This is just a quick “heads up” about some obvious poaching going on here. By “poaching” I mean people from other sites trying to recruit new members for their sites from this one.
Before I explain more in depth I need to say that your subscription dollars are yours to spend as you wish. If you want to join other sites, drop this one, have all sorts of subscriptions or none — That’s your business and I’m not advising or advocating otherwise.
I have a preference because I’ve been following Bill’s work for a long time and I don’t have subscription dollars to squander. This is the only site I have a full subscription to regarding political commentary. I was quite pleased when I finally got to the point where I could afford a monthly subscription here. That’s me, that’s not necessarily you.
Ok, that said, “poaching” …
Signs of poaching and poachers.
- A PM or reply to a post that is flattering and invites you to share your wonderful political mastery — Elsewhere.
- Someone who posts very brief comments, sometimes provocative, sometimes derogatory, but always with a link to a long(er-ish) video on another site dedicated to political discussion. They’re trying to suck you over there hoping you’ll stay.
- An expression of dissatisfaction or a slur aimed at one of our hosts and a “This is a much better ___ (site, talking head, pimple, etc.)” type reference or pointer. Those unfamiliar with Scott like to use him for this a lot because Scott is more centrist and less rabidly right wing than a lot of political commentators on the ‘net today. They don’t care that Scott is an honest, sincere, knowledgeable Christian practicing his faith or that he’s a serious Constitutional Scholar or even that he has bona fide journalist accreditation. They generally don’t know enough about him to care and just cherry pick something he says for faux outrage and criticism.
- Seriously radical single issue people making a lot of short comments like “If you get vaccinated you belong to the Devil”, “If you don’t love every single thing about Donald Trump to utter mindless infatuation then you’re not a real conservative”, “”We need to kill all the ____ (insert favorite boogieman)”, ETC. They’re fishing for a “type” to cultivate.
- People who post links to videos in lieu of discussion and argument. Seriously, if we all wanted to follow all those links and watch all those hours, days and weeks of videos we would never ever get anything else done. Let alone actually discuss the issues between us like rational adults. They’re bait, click bait
So like I said, your money and your time is yours to spend. Just be aware this is happening and act accordingly. Or not. I’m not really trying to give any advice here, I’m just makin’ y’all aware.
4 replies on “Poaching on this site, Heads up.”
It’s been noticed.
Personally I only have 2 subscriptions for which I pay: Here and PJ now that Steve is doing a members only chat on libations. That finally pulled me in.
As for the others, not enough time or $$ to diversify any further.
Thanks for the heads up.
It just seems to me to be a slightly less than honest way to try to get subscribers. I go to YouTube and try to steer people here all the time, but I’m not taking any bread out of the mouth of the owners to do that.
Too, not everyone here is the kind of person who might notice this sort of thing going on, present company excepted of course.
Marketing-wise, it’s not a bad strategy. The poachers know that everyone here behind the paywall have at least one subscription so maybe they’re good for another. For the cost of one subscription if they can get three people to join their site too, or abandon this one for that one – that’s a net gain.
But it seems a bit sneaky and sleezey to me so I don’t want to see anyone tricked. It took a long time for Bill to get to a place where he has his own site and if I’m counting right a couple thousand or more paid subscribers. Outside parasitism is not fair play.
Plus the fact that I just don’t like poachers. If they were to come in and say ‘Hey, I’m from _____ and we’re a subscription based site too. You might consider us too and thanks.’ … Well that at least would be honest.
What I see happening is not what I’d call honest. It’s not easy to acquire my loyalty but Bill and Co. has it, gladly and welcome. This is worth my support and I feel a teensy bit protective of it too.
I haven’t noticed, but will keep an eye out. I’ve considered so many time subscribing to PJM – Steve, Kruiser & Schlichter alone are worth the price of admission. What stops me is that there are too many Vischy Republicans across PJ & the various sister sites and I don’t want to end up going through there what I eventually went through with National Review. Even Jim freakin’ Geraghty went off the deep end at the end of last year.
So much of Steve’s best content is behind the pay wall over there that I made a couple of whisky compromises that saved the price of admission for the year. If it gets too squishy, I don’t have to renew.