Miami, a city primarily known as a humid waiting room for the Atlantic Ocean’s eventual reclamation of the shoreline, has once again proven that its only real export is the specific brand of performative idiocy that characterizes the twenty-first century. The latest episode in our collective slide toward the heat death of human intelligence involves a nightclub called Vendôme, a name that suggests a level of Parisian refinement it could never hope to achieve while serving vodka-cranberries to people who think crypto is a personality trait. The club recently found itself at the center of a viral storm after it played host to a specific collection of the internet’s most exhausting inhabitants: Nick Fuentes, the Tate brothers, and a person who calls himself Sneako—a man whose entire identity seems to be a desperate search for a father figure in the comment section of a live stream.

In the aftermath of a viral video featuring this menagerie of grifters, the management at Vendôme did what any corporate entity does when it realizes its brand has been accidentally associated with the wrong kind of notoriety: it engaged in the ritualistic sacrifice of the help. Three employees were summarily fired, presumably to cleanse the club of the ideological contagion brought in by the VIP guests. It is the quintessential modern solution. Don’t blame the culture that lionizes these figures, don’t blame the security that ushered them into the velvet rope, and certainly don’t blame the profit motive that welcomes any wallet thick enough to pay for bottle service. Instead, find the three lowest-ranking human beings in the building and make them the scapegoats for a societal sickness they didn't invent.

The Tates, currently embroiled in a Romanian legal drama that would be far more interesting if it didn't involve people who talk like they’re reading the ‘About’ section of a pyramid scheme, have naturally denied any wrongdoing. Their lawyer and TMZ—the twin pillars of modern jurisprudence—have assured the public that the brothers weren't singing or supporting any 'offensive content.' It is a fascinating defense: the 'alpha males' who claim to be the masters of their own reality are suddenly just passive observers of a song they didn’t like, trapped in a VIP section they didn't choose, surrounded by people they apparently don't know. It’s a remarkable pivot from 'conquering the world' to 'we were just standing there, please don't cancel our club memberships.'

Then there is Nick Fuentes, the paleoconservative mascot for a generation of men who are afraid of sunlight and women. There is something profoundly hilarious about the intersection of Fuentes’ supposed 'traditionalist' values and the neon-soaked, cocaine-dusted hedonism of a Miami nightclub. Watching a group that advocates for a return to 1950s morality while simultaneously seeking clout in the most degenerate corners of modern influencer culture is the kind of cognitive dissonance that would make George Orwell give up and start a vegetable garden. It isn't about ideology for these people; it’s about the transaction. The Tates need the attention, Fuentes needs the proximity to the Tates’ larger audience, and the club needs the money—until the internet reminds them that they’re supposed to have a conscience.

Vendôme’s official statement, which claimed they do not support 'hate of any kind,' is the standard corporate Mad Libs we’ve come to expect. It is a hollow incantation whispered by PR firms to appease the digital mob. Nightclubs are, by their very nature, monuments to exclusion and superficiality. They are built on the idea that some people are better than others because they are prettier, richer, or more famous. To claim they are bastions of 'inclusion' is a lie so blatant it borders on the poetic. They didn't fire those employees because they suddenly became social justice warriors; they fired them because the association was hurting the bottom line. If hate were profitable and didn't cause a PR headache, they’d be selling it by the bottle with sparklers attached.

We are living in a time where the truth is irrelevant, and the only thing that matters is the optics of the aftermath. The Tates will continue to LARP as persecuted titans of industry, Fuentes will continue to broadcast from his mother's basement or wherever he has been banished to this week, and the nightclub will hire three new employees who will eventually be fired when the next group of controversial 'influencers' decides to use their dance floor as a backdrop for a brand-building controversy. It is a perpetual motion machine of stupidity, fueled by a public that loves to be outraged and a media ecosystem that treats these professional trolls as if they were serious political thinkers. In the end, nobody learned anything, nobody changed, and the only losers are the three people who lost their jobs for the crime of being in the same zip code as a viral video. Miami continues to sink, and honestly, the water can’t come fast enough.