In fall 2020 I was making a lot of really bad life decisions. I don’t know if it was the stress of the pandemic, the chaos in my personal life, or my journalistic obligations to stay up on tech news, but for some reason I decided to sign up for Parler. That wasn’t the biggest mistake I made that year, but it’s one that still haunts my inbox. My Parler account came with an unexpected perk: an invite to the company’s whiny, spam-ridden email list.
Parler is a self described “uncancelable [sic?] free speech platform,” i.e., a social media service for conservatives that won’t ban you for hate speech. The barely-used website made headlines this week when Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, announced he’s buying the platform. The news came days after Ye’s tweeted promise to “go death con 3 on Jewish people,” which got his Twitter and Instagram accounts suspended.
Agreements to buy companies typically don’t happen overnight, so you have to imagine the Parler deal has been in the works for a while. Of course, the timing is just a coincidence. Ye just happened to feel like tweeting something that seems tailor-made to get your account suspended, and he just happened to think of it one week before buying a social media platform that doesn’t censor what he calls “conservative opinions.” Ya’ know, conservative opinions like “Jews are bad.” Definitely not a cynical manufactured controversy. Just a big, antisemitic coincidence.
The sporadic emails Parler sends me and the other sorry individuals on its listserv are a good sample of what you’ll see if you’re one of the few people who actually use the “uncancelable” social network: nastiness, a lot of cry baby complaining, and charlatans trying to bilk innocent people out of their money.
Here are five of of the worst examples.
2 / 7
Early in the days of the Parler email list, the company started sticking gutter-link-style advertisements right in the middle of the text, but at a certain point it gave in and just dedicated entire emails to snake oil ads. I’m not saying there are a lot of suckers among the people (like me) who decided to join Parler. I’m just saying it seems like that’s what Parler thinks.
Parler is still on this weight loss grift, one of the oldest in the online playbook. These days, Parler’s emails are a regular source of hard hitting conservative news that the lame stream media doesn’t want you to hear, like details about the one food you should remove from your refrigerator IMMEDIATELY if you struggle with weight gain, junk food cravings, and even belly bloat.
3 / 7
Parler CEO George Farmer, good ol’ boy, noted British person, and husband to conservative influencer Candace Owens (pictured with Kanye in matching “White Lives Matter” shirts), opened an email last year by pointing out that really, everyone is saying the name of his godforsaken platform wrong. But he’s totally cool with it. It’s “par-LEY,” not “par-LUR,” but no, really, it’s fine.
It’s impossible to say why the original pronunciation didn’t catch on among American conservatives. It must have been because the coastal elites in Washington don’t want you to know that you’re SUPPOSED to say it like the fancy French, “freedom fries” be damned.
4 / 7
Parler wasn’t just going to sit around and let everyone else cash in on NFT ponzi schemes. Earlier this year, the company launched its own NFT marketplace called DeepRedSky, a platform for “creators who share the values of freedom of expression.”
With DeepRedSky came the platform’s first NFT drop, the CryptoTRUMP Club, a naked attempt to get in on the craze and squeeze a few dollars out of Parler’s hapless users. Unfortunately for anyone who bought one, the launch came just a few months before the crypto currency market crashed, so they may not have been a great investment. So far, less than 400 out of a 1000 CryptoTRUMPs have sold.
5 / 7
Parler’s whole thing is how big tech is censoring conservative ideas (which has been proven wrong again, and again, and again, and again, and again). No surprise then that a near constant theme in Parler’s emails is mopey, snowflakey complaining about how conservatives are being silenced and everyone is so mean to them.
One early example was a missive about the tragic fate of Lin Wood. Wood was a defense attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, who brought an AR-15-style rifle to a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin and killed two people.
Wood was silenced, as Parler put it, when he was banned from Twitter. But Parler doesn’t mention why he was kicked off the platform. Wood got banned for tweeting that “patriots” should revolt against the government, just moments before a mob stormed the capitol building during the January 6th insurrection. In fact, the woman who was shot and killed during the riot reportedly retweeted one of Wood’s calls for action just hours before she died. Wood was only suspended temporarily at first, but Twitter kicked him off permanently after he created a second account, triggering the platform’s rules on ban evasion.
Parler quoted Wood in one of their emails, who moaned that “the enemy has now refused to engage me.” Classic Big Tech TM, they just don’t want you to hear conservative ideas, like telling you to go out and do violence on government property.
Fun fact (if you’re feeling nostalgic about famous murders): Lin Wood has also represented the family of JonBenét Ramsey and congressman Gary Condit.
6 / 7
This isn’t exactly trashy, but just look at the model Parler chose to promote their merchandise in one of their emails. The email doesn’t say whether you’re supposed to grow this mustache before or after you buy shirt, but either way, this is clearly the look you should be going for if you want to let everyone know you’re a free speech warrior.
7 / 7
