The Finest Minds Retardia Has to Offer. We Are So Sorry.
Throughout its storied and deeply questionable history, Retardia has produced a remarkable collection of individuals. Each one has contributed something to the nation — whether that contribution was welcome is a matter of ongoing debate.
Sovereign of the Lower Right, Defender of the Obvious, Grand Inquisitor of Woke Marxism
Once a mathematician of modest promise, James Lindsay discovered that 'woke ideology' was secretly a Gnostic Marxist plot approximately fifteen minutes after nobody bought his atheism books. He has since dedicated his life to explaining, at extraordinary length, that everything — critical race theory, drag shows, library science, sourdough — is in fact the same communist conspiracy wearing a different hat. His podcast New Discourses has published over 400 episodes, each one discovering the same conspiracy for the first time. He co-authored fake academic papers to expose the corruption of grievance studies, then became grievance studies. He now sees Gnosticism everywhere, including, one suspects, in the mirror.
Prophet of Personal Responsibility, Professional Reasonable Person
Konstantine Kisin arrived in Britain from Russia and promptly declared himself the last sane man in the West. A comedian by training — a fact his material increasingly struggles to support — he rose to fame on the strength of a single Oxford Union speech in which he told students that success requires effort, a revelation that the audience received as though Moses had descended from Sinai. He co-hosts TRIGGERnometry, a podcast dedicated to platforming people who are definitely not controversial while being very controversial, in the name of free speech. He describes himself as a liberal. His guests describe themselves as persecuted. Both are doing very well financially.
Master of Street Epistemology, Resigned in Protest (from Everything)
Peter Boghossian was a philosophy professor at Portland State University until he resigned in a dramatic open letter, having spent years making his institution's life difficult and then expressing surprise at the frostiness of the reception. He pioneered 'Street Epistemology,' a technique for changing people's minds by asking them questions on camera until they look confused, then uploading it to YouTube. He co-authored the grievance studies hoax papers, which proved that peer review can be gamed — a finding he applied exclusively to fields he already disliked. He now runs workshops teaching people to have conversations, which is a thing he is professionally unable to do.
Director of Counterweight, Author of Very Long Essays, Last True Liberal
Helen Pluckrose describes herself as a liberal humanist, which in practice means she spends most of her time explaining why the left has gone too far while maintaining plausible deniability about where she has ended up. She co-authored 'Cynical Theories,' a book about how postmodern ideas have corrupted academia, written in a style that suggests postmodern ideas may have had a point about readability. She runs Counterweight, an organisation that helps people push back against diversity initiatives, which she insists is not a right-wing project, from her position on an increasing number of right-wing panels. Her essays are thorough, well-cited, and approximately 11,000 words longer than necessary.
Former True Believer, Current True Believer, Professional Escapee
Keri Smith was a committed social justice activist until she wasn't, at which point she wrote a Medium post about it that went viral and has been writing the same Medium post ever since. Her personal journey from woke progressive to anti-woke progressive is documented in granular detail across every platform, each retelling adding new layers of persecution and revelation. She describes the social justice movement as a cult with eerie accuracy, apparently without noticing that the community she joined to escape it has its own vocabulary, its own orthodoxies, its own heretics, and its own very strong feelings about who is and isn't thinking correctly. She is currently in excellent standing.
Champion of the Persecuted Gamer, Keeper of the Sacred Grievance, Husband (Status: Complicated)
Jeremy Hambley built a media empire on the proposition that video games were being ruined by people who were not him, and that this was the most important injustice of the modern era. For years he presented himself as a family man and a voice of common sense, qualities he demonstrated by making daily videos about how other people were bad. His tenure as Retardia's foremost gaming commentator came to a memorable climax when he appeared on the Kino Casino broadcast, a venue operated by the scholar-provocateur Destiny, and proceeded to have his personal finances, marital arrangements, and various private communications discussed in forensic detail before a live audience. It emerged that the man who had spent years decrying the moral failures of others had been conducting his own affairs with considerable creativity. He responded to these revelations in the traditional Retardian manner: by making more videos about how other people were bad.
Founder of Blexit, Destroyer of Alliances, Currently Between Employers
Candace Owens arrived in Retardia as a fully formed contrarian, having previously run an anti-bullying website before pivoting to a career that required a more flexible relationship with the concept. She rose to prominence by telling conservative audiences what they wanted to hear with exceptional confidence and excellent bone structure, a combination that proved highly monetisable. Her tenure at The Daily Wire ended after she developed opinions about Israel that her employers found commercially inconvenient, at which point she declared herself the only honest person in media and launched her own platform. She has since been divorced from her husband George Farmer, a development she has handled with characteristic restraint, which is to say she has not handled it with any restraint at all. She is currently in a feud with approximately everyone she has ever worked with, which she describes as a sign of her integrity.
America's Rabbi, Relationship Expert, Michael Jackson's Spiritual Advisor (Ret.)
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has spent three decades positioning himself as the foremost religious authority on everything, a project he pursues with an energy that his faith's tradition of scholarly humility has been unable to contain. He wrote a book about Michael Jackson based on their friendship, which he published over Jackson's explicit objections, a decision he has described as courageous. He appears regularly on television to represent Judaism in the way a novelty tie represents formal wear — technically present, impossible to take entirely seriously. His most recent chapter of public prominence involved a spectacular falling out with Candace Owens over her Israel commentary, conducted across multiple platforms at considerable volume, which observers noted was the first time in recorded history that a dispute between these two parties generated sympathy for Candace Owens.
Former Secret Service Agent, Current Noise Event, Owner of Rumble
Dan Bongino was a Secret Service agent, a fact he has mentioned approximately 40,000 times since leaving the Secret Service. He parlayed this credential into a media career built on the principle that volume is a substitute for analysis, a theory he has tested exhaustively across radio, television, podcast, and the streaming platform Rumble, which he owns and which exists primarily to host people too extreme for YouTube. He inherited Rush Limbaugh's radio slot, which he fills with a similar quantity of sound and a somewhat reduced quantity of wit. He has survived cancer, which is genuinely admirable, and has responded to this experience by becoming louder. His daily output suggests a man who has never once sat quietly with his thoughts, possibly because he suspects what he would find there.
Former Journalist, Current Content Farm, Resident of the Compound
Tim Pool covered Occupy Wall Street with a 360-degree camera and was briefly considered a promising new voice in citizen journalism, a description that has aged in the manner of milk left in the sun. He has since undergone a political transformation so gradual and so total that it resembles a nature documentary about a creature that slowly becomes a different creature while insisting it has not moved. He now operates from a property he calls a compound, which is a farm in rural Maryland, from which he produces an estimated four to seven hours of daily content warning that society is on the verge of collapse. Society has not collapsed. The content continues. He has not removed his beanie in public since approximately 2012, a commitment to personal branding that commands a grudging respect. Former colleagues from his journalism days report that they do not know what happened.
Journalist (Self-Described), Professional Victim, Exile in Residence
Andy Ngo built a career on the principle that being present at violence is the same as reporting on it, and that being struck by a milkshake is the same as being struck by history. He covered Antifa protests in Portland with a camera and an expression of studied neutrality, and was rewarded with a concrete milkshake to the head, an incident he has since referenced with a frequency that suggests he considers it his equivalent of Gettysburg. His book Unmasked documented the threat posed by left-wing extremists, a project somewhat complicated by subsequent reporting suggesting he had shared the personal details of protesters with the far-right groups he was supposedly just observing. He relocated to the United Kingdom on the grounds that Portland had become too dangerous, a claim that Portland received with mixed feelings. He continues to document threats to civil society from a flat in London, which is very safe.
Content Creator, Partner in Persecution, Also Based in London
Cam Higby came to the attention of Retardia primarily through his association with Andy Ngo, a relationship that has proven professionally generative for both parties. He has since developed his own content operation, dedicated to the proposition that the Pacific Northwest is a lawless hellscape from which he and Andy were right to flee, a message he delivers from the safety of the United Kingdom. He occupies a curious position in the Retardian ecosystem: sufficiently prominent to be recognized, insufficiently prominent to be the main character, which in Retardia is arguably the safest place to be. He and Andy have built a life in London documenting the dangers of the American left, which the American left has not noticed.
Comedian, Podcaster, MAGA's Favorite Funny Person (Self-Assessed)
Chrissie Mayr is a comedian who discovered that the most reliable laugh in contemporary America is the one you get from people who are angry about comedy being ruined by people like Chrissie Mayr. She hosts the Chrissie Mayr Podcast, a production dedicated to the proposition that the real censorship is having to share a green room with people who disagree with you. She is a reliable presence at events where the program describes itself as edgy and the audience describes itself as the last defenders of free expression, and where both descriptions are delivered without apparent irony. Her comedy addresses the great issues of the day with the subtlety of a foghorn and the persistence of a car alarm. She is very funny, she will tell you, and she will tell you at length.
Seer of Things Already Known
The Oracle refuses to give their name on the grounds that names are a construct of the material world, which they have transcended. They accept payment in the material world, however. Their prophecies are delivered in a tone that implies you should already know this, and concern events that have typically already occurred.