July 4, 2022 - 11:00am

Griffin Green, a former college football player at Denison University in Ohio, had a ‘no good, very bad’ week. His first mistake? Uploading a video to TikTok — a Beijing-based streaming company that has helped popularise things like “femboys” and “sissy hypno” in foreign markets while remaining rigorously censored in its home country. The second mistake concerned the contents of the video itself, in which the midwestern transplant impugned the quality of New York City’s bodegas, noting that they compared less than favourably to chain grocery stores such as Whole Foods and Kroger. He then proceeded to complain about the city’s issues with sanitation and homelessness. 

The video went viral, prompting a response from TikTokers like Dutch de Carvalhoand gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who tweeted: “did anyone else view this as racist?” 

In the wake of the outcry, the software firm Outreach, which had hired Green as an entry-level sales development representative, terminated his contract. The company claimed that this was because Green had violated company policy by posting his offer letter in another video, but it seems clear that online pressure played a significant role too.

So now Griffin Green finds himself alone in the Big Apple, with a cost-prohibitive 12-month lease on his New York apartment. What should he do?

Firstly, the economics major must prepare to pivot, lest he wind up like Justine Sacco, whose life as a corporate communications director imploded in 2013 after she posted a tweet in which she joked about going to Africa and not contracting AIDS because she was white (a statement that, truth be told, is worse than anything Green said in his video). Sacco’s rise up the corporate ladder came to an abrupt halt, and Green — who is at the very beginning of his career — can expect that search results including articles like this one will complicate future efforts to enter the 9-to-5 world. 

Green already made a modest step in the right direction by recording a video of himself buying food from bodegas and giving it to homeless people. Though this might buy him goodwill from “normies”, this is an extremely online story, and those extremely online people who wish to see the so-called “Bodega Bro” laid low will never forgive him. Apologies and good works cannot provide for his future.

No, Green’s brightest prospects are to be found on the Right wing of American media. He hasn’t leaned into his infamy yet, but he has a chance to serve the valuable role of martyr for an unpopular cause. The vehemence of Leftist venom has turned everyone from allegedly “transphobic” reporters Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog to Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse into self-financed entrepreneurs. 

The path here is clear: go on Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan, launch a Substack or Patreon, and perhaps even latch on with a think tank of some sort. Given the cleanness of Green’s rap sheet and the insignificance of his offences, he strikes me as a budding media star with massive upside potential and little downside risk.

Should that be too much for Green, he could continue pursuing his evident interest in health and wellbeing, blending into a Right-wing fitness space led by anonymous or semi-anonymous figures such as the Raw Egg Nationalist and Carnivore Aurelius. Owing to his athletic background, he’s already built better than the young men seen roughhousing in Tucker Carlson’s oddball End of Men documentary. If he incorporates some “egg slonking” and raw organ meat consumption into his social media, he might quickly rival the Liver King for online clout. 

The ideal outcome, of course, would have been for poor Griffin Green to end up keeping his job and learning from his mistake. But this isn’t an ideal world, merely the world we live in, and he has to act accordingly.


Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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