Chuck Darwin<p>By the time TechCrunch publicized Yarvin’s identity, in 2013, </p><p>he had become influential in a small circle of the disaffected elite. </p><p>In 2014, The Baffler published a lengthy look at his influence, titled “Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich.” </p><p>The piece warned that Yarvin’s ideas were spreading among prominent figures like <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thiel" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Thiel</span></a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/Balaji" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Balaji</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Srinivasan" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Srinivasan</span></a>, formerly the CTO of <a href="https://c.im/tags/Coinbase" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Coinbase</span></a>, </p><p>and that it was possible for an intellectual fringe to <br />“seize key positions of authority and power” <br />and “eventually bring large numbers of people around,” <br />just as the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Koch" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Koch</span></a> brothers once had with their pro-business libertarianism, <br />a position that Thiel was quickly moving away from.</p><p>In 2017, BuzzFeed News published an email exchange between Yarvin and <a href="https://c.im/tags/Milo" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Milo</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yiannopoulis" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Yiannopoulis</span></a> in which Yarvin said that he’d watched the 2016 election returns with Thiel. </p><p>“He’s fully enlightened,” Yarvin wrote. </p><p>“Just plays it very carefully.” </p><p>Masters soon had an office in Trump Tower. </p><p>He and Thiel worked, <br />generally without success, <br />to install figures like Srinivasan, <br />whom they proposed to head the FDA, <br />and who himself often talked about the <br />“paper belt,” <br />in an echo of Yarvin’s Cathedral concept, </p><p>and made common cause with figures like <a href="https://c.im/tags/Steve" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Steve</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Bannon" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Bannon</span></a>, who wanted to pick apart the administrative state, <br />an idea that at least had a hint of Yarvin’s RAGE proposal. </p><p>Yarvin eventually stopped working as a programmer and left the Bay Area, <br />moving with his wife and two children to Nevada. </p><p>His wife died in April 2021, and he seems to have been devastated, </p><p>publishing searching poems about her. </p><p>But last September, a month before we spoke, he posted a dating call, <br />inviting women who were “reasonably pretty and pretty smart,” as he put it, </p><p>and “have read my work and like it,” and who thought that “the purpose of dating is to get married and have kids,” </p><p>to email him so they could set up a Zoom date.</p><p>“His writing doesn’t really represent who he is,” Laurenson told me. </p><p>“So I answered this email and I was just like, <br />‘Hi, I’m a liberal, but I have a high IQ. And I want kids, and I’m actually just really curious to talk to you.’ ” </p><p>The two are now engaged.</p><p>Laurenson told me she’d had a gradual awakening that accelerated during the upheavals of the early pandemic<br /> and the protests of the summer of 2020. </p><p>“I started really getting drawn to <a href="https://c.im/tags/NRx" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>NRx</span></a> ideas,” she said, <br />using a common online abbreviation for the <br />neo-reactionary fringe, </p><p>“because I was tracking the riots,” by which she meant the violence that erupted amid some of the Black Lives Matter protests.</p><p>“I have a background in social justice,” she said. </p><p>But she was “horrified” by “how the mainstream media covered the riots.… It was just such a violation of all of my values.”</p><p>She’d had a strange realization after she and Yarvin started dating, <br />discovering that some of her friends had been reading him for years. </p><p>“I found out that all these people had been reading NRx stuff just like me. </p><p>They just never told anyone about it,” she said. </p><p>“It has been very striking to me,” she said, “how cool this world is becoming.”</p><p> <a href="https://c.im/tags/RAGE" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RAGE</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/authoritarianism" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>authoritarianism</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/monarchy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>monarchy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yarvin" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Yarvin</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/crypto" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>crypto</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/decentralized" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>decentralized</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/internet" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>internet</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Lydia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Lydia</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Laurenson" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Laurenson</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/BDSM" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>BDSM</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Mencius" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Mencius</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Moldbug" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Moldbug</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Anton" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Anton</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yarvin" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Yarvin</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yarvin" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Yarvin</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thielverse" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Thielverse</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Cruz" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Cruz</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Josh" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Josh</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Hawley" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Hawley</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Masters" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Masters</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Vance" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Vance</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rod" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Rod</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Dreher" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Dreher</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Walter" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Walter</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Kirn" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Kirn</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/worldview" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>worldview</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/dystopian" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>dystopian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hell" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>hell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Peter" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Peter</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thiel" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Thiel</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/NatCon" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>NatCon</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thielbucks" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Thielbucks</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Vance" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Vance</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Blake" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Blake</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Masters" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Masters</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thiel" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Thiel</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Foundation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Foundation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/New" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>New</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Right" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Right</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Curtis" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Curtis</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yarvin" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Yarvin</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/incels" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>incels</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Josh" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Josh</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Hammer" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Hammer</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Michael" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Michael</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Anton" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Anton</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Chris" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Chris</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Arnade" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Arnade</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Sohrab" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Sohrab</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ahmari" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Ahmari</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Compact" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Compact</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/libertine" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>libertine</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/left" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>left</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/libertarian" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>libertarian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/right" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>right</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/kook" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>kook</span></a></p>