The Daily Beast is reporting that Palmer Luckey, the tech entrepreneur who became a multi-millionaire when he sold his Oculus virtual reality technology to Facebook in 2014, has identified himself as the “money man” behind a political group dedicated to pushing anti-Hillary Clinton memes out into the real world. Luckey is reportedly listed as a “vice-president” of Nimble America, a group responsible for translating popular image posts from Reddit into billboards in battleground states, including this one, showing a cartoon of Clinton’s head alongside the phrase “Too Big To Jail,” in Pennsylvania.
The group was organized by two former moderators of Reddit’s /r/TheDonald—a central location for Donald Trump support, often in the form of memes and other viral content—with aid from popular and controversial right-wing figure Milo Yiannopoulos. The subreddit quickly turned on Nimble America after its announcement, though, with many members denouncing it as a scam or distraction, and questioning why a group with a “billionaire” backer was requesting donations of money that could be going to the candidate instead.
According to its initial post, Nimble America—a 501(c)(4) organization—was founded on the idea that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real,” i.e., that the image-heavy viral content that makes up so much of the conversation in the rowdier neighborhoods of the internet might be capable of enacting change in the real world. For his own part, Luckey says he gave the group money because “it sounded like a real jolly good time,” but might be reconsidering his contributions. “I’m not going to keep throwing money after something if I don’t see any results,” he told The Daily Beast.