Founded by Trump advisers, backed by billionaire Trumpite Peter Thiel, The Right Stuff is a safe zone for anyone allergic to pronouns and liberals. Will it do better than all its predecessors?
The moment absolutely nobody had been waiting for has finally arrived: The Right Stuff has launched. What fresh hell is this, you ask. It’s a new conservative dating app that promises to let you “view profiles without pronouns” and “connect with people who aren’t offended by everything”. Despite this all being very predictable stuff, the app has been getting a lot of attention for three reasons: 1) the ads are unintentionally hilarious, 2) it was co-founded by former Trump administration officials and Ryann McEnany, the sister of former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, is the app’s spokesperson; 3) creepy Trump-loving billionaire Peter Thiel, who has been called “the most important person in Silicon Valley”, has invested $1.5m into the project.
It’s that last bit that I find fascinating. The money isn’t much for a guy like Thiel, but it’s still an investment; I’d love to know what he sees in the app. He certainly doesn’t see an opportunity to use it himself: Thiel is gay and The Right Stuff currently only caters for heterosexuals. It’s also hard to imagine he sees a robust business model spearheaded by tech-savvy geniuses. While The Right Stuff has only just launched, it has, in the grand tradition of anything remotely connected to Trump, immediately run into legal problems. Turns out there is already another dating service, set up a long time ago, called The Right Stuff (targeted at graduates of elite universities) which is reportedly planning to send a cease-and-desist letter to the new iteration. “There are a lot of other really good rightwing names that they could choose,” the founder of the original Right Stuff, Dawne Touchings, complained to the Daily Beast. “They are very smart; I am sure they could come up with something!”
