Simulacra

So, apparently Great Satan’s Girlfriend isn’t exactly a hot COIN-nerd chick who wants to talk war and show you nifty pictures of herself in a bikini.  As Spencer points out:

“Courtney Messerschmidt” is a composite personality, made up of several men as well as an actual woman named Courtney. Not to mince words: it was gross to see national-security practitioners and commenters in their 30s and older pop semis over “her” barely-legal-security persona. But that’s a comment on “her” audience, not “her” “herself.” I don’t have any opinions on “her.”

Frankly, I think that Amanda could do a lot with this, as could Alyssa Rosenberg.

It’s a weird blog.  Once you claw your way through the prose, it’s obvious that the author has a good, working knowledge of counter-insurgency theory and defense policy.  For my part, however, there was never anything so particularly interesting or compelling about GSGF that made it worth the trouble of interpreting the torturously affected writing.  It’s basic COIN plus some boilerplate right wing defense politics.  Moreover, in my professional capacity I have become familiar with many woman in their early twenties who are more than capable of both tackling counter-insurgency doctrine AND writing intelligible, complete sentences in the English language.  Thus, the idea of “Courtney Messerschmidt” wasn’t particularly novel, although “she” certainly had an interesting marketing scheme.  I won’t claim that I had any idea that “she” was actually a collective, and I dutifully accepted her friend request on Facebook.  It just never seemed to me that there was much more to GSGF than a novel blog marketing approach.  However, opinions vary…