Explaining my latest twitter controversy to my wife

Mixed marriages can be challenging

Scene: an idyllic lake-side villa nestled in a mountain valley that Mrs. Kitten and I have rented with some family friends. Some of the kids are being pulled around behind a boat by a buddy, some are napping while Mrs. Kitten and I relax on the sectional sofa of the great room overlooking the lake. Dinner is slowly cooking on the grill, I have an ice cold beer in hand, and the smells and heat of a perfect August afternoon are wafting through the open door. All is well in the world.

At least, in the real world. But in the digital realm, on twitter, a dark cloud has passed over my usually carefree, perhaps even happy-go-lucky twitter timeline. I have suggested that video games are not the best use of young men’s time despite being quite fun, and angry gamers have descended upon my notifications, breathing heavily, to make me pay for my heresy.

I sigh, setting down my phone.

“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Kitten asks.

“I’m going viral on twitter again.”

“You mean like when you said women on TikTok don’t understand what POV means?”

“Yes, but in a bad way this time. I pissed off gamers.”

“So they’re making fun of you?”

“Yeah, they’re saying I’m your slave.”

“WHAT?”

“Goyslave actually.”

“Do I even want to know what that means?”

“OK, so you know how some people are obsessed with how the Jews run Hollywood and banking?”

“Yeah…”

“There are a bunch of guys online that have extended that, kind of ironically but kind of not, to basically all of society and institutions. It’s all a Jewish plot to subvert the West. So like packaged food is goyslop, people who buy into traditional morality and a protestant work ethic are goyslaves, and so on. It’s especially prevalent among the Groypers.”

“…”

“Oh, the Groypers are right-wing zoomers who follow Nick Fuentes and post a lot of really gross antisemitic and misogynist stuff. Like it’s really bad, not the funny kind. Everybody hates them.”

“Nick Fuentes?”

“He’s this little Mexican homo who’s been running a podcast with anti-immigration and America-First themes for a few years, he’s got quite a following. Honestly he’s kind of funny. He was also at J6 telling people to go inside the capital building but never got arrested or detained for it, so everybody assumes he’s a Fed. And he campaigned against Trump the last time for some reason. Anyway, Groypers are what his followers call themselves, I think because it sounds like goy, and they all hate women.”

Here Mrs. Kitten pauses to collect herself.

“So why were they calling you a slave?”

“Well I posted something about how video games are fun but obviously a massive waste of time and young guys should be honest about that with themselves…”

“OK…”

“And I mentioned that learning to play guitar is a better hobby to sink time into, and some guy got into it with me, asking why one is more valuable than the other, so I told him other people don’t value playing games but they do value playing guitar.”

“That’s it?”

“Well I phrased it a bit more strongly than that.”

“Of course you did.”

“But anyway, now I’m getting inundated with these incels telling me that this proves I view myself as a slave to you and the kids —”

“Incels? The guys who can’t get laid?”

“Yeah but they’ve made it a core pillar of their identity. Like these are guys where if you visit their profile on twitter it’s wall-to-wall anime porn.”

“Gross. I thought you said you pissed off gamers, not incels.”

“Well I criticized gamers but incels showed up and started calling me a goyslave. Curious, isn’t it.”

“But I’m a good wife! I let you play video games whenever you want!”

“Anyway I’m getting a repetitive strain injury from blocking all these masturbators, I’m thinking I might lock my account down to take a break.”

“There’s that many of these guys? How did they all find you?”

“That’s the nature of virality. A bunch of big right-wing accounts caught wind of this and put me on blast, all their followers are swarming me, that’s how it works. Well, I say they’re right-wing, but these guys all recoil in disgust from the idea of social and family obligations, or that provisioning for others is a vital part of masculinity. Like there’s this guy Devon Erickson who has 100k followers or something who ranted about my supposed ‘slave morality’ because of this. But he’s a childless bigamist.”

“You mean he’s poly? Who is this guy?”

“Not poly, he just has two wives. Only one is legally his wife I guess, they’re actually both mutuals of mine on twitter, they’re really nice. But he self-published a science fiction book a while back, and then Elon retweeted a screed he wrote about immigration or black crime or something and he blew up, and now he’s like a major part of the based punditsphere. His book wasn’t bad either.”

“Huh.” We sip our drinks.

Mrs. Kitten glances over at me. “Don’t you think you’re a little wrapped up in all of this?”

I gaze off into the middle distance of the mountainside behind the lake for a couple beats.

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Well, sure. I mean sometimes. This hardly ever happens.”

“But more and more.”

“Sure, but. How do I explain this. I don’t like the harassment itself, but I do like being the kind of person that gets harassed. And I like the fight before it gets totally out of hand.”

“Yes. You do like to argue.”

“It’s like a form of ritualized warfare. You have your bannermen that rally to your cause and fight for you when you call on them. Sometimes there’s another feudal lord and he has more bannermen, or they’re better equipped or whatever, and you lose, but the stakes are actually pretty low. I spent years watching big accounts joust like this, and now I’m one of them. Bigger than most of them even. It’s… I was going to say fun, but gratifying is a better word.”

We cuddle a bit on the couch. Outside, the screams of the kids drift toward us on the breeze from the lake. The chicken legs I have on the grill drip and sizzle. This is real, I remind myself. Twitter is fake, and this is real. There are more people on twitter, endless ideas and arguments to engage in. But they don’t matter. The people here do.

My wife turns to me.

“Just don’t let it get out of hand.”

“I never do!”

“And can you put the kids to bed tonight?”

“Glad to.”