Franklin Schmidt

Franklin Schmidt
Fschmidt.jpg Fschmidt.jpg
Born
🏳️ Nationality	American
Other names	fschmidt
💼 Occupation	Programmer, software developer, entrepreneur, forum administrator
🌐 Website	https://www.arkian.net

Franklin Richard Schmidt (online handle: fschmidt) is a pioneer American software developer, programmer and philosopher, best known as the founder and long-time operator of Nabble.com (launched 2004–2005), a hosted forum and mailing-list archiving service popular in open-source communities. He later created arkian.net, a separatist platform promoting the "Family Ark" refuge for traditional families, along with the associated Mikraite forum (mikraite.arkian.net) and the earlier Co-Alpha Reactionary Forum. Schmidt has developed "reactionary software" projects, including contributions to simpler tools like Mercurial-based repositories and his own Luan language. His online activity spans decades, evolving from gender-focused men's-rights discussions to strict Old Testament-based separatism and anti-modern critiques.

Early Life

Born to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, he was raised in an atheist household. He has described himself as a former incel before marrying around 1991. He has been active online since at least the mid-2000s under the handle fschmidt.

Career

Schmidt created Nabble.com on December 28, 2004, operating it as Nabble, LLC. The platform provided free hosted forums and mailing-list archiving services, which became a popular tool in the mid-2000s open-source community for converting email mailing lists into searchable, web-accessible forums.

Nabble gained traction among developers and project maintainers by offering a simple, no-cost alternative to self-hosted forum software or paid services at the time. It was frequently used to archive and browse discussions for major open-source projects, including PostgreSQL (where Schmidt himself engaged in bug reports and feature discussions as the service's representative), Cygwin, MacPorts, SQLite, and others. Many archived mailing-list threads from that era still include "Nabble.com" signatures or links in project documentation and search results.

The service's custom scripting language, NAML (Nabble Active Markup Language), and its embeddable forum widgets were praised in various webmaster tutorials and integration guides for their flexibility and ease of use, particularly for embedding discussion boards into websites without server-side setup. These features made Nabble stand out in the pre-Discourse era of free hosted forum solutions.

The service ran for over fifteen years under his control, with historical WHOIS records from 2012 listing him as the registrant. By the late 2010s, Nabble's popularity declined with the rise of modern forum platforms such as Discourse and improved Google Groups integration, leading to reduced ad revenue and eventual downsizing. Community threads on support.nabble.com and other forums show users discussing migration or preservation of legacy content when downsizing was announced, indicating a degree of reliance on the platform by small communities.

In 2020, Schmidt announced that Nabble was going open-source, releasing the code publicly and citing low profitability from AdSense while noting continued personal use of the platform. The Nabble source code was subsequently hosted in his reactionary.software Mercurial repository.

As late as 2020–2021, he continued to post on support.nabble.com as Administrator (Franklin), personally handling the downsizing process (consolidating to a single server at s1.nabble.com) and fielding requests from forum owners to preserve or migrate legacy content. This hands-on administration into the early 2020s underscores his long-term commitment to the project, even as activity waned. Nabble remains online in largely archival/read-only mode for many legacy forums as of March 2026, with ownership privacy-protected since around 2018–2023.

After winding down active Nabble operations, Schmidt shifted focus to ideological and software projects, including the Co-Alpha Reactionary Forum (hosted on Nabble) around 2011–2015, Mikraite (mikraite.arkian.net) starting in 2014–2015, and arkian.net. He maintains a Mercurial repository at hg.reactionary.software for tools such as his Luan programming language and Nabble-related components. Forum administration and software development continued into the 2020s, with redirects from Co-Alpha to Mikraite in 2017.

Personal Life

Schmidt maintains low visibility outside his websites and forums. He has been happily married since around 1991 (approximately 19 years as of a 2010 statement) to a woman he described as a former Levi's model from Mexico, with no divorces mentioned. He has two children: a daughter (age ~11 as of ~2010) and a son (age ~14 as of ~2010), whom he homeschooled after achieving financial success in business, allowing him to work from home and dedicate time to their education. His online presence emphasizes self-sufficiency, computer literacy, homeschooling as a means of preserving values against modern culture, and withdrawal from broader society.

Views

Schmidt's worldview is centered on a profound rejection of what he terms "evil modern culture," which he characterizes as psychopathic, dysgenic, anti-moral, anti-intellectual, and unsustainable. He argues that modern Western society promotes promiscuity, feminism, hedonism, and short-term mating strategies while eroding loyalty, family stability, intelligence, and provider traits. In Reddit comments, he describes members of this culture as "vile human scum" who deserve extermination or at least cultural extinction, viewing feminism as a "cancer" that accelerates decline by rewarding "cads" over stable providers.

Critique of Modern Culture and Gender Dynamics

Schmidt's early writings, particularly on the Co-Alpha Reactionary Forum, focused on male disadvantage in feminist societies. He contended that hypergamy and widespread promiscuity create an imbalance where a minority of "alpha" men monopolize women, leaving most men as incels or forced into suboptimal roles. He rejected pickup artistry ("game") and MGTOW as superficial or counterproductive, instead proposing "Co-Alpha Brotherhood"—cooperative networks of ordinary men to counter hypergamous pressures through mutual support and resource sharing. Threads like "Post-Game Culture" advanced evolutionary arguments that promiscuous societies select against reliable providers, leading to civilizational decay with historical parallels in Mexico, Rome, and Athens. He advised men to seek partners outside feminist cultures or join moral religious communities.

Religious and Separatist Solutions (Mikraism and Arkian)

By the mid-2010s, Schmidt expanded his critique into religious separatism, founding Mikraism as a "serious moral religion" based on the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), interpreted through ethical and inductive principles rather than literalism or rabbinic tradition. He positioned it alongside "sound" groups such as Conservative Mennonites (traditional Anabaptists), early Islam, and aspects of Japanese culture as viable alternatives to modern degeneracy. Membership in his Arkian community required passing tests on scripture, strategic thinking (e.g., beating a Go AI), and technical proficiency (e.g., using Mercurial for self-hosting), all aimed at building trust-based tribes resistant to cultural corruption. He advocated homeschooling children to instill skepticism and anti-modern values, praising Islam as a strong counterforce to feminism and promiscuity while attending a mosque for years. In Reddit posts, he urged support for Islam and non-feminist cultures as practical escapes.

Escalation to Absolutism and Misanthropy

In later years, Schmidt's rhetoric became more extreme and resigned. He asserted that only Japanese, traditional Anabaptists, and Arkians "deserve to live," while others—especially members of modern culture—deserve "extermination" or at least demographic marginalization. Geopolitical commentary included framing the Ukraine war as "Biden’s gift to incels" for killing "modern scum" Ukrainian men and creating opportunities for incels amid surplus women. By 2025, in "Fuck Humanity," he announced withdrawal from Discord, news, and outreach, limiting activity to reactionary software and a small forum while declaring modern humanity hopeless. Recurring themes include consent as a modern "idol," America as a "scam," and approval of forces reducing modern populations (e.g., abortion, LGBTQ trends, or conflicts).

His evolution—from gender-specific solutions in Co-Alpha to religious tribalism in Mikraism to misanthropic isolation—stems from perceived failure to build viable communities amid accelerating cultural decay. Throughout, he frames modern culture as civilization's enemy, advocating withdrawal, moral rigor, and small-scale alternatives as the only rational path.

References

Franklin Schmidt
Born
Other names	fschmidt
💼 Occupation

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