 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2022) |
 | |
| Original author(s) | John McEntee |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Right Stuff App, Inc |
| Initial release | 30 September 2022 [1] |
| Operating system | iOS |
| Website | www |
The Right Stuff is a dating app for American conservatives. It was founded by John McEntee, Daniel Huff and Isaac Stalzer [2] [3] and is funded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. [4] [5]
The Right Stuff was founded by former Trump White House aides John McEntee and Daniel Huff, [6] [7] and Trump Administration appointee Isaac Stalzer. [8] In 2021, McEntee met with Peter Thiel to pitch him on The Right Stuff.[ citation needed ] Thiel agreed to fund The Right Stuff[ citation needed ] and subsequently made a seed round investment of $1.5 million. [4] [9] The New York Times reported in February 2022 that Thiel was funding the app as part of a larger effort to also finance "hard-right" political candidates with Trumpian views. [10] [4]
The company is based in Brea, California.[ citation needed ] The Right Stuff is part of a larger trend among conservatives to create alternatives to a media culture they see as dominated by the political left.[ citation needed ]
The app was launched on September 30, 2022. [1] The Daily Beast reported that it generated 6,000 and 7,000 downloads in its first two days on the Apple App Store, before falling to 1,000 per day between October 8 and 10. [1] [11]
The Right Stuff's marketing is targeted towards young conservatives primarily living in large, progressive cities.[ citation needed ] Its tagline is "A dating app for the right wing" and "Profiles without Pronouns." [12] A promotional video featuring Ryann McEnany, the sister of former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, was released in August 2022. [13] [14]
The Right Stuff's TikTok account @DateRightStuff has become a phenomenon in its own right, garnering millions of likes and several hundred thousand followers. The account features the app's founder performing skits that poke fun at liberals. Other skits show McEntee lamenting over his ongoing struggle to find a romantic partner.
The app received mainly negative reviews from users, [1] [15] [16] with a 3.9 star rating in the Apple App Store as of October 4. [15] Criticism was directed at the app's invite-only model, [1] [15] [16] a lack of female users [16] and the company's slowness in approving new user profiles, [1] as well as a prompt reading "January 6 was..."; some users said that the FBI contacted them after they answered the prompt. [15] [16] [17] A spokesperson for The Right Stuff told The Independent that it had determined the reports of FBI contact were false, and attributed them to "people trolling". [15]
Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of May 2022, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $7.19 billion and was ranked 297th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Parler is an American alt-tech social networking service associated with conservatives. Journalists have described Parler as an alt-tech alternative to Twitter, and users include those banned from mainstream social networks or who oppose their moderation policies. Launched in August 2018, Parler markets itself as a free speech-focused and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
The Federalist is an American conservative online magazine and podcast that covers politics, policy, culture, and religion, and publishes a newsletter. The site was co-founded by Ben Domenech and Sean Davis and launched in September 2013.
Blake Gates Masters is an American venture capitalist and political candidate. Frequently referred to as a protégé of businessman Peter Thiel, Masters co-wrote Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future with Thiel in 2014, based on notes Masters had taken at Stanford Law School in 2012. He was later chief operating officer of Thiel's investment firm, Thiel Capital, and also president of the Thiel Foundation.
Bumble is an online dating application. Profiles of potential matches are displayed to users, who can "swipe left" to reject a candidate or "swipe right" to indicate interest. In heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contact with matched male users, while in same-sex matches either person can send a message first. The app is a product of Bumble Inc.
Kayleigh McEnany is an American conservative political commentator and author who served the administration of Donald Trump as the 33rd White House press secretary from April 2020 to January 2021.
Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service known for its far-right userbase. Widely described as a haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem. Antisemitism is prominent in the site's content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory. Gab is based in Pennsylvania.
Michael Cernovich is an American right-wing social media personality, political commentator, and conspiracy theorist. Though he initially called himself alt-right, he dissociated from the movement after Richard Spencer became its public face. Cernovich describes himself as part of the new right and some have described him as part of the alt-lite.
John David McEntee II is the founder and CEO of The Right Stuff, a dating app for conservatives. McEntee is also an American political advisor who served as Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump Administration. McEntee began as a body man and personal aide to the president until he was dismissed by White House chief of staff John Kelly in March 2018. McEntee had failed a security clearance background check and was under investigation by the Homeland Security Department for possible financial crimes relating to gambling. After Kelly was dismissed in December 2018, Trump rehired McEntee and named him Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in February 2020.
James David Vance is an American venture capitalist, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he came to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Jack Michael Posobiec III is an American alt-right political activist, television correspondent and presenter, conspiracy theorist, and former United States Navy intelligence officer. Posobiec is known for his pro-Donald Trump comments on Twitter, as well as using white supremacist and antisemitic symbols and talking points, including the white genocide conspiracy theory. He has repeatedly planted false and derogatory claims about political figures in an effort to damage his opponents. He has promoted fake news, including the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming high-ranking Democratic Party officials were involved in a child sex ring. He was also a promoter of the Stop the Steal movement.
The 2022 United States Senate election in Arizona was held on November 8, 2022, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Arizona.
Nicholas Joseph Fuentes is an American white supremacist political commentator and live streamer. A former YouTuber, his channel was permanently suspended in February 2020 for violating YouTube's hate speech policy. He is known for holding antisemitic views and denying the Holocaust. Fuentes identifies as a member of the incel movement, as a supporter of authoritarian government, and as a Catholic integralist and Christian nationalist.
Alt-tech are social media platforms and Internet service providers that have become popular among the alt-right, far-right, and others who espouse extreme or fringe opinions, in the belief that these alternatives moderate content less stringently than mainstream internet service providers.
Jeff Giesea is an American entrepreneur who is a business affiliate of several of Peter Thiel's companies and venture capital groups.
On January 6, 2021, Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot during an attack on the United States Capitol. She was part of a crowd of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump who breached the United States Capitol building seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Babbitt attempted to climb through a shattered window beside a barricaded door into the Speaker's Lobby, which led to her being shot in the left shoulder by a United States Capitol Police (USCP) officer. After a USCP emergency response team administered aid, Babbitt was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she later died. The USCP deemed the shooting was "lawful and within Department policy" and "potentially saved Members and staff from serious injury and possible death".
Rumble is an online video platform, web hosting and cloud services business headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with its U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key, Florida. It was founded in October 2013 by Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian technology entrepreneur. The cloud services business hosts Truth Social, and the video platform is popular among American right and far-right users. The platform has been described as part of "alt-tech".
Gettr is an alt-tech social media platform and microblogging site targeting American conservatives. It was founded by Jason Miller, a former Donald Trump aide, and was officially launched on July 4, 2021. Its user interface and feature set have been described as very similar to those of Twitter.
Truth Social is a social media platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group, an American media and technology company founded in October 2021 by former U.S. president Donald Trump. It has been called a competitor to Parler and Gab in trying to provide an alternative to Twitter and Facebook.
The Twitter Files are a series of releases of select internal Twitter, Inc. documents that were made public, starting in December 2022, by CEO Elon Musk, who gave them to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berenson shortly after Musk acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022. Taibbi and Weiss coordinated the publication of the documents with Musk, releasing details of the files as a series of Twitter threads.