In terms of posting new stuff, there isn't a lot to say about the big topics.
I have a lot of ideas, but (too ADHD, too young) no way of combining them into the big coherent post they would deserve.
Firing them off in salvos:
1. A blog operates like a castle did during the Dark Ages, within the broader ecosystem of social media. The whole environment is so anarchic, anti-sincerity, hateful, and toxic that you need some kind of protection / insulation if you want to be able to explore subjects or reveal your personality. Back during the Dark Ages, the looters and highwaymen and brigands would take your stuff and kill you-- today what they try to do is ironically mock you so that you lose your sincerity / spontaneity / spirit. They're so consumed by anger and hatred, it's insane.
The audience for a blog is also more likable, since they're not deranged freaks and cyber-bums, but people who appreciate and seek out quality and authenticity.
2. Why has neoliberalism become "he who must not be named? Aside from a few rare exceptions, nobody will use the term. It's not as if it's some kind of occult word that few people understand, a reference only a handful would know. Most social media commentators will discuss all kinds of esoteric philosophies or outlandish theories, so even if it was a niche term that wouldn't explain it.
I think it has to do with the astroturfing / takeover of the whole discourse in the wake of Trump '16, as well as the various clear signs of the public's lack of trust in the experts, media, institutions, etc sending the establishment into panic mode. The government agencies / billionaires decided to artificially constrain the range of discussion and topics to a handful of boring subjects, which naturally means erasing any post or banning / sidelining any user who links all of the problems in our crumbling society to their common source, namely the trajectory we've been on since roughly 1980 / Reagan.
As I discussed previously, that's also had the effect of transforming the discourse back into the culture wars of the 2000s and 2010s, fought between rabid partisans on both sides, rather than talking about what's actually gone wrong, which would draw in a lot of people from across the political spectrum. It's therefore shifted "the enemy" from the elites across the various sectors to ridiculous and caricatured stereotypes or made-up identities.
3. Low status white males / working class = wrong enemy. This is another result of prioritizing outdated culture war stereotypes, which results in the false belief that the white working class chuds must vote Republican, subscribe to conspiracies about the damn gubmint, and so on.
In reality, the white working class leans Democrat. Look at who lives in the Midwest, New England, Pac NW, and the West Coast. NAFTA / offshoring destroyed their economic prospects, so they vote for Democrats because they're more protectionist and willing to provide welfare / social services (to some extent) as opposed to the Reaganite Republicans who would gut it all and leave them with nothing.
By lashing out at them, insulated morons in the Democratic party think they're scoring big propaganda victories, but in reality they're alienating their base and driving them to defect to Trump. The continuous propaganda is a form of self-harm, weakening their party's cohesion, as well as an outlet for impotent anger (now that it's become clear that the voters won't do what they're told).
4. The only areas where the discourse has shifted against neoliberalism are in those that are unrelated to politics, and where there's more leeway for people to be themselves, since they aren't threatening The Agenda as much.
Namely the use of the word "slop". What is slop? Something that's poorly made, low quality, churned out just for the sake of metrics / engagement, so the user base can satisfy some ongoing addiction, in other words the opposite of something pleasing, well made / high quality, and satisfying.
This word perfectly encapsulates the degradation of everything that has taken place under neoliberalism, but without sounding pretentious or out-of-touch. Low quality, churned out in high volumes, unreliable, ugly, and made purely because of greed-- it's all slop, and that describes the state of almost everything being made these days, from consumer electronics, to housing, to furniture and clothes, and even online content and entertainment.
It's the same with the trend for / interest in thrift stores, buy it for life, high quality, and so on. The tide is turning against low quality disposable junk.
I've realized that people who reference themselves or describe themselves as high IQ on the Internet are not really talking about their intelligence or knowledge or unique capacity for insight but rather bonding with fellow autists / social rejects over their shared mental illness and status as pariahs.
ReplyDeleteSpergs don't really have high intelligence, but rather an out-of-whack or broken emotional sense / intuition. It's either painfully underdeveloped and stuck at an infantile stage or, in severe cases, nonexistent (autism is a spectrum). This is why the live miserable lives, as logic is not something we're meant to rely on for our ordinary behavior. It's almost a form of poisoning, leading to bizarre behaviors and unhealthy patterns (which they never seem to break free from), that are nonetheless rationally justified through some convoluted chain of arguments. They can't help themselves, since they lack the emotional motivation / impulse to distinguish between wholesome and harmful choices, as well as the ability to zoom out and see the bigger picture (rather than get stuck nitpicking the details).
As a result, most autistic types are either reliant on some kind of surrogate mother / nanny figure or self-medicate through hard drugs, psych medicine, and so on.
There seems to be a correlation between being a sperg and being a LARPer / tranny of some sort, strangely enough. The two seem to overlap. The trannies I've seen in the real world were all male autists, painfully non-woman-like, obsessed with niche interests / video games, OCD, and so on. On the internet, the spergs also show tranny behavior in that they constantly play dress-up with a set of personas that don't resemble them at all. It's a form of identity dysphoria.
That ties into the masturbatory superiority fantasies about muh high IQ, muh genes, yadayadayada. Creepily similar to the claim to being a woman by dudes who don't show a single feminine behavior. You have to read all of this garbage about how amazing they are, superior to brown people / normies / women, meanwhile they don't have a job, can't leave the home, and in some cases are incapable of making small talk with strangers, and the stuff they post sounds like the ramblings of a serial killer, nutcase, or homeless person (rather than the reflections of the high IQ paragons they claim to be). Totally bizarre, an inversion of reality.
Unfortunately, in our decadent world these people now infest the Internet, just as their IRL counterparts (the homeless, bums, and junkies) infest public spaces.
Autistic people are incapable of communicating with strangers, or at least doing so in a way that is more advanced than a typical six year old. I see this a lot in Rintrah's comment section. They don't understand that social activities with strangers involve reciprocity or tit-for-tat, which is why they oscillate between seething hatred, dismissal, and contempt for others or fawning adulation and unconditional acceptance-- everything in between is too complex for them to understand, since they lack the required emotional capacity. It's the emotional level of a child who demands unconditional acceptance from others but refuses to change anything about himself in order to fit in, only in a mature adult body.
ReplyDeleteWhen they talk to people, it's typically a long-winded incoherent rambling speech, often times on an irrelevant or boring subject. They are never capable of addressing the broader picture, it's just pointless tedious rambling, INFO OVERLOAD (never interesting anecdotes), sperging out and nitpicking logical points, all of which winds up adding up to nothing-- no coherent vision, no insight. The high IQ autists behave the same as the ones IRL, just slightly more functional, who similarly obsess over the most irrelevant subjects and, if you prompt them, will bore you to death with endless details. None of it is connected to anything useful in the real world, let alone the arts or the sciences, which is why autists go nowhere in real life and why their online counterparts are not seen by anyone
as being unique, gifted, etc. It's a form of anti-intelligence.
The ongoing infestation of social media discourse and its offshoots with trannies, spergs, and trolls is no different from the collapse of public spaces in America, which have been taken over by legions of bums, vagrants, and junkies.
ReplyDeleteThey both share a sense of hostility to the basic rules of society, as well as for the average person. There might be one or two that is likable but poor / out-of-luck, but the vast majority of them are disgusting, criminal, mentally ill , and freakish. The online cyber-bums are no different: warped, hostile, garbage-spewers. They both ruin the environment for everyone else, while normalizing deviance / abnormality / corrosion.
In both cases our rulers will not do their jobs, and in some cases benefit from the situation, while everyone else is saddled with the costs. It's bad enough IRL, but now you have to read the ramblings of nutcases and escaped asylum patients on the Internet, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAJFCxAP_Y
ReplyDeleteNot to go back to the same old topics or restart endless arguments, but it's striking how few vegans give off the noble savage / paleo vibe, in any aspect of their lives. Certainly, none of the ones I've known IRL or online seem that way. They don't talk about themselves as victims of modernity-- trapped in mega-cities, forced to live a dehumanizing life, but longing for an outlet and a chance to re-connect with nature, etc etc etc.
ReplyDeleteMost of their habits are ultra-modern, hyper-degenerate, and anti-natural. Entirely reliant on drug use / substances to get through the day, warped by pornographic fetishes, socially isolated (by choice) and hostile to groups / others. They seem like just the person who would scoff at a carpenter / fisherman / or other generic trad type.
I might shift posting to art / aesthetics, too, we'll see. Always focusing on politics can get very tedious.
ReplyDeleteI think a potential starting point could be why I (as a Zoomer / young person) dislike video games, explaining why and trying to encourage other young people to quit it, and so on. I mainly got veeeery lucky in that my mom showed me a lot of old school cool movies / Hollywood growing up, so I never had my soul sucked out of me by 30 hr tedious "games". There's a lot to rant about too, it's just a question of waiting for inspiration and the right moment.
I might also post interesting recipes, reactions to different kinds of foods / cuisines (I'm curious about Japanese, I want to try eating raw beef / seafood too), so we'll see.
ReplyDeleteAnother reflection I came up with:
Endlessly talking about individual ingredients and diets is a modern obsession. It's a very OCD process, always talking about this or that ingredient, trying to analyze it and detach it from everything else, and then obsessing about its effects on your stats (does it boost this variable? does it boost that other one?). It's a joyless process, and since there are always new studies that contradict the previous studies, it never reaches a satisfying conclusion.
Talking about meals and cooking is more of a satisfying, humble, back to nature approach. You're not constantly analyzing every different strand, you're trying to combine the different ingredients into a meal, holistically. You feel satiated and content, rather than addicted. It's also more tied to the Earth, as a culture's cuisine is ultimately a reflection of their way of life, and so more tied to labor / working with your hands.
Re point #4:
ReplyDeleteA lot of social media at this point is not only low quality, but also directly funded by the government too. This combines the low quality, which already existed before the hijacking / takeover of social media, with insane levels of uncoolness, out-of-touchness, loserdom / impotence... it's almost a new disease.
One way of distinguishing between the fake, top-down, funded-by-the-CIA / FBI, stuff on social media and the real views of actual people is to note that the manufactured slogans rarely spread beyond insular circle-jerks. In Nassim Taleb's terms, they are fragile: they can only exist within an echochamber created for them, loaded with hordes of bots, zealous moderators policing the discourse , etc. Whereas views that are genuinely popular are anti-fragile: the more people try to clamp down on them, the more widespread they become.
Brief update:
ReplyDeleteI recently bought a book on stained glass, I'm just waiting for it to arrive. I also thrifted an old book on castles.
I'm waiting to pick up an interesting cookbook, so I can start experimenting with things.
I've also thought of trying my hand at photography (using film, vintage cameras, etc).
I want to experiment with disconnecting from using the Internet too much. It's become a kind of time-sink, and an unsatisfying one, so maybe if I unplug I will have more energy to invest in real world creativity / productivity, which in turn will make being online or posting more satisfying.
This lack of a coherent vision and model, and instead being like a child and relying on short-term sugar rushes (which are harmful in the long run), seems to apply to everything these days. It's something I've been thinking about lately, and when I come up with a good explanation or essay it'll go on the main page.
ReplyDeleteWhere do I see this behavior?
1. Obviously in psychedelic use, drug use, veganism, and other forms of self harm. You need endless short-term rushes to fill the void, since you're not meeting your nutritional needs, and therefore turn to substances. These of course progressively wear down and destroy your health, but they do make you feel good in the moment. Addicts cannot understand the difference between "feeling good" now and "being healthy" later, or they invert the relationship and prioritize the former over the latter.
2. In Ukraine & Israel's behavior. The mass-media drones strikes, WOW CHECK OUT THIS, type of videos are created for the consumption of violence porn addicts in the West, and so that the people in charge of the Pentagon and their pawns in Ukraine and Israel can feel a rush of spite. With each strike, they become more and more enmeshed in conflicts they have no chance of winning and are actively losing, instead of doing the rational thing and de-escalating. Pure suicide, but again delusional war-junkies cannot understand the difference between making themselves feel good by blowing up some tribal gathering (the Houthis fucked around and FOUND OUT!!!!!!!!) vs achieving long-term goals like controlling the Red Sea, which now belongs to Yemen rather than the US Navy.
The people in charge of Russia, Iran, Yemen, Hezbollah, etc are not deranged drug-addicts, so they understand these things, which is why their foreign policy goals are aimed at achieving long-term benefits, rather than coming up with videos for people on Reddit to jerk off to.
3. Meta-example, but the use of "studies" rather than real scientific models, especially when it comes to understanding processes that change over time. Studies are snap-shots. Even if someone had 100 or 100,000 or 1 million studies (assuming they were legit, of course, which most are not) they would never be able to understand something like human health-- because human health is dynamic, where there all kinds of different things interacting with each other, reacting to each other, balances that can be disrupted, etc.
This inter-connection is never acknowledged by the fetishists who accumulate entire arsenals of studies-- they are a prime example of what Nassim Taleb calls interventionistas, people who keep interfering more and more with complex systems, always doing more, until they blow something up through sheer cluelessness and lack of real world experience.
It's like trying to understand the Empire State Building-- how it looks like, how tall it is, why people admire it-- when your only source is 1,000 high-resolution super zoomed in pictures of one of its windows.
4. Of course, the moron MBA types who optimize companies until they collapse, or make products that don't work, in order to boost the bottom line for the next quarter. Delusional and suicidal behavior.
No different from the bloated HR and admin departments that introduced 'publish-or-die' and other retarded metrics, destroying academia from the inside.
*CHECK THIS OUT
Deletelol.
I've been sick / under the weather for the past week and a half, which is why things have been very quiet here other than the occasional reaction to the latest political drama.
ReplyDeleteIt was nothing serious, in fact I'm not even sure what it was, but I mainly just felt very tired and slow and had trouble concentrating. I also had a bit of a sore throat, but it mainly took the form of exhaustion / low energy. I was still able to go to work and do basic tasks, but I didn't have much leftover for anything else. I also think the high heat here in the Southwest contributed to it.
Anyways, I seem to have made a breakthrough, so things should be more interesting from here on out.
I'm feeling better today-- still not 100%, but I have a lot more energy, more of an appetite, so hopefully I'm on the way back to normal.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, the main symptoms of whatever this is were exhaustion and pervasive low energy / brain fog, not really severe pain or much of a sore throat or anything like that. It didn't really fuck me up very badly, but it did leave me without much energy for writing or anything active in my free time.
I came across this video:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkdsbuUq6_k
I think the reason why this slop is so aesthetically offensive is because most entertainment these days is made by women and fags, rather than by straight men. That's why it has this unhinged, over-the-top, super ADHD and almost perverted quality to it, which most straight guys can pick up on and find disturbing.
The endless child abuse scandals speak for themselves, obviously, but their influence goes beyond that and leaks into the content itself.
Mr Beast is another example of this, too-- he gives me the exact same vibe, with his creepy smile and dead eyes, and his content speaks for itself of course. Super ADHD, way too over-the-top, how can anyone watch that garbage or feed it to their kids?
ReplyDeleteI think they also caught one of his staff members retweeting child porn, or maybe it was hentai child porn, IDK because it involved a bunch of leaks which I didn't go through, but it was something related to that. Obviously the last thing you would want an entertainer for kids to be involved in, but very typical stuff for Hollywood / entertainment industry these, so I wasn't surprised when I heard about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUuH4TEmgLo