Would you like a side order of alt-right trolling with your virtual reality headset?
Palmer Luckey, the guy who invented the Oculus Rift, has admitted funding Donald Trump’s trolls and their relentless creation of anti-Hillary memes.
Mum mortified after teacher finds dead squirrel in her son's backpack
He told the Daily Beast that he had donated ‘significant funds’ to Nimble America, a group that describes itself as a ‘non-profit dedicated to shitposting in real life’.
Luckey is thought to have received around £535million from the £1.5billion sale of Oculus to Facebook, and now works for the social network. He told the DB that he used Facebook to first get in touch with the group.
Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus VR Inc. and creator of the Oculus Rift, demonstrates the new Oculus Rift headset during the "Step Into The Rift" event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Facebook Inc.'s Oculus virtual-reality headsets will work with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 10 and use the software maker's wireless Xbox game controller. Photographer:
‘It went along the lines of, “Hey, I have a bunch of money. I would love to see more of this stuff”,’ he said, referring to the group’s anti-Clinton memes.
He then offered to help them ‘build buzz and do fundraising’, to pay for its initial push and its ads, and to match any money raised during a 48-hour donation drive.
A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, Iraq June 23, 2014.
‘I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time,’ he said.
Posting on Reddit as NimbleRichMan (nice name, right) on pro-Trump subreddit /r/The_Donald, he wrote that he had supported Trump for a long time, and had even encouraged him to run in the 2012 election.
This means he backed Trump and his policies when he was 19 years old, and first setting up his Oculus Kickstarter campaign.
‘America is the land of opportunity. I made the most of that opportunity. I am a member of the 0.001%. I started with nothing and worked my way to the top,’ he wrote.
Toddler survived alone in wolf-inhabited Siberian forest for three days
‘I reached out to the leaders of this community because I am doing everything I can to help make America great again. I have already donated significant funds to Nimble America, and will continue to do so.’
He then added that people who don’t like Trump just ‘cannot stand to see successful people who are proud of their success’, before issuing the rallying cry: ‘Make America great again with your meme magic, centipedes of the Donald!’