https://www.wired.com/story/jd-vance-venmo/
The Republican VP nominee's Venmo network reveals connections ranging from the architects of Project 2025 to enemies of Donald Trump—and the populist's close ties to the very elites he rails against.
Vance has frequently positioned himself as anti-elite, writing in Hillbilly Elegy: “Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn.” In an April post on X, Vance, who graduated Yale Law School in 2013
Lovely juxtaposition.
What, are you accusing the trumpubliQan nominee for VP of . . . Ha - what . . . hypocrisy??!
“Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn.” In an April post on X, Vance, who graduated Yale Law School in 2013
This primal bootlicker views all members of the wealthy elites as worthy of gigantic GOP tax cuts.
his extensive network of connections with establishment GOP heavyweights, wealthy financiers, technology executives, the prestige press, and fellow graduates of Yale Law School—precisely the elites he rails against.
More than 200 people appear on Vance’s Venmo “friends” list. Among them is Amalia Halikias, government relations director at the Heritage Foundation—the conservative think tank coordinating the controversial Project 2025. ... So are Jeff Flake, the famously anti-Trump former Arizona senator and current ambassador to Turkey; lobbyists from organizations like the Government Strategies Group; people affiliated with other conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute; journalists and media personalities like Bari Weiss and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson; and tech executives from Anthropic and AOL. (None of these people responded to requests for comment.)
This points to one important caveat—being friends on Venmo does not mean two people have transacted together, or even know the payment app has designated them as friends.
According to Venmo, when someone first uses the app, they are prompted to allow it to access their phone contacts. If they agree, Venmo will find any contacts already using the app and automatically populate the user’s friend list. Users can also intentionally add or remove friends. Along with the user’s transactions, their friends list is public by default. This means it’s likely that Vance’s list of friends was largely populated by the contacts in his phone when he set up his account in December of 2016.
If I'm not mistaken, the connection can be as remote as that Vance and the other person were both recipients in the TO: field of the same email at some point in the past.
Any time I've signed up for any app or website and gave it permission to read my contacts, that was where the loosest connections it made came from, the head scratchers. When I searched for them in my contacts I found no direct contact, but when I searched for them in email I found that once long ago we were both recipients of a big group email for whatever reason.
On the other hand, I don't look kindly upon this Vance fellow and I'm happy to suppose that he's directly connected to turds like Carlson et al.
Maybe. Venmo does have an option to automatically add your contacts to your Venmo friends, which I assume defaults to on.
JD Vance aside, why does anyone like venmo? Why does anyone want a social network in their payment processing? Isn't that obviously a terrible idea?
I mean especially given how touchy Americans are about money, why are people suddenly signing up to make it all public? It seems like a huge (self)violation of privacy.
Any time I post someone on Venmo, I send it privately. Any time someone pays me, it's always sent publicly.
I'm not a privacy nut, and that doesn't bother me so much as I just don't understand why you'd want these transactions being public.
Why does anyone need or want to know that I paid the neighbor kid to more my lawn?
One of the first things I did was set my account private for every transaction (family uses venmo 🤮). Absolutely disgusting that that shit is just broadcasted by default ALONG WITH THE AMOUNT.
My god, people install that sort of shit on their phones? "Why yes, I would like you to publish my contacts list on the internet, that would be lovely. How about you show all my transactions as well? Perfect."
He probably has one eternally tied down in his basement that he takes his anger out on when he has a bad day.
Rent boy, or rentboy, is a term that is used to describe a particular type of male prostitute. It refers primarily to young men (although its use extends to male prostitutes of all ages) who have sex with men. The term originated in Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand and originally was applied to a male prostitute who was both young and working-class. Middle-class and upper-class male prostitutes more commonly would have been called escorts, and older male prostitutes would have been referred to as hustlers. The rent boy was almost exclusively a street worker who charged low rates for his service. Although the term retains its original meaning, it has gained a certain cachet within the sex-worker community and sometimes is appropriated by higher-end male prostitutes who wish to provide a rough trade fantasy to their clients.
The most famous use of the word was by Thomas Swinscow, who admitted in 1895 to having worked as a rent boy in a London male brothel. The subsequent investigation, called the Cleveland Street Scandal, implicated high-ranking officials. Rumors circulated for decades that the prince of Wales was involved in the scandal, and records released in 1975 confirmed that, although they did not conclude that he was a patron of the brothel. The public outcry over the scandal was partly responsible for the prosecution of Oscar Wilde that year on charges of gross indecency. Victorian morality could not accommodate the existence of rentboys, and rejection of the practice led to a general increase in homophobia.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rent-boy
I thought it was a superhero named RentBoy who, like Robin hood, avenges renters from the evil Land Lord.
Being Venmo Friends with the SWAMP is EXACTLY the type of Person we need to Drain The Swamp!