Parler: A Russian Love Story
The Most Successful Rightwing Social Media And Its Mysterious Birth
(The following is a fictionalized version of true events, based on a story published April 2021 in Air Mail Weekly titled “Parlez-Vous Parler?”, written by Nimrod Kamer)
An unlikely encounter between Alina Mukhutdinova and John Matze led to the creation of Parler. This is Alina’s remarkable journey from Kazan, Russia to Las Vegas, then back to Kazan (to get married) and again to Vegas to settle down and launch the infamous troll farm.
May 1, 2016
Labor Day in Kazan, Russia. Gulnara Mukhutdinova drops her daughter off at the local airport. Her name is Alina and she’s going to America for a two-week road trip. They hug. “Don’t marry too many people without me,” Alina asks. Gulnara promises she’ll take time off from her official role at the Kazanskaya Ratusha marriage license office.
May 14, 2016
Alina arrives in Las Vegas, Nevada. She checks-in to the NoMad Hotel on her own. No friends, no schedule. She unpacks her luggage. Few dresses, cash, Russian chocolate, high heel shoes. Her phone is open on the DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas, she picks it up and books a few tickets to panel discussions and events at the conference.
May 15, 2016
Alina attends a talk by software engineer and computer scientist Jared Thompson. She takes notes and claps at the end. In the lobby she catches Jared’s eye and tells him how interesting the lecture was. Jared thanks her, they chat, he invites her for a drink. At the bar they meet John Matze, Jared’s Best friend. They went to school together in Colorado. John is intrigued by Alina and her journey from Russia to Vegas. He asks how her road trip is going so far. Jared wants to know why on Earth she’s in DevOps, of all places. “I am attracted to men who work on cutting-edge silicon valley projects,” she admits.
May 16, 2016
Alina and John Matze meet again, on the Vegas Strip, without Jared. They hit it off. They joke about Russian directness versus American metaphors. John is curious about Alina’s past. She reminds him how her upbringing was very different to his. John wonders what else she wants to see in the US. “I always dreamed of going to an American gun range out in the desert,” she says. John finds that bewildering and thinks she’s joking. Alina frowns and asks whether he thinks she’s a Russian spy. After a long pause, they laugh.
May 17, 2016
John and Alina are at the Gun Blast Vegas, an outdoor range. To much of his surprise, Alina asks a stranger to take a picture of her, for Instagram, with a t-shirt that says “Trust Me I’m A Russian Spy” while holding Kalashnikov and M16 rifles. John says he likes this sense of irony. Alina asks him to take her pictures from now on. John asks whether she’s really a social media influencer. “There’s no such thing in Russia,” Alina insists. John takes a few more pictures of her posing with ammunition. They embrace, they shoot more rounds, they kiss (in the car afterwards). John says he’d like to join her for the rest of the trip. Alina says “Why not.”
December 12, 2017
Intense few months of whirlwind romance go by, as Alina and John are getting married in Kazan, Russia. Alina’s mother Gulnara is wearing the official state dress. She wishes Alina’s grandmother (An Honorary Builder of Russia medal recipient) could’ve been there. Gulnara officiates the wedding. None of John’s family are in attendance. Alina gives a speech on how happy she is they decided to do this at the spur of the moment. John is impressed by Kazan and everyone Alina introduces him to. “Russia is nothing like I thought it would be,” he tells Alina that night.
July 4, 2018
Independence Day back in Vegas, where the newlyweds now live. Alina asks John what his ultimate goal in life is. John says he loves the USA and wants to do something to allow more Americans to express themselves. Alina pauses, then offers “Why not open a completely new, unregulated social media platform?”. John looks at her in awe. He starts to explain how expansive it would be to build something like Facebook from scratch. Alina says they can save money on content moderators, by not having any.
August 2018
Parler is launched. Old buddy Jared Thompson is back, as Chief Technology. John Matze is the CEO and public face of the company, the visionary. Alina is in charge of raising money and organising the launch party. She gets to work and very quickly secures a meeting with the daughter of American oligarch Robert Mercer, who previously invested in Breitbart, the Trump digital campaign and data mining company Cambridge Analytica. Other lesser known conservative operatives begin to send donations to Parler, some entirely anonymous.
December 2, 2018
Alina and John’s one year wedding anniversary in Denver, Colorado. They celebrate the ever-growing number of Parler users. John himself is posting on the platform, it is now available as an app on iOS and Android. Alina occasionally tells John how much she misses Russia. One day John has an idea: “Lets launch Parler in Moscow!”. Alina shuts him down saying there’s no need for more free speech in Russia at the moment. “We have more urgent problems to deal with.” She urges him to find new celebrity names in the US to drive traffic into Parler.
February 2019
Alina hires a PR consultant to scale outreach. She also opens a marketing division. Alt-right heavyweights Candace Owens, Dan Bongino, old timer Rudy Giuliani and InfoWars’ Alex Jones join Parler, declaring it the only non-censored platform on the internet. Parler trending topics are #IslamExposed, #IllegalImmigrants, #BuildThatWall and #WomenForTrump. A ton of content is being posted daily, some of which includes death threats and doxxing to both famous and unknown users. John has no choice but to begin moderating the site himself to avoid lawsuits. They still have no professional moderators or written guidelines.
June 1, 2019
John reads a report on increasing amount pro Russian propaganda posts on Parler, almost half the content on site, in the millions. It seems to be created by bots and trolls, no one knows where they’re coming from. He shares the news with Alina. She makes it clear she doesn’t care. Later that day in the park Alina tells John she’s pregnant with his child. John is elated, hugs her and asks whether she’d happy to raise a child in the US. “One day our baby could become the first Russian-American President,” she proclaims.
May 4, 2020
More than 5 millions people download Parler per month. Kanye West reserves his username, the President’s son and numerous members of Congress as well as QAnon leaders become very active on the platform. Many of them hope it will eclipse Twitter. Alina calls her mother and cries on the phone with happiness, sharing the good news of the pregnancy and the scaling success. Rebekah Mercer calls and promises to give another $100M to make Parler truly great and completely free of marxist interference.
December 15, 2020
President Trump’s election fraud lawyer Lin Wood posts a death threat to Vice President Pence on Parler. No action is taken. John Matze announces a new independent board of Parler users who will decide what to do with posts that receive high number of complaints. Jared, the CTO, calls Alina begging to moderate the site properly, warning it is “becoming a cesspool of hate and a tool to organise violent gatherings.” Alina threatens to fire Jared and hangs up on him.
January 7, 2021
Following the January 6th storming of the US Capitol, Parler is blamed to have facilitated an insurrection. Apple and Google remove it from their app stores. Soon after Amazon Web Services announce their decision to kill Parler by denying it server space. Alina is fuming. She believes the liberal private companies canal has “Declared war on her labor of love.” She confronts John, though he seems hopeless to her now. They fight for days, John fears litigation from riot’s victims families and more federal agents digging into their business model and practices. Alina reassures him that they have nothing to hide. A prank posted on Parler that day gets thousands of users to publicly share their home address and phone numbers, in order to get “a pardon” from the President. Alina urges John to sue Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn and every other liberal media that ever blocked Parler.
January 15, 2021
Parler is dead. Alina and John are depleted, having fired all remaining employees. John turns to her and asks what’s next. “Do you really want to live here, a country that silences free speech to such a degree?” Alina answers “Yes.” She admits she misses Russia more than ever but wants their child to grow up in the US. John offers to look for a basic tech job at Uber or Slack, or else they’ll need to sell their Vegas mansion. Alina says absolutely not. Late that night John gets into a Facebook fight with a Jewish friend that doesn’t acknowledge Russia’s role in defeating the Nazis.
January 20, 2021
Alina wakes John up, her mood turned bright. She has an idea: they can continue Parler on a Russian server. John is intrigued.
Cut to a Bloomberg TV report: “Parler is attempting to get back online with the help of a Russian company whose clients include an internet service provider to Russian intelligence, raising concerns about the conservative social forum’s security if it ever formally returns. A data analysis indicates that Parler is the only American company – aside from some phishing and crypto scam pages – entrusting DDoS-Guard to host or secure any portion of its platform.”
The End
Air Mail Weekly Story (the non-fiction version)
