What we talk about when we talk about Hardcore

It has less and less to do with politics as we know it

Anyone who’s been reading along with me knows that by “Hardcore” we mean ragebait emails that lure your senile relatives to rightwing garbage sites. And we have talked about their connection to other grifts, such as pitches for weapons and miracle cures — the grifters’ intuition being that if poorly-written rants about the immigrants and the gays can rile Grandpa to click links and even drop some dough on Trump tat, he might also be riled to buy guns, knives, and billy clubs to protect himself from the Messicans and pills to flush away his arth-a-ritis.

Maybe it’s just a trick of the light rather than a real trend, but I seem to see that connection getting more intense lately. It would make sense: I hear from Comscore that traffic for rightwing websites is way, way, way down.

Now, Comsore is talking about semi-legit sites like The Federalist (-91%), Gateway Pundit (-47%), and National Review (-61%), not the flea-bitten enterprises of Hardcore. But such sites are largely insulated from market forces by rich rightwing sugar daddies. So long as fash tycoons seethe at the damn peasants and their insatiable lust for health care and a living wage, and yearn to see their own retrograde opinions put into professional layouts as a corrective, all these money-losing enterprises will yet survive.

Hardcore vendors, on the other hand, only eat what they kill. If the traffic and affiliate marketing doesn’t earn out, they’ll have to go back to breaking into church poor-boxes.

That may be why I’ve noticed an increased emphasis on the tried-and-true tropes of old-fashioned, non-denominational grift in Hardcore lately. Look at this TOC from the DC Bugle, one of the scammier outlets:

You’re all familiar with that One Weird Trick thing that’s been making con men’s cash registers ring online for over a decade. It’s weird to see that model applied directly to rightwing politics, though, rather than as a teaser within rightwing political publications. Speaking of which, those are getting less political and more hard-sell, too — here’s a rather typical interrupter at DC Bugle:

Apart from the Fetterman one — and that’s not even really political in context — it’s all come-ons that could fit as easily in a Celebrity Skin or Muscle Cars You’d Love to Drive If They Still Let You Drive or Which Of Your Favorite TV Stars is Gay context. And here’s what I got recently from Conservative Reboot, a reliable dispenser of conservative glurge:

These three stories have only the faintest connection to politics as such. They are based rather on what we might call the bedrock of those politics: Namely, Fear and Greed.

We know, for instance, what the target reader’s preference in the “2024 election” is, and the pitch has fleeting references to “rising debt and interest rates” and socialism. But they get that over quick, and push right to the value proposition: “While traditional investments have merit and offer diversification, many feel their privacy and control eroding… In this uncertain landscape, gold emerges as a beacon of stability.”

Yep, it’s that old wheeze, this time from an outfit called Allegiance Gold. They’ll send you a book about it absolutely free — but you have to give them your email and phone number so they can ask you, after a decent interval, how, with privacy and control eroding, can you pass up a deal like this?

Ditto the bank story. At first it seems like a version of the popular Hardcore thing about how Joe Biden is going to destroy the dollar and replace it with a “Trackable ‘Spyware’ Version” — in this case, it’s some obscure Obama executive order that created a “bail-in” plan that threatens your bank account. “With our economy heading towards a possible recession, inflation at an all-time high and the housing market in a bubble,” we are told, “uncertainties are looming over the head of Americans.”  That’s why you need — Allegiance Gold! Read the book! No money down!

And the one about “why the Truth about gold is being concealed” — well, you can imagine. Republic First Bank failed in May, and while commie fake news outlets like Forbes will tell you it was about a drop in the bank’s deposits and a failure to diversify investments, Allegiance Gold will have you know it’s “a troubling trend that seems to be unstoppable.” Greedy brokers will try and sell you bonds backed by such chimerical institutions, “due to conflicts of interest, prioritizing assets that generate ongoing fees or commissions.” But your new friend at the other end of a Conservative Reboot link is only interested in your welfare.

Grandpa may forget his phone number. He may forget why he was so gosh-darned mad at Joe Biden — was it because he’s old? Ah, how can that be! He won’t forget Trump, though he may be a little shaky on whether or not he’s still president. But his heart will lift at the familiar sight of the logos and colors (heavy on the red, white, and blue) that point him toward the portals of online panic rooms where he and his savings will not only be secure but also, in fact, renewed, reversing the decline from which everything around him — America, the banks, music you could dance to — seems to suffer.

Allegiance Gold’s motto, by the way, is “A Safe Investment In An Unsafe World.”