The Voxen aren’t pleased with the fact that firearms industry influencers are making money on Instagram. Their exposé is no doubt intended to call attention to the fact that the Facebook-owned platform is being used to promote products like guns, safes and other icky products that appeal to deplorables…and prompt the Zuckerdrones to put a stop to it.
If the first wave of Instagram influencers were hired to promote things with obvious visual allure — fashion, beauty products, high-end travel, home decor — this community is being hired for a more complicated task. They’re taking the inherently ugly, seemingly undesigned world of weaponry and making it beautiful. What they’re selling, as is the case with all influencers, is their own taste; their purchasing choices are evidence of a charming and enviable lifestyle. They’re liberating guns from a dogmatic and fanatic reputation. Beautiful people love guns too.
A few weeks before the birth of her son, Charissa Littlejohn (388,000 followers) posted a photo of the baby sneakers she would give him when he was born. They were sitting on the ground between her husband’s feet (in a pair of the same shoes) and her own (also classic black Converse).
It would not be so different from any other Instagram influencer’s prenatal post — down to the tagging of a profile belonging to a baby who could not yet secure his own username but needed one all the same — were it not for the fact that surrounding the soon-to-be-filled kicks was a circle of FN 509 handguns. “Even got one for @babyyygat when he gets here …” Littlejohn wrote, thanking the company with a heart-eyes emoji, to the response of nearly 5,000 likes. Yes, her baby’s Instagram handle is a gun reference too. This is called a consistent brand.
However disorienting, when broken down to its component parts, the post is an example of coloring inside the lines, following a template long since standardized across Instagram. There are ways in which all types of Instagram influencer are the same.
– in The hired guns of Instagram
Seemingly undesigned weapons?
That would be software.
‘They’re taking the inherently ugly, seemingly undesigned world of weaponry…’
‘Seemingly undesigned’? Does she (or is it Kaitlyn as in Bruce Jenner?) think the FN 509 didn’t have a designer? Of course if you don’t think the human body had a designer that might make sense. I suppose.
What a strange place to disrespect a trans-person. Other than a first name what connection does Kaitlyn Jenner have to this?
She’s a beautiful woman.
Man!
Frank M.,
I fail to see how Governor Le Petomane has shown “disrespect” towards Bruce Jenner.
I know it may be fashionable in our “post-truth” society to regard Bruce Jenner as a “woman” and demand that we respect him for claiming to be a woman.
The truth of the matter is that Bruce Jenner is a man who is just as psychologically disturbed as a 50 year-old man who seriously and emphatically claims to be a teenager or a chimpanzee. No matter how intense his feelings may be, and no matter how many people affirm his claim, the facts are still the facts: Bruce Jenner is a man who is psychologically disturbed. Refuting his outrageous claim that he is a woman is in no way disrespectful.
Exactly this.
Imagine a hundred years in the future, an archaeologist examining Bruce Jenner’s skeleton. “Male. Absolutely certain. Look at the bone structure.”
The other thing I find interesting is how you can go through life (at least you’re internet life) with a name that literally is French for the fart maniac and yet people still take what you say seriously.
That said, in defense of Bruce, from what I’ve heard he has no intention of going through with the surgery, so IMHO he’s just a little weird. These are the people that are full blown crazy – https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/04/woman-demands-doctors-sever-spinal-cord-fit-body-mind-transsexual-man/
This is why homosexuals, Libertarians Liberals and the Left are so distrusted by normal people, because they want you to believe and repeat their lies.
Bruce Jenner is a man. But the three L’s and gays want you to call him a woman. People who lie about something so simple will also say the Second Amendment applies only to the National Guard.
Unless THEY want guns, then it applies ONLY to them.
There’s plenty of places that you can read up on the relationships between gender and sex (they’re not the same thing) but I’ll keep it short here and say that cross-culturally there are numerous examples of cultures that don’t have strictly binary gender systems. The psychological issues you example (someone thinking they are another species or a different age) don’t compare to gender.
To Waywatcher : I’m a professional archaeologist. Macroscopic sex determinations on human skeletons can be tricky as they rely on particular differences between male and female physiology. For instance, the angle of the bottom of the pelvis or particular parts of the skull. There’s overlap between the sexes on these measurements and a particular gracile man may be wrongly identified as a woman or vice versa. DNA evidence has muddied the water considerably in that we can detect inter-sexed individuals who may have genitals that appear male or female but their chromosome suggests otherwise.
There’s a wide-world out there full of people being human in a myriad of ways. It’s worth not being so closed-minded and learned about it.
While I’ll make an exception for people with genetic abnormalities (XXY, XYY, etc) the vast majority of trans gender people are XX or XY. The chromosomes don’t lie, if you’ve got a Y you’re a dude, regardless of how much you dislike being a dude.
Frank, read that article I linked and tell me how the guy who chopped his leg off with a homemade guillotine and swore at the doctors that he’d cut it off again if they reattached it because he ‘identified’ as an amputee is any different that a perfectly healthy male (XY) or female (XX) paying a doctor many thousands of dollars to mutilate their genitals because they don’t like being a boy or a girl. They’re both stark raving made IMHO.
Anyway, you completely missed the joke in the first place – you’re not supposed to assume people’s gender anymore. I just didn’t want to commit a microaggression to an obvious snowflake.
Everybody knows that all you need to make a “gun” is to take a couple bites out of a pop-tart.
What could possibly go wrong with defunding a popular influencer on account of their values in a politicized environment that vaguely implies the expectation of free speech. I only hope that the illusion fades before the election.
You have no expectation of free speech on a privately held platform.
But you DO have an expectation that if you abide by whatever terms of service, you’ll be treated like all the other users of that service… and you DO have a right to expect that if a service is making editorial decisions about your content, that they should be regulated like a publisher, and not a content-neutral platform…
And you have no expectation of privacy while out in public
This is not exactly true. By creating an unedited public forum they are protected from certain laws (libel, e.g.). There are obvious exceptions like prohibiting child pornography, but once they start restricting certain points of view they are in fact publishers and are therefor responsible for everything they allow on their sites. Your kid gets bullied on Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg gets sued and has to pay you a million dollars, etc.
Now deplatforming is a bit different. There are no laws that says You Tube has to pay content providers, so when say, Steven Crowder gets deplatformed he has to dig in deep into the fine print of the You Tube user agreement and find proof that they violated their own rules and sue them for the money they owe him. So this is one way they can generally get away with stifling free speech.
Always a hoot when people defend censorship.
Anybody else get creeped out with how they call content creators, “influencers”? It has a very NWO ring to it.
Comment Commissar came to mind and had to laugh as I contemplated what hat would go best.
What Vox does:
“Explanatory journalism aspires to provide essential context to the hourly flood of news—not simply a separate fact-checking operation but the mobilization of a rich array of relevant information made possible by new technology but presented to the public in accessible and digestible formats. It is fact-based and data-rich but doesn’t shy away from making arguments that flow from the evidence—even at the risk of being charged with taking sides. It seeks to unravel the mysteries of policy and politics with historical and empirical context and speak openly and honestly about the stakes and drivers of our public life. Ezra Klein pioneered two path breaking initiatives in explanatory journalism, first The Washington Post’s Wonkblog and now Vox.com.”
See, Vox explains the truth to you in “fact-based and data-rich” ways. If you like pictures of guns, they will tell you why that’s wrong. Vox is so evil, I may have to give up my favorite sports blog owned by Vox Media.
The Four Monkeys of the Democrapolypse
Speech Control – Economic Control – Content Control – Thought Control
Europe does it so why not us ? Party Line Only !
Responsible use of guns by responsible people on social media = bad.
Ghetto drop outs flashing their HiPoints and dollar bill wads while LARPing as rappers on social media = beautiful expression of culture.
Cultural appropriation… they should be using spears and shields
Vox pro censorship? Who would have thought it in terms of Crowder.
Conventional cars pollute… regardless of who is operating them or their purpose of operation. Do we see hand wringing over car pics? Motorcycles? No, we hear heart warming stories of restoring dad’s old truck, or finding the muscle car “just like I had when I was a kid,” but restoring dad’s old shotgun or picking up a minty 5906TSW… “Oh, lawdy! Guns!”
Because we can’t let guns be seen as anything but evil and bad.
And ugly and unattractive; that’s why you never see movie stars using them….
A lot of folks have picked up on this but I’m stumbling over the “undesigned” bit. If the author performed the minimum amount of due diligence they would have seen how carefully designed firearms generally are. The Forgotten Weapons channel on YouTube demonstrates that clearly.
Maybe design means something else that I don’t know of?
In the context of the quote, I think “undesigned” is supposed to mean “I hate this and feel that it has no aesthetic value.” From the style of the writing, and the way the word is slipped in there as fact, we’re all supposed to set aside what we know about design and engineering to agree, obviously.
To be fair, an alternative interpretation is that millenial Vox writers legitimately think that guns just sort of “happen,” just like the food, iPhones, mass transit, and electricity.
Oh no, not “vox”, the do all, end all in BS news…
Wouldn’t “puckerdrones” be a more apt descriptor, since the guy is a giant asshole?
Does anyone actually read VOX aside from the readers here on TTAG that are fed these stories?
https://www.similarweb.com/website/vox.com#overview
Hi Dan
Just emailed you update from New Zealand re gun stealing
Was joking Dan. Sort of anyway. They must have some audience, they are one of the many internet propaganda vehicles for the statist left.
WOW! I must be a Luddite. I have no clue what/who Vox is. I don’t Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or have the ‘net on my cellphone. Worse yet, I don’t seem to be missing anything. This site and a few others is as close to “social media” as I get.
On the other hand, I don’t have ulcers, panic attacks or lost sleep because of someone saying mean things to/about me. Bummer.
vox was created to counter Fox news…almost a parody site, but very left leaning…
like all left leaners, they tell half-truths and lie their collective asses off…
Thanks for the info. Still don’t care.
A healthy and well adjusted outlook. I just like to know what the other side is frankentruthing so I know why it’s garbage. It’s always garbage but I like being able to articulate beyond Idiocracy (even if it’s accurate)
Vox is run by anti civil rights homosexuals who say they are a minority and want the government (courts) to tell you what you can and can’t say.
They also want multi billion dollar corporations to control your speech. They are hypocrite pigs. They hate the citizens united case when it was said a corporation had free speech rights. But they also want corporations to stop you from speaking about whatever subject you want to and being able to interact with others.
Apparently appalled that *some people* like things they do not. Because #diversity.
So I had my 92 at the range and another shooter said “Beretta makes beautiful guns.” So, is that guy a pervert?😎😎😎😁😁😁
To a Glock owner, yes. 🙂
Here in SoCal, the LASD switched from the Beretta 92F to the Smith & Wesson M&P. A couple of my LASD friends said they many have chosen to keep their 92s for supplemental training.
BTW, one the department’s full time firearm instructors (who trains LEOs from new hires all the way up to SWAT) recently told me they have a lot of NDs due to all the career deputies who carried 92s for years and were forced to suddenly switch to the M&P.
I really can’t understand that. So people who have spent their career handling weapons were just barely avoiding disaster because of the da/sa trigger on the 92? Pathetic that “professionals” can’t simply handle firearms in a safe manner.
Modern gun owners are destroying the lefts illusion of what gun ownership looks like. Instagram influencers, competitive shooters, and people willing to spend thousands of dollars on training don’t fit into their mold.
I know for a fact I have more value in my guns than most people have equity in their vehicles. Guns have not been commonly seen as a sign of wealth or status. But despite being “undesigned”, we now live in a gun world where its normal to spend over 3000 on a gun and still put more money into it. This is the equivalent of triathletes spending money on bicycles, car enthusiasts buying multiple cars, or video gamers buying massive televisions and high end computers. It’s difficult for the left to view gun ownership in that light
Vox is a bunch of glorified left-wing bloggers/vloggers (including Klein, Yglesias, etc.) who just play at being “journalists” and are perfectly OK with censorship and violence as long as it favors their politics and company.
Change my mind. 😉
Being armed is better than disarmed.
Change my mind.
This…from people who support infant murder
“…down to the tagging of a profile belonging to a baby who could not yet secure his own username but needed one all the same…”
I don’t take these people seriously in their lame attacks on us. I do take seriously their defamation of character to those who would protect the innocent, and attacking someone’s livelihood. Same folks who want to make Sarah Sanders unhireable.
Thanks for the pointer, Vox. That IG post needs some more likes… 😉
Can someone explain just what an “Instagram influencer” is in simple terms even a mouth-breathing gun owner like me can understand?
Internet celebrity (low end) that uses the internet as a platform to sell their ability to get attention to market products/brands/activities/causes to those that pay attention to them (followers). Value of endorsement comes from number of followers, average income, and ability to datamine info.
Someone who sells their ability to get attention on “instagram”, mostly from pics & pseudo-direct relationship w “followers”, direct to advertisers without an agent or publisher. Often paid in merch.
A sort of interweb hosted cross of lad mags, phone sex, and penthouse letters, with host /hostesses, paid party “guests”, booth babes & “comfort women.”
See also “brand ambassidor.”
Thanks for the attempt – even in rational terms it all sounds like nonsense to me. How anyone in any position of responsibility at a business that provides goods and/or services could transfer anything of value to people who do what you described is mind-boggling. My business management class instructors taught that it’s nearly impossible to quantify the effectiveness of conventional advertising so how can you justify this sort of thing? Guess I’m just too old – get off my lawn!
This type of digital promotion is actually much easier to quantify than conventional advertising, where there’s an unbridgeable gulf between the ad/promotion and the end result of someone going into a physical location and buying something.
The entire “social influencer” model is seamlessly quantified, start to finish. In the digital realm, you can know exactly how many people viewed your promoted content and either spread it around or went on to visit your website, buy your products on Amazon, etc., etc.. Social media is designed to capture all the data advertisers always wished they had and could never get before.
If I had the social savvy, I’d probably try the influencer game, too. It’s a pretty brilliant moneymaking system — not only for evil toads like Zuckerberg, but for everyone who uses it. The best and worst of capitalism, all wrapped up together.
Oh, you’re just not amoral enough.
As Ing said, this is the most relentlessly quantified stuff in all of business. Part of what makes it attractive to spreadsheet jockeys is that precision. Robo calls, refinancing schemes and even fund transfer email scams are similarly sketchy, and quantifiable.
In the end the problem is people with too little self-awareness, self-direction, and self-worth. None of this works without willing targets.
Also, I’m shallow enough to appreciate when some Instagram-famous “model” tries to “influence” some issue, while still not caring what she thinks.
(Yes, that’s hopelessly normative of me. Hey, there’s no accounting for taste.)
The left gun needs to be facing the other way. That would create a nice radial pattern with the muzzles all facing outward, with the baby shoes inside. It would be a nice subtle way of stating ‘our child is precious and WILL be protected from all threats to his/her safety’.
THOTs gonna THOT. Should be no surprise that after they show up everywhere else, they wouldn’t show up in the firearms subculture.
Doesn’t thot presence push it out of subculture and into mainstream nowadays?
No, it just means we’re going to see a lot of vapid twats with the entirety of the Avon catalogue on there face, holding there boyfriend’s AR and saying, “Lulz I do gunz too you guyz #gunchick#feirce#stronkindepentwamen”
Well I tried to spin it as something more positive than attention whoring, can’t trump the truth.
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