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| Original author(s) | John McEntee |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Right Stuff App, Inc |
| Initial release | September 30, 2022 [1] |
| Operating system | iOS |
| Website | www |
The Right Stuff is a dating app for American Republicans and conservatives. It was founded by John McEntee, Daniel Huff, and Isaac Stalzer [2] [3] and is funded by Peter Thiel. [4] [5]
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in the United States |
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The Right Stuff was founded by John McEntee, Daniel Huff, [6] [7] and Isaac Stalzer. [8] Peter Thiel funded The Right Stuff with 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 (though Thiel would later back away from this strategy). [10] [4] [11]
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. [12]
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] [13]
The app has a number of features intended to weed out internet trolls, such as by being invite-only, and also requiring manual approval of each new user by the company itself. The app also has terms and features intended to enforce its political leanings, such as by prohibiting mention of gay relationships (despite the app being funded by Thiel, a married gay billionaire.) [14] [15]
Its tagline is "A dating app for the right wing" and "Profiles without Pronouns." [16] A promotional video featuring Ryann McEnany, the sister of former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, was released in August 2022. [17] [18]
The app received mainly negative reviews from users, [14] [19] [1] [20] [21] with a 2.4 star rating in the Apple App Store as of October 4, 2022. [20] Criticism was directed at the app's invite-only model, [1] [20] [21] a conspicuous absence of female users, [21] [22] and the company's slowness in approving new user profiles, [1] as well as a prompt that began "January 6 was..."; some users said that the FBI contacted them after they answered the prompt. [20] [21] [23] 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". [20]
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American 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 July 2024, Thiel had an estimated net worth of US$11.2 billion and was ranked 212th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
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