD10.
Later, the conversation turns to AI, Claude vs ChatGPT, the tech right, Bannon-style anti-tech populism, X vs YouTube, bot accusations, gender war discourse, office jobs, girlboss marketing, and whether the “normie job” fantasy is actually just another internet mirage.
REMEMBER to purchase all books from sponsor Passage Press: https://passage.press
Promo code PD10 gets you 10% off
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Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.org
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Lomez: https://x.com/L0m3z
0:02:17 — Fake jobs, make-work, and being too close to the real economy0:03:48 — Introducing Lomez0:04:30 — Lomez’s early life and getting a remote job at Google0:06:00 — Human search ranking, porn SEO, and “artisanal Google”0:10:19 — Leaving tech, traveling, and deciding to become an English professor0:11:55 — UC Irvine, academia, and the politics of 20140:13:02 — Charlie Hebdo, free speech, and campus liberalism0:15:36 — Why online transgression felt politically meaningful0:17:21 — Gamergate, gamers, and the online right0:21:02 — Is woke actually over?0:24:42 — Early Lomez internet lore: forums, Twitter, sports, and betting0:30:43 — The old alt-right, Breitbart, Spencer, and Charlottesville0:34:35 — Passage Press, Scott Greer, and White Pill0:35:00 — Social justice warriors, Tumblr, and naming the enemy0:40:00 — Trump, Kavanaugh, liberal coalition discipline, and political hysteria0:43:19 — Male feminists, the cuttlefish strategy, and dating discourse0:48:56 — The gender war escalates0:56:15 — Wirejacking, welfare, work, and the broken social contract1:05:32 — Passage Press books, QR codes, and preserving internet archives1:10:11 — Digital censorship, stealth edits, and why print still matters1:15:05 — Lomez’s doxxing and public-interest journalism1:25:38 — Polymarket, betting markets, and “selling dollars for 50 cents”1:30:14 — Scale, inefficiency, local culture, and AI1:34:00 — Hard takeoff AI and whether acceleration is inevitable1:45:18 — Nick Land, nation-states, and machine intelligence1:55:01 — Who fears AI more: the left or the right?2:08:21 — Sam Altman, OpenAI, Claude, and AI politics2:13:15 — The tech right, the administration, and institutional conservatism2:16:20 — Policy battles, post-humanism, Bannon, and anti-tech populism2:25:00 — San Francisco, crime, tech elites, and urban decline2:35:00 — Online discourse, media narratives, and AI acceleration2:50:00 — Political aesthetics, millennial posting, and internet memory3:06:14 — Bots, real people, hate-farming, and X engagement3:10:15 — YouTube vs X: analytics, algorithms, and distribution3:15:00 — The return of the gender war meta3:25:00 — The normie office fantasy, PF Chang’s, and work wives3:28:52 — Mega-corporation incentives and fake corporate jobs3:34:27 — Escape hatches, mortgages, and the terror of being stuck3:35:47 — Closing thoughts and subscribe
