When I wake up in the morning, I go through a pretty standard media routine.

I check my news alerts, skim the major papers, look at Twitter to see what people are talking about,

then I might read a longer story or two on Slate or the New Yorker, maybe listen to a podcast.

Basically, I want to get a sense of what big

stories are happening that day. But when Daily Beast reporter Will Summer wakes up, he goes through

a very different routine. I have like a folder on my Chrome of bookmarks that's about like

30 tabs that I just like open in the morning. Will covers the

extreme right wing and he writes a newsletter about it. His goal in the morning is to get a sense

of what the far right is talking about. I go on like telegram or parlor, whatever site is up at the

time. And then typically like when I go to get lunch or something, I'll listen to Rush Limbaugh

around then and kind of just get the taste for it. I checked the Donald, which is kind of the main pro-Trump forum. On Reddit? So they got kicked off of Reddit and they kind of built their own Reddit. So, I mean, it basically looks just like Reddit, except like there's no rules. We're talking about the places where the people who have been kicked off

with social media have ended up and they're fans.

So already these are like kind of rough and tumble places.

Will is spending his days mainlining some of the darker content on the internet.

So you have like a far right info diet, basically.

Yeah, very much so.

I certainly spend a lot more time, you know time on kind of unsavory portions of the internet. But I was doing it for fun anyway, and that's kind of how I got into it. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah. So I come from a pretty concerted background in Texas. So I grew up like, you know, I was like road trips listening to Iron Rand and like Rush Limbaugh a lot. And, you know, when I went to college, my politics changed, but I still just like loved these characters. And I was kind of keeping up with them for fun for several years. And then kind of during the Trump era, that's when this kind of became very relevant. And basically my girlfriend said, you know, rather than bother me with this stuff, why don't you write a newsletter about it?

Keeping up with these characters is now a full-time job for Will.

And it's probably not so fun anymore.

It's also not so easy.

After the riots at the Capitol, a lot of far-right activists have been de-platformed.

Will is trying to follow them and monitor them and figure out what's just talk,

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