Two weeks ago, YouTube sex educator and MTV sex-education show host Laci Green announced that after a long absence from YouTube, she would soon upload new videos featuring more anti-feminist/anti-SJW content. Green spoke of “taking the red pill”, in the sincere sense of choosing to radically change her views rather than carry on believing what she has up to this point despite her doubts.

Effectively, Green announced she had been watching videos from the alt-right YouTube talk circuit, liked at least some of what she found, and offered to appear on their debates and livestreams. The news appears to have been a boon to the alt-right, and a bust for Green’s established left-leaning and feminist audience. Now, the question on everyone’s mind would seem to be: Why is Laci Green now engaging with a community which has for years harassed her and treated her as their folk demon?

According to Laci, she just “[ran] out of fucks”, and in a spirit of depression, indifference, and self-loathing decided “I don’t have a choice, it’s this or try to appease everyone and I gotta do me.” Having encountered harassment and censorship both within feminism and anti-feminism, it would appear Green is now extending her dialog with right-leaning YouTube stars on the right as a sort of centrist pursuit. However, I think there’s also more proximal incentives for Laci’s pivot to the center: money and viewers.

Here’s the facts: Green’s show on MTV has ended, and her personal channel hasn’t uploaded new videos for months. Building pro-feminist, left-leaning channels of any size is slow work, especially if you’re returning to it after a years-long absence. Alt-right channels, however, get great ratings and plenty of patronage; and many of them do so by regularly discussing Laci Green herself. Laci’s person and the footage of her shows has been the fodder for probably hundreds of these low-effort talk-show broadcasts. Sargon of Akkad, in particular, has been obsessed with Green for years. He even once pretended to be Laci Green by speeding his voice up and arguing with himself for his YouTube talk show. His viewers like it: currently, Sargon gets $5,550 a month to “create arguments”. Even Laci’s announcements about thinking about talking with the alt-right have gotten increased views compared to the last few sex-ed videos she posted. Financially, Laci Green has every incentive to take her channel in the direction it appears to be headed.

Laci Green would not be the first feminist to sell out and ally herself with the right. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin did it in order to draft an antipornography civil rights ordinance for the right-leaning Minneapolis city government. Director Cassie Jaye did it for her 2016 movie, “The Red Pill”, which was bankrolled by Mike Cernovich and A Voice for Men.  Feminist lifestyle marketing is now a common ad strategy for all kinds of products. However, I think if Laci is going to take her channel in a more “naive and stays that way” type direction, it bodes poorly for the discourse. It suggests one of the most experienced feminist channels on YouTube has decided it’s better to go along with with the alt-right than to resist it.

CORRECTION 05/27/17: “The Red Pill” is the fourth feature film made by Cassie Jaye, not her second. I regret the error.