arcticx

There’s a type of dude who was a teen during Bush 2 and pins that time in his life as being a leftist because he hated Bush but it’s actually because he was just contrarian teenage boy who didn’t like someone telling him what to do. Guys like this are so politically and culturally irrelevant that they aren’t even worth engaging with. It’s always the dumbest guy you know from growing up who didn’t ever pay attention in class who now says things like “they shoulda taught us taxes instead of algebra!”

Plus influence operations are engaging with and creating memetic content to create the perception of mass movements — not writing 25 paragraph essays about Marxism.

I feel like that has more to do with the need to map the Freseni stand-in to a realistic character that also allows for the commentary on right-wing racial and humiliation fetish stuff more than anything tbh

I know we are all onto the whole “cops are publicly subsidized paramilitary who act on behalf of capital” beat but I’m genuinely shocked that stuff like killology training hasn’t made it obvious to more libs

Appealing to norms and traditions in a post-truth fascist society is something alright

Agreed. I would say yeah we likely are at one of those historical inflection points. But I think what we do in the interstitial period matters a lot. It’s now apparent that these systems that we were told were immovable can be dismantled rather quickly.

The hinge point we sit on is whether or not we allow the existing ruling class to consolidate power and create the new world or if working class people take back the power that belongs to them. I think the doomer attitude favors the prior.

At this point it’s already happening one way or another so either you resign yourself to the fact that the world you knew is over and do everything in your power to make something better or you cede the future to those who certainly won’t. I’m not delusional, I know things suck. The planet is irreparably damaged. Wallowing in that fact does nothing, it’s a bridge to nowhere.

Every generation has had its own set of crises that could “never be overcome”. Being a doomer is letting them win. A better future only happens if we make it happen.

There’s something to be said about how hiding behind irony allows nastiness to fester.

I started to feel this way after watching a whole bunch of Joe Pera and it kept making me cry. Stupid shit about trees and stuff was making me weepy. Obviously it’s absurd but it pointed to something deeper in me longing to feel a world that isn’t couched behind 15 layers of irony and memetic recitation.

I wish Mark Fisher lived long enough to have finished Acid Communism. But what we have from the intro is him imploring the left to recapture hope. To me, the kindness of someone like Ms. Rachel exemplifies that hope. Sincerity and empathy in an era of ironic detachment and nihilism is radical and gives me hope.

As much as I love a good shitpost it may be time to bring sincere-posting to the forefront as an counterprogramming strategy given that the challenge of determining terminally online weirdo v. shitposter is becoming more and more of an impossible task.

And don’t forget to leave the Palestinian flags at home! We can protest that later on I promise!

I would counter that by saying Twitter encouraged people to learn brevity and clarity when communicating their thoughts. LLMs on the other hand encourage a bloated verbosity that no one wants to read. It’s like Corporate Memphis but with words.