Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus Rift, has been keeping busy since he sold the company to Facebook in 2014. One thing he’s done to pass the time, as reported by The Daily Beast, is to financially back (and be named Vice President of) a company dedicated to alt-right meme shitposts.
Image: AP
UPDATE: Palmer Luckey posted a statement to Facebook in which he claimed he’s not a Trump supporter and instead plans to vote Libertarian. He said he contributed $US10,000 ($13,300) to Nimble America because he’s “committed to the principles of fair play and equal treatment” and “thought the organization had fresh ideas on how to communicate with young voters.” He also said he did not write the infamous ‘NimbleRichMan’ Reddit post, contrary to what the Daily Beast’s news editor claims Luckey said in an email.
Original story follows:
The company, described in The Daily Beast’s article as “a pro-Trump political organisation”, is called Nimble America, and say they are dedicated to establishing that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real.”
Some actions Nimble America claim to have taken in recent months include “conquering Reddit” (and by that they mean r/The_Donald) and paying for a giant anti-Hillary Clinton billboard outside Pittsburgh. Alongside Luckey’s name (well, his Reddit account) on the group’s founders page are two mods of r/The_Donald.
The report also dwells on the relationship between Luckey and Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, and mentions that another of Nimble America’s founders, Dustin Ward, claims the group will be paying for more billboards around the sites of upcoming presidential debates.
Luckey says that “I came into touch with them over Facebook. It went along the lines of ‘hey, I have a bunch of money. I would love to see more of this stuff.’ They wanted to build buzz and do fundraising.”
Here’s Luckey’s bio on Nimble America’s site (NimbleRichMan is his Reddit account, which Luckey confirmed to The Daily Beast):
NimbleRichMan is a near Billionaire and staunch supporter of the Common Sense Conservative movement. He is co-founder along with D.B. Purple and our third silent partner. Milo Yiannopoulos has personally vetted NimbleRichMan and the Non-Profit Nimble America, Inc. he helped create. NimbleRichMan will continue to guide Nimble America as its Vice-President.
And here’s a recent post Luckey made on r/The_Donald:
The American Revolution was funded by wealthy individuals. The same has been true of many movements for freedom in history. You can’t fight the American elite without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy you by any and all means.
Cool, guy.
Now go read The Daily Beast’s full piece.
UPDATE 1: Here’s another of his Reddit posts:
This is a message from @PalmerLuckey, the founder of @Oculus. pic.twitter.com/CWlAA8ugMx
— Cody Brown (@CodyBrown) September 23, 2016
UPDATE 2: Looks like Luckey’s NimbleRichMan Reddit account has been deleted.
Comments
32 responses to “Oculus Rift Founder Palmer Luckey Funding Trump Shitposters”
Perfect.
This is all a distraction tactic. He’s really just trying to fight memes with memes.
But some memes can never been unmeme, Palmer:
http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/11050636_917614991639673_6981854500782340609_n.jpg
Just at that point I could not care with their election any more. Tired of the alt left, alt right and all of both sides rubbish.
What about Pepes?
Alt-Pepe is where it’s at.
Didn’t you hear? Pepe declared himself a Meme-supremecist! He’s off founding the alt-alt-alt-middle party.
All this alt-right and alt-left makes me want to alt-F4.
Best response ever! lol
Best comment ever! Haha!
Just ensured I dont buy an Oculus
Doesn’t really matter now – he’s already sold the company, hasn’t he? So the money won’t be going to him even if you do buy one.
The Oculus acquisition was done partly with cash, and partly with shares. So unless Luckey has divested all his Facebook shares, he still stands to benefit if Oculus performs well.
What if they release a meme battle game? How will you live with yourself?
You’re going to let one man’s political opinions stop you from enjoying a product? Why would you do that. It’s not like he’s got slaves or is forcing hungry Chinese children to build the Rift.
Everytime I see a pic of this guy, first thing that comes to mind is @blaghman
Man, I’d take being an idiot trump supporter if it meant I was worth close to a billion dollars.
hahahaha you two just look so similar! 😀
It’s strange, I’ve never really thought the two to look anything like each other except for at this one particular conference which seems to get used for all the pictures now.
It’s said that people think “being a giant troll on the internet” is a legitimate political movement.
Now I can tell people I have had a strong interest in politics since I was 12 years old.
That’s odd… no actual no alt-right keyboard warriors singing us the song of their people. Normally they’re on this like stink on a teenager…
He seemed pretty cool on all the Giant Bomb E3 podcasts, but finding out he’s a diehard Trump supporter… eurgh. Toss him in the pot of Mel Gibson and Clint Eastwood, people who make shit I love, but with horrible personal views I find impossible to respect.
So, the fact that this guy holds a opinion that you don’t means that you’ve lost all respect for him? If that is truly the case, then you never really had respect for him in the first place.
False equivalence. This isn’t a case of someone liking a rival sports team. If you support Donald Trump, your opinion is terrible because you’ve paid the slightest bit of attention to what comes out of his mouth, you’re condoning the behaviour of a racist, sexist, war-mongering, pathological liar. ‘Racism’ is not a respectable opinion in 2016, it’s just being a shitheel.
You realise that Trump isn’t racist, sexist, war-mongering or a pathological liar though, right? In fact he’s the candidate trying to help minorities the most. He’s the one trying to help women’s rights. He’s the one that is against the wars that America has started. He’s the most honest and transparent candidate running.
I don’t even… so the Mexican ‘drug dealers and rapists’ thing? The giant wall? The wildly sexist comments regarding Miss USA, Megyn Kelly, Ariana Huffington, Rosie O’Donnell, and Carly Fiorina? The years of race-baiting he pulled with the birther movement to discredit the first black president? The debunked ‘thousands of Muslims’ cheering on 9/11? Skittles? Or how about when he suggested that the mother of a dead soldier wasn’t being allowed to speak because she was Muslim? When he suggested a judge couldn’t perform his job because he was Mexican? Condoning violence against Black Lives Matters protesters?
None of this registered to you? Yeah, okay. I guess he’s just misunderstood and minorities just hate his face or something.
It is a fact that a majority of the illegal Mexican immigrants have some sort of criminal history. He’s always claimed that it was the illegals he had a problem with and last time I checked, illegal immigrant wasn’t a race. And the wall. The wall would be an excellent deterrent to keep Mexicans from trying to illegally hop the border. It has worked well in many other countries.
I haven’t heard about some of those examples, but I am aware that he has criticized some of those women for their looks. Saying that a woman is not attractive is not sexist. It just means that you don’t like their appearance.
This is an actual thing that’s happened. Muslims, by definition of their faith, are inherently violent towards non-Muslims and they rejoice over the fact that they’ve caused a large part of the world to fear them.
He did not say that the judge was unfit for his position because of his nationality. Trump questioned the judge due to the case at hand. He felt that the race of the judge, due to the rising conflict between Mexicans and Trump, would cause him to be biased in his proceedings.
Trump has never condoned violence towards any of the groups that oppose him. The only instance I can find of hims saying anything like that is when one of his supporters was attacked and Trump said he’d cover the legal fees if the supporter fought back.
The population is completely withing their rights to now if their President was born in America. No matter if they’re black or white. To be President, you must be born in America.
It’s always a little awkward when douche-canoe’s invent something of value. Luckily it appears he’s moved on from adding value to the world, which should reduce the cognitive dissonance.
Centipede.
“Trump is a big doodoo head and anybody that likes him is an idiot and a child!”
You shouldn’t let somebody’s political opinions change how you see them. Unless it’s communism or socialism or something extreme like that, of course.
So communism and socialism are no-no, but fascism is okay? Cool.
Communism and socialism don’t work for big countries. Nobody in the presidential race is trying to enforce a fascist regime. But yeah, you should stand against fascism too.