Cue the St. Patrick Cam Girls. … Now if only we could find a leprechaun who could grant our wish for some hot sex. But who needs a leprechaun when virtual sex abounds? Continue reading “St. Patrick Cam Girls”
Olga Zavershinskaya, a Russian visual artist currently based in the Czech Republic, creates striking, surreal, erotic images that are a combination of photography and digital manipulation. Olga combines shapes, lines and light, reimagining the female nude — but always with a memorable twist, perfect for a Post-Corona exploration. Continue reading “Penthouse Post-Corona Flourish”
The viral pandemic threw a wrench into our social lives this year. Any plans we might have had that involved wearing a suit and going out were overpowered by our rotation of sweatpants and T-shirts and the requirement to stay in. However, they say that clothes maketh the man, and with the lockdown laws lifting, there’s never been a better time to refresh your wardrobe and up your sartorial style game.
We’ve come up with a few tips that will have you looking like a proper dapper chap for when it’s time to don a suit again.
When we think of the pinstripe suit, it’s easy to picture Wall Street bankers and big shot lawyers. But the fact is pinstripe suits are back in a big way and will definitely make you stand out from the crowd. They can be worn with or without a vest, depending on the weather, and they also look great with a tie or cravat.
If pinstripes aren’t your thing and you like a more refined, minimalist look for the occasion, you could definitely consider lighter color suits for your event. Beige or light blue always looks fantastic, especially when accompanied by some sleek navy-blue accessories to finish off your ensemble. Slip on your favorite pair of (designer) sunglasses to complete the look.
This is an area that can really make or break your look.
Socks are an easily forgettable yet crucial link in a man’s wardrobe. Resist the urge to go too outlandish. For a classic, fluid look, coordinate the sock color with the tone of your trousers. Bolder dressers should consider mixing it up with a contrasting tone that complements another detail of the outfit (pocket square, tie, etc.). No matter what anyone says, superheroes and cartoon characters are not cool or a cultivated representation of who you are. Length matters! Always go for a longer sock, rather than shorter. Steer clear from putting your ankles on display.
As for shoes, a nice pair of brogues or derby shoes never go astray, especially if you’re heading out for a day at the races.
We pause for our now traditional Post-Corona Adaptation intermission. Taking a break with some visual dessert before heading into part two on our Post-Corona trip.
We are actively looking for the answer to that online shop for Penthouse Merchandise question, though. Somebody around here ought to know something it seems like.
In the meantime, we shall continue with our survival-critical look into lifestyle excellence.
They say it’s better to give than to receive, but those who make the effort to give, often receive.
Buying lingerie for a lover can be a minefield. Too small and she’ll be embarrassed. Too big and you’ll be in the doghouse for a week. When buying for a new lover, follow these basic tips and you’ll stay in the good books.
When in doubt, a gift certificate is always the best bet. [Not to beat on the obvious here, but give some thought to the vendor if you decide to go in this truly boring, grandma-like direction. A gift certificate to a cruise line or Weight Watchers may not be the best idea right now, for example. -Ed.]
We always consider historical perspective relevant, perhaps never moreso than in the midst of a global pandemic of which we have not seen the likes in over a century. Consequently, we decided to remaster some visual history of Penthouse itself. Also, we really like Kenna James.
For the record, we have absolutely zero idea why they skipped the entire 1970s when creating this series. Moreover, no one still working here has any idea why/how this happened. Near as we can tell, a former executive experience a horrible emotional tragedy in the 1970s, and she mandated that we all pretend that decade never existed. That could be untrue, however.
As we begin our Post-Corona Emergence trek and begin anticipating a return to some kind of new normality (and lockdown laws relax), it’s time to have a look in the mirror and see if your head and face could do with a touch of TLC. You may also want to lose a bit of that lockdown flab in time for a day on the beach, especially if you’re looking to grab a certain kind of attention.
A new look is a great way to give yourself a morale boost. It can be as small or as big as you like, but it has to have a positive impact on your appearance and add a bit of swagger to your step. Maybe you want to grow your beard out, or lose the beard altogether for a ‘stache? Maybe you want to go for a short back and sides or get a high fade. Either way, these things should be carefully considered for maximum effect.
You’re bound to have a great day when your hair is looking good. If your hair product isn’t doing exactly what you need for the style you like, it’s time to explore new options. Everyone’s hair is different, so finding the right hair product can take a bit of trial and error. The main things to consider are the hold and the finish. If you shop online, read the product descriptions and feel free to email the store with any questions you have. Your hair and face need to work together to bring some perspective to your appearance. You might have a small forehead or a round face that isn’t going to work with certain hairstyles. Likewise, if you have a long beard and a super high pompadour but you’re a bit of a shortie, your head is going to appear a lot larger than it actually is. Striking the right balance is important from the off.
A good barber or hairdresser is always going to look at what type of hair you have and your head shape when discussing a cut. If you have a few ideas, it’s always best to have a little consultation with them first as they are usually right when it comes to what will and won’t work. Remember, the more you say, the easier their job becomes, so it’s a win-win situation.
It’s encouraging to see men taking a real vested interest in caring for their skin. Skin care is certainly not just for the ladies; we all have a face and we all feel good when it’s looking its best. Keep things simple by cleansing and moisturizing daily with a once-a-week exfoliation.
From protecting your face from daily pollution to reducing wrinkles, along with promoting an all-round handsome mug, moisturizing daily along with a weekly exfoliation is a new norm for the modern man. A really good face wash for morning and night will also ensure the effects of a hard day’s slog are removed, while retaining essential natural oils that protect your skin. There’s a wide range of skin care products specifically made for men on the market now. Pro tip: the more natural the ingredients, the better the results.
Whether you’re a bearded gent or prefer a clean shave, we’ve got some simple tips for taming your facial hair. To start, a good beard oil is essential for preventing itchy beards that can fall victim to beardruff. Followed by a beard balm, your beard hairs will be left feeling soft and looking relaxed. When shaving, think about whether you suffer from razor burn regularly. If the answer is yes, you most likely need to consider a safety razor for a closer shave without irritation.
If you’re considering losing your beard altogether and returning to a clean-shaven look, be wary of sensitive skin that hasn’t been introduced to a razor for a wee while. If you do have skin irritations when shaving in general, it’s wise to take as much off as possible with your clippers and finish with a safety razor. A good cut-throat shave at your barbershop is even better, as it is refreshing, enjoyable and leaves your skin blemish-free.
By exploring new products, reading labels and asking questions in stores and barber shops, you’ll begin to figure out exactly what works for you. Forge good daily habits by taking the time to implement a simple grooming routine that leaves you feeling and looking sharp every day. Life is a game of confidence, so stay ahead by using the right tools.
We pause for a Post-Corona Emergence intermission worthy of consideration before continuing with part two on Post-Corona Emergence.
Pet of the Month LaSirena69 … Oh! And a Mercedes SLS AMG 2020
Dom Perignon & YSL revere the great Lenny Kravitz, and we salute the rock star. The lord of leather is a style icon who has a very simple style recipe.
Sir Lenny is literally an image of cool, from his trendy locks to his rock ’n’ roll swagger—something that has made the French, in particular, eager to have him as the face of some of their biggest brands. But what exactly does it take to be seen as an icon in a country that has haute couture at its beating heart?
Leather needs to be worn right, otherwise it can all go horribly wrong. Kravitz is often pictured on the red carpets keeping his leather combinations strictly black, from his skintight pants to sleek jackets, usually backed up with a pair of dazzling leather boots with a chunky heel.
In many ways, Mr. Kravitz is a throwback to a mythical type of U.S. rock star from a bygone era. He does this by combining classic light blue denim ensembles that include everything from sleeveless shirts that expose his classy tats, to outlandish bell-bottoms that only he seems able to pull off.
Nothing quite says free spirit like a carefully selected splattering of bracelets, chains, emerald-green rings and a few piercings! Now this can, and often does, go horribly wrong for most people, but again Kravitz keeps it just the right side of cool—enough to make you want to head out and get jeweled up. Problem is most of us end up looking more Mr. T than Mr. K!
Stir gently. [Seems odd. Here we thought “shaken, and not stirred” represented the height of sophistication. -Ed.]
We always consider historical perspective relevant, perhaps never moreso than in the midst of a global pandemic of which we have not seen the likes in over a century. Consequently, we decided to remaster some visual history of Penthouse itself. Also, we really like Kenna James.
Even as video games become more visceral in their display of violence, little to no effort has been paid to the presentation of sexuality — a topic that remains taboo, at least in the mainstream. It would be as if cinema offered only movies like Saving Private Ryan and No Country for Old Men, but nothing to the likes of Risky Business or Fifty Shades of Grey.
Video games have come far, but there is farther still for them to go. And the only games to push the boundaries (in terms of sex) are independent titles on Steam and a handful of visual novels out of Japan.
So why is that? What is it about sexuality that makes mainstream developers avoid the topic entirely?
As an entertainment medium, video games are just that — they’re games. Like board games and sports, they’re rooted in winning and losing and the accumulation of some form of high score. You can’t “win” or “lose” at sex, and the idea of distilling sexuality down into a game with points would make the whole exercise pornographic — and pornography just doesn’t sit well with publishers and mainstream platforms. After all, you’re not going to find a Rocco Siffredi movie on Netflix, much less at a movie theater. Video Game Sex simply suffers from being painted with that overly-broad brush.
Beyond that, porn games have always existed, so that isn’t the issue. The issue is that games just don’t approach sexuality in the same way they do violence — for the very same reason that games often struggle with storytelling.
Video games are not a storytelling medium, but they can be, just as games like L.A. Noire and Detroit: Become Human have shown. But even with those titles, there just isn’t sex in there, and the reason for that is simple: sex scenes, especially interactive ones, are hard (pardon the pun) to properly depict.
Should they be interactive or passive? You could make a quick-time event out of it like Dance Dance Revolution, and have players mash the necessary buttons to coincide with what’s happening onscreen, but players might as well be watching a cutscene. Plus, that’d be kind of weird.
But even if you have all of that figured out, it doesn’t even get into the creation of a video game sex scene.
First, you need to performance-capture the actors. A pair (or more) of people have to be willing to get down and simulate sex. Given that most actors have an unwillingness to even strip down for the camera, game developers are going to be hard-pressed to find ones willing to simulate full sexual intercourse. [Yeah, that’s simply not true. We know hundreds of willing people. -Ed.]
And second, the sex would have to fit the scope of the game’s story. This can, of course, be done. But in the times it’s been tried — in Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and most recently in The Last of Us Part II, the results have been nothing short of cringe-inducing, even to the point where gamers have been taking scenes from the game out of context and turning it into Twitter memes. But for all the mockery The Last of Us Part II has been getting for its sex scenes, it still deserves credit for the attempt.
In summation, you won’t find a lot of sex in video games not simply because it’s taboo, but because — for the most part — it doesn’t fit into the scope of the game, and the effort to insert sex scenes into the narrative ends up detracting from it in some way.
But much like sex (and playing video games), the more you do it, the better you get at it — and game developers could stand to figure out how to make these interactive experiences just as good as they are at depicting violence and death, if only they’d stop being so damn shy about it.
Should one have more immediate goals in mind that perhaps a video game might provide, one might eschew video game sex entirely in favor of some online role-playing of an entirely different nature. Also, should any game developers honestly wish to find some copulating-friendly couples, we’d be happy to send them a list. Oh, and for the record, Risky Business has absolutely no association at all with Risqué Business, but there certainly appears some homage at play there.
In Australia’s case it’s COVIDSafe, whereas the French have StopCovid. In India it’s Aarogya Setu, the Italians have Immuni and even our friends in North Macedonia got in on the act, with cool-sounding rejected high school band name StopKorona!
It took about five minutes for most concerned citizens to say, hold on, aren’t these just surveillance bots designed to track our every move and find out who we’re conspiring with? “No,” came the cry, “we would never! We’ll take care of your data and promise not to share it with the FBI, Facebook or your local nightclub bouncer, honest!”
As of June 1, 2020, 6.13 million Australians had downloaded COVIDSafe. With a population of roughly 25 million, 80 percent of whom own smartphones, that’s about a 30 percent uptake.
Obviously, there were technical issues — the bloody thing didn’t work very well, especially on older iPhones, Bluetooth had to be switched on while you were out and about, and the app had to be running in the foreground. Not to mention the inconvenient modeling conducted by the University of Oxford, which showed 80 percent of smartphone users would have to be using the app for it to be remotely effective in curtailing viral spread.
China’s COVID app openly mines all sorts of data from its citizens, who must swipe their phones to enter offices, restaurants, parks and malls. Their travel history and retail purchases are tracked, so rulebreakers can be identified and bundled into the back of a Hi-Ace. A green light upon swiping means you’re in good health. Yellow is uh-oh, best hightail it back to the bachelor pad. Red results in the aforementioned police van abruptly turning up and a subsequent bop on the noggin. Goodnight, sweet prince.
With rumors abounding of tracing apps being repurposed to log and track other health issues, you have to worry how far Big Brother is willing to go in order to control our every thought, product choice and questionable sexual decision. Got a sniffle? Yellow light. Bought a non-fair-trade cappuccino? Yellow light. Urinary tract infection after a boozy night out in the city? Red light, red light!
In Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 book Super Sad True Love Story, characters in near-future U.S.A. (in debt to China, run by mad President Cortez) carry an apparat, a phone-like device that projects a hologram over their head at all times. This number, from one to eight hundred, is the individual’s fuckability rating, worked out from their general hotness, sexual health, income bracket, style and purchasing history.
Is this where we’re headed? Sexability Rating? Tinder and COVIDSafe joining forces to launch GONADSafe? Why risk touching anyone’s unmentionables before they’ve been exhaustively analyzed, cleansed and rubber-stamped by the government? How about a dating app that reveals specific details about a user’s sexual history, including names and numbers of everyone they’ve ever bumped, STDs, penis sizes, and pubic hairstyle choices?
In the post-corona world, where hygiene practices have turned everyone paranoid and populations have been convinced that surveillance apps are necessary in order to keep everyone safe (rat on your friends and receive frequent flyer points!) only those who are beautiful, government-sanctioned sanitized and wealthy will get laid. For the rest of us, it will be a succession of red flashing lights and Chaturbate marathons. Boomer flu will be the least of our problems.
As you may have figured out, this editorial arrived courtesy of our friends in Australia. Across the world in the U.S. we would of course suggest you consider PenthouseCams rather than that (wholly acceptable, yet not nearly as fun) competitive cam alternative. This one we can vouch for, after all. … Should you simply be one of those folks always searching for interesting phone apps, we can help there too. We’re a helpful bunch, overall.
Natural stunner Emily Willis has captured more than fans’ attention with her beguiling smile and beautiful body — she’s also snagged the title of Pet of the Year Runner-Up!
Since Emily was named Penthouse Pet in May 2019, the 21-year-old Utah native has been busy performing for the camera. But she also has ambitions to launch a website and direct and produce her own sexy scenes to let “fans see my creative side.”
Emily says she’s “happy and honored” to be named POTY Runner-Up and is looking forward to another “awesome year of doing new things!”
So the magazine article ended there (well, before the Sucking Up headline) — except obviously magazines show themselves vastly inferior when it comes to displaying video content. Have you ever seen a video in a paper magazine? It looks a lot like a photograph — really a lot like a photograph.
At any rate, considering Emily’s recent smash performances at the recent round of industry Awards shows — where Dear Runner Up Emily Willis won Female Performer of the Year for both XBIZ and AVN, by the way — it felt like we should brag about this exceptional woman just a bit more if we could. And of course we could.
So we dashed over to the Post Production Team (a trip much more substantial these days than one might think) where we sought a philosophically difficult request to fulfill. How does one show a “PG” striptease, after all? Well, they came up with the following clip that we can show out here in the free area, but we did want to be clear before you get all excited and click on the Play button. While wonderfully alluring and captivatingly sensual, what you will basically see will be Emily dancing around and starting to strip. About the time you may find it getting interesting, we’ll fade to black. That limitation does not offend any of the editors here, however.
Obviously the executives from other divisions at Penthouse want you to sign up for a PenthouseGold Membership. (Hence the “Sucking Up” part of the subheading.) Being fair, however, we will also point out some free places you can experience this lengthily-titled-and-worthy-of-it-all Penthouse Pet of the Year Runner Up Emily Willis. You have Twitter. You have Instagram — if you can figure out the latest place, as poor Emily seems to get deleted every few months. And we even have more HERE. … So feel free to Emily Overload. We tend to enjoy that.
Only utilizing available light, Kenn exclusively shoots in New York City, where his focus is on juxtaposing the female form with the architecture of the Big Apple, always emphasizing composition, angle and perspective in his images.
I’ve had a fascination with photography since a young age and sporadically took photos through my college years. Shortly after earning a degree in business administration, I crazily chose to attend a photography school, and it was at that point I really became hooked on the magic of film and the creative process. I now shoot exclusively digital but really adhere to many of the principles I had learned while working with film.
My photographic endeavor now for a number of years has been to shoot urban erotica. I thrive on juxtaposing the female persona and form against an urban backdrop, placing an emphasis on composition, angle and perspective. Personally, I thrive on putting order to chaos. Particularly in New York City, where it’s always chaotic. To work with a model and bring some order to the space is very fulfilling.
When shooting in public, I’ve usually sought to be as discrete as possible, where the public either isn’t around or won’t notice. Lately though, I’ve begun to photograph nude models in very public spaces. Interestingly, I’ve found many New Yorkers could care less, as I suppose they’ve already pretty much seen it all, or they are otherwise easily distracted with phones or in a rush to get wherever they are going. It’s become an interesting social dynamic that I’m seeking to explore further.
I’ve had a few police encounters in which a mutual understanding was reached to move along. It is legal for women to be topless in public spaces in NYC, so that helps.
The image in this layout of the model photographed from a very low perspective with the skyscrapers above her. I just love the pose she came up with, it exudes so much energy. The angle is very provocative. The backdrop is equally dramatic. For me, this image has all of the pieces of the puzzle working together.
As you might imagine, we cannot show much of Kenn’s art in this public space where sensitive eyes of any age might run across them. That would against our company policy. That said, we obviously encourage you to Join PenthouseGold if you find yourself of legal age and have an interest in the “fewer restrictions” — at it were. Should you wish to see Kenn Lichtenwalter’s work specifically, you might look up Kenn at his site for that. You could even follow him on Instagram, should you be a social media creature.
We can all agree that 2020 was not our best year, mainly because of this fucking pandemic. And, surprise surprise! The pandemic is not over! So what does this mean as far as taking a fresh start in 2021? Well, the world is changing and there are things to look forward to even if it’s not happening just yet. Remember that good things come to those who wait … and good things come to those who seek out those good things … especially in live sex chat! So check out some New Year Cam flavors!
The pandemic is still here, but at least we know that with change, we may see some sort of normalcy in time. While we wait that out, let’s chat with some hot chicks! Since we still can’t find that cute babe at the end of the bar, go on live dates, or even celebrate Valentine’s Day anywhere…options are still available virtually. After all, we’ve been doing mostly everything in our daily lives virtually for the pat year, so we can easily fuck a hot babe virtually too!
Camster.com has hundreds of more girls who have signed up to be cam models in 2021 alone. There is always someone there on the computer screen to talk to, whether it’s about daily life or how badly you need to blow your load. These chicks do everything in live chat from making friends to pulling out the dildoes. Wouldn’t that be one way to celebrate the new year? Never hurts to try…unless you want it to!
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I saw Magnum, a soft rock band from the 1980s. They had big hair and blasted out power ballads about unrequited love. I assumed everyone would stand politely, nodding and singing along, so I wore my best outfit. Slip-on red shoes, white socks, checked golf slacks, a white T-shirt and a cream linen suit jacket with the sleeves rolled up, so I would look like Crockett from Miami Vice.
I miscalculated, badly. Everyone wore black jeans, cowboy boots and leather jackets. The crowd shoved and spat on each other like punk rockers. Ruined my best thrift-shop duds. But it was all good fun! Years later, I cavorted in the filth each Australian summer at bush doofs like Earthcore and Rainbow Serpent, off my face on Ecstasy and lost in the K-hole. Everyone hugged and snogged and got stinky. Remember? Remember how amazing live music was?
I hope you do, because that shit is deader than Elvis. Or is it? The music industry was one of the first to be affected by the worldwide ban on mass gatherings and is likely to be one of the last restored. State and federal governments in Australia have had a chip on their shoulders concerning music festivals for some time now, with increasingly draconian crackdowns on volume, druggy behavior and, in the case of New South Wales’s boys in blue, a fucked-up tendency to strip-search minors.
All of which means they won’t exactly be champing at the bit to green-light musicians hitting the festival and concerts circuit. Which is unfortunate for musicians, who, with internet piracy the norm, have come to rely heavily on touring as a primary source of income.
Still, some canny operators are working out how to play concerts without breaking any coronavirus restriction rules. On May 14, Keith Urban played to 200 people inside 125 vehicles at the Stardust Drive-In Theatre in Watertown, Tenn.
“I’m grateful that we have the technology to do ‘at home’ concerts but come on,” Urban said. “Without the audience it’s just one long soundcheck.”
Keith blasted his hits quietly from the safety of a flatbed truck, with the music piped through FM radios inside the cars.
“The only real challenge for me was [the absence of] the energy from a mosh pit. But the car horns, the flashing headlights, that was crazy cool.”
Drive-in concerts are planned across Europe and America for the rest of this year, but with numbers and pricing options limited, it’s hardly going to make bank for the artists.
Australia might provide the solution. With a virus-free post-corona environment entirely possible Down Under, might international artists be tempted to relocate to Oz and New Zealand for a year? While the northern hemisphere suffers under an unstable pandemic, race riots, protests and a divisive U.S. election this winter, Australians will be enjoying a summer season where we can mingle our fluids freely and with wild abandon. Combine that with the fact that Aussies won’t be able to travel overseas on holiday and the appetite for live music will be staggering.
Those artists who do manage to tour will sell out gigs in record time. Festivals — if they go ahead — will be packed to the gills with revelers seeking the hedonistic joy of live performance. As fate would have it, Australia is being presented with the opportunity to become the world’s leading (and only) stage for live music. So come on, Beyoncé, Timberlake, Kanye, Post Malone, Billie Eilish, Rihanna, Gaga, Drake, Daft Punk and everyone else — post-corona Australia is waiting.
As you may have guessed, this article came in as a friendly contribution from Australia, thus explaining the slightly different view of concerts and the perhaps baffling vernacular. Also, we would of course be remiss if we did not warn everyone that concerts and dancing can get out of hand. We hate to be remiss, seeing as how many of us have never been miss in the first place.
On April 22, 2020, midday on the sprawling Texas base of Fort Hood, a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier named Vanessa Guillén went missing. While junior soldiers going AWOL is hardly unheard of at Fort Hood, or any other military base, that tends to happen before or after long weekends, not during Wednesday lunches. Further confusing the situation, Guillén’s military ID card, credit card and keys were found inside the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (3CR) armory, where she worked as a small arms mechanic and spent much of her workdays. Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal. Continue reading “Justice for Vanessa Guillén?”
When our Skype call connects, I see John McAfee sitting in a soundproofed room. He’s been a fugitive, on the run from the American government, for nearly a year. But he hasn’t let that diminish his spirit. McAfee, 74, is in great shape for his age, and his energy levels are those of a much younger man.
During our interview, I learn other people are in the room, sitting off-camera. They’re his wife, Janice McAfee, and Amy Emshwiller — one of his girlfriends, a former sex worker from Belize, who has admitted to attempting to kill McAfee, more than once. They must have patched things up, because following the tech millionaire around the world as he eludes the long arm of the U.S. government is no small commitment.
Since leaving American soil in 2019, McAfee’s been forced to flee the Bahamas, Cuba and the Dominican Republic — where he says the jails are not nearly as good as Mexican jails, which he tells me he loves — all before his boat was confiscated and authorities shipped him away to sunny England. After which, he tells me, he went underground, hiding his location from even his closest friends and family.
Our conversation starts here.
Yeah, I’m still on the run.
I haven’t paid taxes for 11 years. I refuse. In America, our constitution explicitly forbids it. We had no federal income taxes in America until 1913, when they imposed a 33 percent income tax to help fund World War I, as an emergency measure to be repealed after the war.
Two years ago, though, I started talking on international stages. London, Bucharest, Hong Kong, Malta — all over — telling people, “If you don’t want to pay taxes, here’s how you do it. You’d use privacy cryptocurrency and distributed exchanges, decentralized exchanges.” And nobody, no one, not in any government will ever know anything about your finances, providing you buy everything with crypto and you get paid in crypto.
That’s when the U.S. government decided I’d gone too far. They charged both my wife and I, in January of last year, 2019, with tax fraud.
We’ve been underground since July 17th of last year. That’s almost a year now. We’ve been gone a mighty long time.
Presidents are pretty much powerless to do what they want. Look at what happens even when [Barack] Obama, through a lot of hard work, four years of his time, tried to create Obamacare. We all knew it would be dismantled, and it was.
Nothing can change in America without the deep state changing it. But no one’s running the deep state. It’s a disparate bunch of government departments with people who’ve been there for 50 fucking years. Here’s the problem in America. Trump’s probably going, “Fuck it. Why did I waste my time?”
And besides, I would also advise, if you really want to do something for the good of America, simply let Biden win, because I actually think an America where the president wakes up every day and goes, “Who am I, sweetheart?”
“Oh, you’re Joe Biden. You’re the president.”
“The president? Of what, sweetheart?”
“Of America.”
“Oh, really?”
I think that would be far better. How much damage can that motherfucker do? I’m serious.
There’s obviously a fucking conspiracy there. If you define conspiracy as more than a few people wanting him dead and managing to make it happen.
Good God almighty, everybody knows that he was strangled by his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione.
And so, we know it goes as high as the warden. Beyond that, I mean even me, John McAfee, cannot go higher than that. And I wish I could.
I’m not a doctor, but it is microwave radiation, you have to admit. Put something in the microwave oven and turn it on and see what happens to it. That’s 5G, people. Now, admittedly, it’s a much, much, much lower power. However, it’s for the rest of your fucking life. Not just for two minutes at a super high power, it’s maybe 50 fucking years at a very low power. Nobody knows what that’s going to do. I don’t know what it’s going to do.
I do know this: It’s going to locate your sorry ass within 10 inches or locate your phone within 10 inches. You’re not going to escape anybody with 5G.
Hang on. You’re talking to a man who’s already in hiding from the IRS and their long fucking arm. You want me to piss off some super powerful people? I have no intention of doing so. Next question, my friend.
I’ve only met Bill one time, and that was 1985. And in all of my existence of 74 fucking years, I’ve never met a more boring individual. To the point that if you said, “Mr. McAfee, you have the choice of having dinner with Bill Gates or driving this 10-penny nail through your foot.” I’d say, “Give me the goddamn nail and hammer.”
Now Bill Gates, it’s pretty well known and it’s probably a true fact that he founded and ran one of the largest computer and software companies on the face of the planet. From my own experiences running businesses, the only way you can survive is through deception and disinformation as far as what your plans are for the future.
We don’t really have viruses. Number one, you can’t make any money. I mean, there are programs that lock down your computer and demand money. Ransomware, that’s a virus. But beyond that, there’s no money in it.
No, the entire world of hacking has changed from writing damaging code to designing damaging social engineering paradigms.
Let me give an example. One of my best friends, well-known, I don’t know if I can say his name, but he hires himself and his team out to corporations and government agencies to stress-test their systems.
Some years ago, he was hired by America’s largest electricity provider on the eastern seaboard.
In any case, obviously it’s in America’s political interest that people don’t fuck with electricity providers. So they were hired to try to break into their master control.
First thing he did, he drove around, hired a helicopter, took a look at the terrain. Drove around access roads, dirt roads, whatever, and then he picked a hill about a quarter of a mile from the main gate of the compound, got himself some people, telescopes and cameras, and things necessary for actually taking a photo of the entry gates with absolute clarity from a quarter of a mile.
After a month, he noticed something. He knows that every Thursday, about 50 trucks come through. Old, some of them beat up with lawnmowers and trimming gear, electric sheers and all sorts of shit in the truck beds. And he noticed one thing: Only the first truck would send their paperwork to the guards. And the paperwork, it actually had the number of trucks on it, and so on and so forth. But there were sometimes 50. The guard, after taking the paperwork, ignored the trucks.
About a mile away, the convoy had to come around the curve, and there was an adjacent road that intersected with the main road. So he parked there, waited until about 15 trucks came by and bullied his way in. He gets through the gate, parks where everybody else is parked, and all the people are looking at him, but half of them are illegal Mexicans and, listen, nobody wants to get involved. OK. They went about their business.
They take off their coats, and underneath they’ve got three-piece suits, ties, the whole thing. In his hand is a letter that has on it, “Audit Authorization Letter on General Miller.”
So why did he choose the audit? Because the audit authorization letter is one of the tried and true social engineering tools. Why? You present it, the last thing in their mind is, “Are you real?” The first thing in their mind is, “Good God, did I install the latest version I was supposed to install?” Everybody’s panicked, fucking panicked.
So now at the bottom, they had the general’s signature and two phone numbers to call, just in case. He had operators standing by on these numbers, very professional. And had they called, they would have said, “Yes, General Miller demands that you give full cooperation.” But they never even bothered to call. The security saw the letter, and from then on, my friend and his team were gods.
So, they went to the manager’s office and announced themselves, “I have an authorization letter.” And then said, “And please, we want no one watching what we’re doing, and we want access to everything.” And they did have access, except to the main computer.
Now, the social engineers are also the best lock pickers on the planet. They all have lock-picking gear. My friend is down on his knees, picking the lock to the main computer room, and the security guard comes around. My friend jumps up and says, “You. Here, come here.” They were wearing suits; they’re clearly management, right? “We got a call about this lock. Have you had problems with this thing?” He goes, “No, I don’t know anything about it.” He says, “It keeps getting stuck is what we hear. Open this for us.” And he goes, “No, it works fine, sir.” My friend replies, “OK, you can leave.”
They go inside, they bug-test, they take photographs to prove they got in, because no one’s going to believe this, right? Because no one can get into the most secure fucking facility on the East Coast. Nobody. Social engineers can. This is how social engineers work. Now, imagine how much more fun that is, than spending tedious hours writing some fucking computer code.
No, no, no. I didn’t say anything about that. Nothing about the Wired story. There’s a difference between the Gringo movie that was put out by my archenemy and the Wired piece that was done by Joshua Davis. I didn’t think there was anything untrue about that at all. But let me tell you what happened.
OK, so Wired magazine called me and asked if I’d be willing to have one of their reporters come down and actually live with me for a couple of weeks to write up a big story. I said, “Well, this ought to be fun. Yes. Sure.” And I gave Josh Davis an entire week. I mean, wow, did they send the wrong dude. I mean, he was so out of his fucking comfort zone.
On the second day, for example, I said, “OK, well, I’ve got to put up with this motherfucking guy.” And the big thing about this story, which everybody talks about, is the gun incident, the Russian roulette.
First of all, sleight of hand and magic for kids and things, I enjoy doing that. I’ve been doing it for 55 years. Here’s what I did: I took a bullet and fired it so that the firing cap had detonated already. I then take the bullet itself, put it in the shell so it was just like a real bullet, with the exception if you’re looking closely, you can see the indentation in the cap.
We were sitting at the dining room table in my San Pedro beach house. We were just talking and shit, and while we’re talking, I pull my gun out. He’d never even seen a handgun before. I open it, and I’m still talking, and I’m saying, “Yes. The difficult thing in the jungle,” and I’m emptying the shells on the table. And he’s looking. “The difficult thing was trying to get all of the people together to actually do the work, and they’re so lazy out there.” And I take one of the bullets, I put it back in the gun, it’s the one that’s already been fired, there’s no powder in it. It cannot fire. I spin it and close it, and while I’m still talking, I go, “And the other thing, in Orange Walk, the mayor…” Click.
So, now he jumps up, knocking his chair over, and he’s going crazy. And I go, “What’s the matter?” And so I spun it again, and I went click. Now he’s panicked. He involuntarily jumps back against the wall, he says, “What are you doing?” I go, “Nothing.”
“You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this,” he says.
So finally, I just spun it, and I went: click, click, click. By now, he’s totally freaking out. He’s looking around. “Is there help? Somebody help, I don’t know what’s going to happen. He’s going to shoot me.” So then I said, “Calm down, calm down, calm down. Let me show you something.” And in the meantime, since he’s panicked, he’s paying no goddamn attention. I’ve taken out the dud and put in a live shell while he’s not watching, one of my sleight of hand things. So, “It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK. Josh, it’s OK. Come with me outside. It’s OK. I’ll stop.
I’ll stop.”
I then take the gun, point it at the sand, I go, boom. Sand flies everywhere. “See how lucky that was?”
Now, he was too stupid to figure out, “Goddamn, that was a clever trick.” Because most people they go, “How did you do that?” But not him. No. So he makes this the central point of the whole fucking story about how crazy John is.
I fucked with him the entire time he was with me to the point that when he left, he was just a pool of jelly. He did not know what was up, down, left or fucking right. Why? He’s the media, my son. Had he been remotely honest with me or himself, we might’ve had some fun, but no. OK. So let me show you what happens when you waste my fucking time.
That’s all we got from John McAfee himself, but should you wish more, we helpfully direct you to the Wired Magazine article. Other fascinating interviews appear within these pages, also helpfully. All in all, we’re really very helpful.
If you’ve been feeling a bit nervous lately about Google-and-the-Gang — well, it’s about time. Google, and, to a lesser extent, other tech companies in the U.S. and China, pose the most serious threats to democracy, free speech and human autonomy that humanity has ever faced.
Recent surveys by the prestigious Pew Research Center in the U.S. confirm Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about how their private data is being used by Google-and-the-Gang and even about the ability of these companies to influence our elections.
If only people knew what I knew. They wouldn’t just be concerned. They would have nightmares.
Since 2013, I have been conducting two kinds of research that have revealed a sinister side to Big Tech. First, I have been conducting randomized, controlled experiments — experiments adhering to the very highest standards of scientific integrity — that have revealed and quantified the power tech monopolies have to alter people’s thinking and behavior without their knowledge. Along the way, I have discovered about a dozen new means of influence that the internet has made possible and that are controlled exclusively by a handful of U.S. tech companies and, within the boundaries of its Great Firewall, the Chinese government.
Second, I set up the world’s first passive monitoring systems: Nielsen-type systems that allowed me to look over the shoulders of real people — with their permission — as they were using the internet in the weeks leading up to the 2016 and 2018 elections in the U.S. These systems allowed me to see whether Google and other companies were actually using the new forms of manipulation I had discovered.
Both types of research have uncovered a world of bad news. Among other things:
The search engine is the most powerful mind-control machine ever invented, and because more than 90 percent of searches are conducted on just one search engine in almost every country in the world, Google is, on a daily basis, influencing the thinking, behavior, attitudes, beliefs, purchases and votes of more than 2.5 billion people worldwide — with no one able to counteract what the company is doing.
As of 2015, Google’s search engine was determining the outcomes of upward of 25 percent of the national elections in the world, and, with internet penetration increasing rapidly, that number has almost certainly gone up since. This is because many national elections are won by razor-thin margins (Julia Gillard and her party won the 2010 election in Australia by a mere 0.24 percent of the vote), and because search results that favor one candidate can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters — by up to 80 percent in some demographic groups.
By manipulating search terms — those phrases Google flashes at you while you’re typing a query into its search bar — Google has the power to turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into an astonishing 90/10 split with no one having the slightest idea he or she is being manipulated.
In both 2016 and 2018, we found substantial political bias on the Google search engine — but not on Bing or Yahoo — bias sufficient to have shifted between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes in the presidential race of 2016 and upward of 78.2 million votes to candidates of one party in 2018.
In July 2019, I testified before the U.S. Congress about such issues, and I also explained how Congress could act to constrain Big Tech. The day before my testimony, I published an article in Bloomberg Businessweek explaining how U.S. or European authorities could quickly and permanently end Google’s worldwide monopoly on search and how doing so would make search competitive and innovative again — like it was before Google destroyed all its competitors.
More than a year has passed since then. Has anything changed?
Since 2017, the European Union has fined Google more than 10 billion euros for violating European antitrust laws, and last year the U.S. government fined Facebook $5 billion for failing to protect user privacy. On May 25, 2018, the EU’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, supposedly to protect EU citizens from possible abuses of personal data by tech companies.
Has anything changed?
There have been changes, but they’re all in the wrong direction. Both the revenues and the user bases of Google and Facebook have increased dramatically. When I first began calling for Google’s regulation in 2012, its annual revenue was $50 billion. Since then, the company’s revenue has grown at an increasing rate each year, with no slowdown in sight. In 2018, it raked in $136.4 billion, and in 2019, an incredible $160.7 billion.
Its power and reach have also grown. Last year, Google dramatically increased its ability to monitor the health data of millions of people by purchasing Fitbit, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has further increased its access to health information because of its new partnerships with government health agencies worldwide.
As for that pioneering GDPR, its main effect has been to increase the power of both Facebook and Google in Europe by discouraging startups from entering the tech marketplace. Startups can’t afford to comply with all the GDPR paperwork — only the giants can. Has the GDPR at least protected user data in Europe? Not at all. Google and Facebook are collecting more data than ever; they’re just being more careful about revealing what data they have and how they use it.
Doesn’t Google at least delete the data of EU citizens when they ask it to? Absolutely not. That would be like King Midas flushing gold down the toilet. Google invented the surveillance business model, which has now been adopted in varying degrees by thousands of companies. Under this model, Google entices you into using a wide range of “free” services — Gmail, Google.com, Google Docs, Google Wallet and so on — which, from a business perspective, are just surveillance tools. You and your kids provide the company with an endless stream of personal data, which Google then monetizes. That’s where more than 90 percent of the company’s revenue comes from. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, Google and Facebook sell almost no actual products; for the surveillance-model companies, you and your children are the product.
One of the ways Google crushes competition is by buying it. On average, it buys a new company every week. In 2014, for $3.2 billion in cash, Google acquired Nest Laboratories, which manufactured smart thermostats — that is, thermostats that have internet access through your Wi-Fi network. But why buy a thermostat company?
Google bought Nest to better penetrate the boundaries of your home. The first thing they did — quietly — was to add a microphone to the thermostats, and the newest models include cameras. The recent influx of modern smart speakers — Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home being the most popular at the moment — is driven by a set of extremely disturbing goals: listening, recording, analyzing, monetizing and influencing. The Stasi in Germany could only just listen — before they arrested you, anyway. But Home and Alexa — not to mention Apple’s Siri, which gets all of its answers from Google, and the Google Assistant on Android phones — are fully interactive, just like the “telescreens” in George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Such devices not only listen and record continuously, they also give you the answers these companies want you to hear.
Lest you think my imagination has run wild, please consider: In 2016, Google was granted a U.S. patent — one of several of this sort — entitled “Privacy-Aware Personalized Content for the Smart Home,” which secures the methodology for intelligently interpreting what its microphones and cameras are observing in your home. If your son has left his T-shirt on the floor, and the camera can see an image of Will Smith on it, Google might let your family know when the next Will Smith film is coming out. If Google’s microphone hears your kids whispering in a way that detects “mischief,” it might alert you or recommend a good family counselor.
How far can they take this? Can they draw conclusions about how good a parent you are, about whether you’ve been cheating on your boyfriend or spouse, about your favorite sex positions and toys? Can they rank your social and economic standing? Of course they can.
Another patent, entitled “Smart-Automation System That Suggests or Automatically Implements Selected Household Policies Based on Sensed Observations,” turns the surveillance data into a means for controlling systems in your house: for sounding alarms, locking and unlocking doors, deducing when you’ve gone on vacation, turning the lights off on your kids when they use “foul language,” and for warning that cheeky babysitter of yours to send her boyfriend home now.
Do you trust this Silicon Valley company to be this close to your kids? You shouldn’t, because those same policies you set for your children can also be set, according to that second patent, “based upon certain inputs from remote vendors/facilitators/regulators/etc.” Google has a long history of sharing our personal data with a wide variety of such entities. They even reserve that right under their creepy Terms of Service, to which we all agree as long as we are using a Google application — even if we don’t know we’re using a Google application.
Google wants us to believe the massive amount of personal data they’re collecting about us and our children will never, ever be misused. But we’ve seen how easily massive amounts of data can end up in the wrong hands — in the hands of election riggers at Cambridge Analytica, for example. It’s not just retailers and banks that get hacked; every major tech company has also been hacked. Through hacking or sharing, even those silly, crazy things you said in the privacy of your home but didn’t really mean might end up in the hands of the FBI or the TSA. Wait! Did I just say “privacy?” What was I thinking?
The home that Google envisions — no, the home that Google has already created when we weren’t paying attention — is an Orwellian wet dream, in which the walls have ears and the thermostat is definitely listening. And those are just the big moves Google has made. Densely packed between each of those moves is the acquiring of multitudes of businesses, intellectual property and technologies — all for the purpose of extracting and interpreting more and more of your personal data.
And those are the moves we know about. For a company this steeped in secrecy and surveillance, with close ties to the NSA and CIA, I’m sure the list we don’t know about is much longer.
People occasionally tell me I exaggerate such matters. But my research over the past seven years has put me in an oddly ironic position when it comes to exaggeration: No matter what I tell you about the threat that Google-and-the-Gang pose to our families and societies, I am, it turns out, grossly understating the seriousness of the problem.
Bear that in mind as we now move from the comfort of your own home (still feeling comfortable there?) to the sanctity of the voting booth.
In June 2016, a few months before the U.S. electorate — or least our archaic Electoral College — selected Donald J. Trump to be our president, a small news outlet called Sourcefed released a dramatic seven-minute video that claimed Google was deliberately suppressing negative search suggestions for candidate Hillary Clinton (such as “Hillary Clinton crimes,” which Google Trends showed people were searching for in large numbers) while suggesting only positive terms (such as “Hillary Clinton crime reform,” which Google Trends showed virtually no one was searching for). Google was not suppressing negative search terms for people like Donald Trump (“Donald Trump racist”) and Bernie Sanders (“Bernie Sanders socialist”).
Unfortunately, Sourcefed posted their video on Google-owned YouTube — what were they thinking? As views of the video rapidly approached the million mark, Google blocked access to it.
Impossible, you say. Isn’t Google’s company motto: “Don’t be evil?” Sorry, but Google officially dropped that motto in 2015. As I said, you haven’t been paying attention.
Fortunately, the three-minute version Sourcefed posted on Facebook — which, alas, cut out all the references to my research — survived Google’s censorship and soon passed 25 million views.
That video inspired me to begin conducting experiments on search suggestions, which led to my discovery of the Search Suggestion Effect or SSE. Those experiments have revealed a number of disturbing things about search suggestions, among them:
(a) One of the simplest and most effective ways to use a search engine to shift opinions or votes is to suppress negative search terms for the candidate or cause or company you support, while allowing negative search suggestions to appear for the other candidate or cause or company.
(b) This shift occurs because of a well-known behavioral effect called “negativity bias” — also known as the “cockroach in the salad” effect. Negatives draw lots of attention and thought. That little cockroach in the middle of that big salad ruins the whole salad, does it not? When it comes to search suggestions, we learned that a negative search term can draw between 10 and 15 times as many clicks as a neutral or positive term. So a suggestion like “Donald Trump racist” will draw a lot more traffic than a suggestion like “Hillary Clinton crime bill,” at least for undecided voters, and those are exactly the voters Google wants to influence to tilt an election. That’s why suppressing negatives for your favorite candidate can shift so many votes.
(c) When we manipulate people by using biased search suggestions, people have no idea they’re being influenced. Manipulations that people can’t see are extremely dangerous, because when people can’t see a source of influence, they mistakenly conclude they have made up their own minds.
(d) Like bias in search results, answer boxes and newsfeeds, search suggestion manipulations are what Google insiders call “ephemeral experiences” — that is, fleeting experiences that impact users and then disappear, leaving no trace. In other words, authorities can never prove that SSE has been used on a large scale. There is no way to go back in time to see what search suggestions, search results or newsfeeds people were being shown. And Google employees know that. That’s why I developed monitoring systems — to preserve those ephemeral experiences. In 2016, I preserved 13,207 election-related searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo, along with the 98,044 web pages to which the search results linked. In 2018, I captured more than 47,000 searches and nearly 400,000 web pages. Once you capture such content, you can look for bias or censorship, and you can quantify it.
Over the years, I have been discovering, studying and quantifying a number of new forms of influence like SSE, every one of which is controlled exclusively by Big Tech companies. Unlike billboards, television commercials and ads posted on Facebook by election campaigns or Russian agents, these new forms of influence are both invisible and noncompetitive. If Facebook or Google wants to flip an election, there’s nothing you can do about, and, at least in the U.S., there are no laws or regulations forbidding it.
In the 2020 presidential election, I’ve calculated Google-and-the-Gang can shift 15 million votes — more than enough to select the next president. And over the past year, whistleblowers from both Google and Facebook, along with leaked videos and documents from Google, have made it clear these companies will not allow Trump to be reelected.
I’m not a Trump supporter. I’m not even a conservative. But I believe strongly in democracy, and the more I’ve learned about Big Tech companies, the more outraged I’ve become by the power they wield and by the abject failure of our leaders to constrain that power.
In my opinion, 2020 is the watershed year on this issue. It is either the year we turn over democracy, free speech and human autonomy to Google-and-the-Gang — or the year we fight them.
Outside China, which takes great pride in using emerging technologies to surveil and control its population — sometimes with Google’s help — Google and, to a lesser extent, other Silicon Valley tech companies pose the greatest threat to humanity it has ever faced. Over the past year or two, and with increasing frequency, I have been approached repeatedly by members of the U.S. Congress, by the attorneys general of several U.S. states and by White House staff, all of whom are concerned about the obscene power of Big Tech.
Some of these officials are conducting investigations, and some members of Congress have held hearings.
But no laws or regulations will ever keep up with rapidly changing and emerging technologies. By the time a piece of legislation is passed, the tech companies have outgrown it by decades.
So what, if anything, can we do?
On a small scale, we can all take steps to safeguard our privacy and the privacy of our family members. For details, please see my article at MyPrivacyTips.com, which begins, “I haven’t received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone since 2014.”
At the societal level, I know of only one way, both in the short term and in the murky future to come, that we can protect ourselves from domination by Big Tech, and that is to build a permanent worldwide network of passive monitoring systems — large-scale versions of the systems I set up in 2016 and 2018.
These systems will monitor the content tech companies are showing people on their screens and telling people on their personal assistants. Monitoring systems are tech, so they can keep up with whatever the tech companies are throwing at us: surveillance and control mechanisms built into the rapidly growing internet of things, wearables and self-driving vehicles, for example. Looking ahead, monitoring systems will even be able to detect and expose manipulations implemented through the biological implants that will make our children and grandchildren especially vulnerable.
Alas, since I’m guessing you’ll be reading this essay not long before the November presidential election in the U.S., I need to end on a dark note. In 2016 and 2018, my associates and I had relatively little trouble raising funds to build online election monitoring systems. It’s common sense, after all. Monitoring systems must exist to preserve those ephemeral experiences Google employees are so proud of.
But this year — the watershed year, as I said — we were unable to find funding, at least in part because the coronavirus has frozen many funding sources. This means that in this critically important election, we will have no idea how Big Tech was interfering, even though I have no doubt that they are interfering at this very moment on a massive scale.
It also means the Democrats are likely to sweep Washington, D.C. That doesn’t bother me, except that early next year both Congress and the White House will almost certainly shut down every single investigation of Big Tech shenanigans that has been initiated in recent years.
From that moment forward, the big threats these companies pose to humanity — the ubiquitous surveillance, the politically biased censorship, and the invisible manipulation — will become permanently embedded in countries around the world.
Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein), a former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, is senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He has published 15 books and more than 300 articles on AI and other topics. You can support and learn more about his research on online influence.
