After media outlets aligned with former Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, organized a smear campaign against Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey back in September, 2016, the techno-guru mostly disappeared from the public eye. Gizmodo attempted to start a harassment campaign against him and his then girlfriend – a supporter of #GamerGate and current President of the United States, Donald Trump– but she ended up deleting her Twitter account to avoid harassment. Well, now that the dust has settled, Luckey is now officially departing from Facebook according to the latest reports.
UploadVR published a statement from Facebook that reads…
“Palmer will be dearly missed. Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.”
Following the media tirade against Palmer Luckey for having been involved with funding a political action committee who posted an anti-Hillary Clinton billboard, Luckey took his leave from social media. He posted an apology before doing so, clearly making it known that he didn’t intend for the fallout to happen in the way that it did, writing…
“I am deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners.The recent news stories about me do not accurately represent my views.
“Here’s more background: I contributed $10,000 to Nimble America because I thought the organization had fresh ideas on how to communicate with young voters through the use of several billboards. I am a libertarian who has publicly supported Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in the past, and I plan on voting for Gary in this election as well.”
The apology didn’t reduce the amount of media abuse Luckey received for his efforts of not supporting Hillary Clinton. Gizmodo even published a regular series of articles attempting to keep track of Luckey’s whereabouts after he went radio silent, following the first wave of salvos.
The media’s unethical corpulence continually manifested in attacks against Luckey and his girlfriend, which actually netted them some indirect admonishment from the SPJ president, Lynn Walsh.
Palmer Luckey helped usher in mainstream attention to VR when he took the Oculus Rift to Kickstarter back in 2012. Facebook stepped in years later and bought out Oculus for $2 billion. Despite protests and anguish from backers, Facebook helped speed up the development and release of the Rift, which launched for consumers just last year along with the rival headsets from HTC and Sony.
Now that Palmer Luckey is out of the Oculus game, he can take his millions and hide away on an island if he wants.
Many of the commenters on the UploadVR website make it known that they aren’t pleased with the fact that practicing “wrongthink” in the eyes of the media can cost you your job. Others are attempting to put the blame on Luckey taking the stand during the ZeniMax and Facebook trial over some allegedly copyrighted code, but that fell on the shoulders of John Carmack, not Palmer Luckey.
Regardless, this sends a strong message to the tech community that if they don’t support the media’s appointed political savior and if they don’t toe the line of the regressive left, they’ll eventually find themselves facing an unending barrage of scrutiny and excoriation at the hands of vindictive media pundits.
(Main image courtesy of The Next Tech)
