I am probably not the first person to have noticed the strong relation between heterodox opinion and visually crappy websites.
Take a look at the old American Renaissance site design: http://www.amren.com/attic.htm
A big banner with “Dangerous Kooks” across the top of the site could not have delivered a worse first impression.
The shame of it is that they are not all that kooky. American Renaissance contains no more than the average share of garbage that one can expect from a small press publication. It also has its share of gems, like the recent article, Race in Scandinavia.
The new American Renaissance website is a substantial improvement, but it is obviously not going to win any awards.
VDARE is another publication whose site design detracts from its message. VDARE.com is not that bad of a site, actually. The yellow looks kind of bad. The green and red remind me of a neighbor that does not plan to take his Christmas lights down until July. But nothing exceptionally bad.
An appearance of failed chintz is not good enough, however, for a site that publishes so much excellent material. Especially a site that wants to dabble in controversy. As soon as a semi-undecided potential reader hits the VDARE website, he will flee back to the loving arms of the SPLC. The bright and fresh visual appearance of www.splcenter.org does a reasonable job of obscuring the crap they peddle.
Moving on to individuals, just take a look at Chris Brand’s website. The bright yellow background is enough to make a person mistake the banner at the top, “Chris Brand – Psychorealist” for “Chris Brand – Psychodelist.”
Steve Sailer has a better site than Brand’s at iSteve.com. But it looks like a personal homepage. Of course, the site is not that at all. Instead, Sailer’s site is an archive of hundreds of his published articles and includes an accompanying web log.
That is enough examples. Glass houses, and all that.
So why the relation between visual crap and heterodox opinion? Money is an issue. But designing at least an acceptable website is easy enough to do on the cheap. The question gets a whole lot easier to answer when I rephrase it as “Why the relation between unconcern about appearances, and unconcern about disagreeing with the majority?”
‘Unconcern’ may be an exaggeration, though it does contain an element of truth. What makes it unfortunate is that there is an even stronger relationship between unconcern about appearances and disordered minds. So people with controversial opinions have to try far harder at spiffing up their websites than they would otherwise, so as not be thought a crank.
Posted by Thrasymachus at 09:20 AM Comments