Three-Sided Marketplace: Hitmen, Consumers, and Witches

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sources-say-bay-area-house-party

[previously in series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Something is off about this Bay Area House Party. There are . . . women.

“I’ve never seen a gender balance like this in the Bay Area,” you tell your host Chris. “Is this one of those fabled ratio parties?”

“No - have you heard of curtfishing? It’s the new male dating trend. You say in your Bumble profile that you’re a member of the Dissident Right who often attends parties with Curtis Yarvin. Then female journos ask you out in the hopes that you’ll bring them along and they can turn it into an article.”

“What happens when they realize Curtis Yarvin isn’t at the party?”

“Oh, everyone pools their money and hires someone to pretend to be Curtis. You can just do things. Today it’s Ramchandra.”

You follow his gaze, and there is Ramchandra, hair greased back, wearing a leather jacket, surrounded by a crowd of young women. “When I say I’m against furries,” he’s explaining, staccato, at 120 wpm, “I mean the sort of captured furries you get under the post-Warren-G-Harding liberal order, the ones getting the fat checks from the Armenians at Harvard and the Department of Energy. I love real furries, the kind you would have found in 1920s New Mexico eating crocodile steaks with Baron von Ungern-Sternberg! Some of my best friends are furries, as de Broglie-Bohm and my sainted mother used to say! Just watch out for the Kikuyu, that’s my advice! Hahahahahaha!” Some of the women are taking notes. “But enough about me. When I was seventeen, I spent seven weeks in Bensonhurst - that’s in the Rotten Apple, in case you can’t tell your Nepalis from your Neapolitans. A dear uncle of mine, after whom I was named…”

“Ramchandra is pretty good,” you admit. “Still, if it were me I would have gone with a white guy.”

“It’s fine,” says Chris. “Curtis describes himself as a mischling, and none of the journos know what that means.”

Ramchandra is still talking. “Of course, strawberries have only been strawberries since after the Kronstadt Rebellion. Before that, strawberries were just pears. You had to get them hand-painted red by Gypsies, if you can believe that. Gypsies! So if you hear someone from west of Pennsylvania Avenue mention ‘strawberries’, that’s what we in the business call il significanto.”

“I admit he has talent,“ you say. “But this curtfishing thing - surely at some point your date realizes that you’re not actually a high-status yet problematic bad boy who can further her career just by existing, and then she ghosts you, right?”

“That’s every date in San Francisco. But when you curtfish, sometimes she comps your meal from her expense account. It’s a strict Pareto improvement!”

After some thought, you agree this is a great strategy with no downsides, maybe the biggest innovation in dating since the invention of alcohol. Having failed to bring your own journo to the party, you look for one who seems unattached. You catch the eye of a blonde woman who introduces herself as Gabrielle, and you try to give her the least autistic “Hello” of which you are capable.