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And I kind of need to, because I've had an epiphany, but it falls under the aegis of "Woo or Interesting Beliefs."
And it is inspired by the video about Terence McKenna that I posted a few days ago, as well as a bunch of interviews that I've listened to over this week on the subject of what Terence McKenna called "Self-Transforming Machine Elves." And the realization about all of the frank discussions of substance use that I used to see on 4chan pre-Gamergate, when it really seemed to turn into the "Internet Hate Machine" that the media tried unsucessfully to turn into a moral panic back in the late 2000s (when such concern might have actually been helpful, and done some good had it caught on.)
And it goes like this:
The 4channers and Kekistanis are Fae-struck.
No, really. I'm not saying that they've all done enough DMT or psychedelics to do this to themselves - but the ones who did maybe infected the others.
Because their behavior is a lot like what he describes the DMT Elves as being - playful, but without any regard for propriety or safety, in a "move fast and break things" kind of way. Terence McKenna compared dealing with Machine Elves to a Road Runner cartoon in one of the interviews I listened to. "They might toss you sticks of dynamite, and think it was hilarious."
McKenna also claimed that memes - as in "units of cultural transmission" - are the Machine Elves' stock in trade. They're like currency. But they're not just currency - it's almost like the Elves themselves are composed of "Light and Syntax." Like sentient beings composed of language, and language's ability to transmit and propegate memes. But they're constantly playing with words. Terence McKenna stated in one interview that this was ancient peoples' common experience of them in folklore: encounter the Fae, get into a Poetry Battle, and get trapped for 100 years if you aren't good enough to keep up with them.
And that reminded me of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's comments about antisemites. You know the one:
That's when it hit me:
4channers aren't racist because they hate or fear people who are different from them. Because they don't actually believe in anything - they're nihilists, Dude. They're racist because they're disseminating racism as a meme. Racism is a meme to them. Antisemitism is a meme. They're infected by memes, and spreading memes to infect others. But they're doing it playfully, "ironically."
I'm not saying this to downplay the harm they've done and are still doing, because it's insidious. But these are "unserious people" in every sense of the term. Back in the 2000s, the whole "ironic" thing came about because of the belief that caring deeply about anything was just lame. Or in the modern slang: caring too deeply about anything made you an "NPC." It was "cringe." It was uncool, and nobody wanted to be uncool. Worse: caring about things is boring. And to people and entities with this kind of mindset, being boring is the deadliest sin imaginable, and being bored is the awfulest of fates.
And then of course, there's the aspect of memes being in-group signifiers. Expressing certain memes identifies you as belonging to certain in-groups. And these are people who, despite their seeming allegiance to nihilism, (or maybe because of it) desperately want to belong to an in-group and feel accepted.
But the channers and Kekistanis are possessed by memes. They think they're playing on the level of the Elves, but they're Fae-struck. And asking them not to be racist or antisemetic, is asking them not to meme. And asking them not to meme is taking the only thing they have away, because they are nihilists in every other respect. Or they want to be. (I guess National Socialism isn't much of an ethos, after all.)
Nihilism is a reaction to the existential horror and the "Doomerism" a lot of us feel right now. And they desperately want to banish that horror by laughing at it, like the Chaos Magick texts told them to do. But it just isn't working, and they're choked by the fear and loathing of their own hollow existence. As so many of us are these days.
Honestly, I'm reminded of the language and culture-jamming pranks my friends who were like Junior Chaotes perpetrated back in High School, and kind of wishing I'd kept up with that now. Because all the pearl-clutching in the world did nothing to dissuade the fae-struck memesters. It encouraged them. Remember that old saw from eight years ago, "the Left can't meme?" What we needed were people who could beat them at their own game. Which it looks like we've finally stepped up to. But we're eight years overdue.
Seriously, someone just needed to up and Reggie Watts the motherfuckers, back before they had the chance to do real harm. It was time again for what the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament referred to as "The Confusing Of The Languages."
And that in turn makes me wonder about the channers and Kekistanis' veneration of Trump. If they think his word salad is just that, instead of the fractured stream-of-consciousness rambling word vomit of a sundowning Boomer.
Also: "Captain" of our Junior Chaote Team is now a conservative evangelical Christian, and I wonder what the hell happened to him?
There was another related epiphany last week I had about "Tumblrinas" that went like this - every Tumblrina viciously policing others people's posts for insensitive or ableist content in the 2010s was laughing it up in the 2000s at the same kinds of content that they were policing later. There was a huge amount of crossover between both platforms in the later days of the 2000s. And those Tumblrinas were doing this because they were maybe overcompensating for having laughed it up out of a sense of shame. It was "born again" behavior that mostly mellowed out and evened out over time, even if the 4channers acted like they were being subjected to the worst kind of authoritarian suppression and tyranny whenever a "SJW" razzed them. But I digress.
Anyway, here are the interviews I listened to this week:
https://youtu.be/BkBtT7l4hlM?si=IAL4FEECz7AuJ97F
https://youtu.be/_8UCpLZ7Nqc?si=tGPqPQVdDPT3zOeM
https://youtu.be/E8ocbqwSzP4?si=QnSG8CSzCAroE1FL
Current Mood:
And it is inspired by the video about Terence McKenna that I posted a few days ago, as well as a bunch of interviews that I've listened to over this week on the subject of what Terence McKenna called "Self-Transforming Machine Elves." And the realization about all of the frank discussions of substance use that I used to see on 4chan pre-Gamergate, when it really seemed to turn into the "Internet Hate Machine" that the media tried unsucessfully to turn into a moral panic back in the late 2000s (when such concern might have actually been helpful, and done some good had it caught on.)
And it goes like this:
The 4channers and Kekistanis are Fae-struck.
No, really. I'm not saying that they've all done enough DMT or psychedelics to do this to themselves - but the ones who did maybe infected the others.
Because their behavior is a lot like what he describes the DMT Elves as being - playful, but without any regard for propriety or safety, in a "move fast and break things" kind of way. Terence McKenna compared dealing with Machine Elves to a Road Runner cartoon in one of the interviews I listened to. "They might toss you sticks of dynamite, and think it was hilarious."
McKenna also claimed that memes - as in "units of cultural transmission" - are the Machine Elves' stock in trade. They're like currency. But they're not just currency - it's almost like the Elves themselves are composed of "Light and Syntax." Like sentient beings composed of language, and language's ability to transmit and propegate memes. But they're constantly playing with words. Terence McKenna stated in one interview that this was ancient peoples' common experience of them in folklore: encounter the Fae, get into a Poetry Battle, and get trapped for 100 years if you aren't good enough to keep up with them.
And that reminded me of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's comments about antisemites. You know the one:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
That's when it hit me:
4channers aren't racist because they hate or fear people who are different from them. Because they don't actually believe in anything - they're nihilists, Dude. They're racist because they're disseminating racism as a meme. Racism is a meme to them. Antisemitism is a meme. They're infected by memes, and spreading memes to infect others. But they're doing it playfully, "ironically."
I'm not saying this to downplay the harm they've done and are still doing, because it's insidious. But these are "unserious people" in every sense of the term. Back in the 2000s, the whole "ironic" thing came about because of the belief that caring deeply about anything was just lame. Or in the modern slang: caring too deeply about anything made you an "NPC." It was "cringe." It was uncool, and nobody wanted to be uncool. Worse: caring about things is boring. And to people and entities with this kind of mindset, being boring is the deadliest sin imaginable, and being bored is the awfulest of fates.
And then of course, there's the aspect of memes being in-group signifiers. Expressing certain memes identifies you as belonging to certain in-groups. And these are people who, despite their seeming allegiance to nihilism, (or maybe because of it) desperately want to belong to an in-group and feel accepted.
But the channers and Kekistanis are possessed by memes. They think they're playing on the level of the Elves, but they're Fae-struck. And asking them not to be racist or antisemetic, is asking them not to meme. And asking them not to meme is taking the only thing they have away, because they are nihilists in every other respect. Or they want to be. (I guess National Socialism isn't much of an ethos, after all.)
Nihilism is a reaction to the existential horror and the "Doomerism" a lot of us feel right now. And they desperately want to banish that horror by laughing at it, like the Chaos Magick texts told them to do. But it just isn't working, and they're choked by the fear and loathing of their own hollow existence. As so many of us are these days.
Honestly, I'm reminded of the language and culture-jamming pranks my friends who were like Junior Chaotes perpetrated back in High School, and kind of wishing I'd kept up with that now. Because all the pearl-clutching in the world did nothing to dissuade the fae-struck memesters. It encouraged them. Remember that old saw from eight years ago, "the Left can't meme?" What we needed were people who could beat them at their own game. Which it looks like we've finally stepped up to. But we're eight years overdue.
Seriously, someone just needed to up and Reggie Watts the motherfuckers, back before they had the chance to do real harm. It was time again for what the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament referred to as "The Confusing Of The Languages."
And that in turn makes me wonder about the channers and Kekistanis' veneration of Trump. If they think his word salad is just that, instead of the fractured stream-of-consciousness rambling word vomit of a sundowning Boomer.
Also: "Captain" of our Junior Chaote Team is now a conservative evangelical Christian, and I wonder what the hell happened to him?
There was another related epiphany last week I had about "Tumblrinas" that went like this - every Tumblrina viciously policing others people's posts for insensitive or ableist content in the 2010s was laughing it up in the 2000s at the same kinds of content that they were policing later. There was a huge amount of crossover between both platforms in the later days of the 2000s. And those Tumblrinas were doing this because they were maybe overcompensating for having laughed it up out of a sense of shame. It was "born again" behavior that mostly mellowed out and evened out over time, even if the 4channers acted like they were being subjected to the worst kind of authoritarian suppression and tyranny whenever a "SJW" razzed them. But I digress.
Anyway, here are the interviews I listened to this week:
https://youtu.be/BkBtT7l4hlM?si=IAL4FEECz7AuJ97F
https://youtu.be/_8UCpLZ7Nqc?si=tGPqPQVdDPT3zOeM
https://youtu.be/E8ocbqwSzP4?si=QnSG8CSzCAroE1FL
Current Mood:
