That’s right, fellers, your eyes don’t deceive you. Walt Bismarck is rebranding again.
The reason for this is pretty straightforward: I’m no longer committed to pluralism as an end in itself, and have grown far more interested in advancing my own distinct vision of the True and Beautiful while unapologetically agitating for the interests of affluent, urban, and secular straight white men.
Obviously that doesn’t mean abandoning the many Christian and nonwhite friends I made through the Walt Right. But it absolutely means withdrawing the open hand I’ve proactively extended to such groups and focusing instead on empowering my central constituency to secure an optimal negotiating position in any right wing coalition.
It also means pivoting from an aggressively horizontal growth strategy to something more vertical. My job stacking group has just started seeing its first real successes, and as more of our guys get involved in the lifestyle I’ll need to dedicate a lot more time and energy to coordination, security, and developing our internal resources.
As a result my podcasting schedule will need to slow down considerably, and I am entirely fine with that. Until now I’ve mostly used Walt Right Perspectives as a community-building mechanism, but at this point I have more than enough followers for the right kind of growth to come naturally, so it makes a lot more sense to use the podcast for focused discussion items with big ticket guests.
The pace of my writing will remain basically the same, but you can definitely expect a shift in direction. The time has come to write about some inflammatory topics I’ve hitherto only tiptoed around and take some unpopular stances on the issues that matter most to me, even if this risks alienating parts of my audience.
I’d like to think my attempts at pluralism have bought enough goodwill to keep everyone onboard through this pivot, but we’ll see how true this is in a few weeks.
So why Tortuga?
Obviously it aligns well with the pirate branding I’ve used to promote my job stacking venture, but there’s actually much more to it than that.
For one thing Tortuga is an island, and after spending many months trying to be Everyone’s Friend while constantly having to resolve drama in my community over religion and gay shit I’ve begun to find the aesthetics of insularity deeply appealing. I’m leaning into that impulse with Tortuga, and going forward will be relentlessly aggressive about blocking outsiders who approach this space in bad faith.
Tortuga is also Spanish for “tortoise,” which serves as an equally useful ideal for this next stage of my project. My closest friends and confidantes have encouraged me to slow down and get decent sleep and stop slamming Hitler levels of Adderall for weeks now, and it’s probably a decent idea to take their advice.
It was unchecked manic frenzy that saw the Walt Right explode into a major platform over just a few months, but it will take a far more deliberate and consistent approach to transform this thing into a real institution with cultural clout and intellectual heft, and to that end we ought to turtle up for a bit.
Not forever, mind you. But long enough at least to grow a hard shell.
