A former Infowars reporter is pushing a hot new gadget on the right-wing electronics market: the Qux.
Yes, it’s pronounced “cucks.” No, no one knows what it does. But for $99, it promises to free Trump supporters from the tyranny of Big Tech.
“It’s kind of a Black Mirror thing,” Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer says on the latest episode of Fever Dreams. “It sits in your house and you’ll find out what it does.”
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“I have no idea what this thing is,” co-host Asawin Suebsaeng says. “It’s just staring back at me like the abyss.”
Sommer and Suebsaeng tried to puzzle out what exactly the Qux—a slim box meant to connect to a TV—will do, with no help from its creators, who didn’t respond to requests for comment or technical specifications.
The brainchild of former Infowars reporter Millie Weaver, the Qux has succeeded in spite of or because of that lack of specificity, raising more than $170,000 on crowdfunding site Indiegogo with a promise to create electronic “portals” free from censorship. The Qux is coming, whether anyone involved knows what it is or not.
While giving a gadget aimed at Republicans a name pronounced “cucks” might seem unwise, given its history as a go-to insult during the 2016 presidential campaign, Qux co-creator Gavin Wince insists it was actually a genius marketing decision. The name, according to Wince, is meant to underscore that the true “cucks” are those who give their data to tech companies.
“Knowing you would pronounce ‘Qux’ as ‘cucks’ we went with the name—because it also serves as a ‘troll bait-n-switch,’” he tweeted on Sept. 8.
Weaver and Wince were previously best known for their arrest in what their supporters cast as an attack from the deep state. Weaver managed to raise nearly $200,000 from her fans for a legal fund, only for court records to reveal that she was in fact arrested after an incident in which she allegedly stole her own mother’s phone. The charges were later dropped.
Whatever the Qux turns out to be, there’s no doubt its creators are getting paid.
“I think the people who put this out and are marketing it for $99 are geniuses,” Suebsaeng says. “And we are actually the true cucks.”
Also in the episode, actor and director Josh Ruben stops by to discuss his movies, Scare Me and Werewolves Within, and talk about the challenges of reflecting the twisted state of our current politics in film. To Ruben, the overheated internet world of a conspiracy theory like QAnon can spark a horror-comedy—while keeping the characters recognizably human.
“I think you have to find the humanity in these characters,” Ruben said.
Elsewhere in the pod, the boys discuss the upcoming Sept. 18 rally for Jan. 6 riot defendants. Contrary to some overheated reporting about a possible riot repeat, the hosts say the event looks unlikely to draw much of a crowd—although one never knows, with so many nuts out there. The Fever Dreams hosts also discuss Veronica Wolski, the COVID-19 denier and QAnon promoter whose attempts to receive ivermectin in the hospital became a cause célèbre on the far right before her death Monday.
Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
