the most infamous love triangle in substack history
meeting walt bismarck on new year's day
In late summer of 1970, blues legend Eric Clapton and Beatles guitarist George Harrison were in love with the same woman. Her name was Patti Boyd and she was George’s wife. For her, George had written “Something,” which Frank Sinatra considered ‘possibly the greatest love song of all time.’ In response, Eric wrote one of the most powerfully devastating expressions of pure desperation and — dare I say it — yearning. He titled it, “Layla.”
55 years later, a girl named after this song would become the focus of the most infamous love triangle in Substack history. Her suitors: homeless sexual deviant Worst Boyfriend Ever and former white nationalist Walt Bismarck. Their story would profoundly impact a very, very small corner of the Substack multiverse.
How did I get mixed up in all this?
I first heard the story from WBE, whom I met back in June. He portrayed Walt as both an old loser creep and, contradictorily, a Very Smart Guy whose posts were worth reading.
More recently, however, I’ve been going through a bit of a moral crisis. A couple months ago, I lost my job and NYC art community due to the way I write about women and fled to Florida to escape the cold and the shame. Whilst in exile, I found that Walt’s post on morality made a surprising amount of sense. So I reached out to Walt, who happened to live nearby. I hoped he could provide some moral clarity.
As a disclaimer, I don’t align with Walt’s right-wing political views. In fact, I have a liberal upbringing and consider myself apolitical. But I’m naturally high in openness and disagreeableness so I gravitate towards misfits like Walt and WBE. I believe everyone has a valid perspective of reality1. And I was certain I could learn a thing or two from the man.
So at midnight on New Years, 2026, I kissed my mom and sister on the cheek then spent the next few hours in my room decoding Walt’s deliberately obscure writing style.
The next morning, still groggy, I met Walt Bismarck outside his high-rise apartment in downtown Orlando.
Walt wore a purple Hawaiian shirt over a black tank top, dark blue jeans and brown work boots. Maybe six foot and overweight, with unkempt hair, neckbeard, slight lazy eye, and black rim glasses that kept sliding down his face. On first glance, he would’ve fit right in at a Magic the Gathering tournament.
But Walt’s verbal prowess became obvious the moment he opened his mouth. He spoke quickly, garrulously, ricocheting acrobatically between associations, ideas, and references — difficult to follow at times for my sleep-deprived shape-rotator brain. I did my best to keep up.
At the nearby World of Beer, I ordered a flatbread with steak and arugula and he, a Guinness and chicken salad. While eating, he asked for my impression of him. Realizing my response would set the tone of the interaction, I hesitated, then decided on complete honesty.
“You’re... fatter than I expected,” I said.
Walt laughed. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
He said he used to lift but had gotten lazy. His left boot stayed untied the whole day, laces flopping about, even after I pointed it out. And due to extensive Adderall abuse, he looked much older than his 32 years.2 To be frank, Walt was slovenly — but he was the first to admit it:
“My self concept is of an ugly guy,” he said. “I like to be the Beast.”
Despite that, he claimed to have slept with over 100 women. How the fuck was that possible? A mix of online clout, sugaring, and hyper-verbal dominance.
Walt had found his first girlfriend while creating alt-right/white-nationalist Disney song parodies on YouTube, racking up 50k subscribers before getting taken down. Later on, he used his earnings from actuary work, financial consulting, and ‘job stacking’3 to sugar girls on SeekingArrangement. He liked to sexually dominate local Disney princesses.
He also met girls on Substack.
One of those Substackers was Layla, a 19 year old Catholic girl living in Florida. She was a talented storyteller who wrote compelling, unfiltered journal-style posts. I heard inklings of a beef with Girl Insides, but that was before my time on Substack. By all accounts, she was beautiful. By all accounts, she was troubled.
She and Walt had been messaging for many months before these events transpired. The nature of their conversations was sexual. Pictures were exchanged. Wanting to appear sexually experienced, she told Walt she was 21 years old and had been with 8 men. That was a lie. Layla was a virgin.
After WBE drove his van to Florida to meet first Walt then Layla, she deleted her account (again)4 and disappeared from Substack for good.
It was a beautiful afternoon and we took a stroll around nearby Lake Eola, famous for its swans and swan-shaped boats. Christmas decorations lined the path — green wreaths wrapped around lampposts, red and silver wire candy canes overhead. It was chilly in the shade but warm in the sun. The water was turquoise blue.
“It’s nice to see the sun,” Walt said, half-joking.
He only ever left his apartment for Adderall to fuel his 10-18 hour writing binges, typing in bursts of inspiration straight into the Substack editor. He said he lives primarily in the world of ideas and barely registers the physical world around him. He called his apartment a ‘Wizard’s Tower.’
We stopped by the side to watch the swans. I told Walt about my moral conundrum.
After I’d lost my job and community, I’d decided fuck it — full honesty. So I’d admitted to Substack that I was a fan of WBE’s work… which immediately got me cancelled and labeled a Bad Person. I asked Walt for his take.
“Morality is downstream of status,” he explained, as a swan emptied its bowels onto the concrete.
“Objective morality doesn’t exist. Morals are social constructs, fictional but necessary for a functioning society. They serve the interests of powerful parties — ultimately, winners determine what’s considered Good and Bad.”
A very Niezchean take, which Walt called ‘moral intersubjectivism’. It seemed cynical but agreed with my understanding of self-interest and evolutionary biology.
“Might makes right.” he concluded. “That’s descriptive, not prescriptive.”
Without our noticing, a swan-watching crowd had formed around us.
“Let’s move on,” he said. “We’re scaring the normies.”
We found seats in front of an outdoor amphitheater and watched cute Asian girls take photos by the water.
“An easy way to win your audience back would be to pick a low-status guy and dunk on him,” Walt advised. He’d originally gone viral on Substack by bashing incels.
An evil thought took root in my mind.
“What if I used your own advice against you?” I challenged. “Portrayed you as some low-status chud and ripped you to shreds in my article?”
Walt paused. Then he leaned forward imposingly, glasses slipping down, eyes both good and lazy fixed on mine.
“I’d go to war with you.” he said.
Walt Bismarck is no stranger to online conflict. Substackers are familiar with his longstanding feuds/good-faith debates with Kryptogal (Kate, if you like), Lirpa Strike, Bentham's Bulldog and, of course, Worst Boyfriend Ever.
Like Eric Clapton and George Harrison, Walt and WBE started as friends. From what I can tell, Walt was impressed with the WBE’s unabashed honesty and runaway popularity (no pun intended). And WBE considered Walt his superior when it came to philosophical thinking. They found each other’s writing mutually entertaining.
They’d met at the same World of Beer back in Spring of 2025. Still under the impression that Layla was a promiscuous girlie, Walt encouraged WBE meet her — he planned to pick up the sloppy seconds afterwards. But the night before she and WBE were to meet, Layla confessed to Walt that she was a virgin. For Walt, that changed everything.
“The purity of virginity must be upheld,” he told me. For some reason, he held this especially strong moral intuition.5
The events that follow are well documented in each of their blogs. Walt begs Layla not to meet WBE. She agrees, but does so anyway. Walt threatens to doxx WBE. Out of fear for his personal safety, WBE doesn’t fuck Layla, and instead nuts in his pants. Allegedly.
Despite that, Walt remains convinced that WBE and Layla had sex. And even if they didn’t, he says, “they might as well have.”
“Guys like him can’t exist in society,” he ranted. “Men need to have a code of Honor. Communities can’t function without a system of mutual trust. He’s a cockroach and needs to be taken care of.”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant.
“One day,” he continued, “when WBE ends up dead or in jail, I’ll be the first to say ‘I told you so.’”
I shook Walt’s hand outside his apartment and left.
To be honest, I was a little disappointed. In my search for moral clarity, I’d discovered instead that morals are, by nature, unclear. There are no objectively Good or Bad people. There is only opinion.
Walt, WBE, and Layla, from one perspective, are all terrible people - liars, cheaters, bigots (and — worst of all — writers!). Yet in their own stories, they are protagonists, their motivations understood and justified. Walt and WBE each portray the other as a sociopathic villain. Whose perspective is morally ‘correct’? Walt would claim: whoever writes the stronger story.
As writers, this is where our power lies. We tug emotional strings, sway public opinion, and teach moral lessons. We create heroes and villains; we decide Good and Bad. We manipulate morality.
So heading into the New Year, I’m done worrying about others’ moral opinions. It’s all (inter)subjective anyway. Instead, I’m going to keep my head down and focus on my craft. Become the best I can. And keep telling the truth no matter what.
This year, my only resolution is to tell better stories.
Here’s Walt’s perspective on our meeting, if you’re interested:
And here are both of their perspectives on the original drama. Layla was unavailable for comment.
informed by their upbringing, exposure to ideas, inborn traits and personal experiences. you don’t have to agree with someone to understand that they believe what they believe for a reason. and it’s useful to understand why.
like 37/38.
the ethically questionable practice of simultaneously accepting multiple full time remote jobs, popular during the pandemic, no longer viable since the post-covid return to office
even before meeting wbe, she’d deleted her account with thousands of subs once because she felt ‘she was being performative’.
he explains why in his perspective of our meeting (link at end)
"“Morality is downstream of status,” he explained, as a swan emptied its bowels onto the concrete." That sentence should be in a textbook somewhere..
Glad the young guys are having fun