Vox Day

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Vox Day
Vox Day by Tracy White promo pic.jpg
Vox Day
Born Theodore Robert Beale
(1968-08-21) August 21, 1968 (age 56)
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Other names Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil
Education Bucknell University
Known for Writer, computer game designer, publisher, musician
Parent(s) Robert Beale
Website voxday.net (formerly voxday.blogspot.com)

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Vox Day (born 21 August 1968) is the popular alias of Theodore Robert Beale, an American publisher, science fiction writer, philosopher, musician and video game designer. He is a former nationally syndicated columnist with Chronicle Features and Universal Press Syndicate. He is known as the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his supporters who he collectively refers to as The Reprehensibles after they have been described as such by Jordan Peterson. They consist of

  • the Ilk who are any of his fans
  • the Dread Ilk who were avid contributors to his blog since before he started his Darkstream
  • the Vile Faceless Minions (VFM) who are involved in covert operations

Early life

Theodore Beale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Minnesota. He is the son of entrepreneur and jailed tax protester Robert Beale[1] and the father of Christopher Beale, the youngest-ever published male author.[2] He is of English, Irish, Mexican, and Native American descent. He attended Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis where he played varsity soccer for the MISSL-champion Indians and ran track-and-field. In 1986, he was the 100-meter and 200-meter dash champion of the Tri-Metro Conference, recording personal bests of 10.82 and 22.40 seconds. He graduated from Bucknell University in 1990,[3] where he studied economics, history, and Japanese, and ran for four East Coast Conference championship-winning track teams. Beale first began to write short stories while he was in college,[4] and began using the name Vox Day as a stage name after founding the band Psykosonik.

Careers

Music career

In 1987, Beale played in a cover band called NoBoys. He met Smilehouse lead singer Paul Sebastian at The Underground in Minneapolis and the two men put together a band with Beale on keyboards and Sebastian on guitar and vocals. They found a drummer, Michael Larson, and a production engineer, Daniel Lenz. Psykosonik began recording electronic music at Sebastian's apartment where he had a recording studio and performed in Minneapolis clubs such as First Avenue, 7th Street Entry, and Glam Slam.[5] Their first recorded song was the unreleased "Sex Me Up",[6] which was the first song on the three-song demo that led to the band being signed to Wax Trax! and TVT Records.

Between 1992 and 1995 Day was a founding member of the electronic band Psykosonik, which recorded four[7] Billboard Top 40 Club Play hits. Day was responsible for composition and lyrics on three of the four: "Silicon Jesus", "Welcome to My Mind", and "Unlearn". Day left the band before writing or recording "It Has Begun", featured on the Mortal Kombat: More Kombat soundtrack.

In 1995, Day and Sebastian founded Power of Seven to make soundtracks for video games.

In 2022, Day founded Booster Patrol with guitarist and producer John Bradley. The duo began recording covers that were "boosted" with two or more guitar solos. Singers Rachel Danley and Elizabeth Duvall subsequently joined the band.


Video game career

Day and Andrew Lunstad founded a video game company in 1993 named Fenris Wolf. They developed the game Rebel Moon in 1995, and its sequel Rebel Moon Rising in 1997.[8] Computer Gaming World described Rebel Moon Rising as technologically innovative and "highly creative", and declared that its escort missions broke new ground in 3D shooter mission design.[9] Fenris Wolf was developing two games, Rebel Moon Revolution and Traveler for the Sega Dreamcast, when it closed in 1999 after a legal dispute with its retail publisher GT Interactive.[10] In 1999, under the name Eternal Warriors, Day and Lunstad released The War in Heaven, a biblical video game published by Valusoft and distributed by GT Interactive.[11]

Day was an early supporter of Gamergate and hosted the GGinParis meetup in July 2015 with Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich.[12]

Writing career

Theodore Beale first began writing under the name Vox Day for a weekly video game review column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press,[13] and later continued to use the pen name for a weekly WorldNetDaily opinion column. His columns have been nationally syndicated three times, once by Chronicle Features and twice by Universal Press Syndicate.[14] In 2000, Day published his first solo novel, The War in Heaven, the first in a series of fantasy novels with a religious theme; entitled The Eternal Warriors. The novel investigates themes "about good versus evil among angels, fallen and otherwise".[15]

Day served as a member of the Nebula Award Novel Jury in 2004[16] and in 2007.[17] He was a contributor to the Black Gate blog until December 2012.[18]

In 2008 Day published The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, a book devoted to criticizing the arguments presented in various books by atheist authors Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray.[19] The book was named a 2007 Christmas recommendation by John Derbyshire in the online conservative magazine, National Review Online.[20] Day's 2008 book, Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy, was nominated for an American Christian Fiction Writers award in 2009.[21]

Blogs

Day currently produces a blog called Vox Popoli, and previously also the Alpha Game blog. Vox Popoli is his primary outlet for commentary and had traffic of 25.8 million pageviews in 2016.[22] He also produced the blog Alpha Game, which focused on male-female relations and the socio-sexual hierarchy, particularly from a married Christian perspective. Alpha Game had an additional 5.3 million pageviews in 2016.[23] In August 2021, Vox Popoli was shut down by the Google multinational organization as part of a much larger deplatforming program aimed against right-wing political activism. The blog was promptly restored elsewhere, however the comment section has been lost.[citation needed] The comments were then moved to the paid site SocialGalactic. Vox Day asserted that the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified, since Ukraine had been infiltrated and corrupted by globalist interest groups funded by George Soros and others. They hoped to control and ultimately transform all the states of the former Soviet bloc, along with all other white-majority countries and cultures. Day also accused the mainstream media of wildly distorting and manipulating news reporting about the war.[24]

Video streams

He started two channels on YouTube and the newest videos are also available on Unauthorized.TV

His main channel Darkstream still exists on YouTube with a few videos available, but denies access to new and most older videos in order to minimize possible enemy incited strikes. Day mentioned plans to make all videos available on Unauthorized.TV.

His secondary channel Voxiversity are intended as a repository for videos focusing on certain topics, which are shorter, edited to higher quality, and witohut interactive chatting. On YouTube, there are two videos that he created before the Voxiversity concept was what it is, which are not on any channel on Unauthorized.TV.

Technology innovations

Computer hardware

Day was an early champion of 3D CAD hardware in video games. As the Transdimensional Evangelist for ARTIST Graphics, he named the 3GA chip and trademarked the term 3D Blaster, but later gave the trademark to Creative Labs.

WarMouse, a computer mouse with 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, a thumb-operated joystick, and 512k of memory.

Day holds the design patent[25] for WarMouse, a computer mouse with 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, a thumb-operated joystick, and 512k of memory.[26]

Software

In 2002, Day created a system to use 3D videogame technology to sell real estate called 3DH. The technology was received well by real estate agents in Minnesota after being the subject of a local news report on KARE 11 by reporter Rick Kupchella, but Day shut down the company after learning that agents were not willing to use it for all their listings, but were only using it to acquire expensive listings they would not have otherwise been able to land.

Internet

He created Infogalactic, SocialGalactic, and Unauthorized.TV.

Publishing

Day and game developer Markku Koponen founded Castalia House in early 2014.

Castalia House has had 22 Hugo Award Finalists as a result of the Sad Puppies (2014) and Rabid Puppies (2015-2016) campaigns.[27]. Castalia House has also published two inaugural Dragon Award winners, one of which, Somewhither by John C. Wright, was edited by Day.

Controversies

SFWA

In 2013 Day ran unsuccessfully against Steven Gould to succeed John Scalzi as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). African American writer N. K. Jemisin, during her delivery of the Guest of Honour speech at 2013 Continuum in Australia, complained that 10% of the SFWA membership voted for Beale in his bid for the SFWA presidential position and called him "a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole". Beale responded by denying her accusation and calling her "an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature by 'a bunch of beardy old middle-class middle-American guys' than an illiterate Igbotu tribesman has of how to build a jet engine...."[28] In the resulting interactions, he also called writer and editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden a "fat frog"[29] and "the Toad of Tor".[30]

A link to Day's comments about Jemisin was tweeted on the SFWA @SFWAAuthors Twitter feed. Day had previously made controversial remarks, but in this case he was investigated by the SFWA Board, who subsequently voted to expel him from the organization over his use of the promotional SFWA Twitter feed in a manner that allegedly violated organization guidelines.[31] Day posted a scan of the letter notifying him of the decision on his website. He later maintained that the vote did not signify his expulsion from the organization due to the fact that the required vote by the entire membership never took place.[32]

2014 Hugo Awards

In 2014 Day's novelette, "Opera Vita Aeterna", was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette[33] as part of Larry Correia's Sad Puppies campaign. Correia later explained that he had included "Opera" in his campaign because he had enjoyed it, because he wanted to increase participation in the Hugo nomination process, and because he wanted to upset people, stating that he "nominated Vox Day because Satan didn’t have any eligible works that period."[34]

The Hugo voters ranked "Opera" sixth out of five nominees, behind "No Award."[35][36][37][38]

2015 Hugo Awards

In 2015 Day created a slate of candidates for the Hugo Awards called "Rabid Puppies", which successfully placed 58 of its 67 recommended nominees on the ballot. Two of the nominations were for Day himself, and eleven were for works published by his Finnish publishing house, Castalia House,[39] where Day acts as lead editor.[40] Of those other nominees, two authors, an editor, and a fanzine subsequently withdrew their own nominations; three of these four explicitly cited the wish to dissociate themselves from Day as being among their reasons for doing so.[41][42][43]

Day was nominated in the Best Editor, Long Form and Best Editor, Short Form categories. No award was given in either category.[44] When asked why he included himself in the nomination, and what it meant that the voters preferred that no one win the award rather than give one to him, Day stated, "I wanted to leave a big smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were. All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You—one massive gesture of contempt."[45]

2016 Hugo Awards

In 2016 Day ran a second annual "Rabid Puppies" campaign, which successfully placed 69 of its 80 recommended nominees on the ballot. Five of the nominations in the Best Dramatic Presentiation, Long Form and Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form categories were disqualified, and two nominees, Best Fanzine finalist Black Gate and Best Short Story finalist Thomas Mays, elected to withdraw their nominations after learning they had been nominated as a result of Rabid Puppies.

Feud with John Scalzi

Since 2005 Day has engaged in an exchange of online criticism with science fiction writer John Scalzi. This began with Scalzi's attack on one of Day's syndicated columns blaming the lack of woman hard SF writers on poor science education in universities.[46][47]

In 2015 Day released a book about social justice warriors titled, SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police[48] The book was positively reviewed by the conservative online magazine American Thinker[49] and contained a chapter demonstrating that John Scalzi had repeatedly lied about his popularity and his claimed site traffic of two million pageviews per month. The book was the #1 bestseller in the Political Philosophy category on Amazon for 13 months.

Progressive writer Alexandra Erin then wrote a short parody of the book titled, John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels. Supporters of Vox Day released their own parody book on Amazon in response, titled, John Scalzi Is A Rapist: Why SJWs Always Lie In Bed Waiting For His Gentle Touch; A Pretty, Pretty Girl Dreams of Her Beloved One While Pondering Gender Identity, Social Justice, and Body Dysmorphia. The parody became the top seller in the “parodies” section of the Kindle store, two places ahead of Erin’s book.[48] At one point, SJWs Always Lie, the parody of the parody, and the parody were the top three sellers in Amazon's Political Philosophy category.

After John Scalzi complained to Amazon about the title of John Scalzi Is A Rapist: Why SJWs Always Lie In Bed Waiting For His Gentle Touch; A Pretty, Pretty Girl Dreams of Her Beloved One While Pondering Gender Identity, Social Justice, and Body Dysmorphia , the title was removed from Amazon. The book was subsequently renamed John Scalzi Banned This Book But He Can Never Ban My Burning Love: A Pretty, Pretty Girl Dreams of Her Beloved While Pondering Gender Identity, Social Justice, and Body Dysmorphia. In September 2015, another parody, entitled John Scalzi is Not a Rapist: A Respected Grand Master of Science Fiction Refutes Certain Allegations Made by a Devoted but Mistaken Fan was also published on Amazon.

Hugo Award nominations

Day has been nominated six times for a Hugo Award.

Happy Frogs Award nominations and awards

  • Happy Frog Lifetime of Achievement Award

Personal life

Day is married and was a member of Mensa and a National Merit Semifinalist. He speaks English, Japanese, French, German and Italian.[54]

Philosophical views

Vox Day is known for libertarian and traditional views, and has been described as an "alt-right figurehead".[55] According to the site Know Your Meme, Day is a "proponent of the philosophy of racial realism, which states that one’s race directly correlates with their ability to think and create."[56]

Day describes himself as a libertarian nationalist and of the Alt-West branch of the Alt-Right. Writing for Publishers Weekly, Kimberly Winston described Day as a "fundamentalist Southern Baptist",[15] but other journalists have made more pointed characterizations, such as Mike VanHelder's assertion in Popular Science that Day's views are "white supremacist."[57] Similarly, an article by Jeet Heer in The New Republic says that Day "has written that women should be deprived of the vote",[58] an interpretation of comments in Day's article "Why women's rights are wrong."[59]

Vox Day's argot, memes, and assorted miscellany

DNC-meme.jpg
Zimbabwe-Meme.jpg

Day produces a daily meme going by the name of The Meme of the Day.[citation needed] Examples include those shown at the right.

Day is known for coining terms for several concepts that have been popularly adopted, and for constructing logical and philosophical arguments that are frequently referenced in the media. He did not coin the term cuckservative but merely popularized it in the bestselling book of that name.[citation needed]

  • Alt-White and Alt-West — the two primary branches of the Alt-Right.
  • Magic Dirt — the idea that geographical relocation will automatically transform the behavior of an individual or a group of people.
  • Omniderigence — the idea that God directly dictates every action and every perceived actor in the universe.
  • SJWs Always Lie — the idea that social justice warriors are reliably dishonest.
  • Voliscience — the idea that God knows as much as God wants to know. As opposed to omniscience.
  • Vox's first Law — "Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from madness. (As people usually conclude that I'm crazy, rather than just admit they don't understand what I'm talking about.)"[62] This law is likely based on the third of Clarke's three laws.

Criticisms

In 2015, reporter Michael Rapoport described Day in The Wall Street Journal as "the most despised man in science fiction".[63] Jeet Heer of New Republic referred to Day as "noxious", "vile", and wrote that "He makes no pretense to moderation."[64] Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Associate Publisher of Tor Books, said Day "rises all the way to 'downright evil'."[65] RationalWiki considers him to be "public enemy number one of the entire science fiction community."[66] Wikipedia has described Day as being "far right", a "white supremacist", and a "misogynist".[67]

Discography

Video games

Game name First released System name(s) Role(s)
X-Kaliber 2097 1994 SNES Music (Psykosonik)
CyClones 1994 DOS Audio
Rebel Moon 1995 DOS Game designer, co-producer
Rebel Moon Rising 1997 DOS Game designer, co-producer
Rebel Moon Revolution Planned 1999 Windows Game designer, co-producer
The War in Heaven 1999 Windows Game designer
Traveller Planned 2000 Sega Dreamcast Game designer
Hot Dish 2007 Windows Game designer

Bibliography

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police (2015) ISBN 978-952-7065-68-6, front cover.

Selected book length works include:

As a contributor:

References

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  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Retrieved Mar 12, 2022 | https://voxday.net/tag/russia/
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/
  45. ↑ Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters, by Amy Wallace, in Wired; published August 23, 2015; retrieved August 26, 2015
  46. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  47. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  49. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  50. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  51. ↑ 51.0 51.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  53. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  54. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  55. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  56. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  57. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  58. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  59. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  60. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  61. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  62. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. from 4m50s to 5m10s
  63. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  64. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  65. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  66. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  67. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Writing
Video games
Media

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