I find it really notable that the entire response from the Spiderverse: ATV fanbase (all teenagers mind you), from all the analysis I've seen online, basically none attempted to back up the only responsible member of the cast: Miguel. He's only imagined as a foil to Miles, but he's really what Miles fears: growing up, facing adulthood.
Miguel is not simply a white man, but literally the antithesis of every other character. He's responsible for the entire organization, responsible for making the tech, does basically all the work, get's nagged & foiled by midwits who don't deserve their jobs, imposing, doesn't take bullshit, & above all else actually has gone through the ringer. He's been tested physically & mentally. Miguel fears growing up & death, but by doing so rejects being someone like Miguel.
This whole movie really shocks me. A white guy being explicitly written to be the genesis of all the actual progress, from the tech to the AI bot to the fighting, & Miles as a black teen isn't the hero: he's still a child yet to grow up being coddled by everyone else, including his so-called allies.
Fantastic essay, one of your best. Took me a bit of time to get through it, I'm ashamed to admit, I've been hacking through it before bed all week. Finally wrapped it up tonight. There's just so much going on in here. You could cut this up into 17 separate think pieces.
It's a testament to Zero HP's ever-questing mind that a tributary paragraph and footnote in an essay about a children's movie says something so monumental about wokeness that I had to reread it five times: That it only seems to have abated because it has won so conclusively.
It was such a monumental "Do you think that's air you're breathing now?" moment, because everywhere else all you hear is that the era of wokeness is over, that the tide is finally shifting. You read this, and you realize that's because we just haven't noticed, because we're fish, and woke is water now.
It's a point a lesser substacker would have milked for a five part essay, and it's thrown in here as an afterthought, just another eddy in a torrent of ideas coming at you.
“We don’t believe in authenticity, because we think that if the inner reality of the self is weak, or flawed, or deficient, then we also have an obligation as a self to destroy it and re-make it into something better”
And this:
"We have contempt for people who fail to embrace their duty to become superior."
Some great ideas in this essay!
As to Spiderman, I enjoyed the movie for aesthetics alone--The rest is just what I expect from this type of film. Always found the Spiderman story the most grating of the franchises anyhow, so a minimally-sacred cow to be led to slaughter.
Re point 5 Id argue fag liberation was technologically assisted it came about more because of modern antivirals than any other factor even legal or moral the same way women's lib came about because of the pill. But this is merely small quibbles about chronology than any real dispute great piece.
A small fragment of your essay remained buried in me from the first time I read it, and now reading it again two years later, I see certain paragraphs and sentences as mountains and peaks in a raised-relief map.
"End of the world" stories are childish and they appeal to children, because metaphysically, they fail to distinguish between the universe of an individual and the universe itself. - Yes, I was guilty of this when I equated my personal sob story with Yeats' poem The Second Coming.
'...it’s far more likely that social media was the first time we ever truly saw ourselves from the outside in a way that was accessible...' - Yes, the magic mirror in my pocket showed me how I appeared from the outside: as an infantile whore. One that played the parts of the victim, villain and heroine all at once.
'We don’t believe in authenticity, because we think that if the inner reality of the self is weak, or flawed, or deficient, then we also have an obligation as a self to destroy it and re-make it into something better'. - Yes, the magic mirror once showed me an image with the words 'Let Me Destroy You'. Fine. Destroy the shameless childish whore. There is a better me, one that isn't mentally asleep or wallowing in self-pity. I was never "good enough all along", I did have to grow and change myself. The terrain map of your words changed because I changed.
I used to think the online-IRL boundary was a fairly solid wall, but when you're up against a Kraken, the wall is as effective as the Maginot Line was for the French. My hard-won awareness of the Kraken's use of the gig economy has made me stronger. I stay alert because I know that if ever I dissociate or fall into poems and Boschian paintings as I once did, I would have to face the tentacles. I'd rather not.
Another look in the mirror, another whore. It seems all the deficient parts of myself are to be described with this terrible, stinging word for the purpose of destroying them. The mirror offered a guide, The Myth of Mental Illness, a book that also allowed me to see myself from the outside. Szasz says that a presumption of illness is like a presumption of guilt at the onset. Instead he wants me to acknowledge that I've been role playing. Roles can and do become habits, he says, and playing at hysteria or schizophrenia becomes an ingrained habit. It jogged my memory about what you said about DFW in an interview. What I failed to understand then is that his role playing was the cause of his suicide.
To put it bluntly then, I have to destroy the part of me that is a role playing whore before it destroys me. I will do that.
I'd like to relate something to you despite knowing that it bolsters your argument about women's overuse of anecdotes. Many years ago, a group of teenage boys in a different land made clandestine moonshine, and ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. The mother of one of the boys beseeched the doctor for advice and asked how had "we" allowed this to happen. She was looking to blame a repressive society for her troubles. As the woman recounted later, the doctor made it clear to her that it was she who was at fault and unless she changed herself her son would not change. She did heed his advice, harsh though it was, and her son eventually became a doctor in his own right.
I remembered this anecdote because too often women, including myself, are unaware of their effect on men. I thought about why the recommendation engine showed me not only whores, but other hideous beings including shoggoths, and it is this: a woman who acts out her worst self leads to men who act out their worst selves. A woman's worst self is foolish and contemptible, but a man's worst self is downright dangerous. Therefore it is imperative that I confront my worst self and destroy it.
I have acted shamelessly toward you, from my initial loss of self control, to the hide & seek games, the letters that disengaged from reality, role playing while comparing you to both a serial killer and the wizard of oz, all the while alternating between infantile and lugubrious. The last time I apologized for my hysterical outburst, this time I apologize for my immoral behavior. At some point I will work up the courage to look in the mirror again but not before I become a better woman.
In your interview with FlightAstral you spoke of having a honed disgust reflex, and I wonder if this is what allows you to remain in control in the midst of all this madness.
I allowed my own disgust reflex to atrophy over the years, and that is my fault. It is the reason I acted so shamelessly, and allowed the bad habits of a game-playing schizo to take over. What's more, I allowed myself to be repeatedly terrorized by my own fears, and the mirror taunted me with a dominatrix. I will not be continually tormented by the thought of becoming something I fear. I can only destroy the part of me that is Galatea from GSH by feeling disgust at myself and my past behavior. Edit: It took a lot more soul-searching to actually destroy this part of myself, and I confront this in the next post.
I must learn to hone my disgust reflex in the physical world too. A garishly painted car emblazoned with Storm of Wakanda elicits a response from my reflex even in its atrophied state. If the intent of the red dream car was a warning to wake up, then the Storm car is a warning of danger from a man acting out his worst self. I honestly don't know if I'm imagining the car as a threat but it fills me with unease. If the driver is looking for a delusional game-playing slay queen, then it portends actual danger.
I've read, re-read, and misunderstood your work over the years that I've known you because I was in a death slumber. Reading the interview again, your candid words delivered a jolt to my heart. I would thank you but no one wants to be thanked by someone they hold in contempt. If and when you no longer hold me in contempt and feel that I've earned a reply from you, please let me know, and I will thank you properly.
To actually follow through with Szasz's prescription of recognizing and correcting game-playing behavior I have to recognize the games that I played and confront why I played them. At one point the mirror reflected the characters from Wicked back at me as the worst aspects of myself.After playing a game in which I was both Dorothy and the wicked witch and defeated her/myself, I played another game in which I embarked on a delusional dream to save you from what I perceived to be an evil woman/dominatrix. But the mirror showed me this woman, which means I am her. At that time I didn't recognize the mirror, but now I do. I play these games to defeat her, but I am her.
You said that world-ending crisis/resolution tales are a means for the protagonist to come out of the closet. You also said that words represent dead ideas so I write these words to finally destroy the worst part of me that plays games.
I didn't just role-play the protagonist in The Silence of the Lambs, I role-played the actress herself who is, in fact, a lesbian. As long as I don't accept this part of myself, it morphs into a dominatrix, or Galatea, and in its most demented form, a transgender serial killer whom I have to kill. As the protagonist of my poetry-addled stories, I accept the lesbian part of myself, or else I will forever be playing crisis/resolution games. I apologize for likening you to all manner of weak characters during my game-playing. A far more apt way to describe you is as an incredibly strong Kraken - the slayer of slay queens. Please, do not unleash any shoggoths on me.
I apologize for inflicting so much poetry on you just to come out of the closet which is frankly a banal event in this era. I have no intention of living an alternative lifestyle, I think it is possible to have 'alternative' feelings while still conforming to a hetero-normal way of life. I make a choice here to not allow confused sexuality to be my defining characteristic. Culture, religion, and upbringing matter more to me. If your Nietzschean-Christo ideals offer a path to redemption, then I ask for your forgiveness in order to be redeemed.
> Watching movies and TV from the aughts feels like you’ve traveled to a different country, because the things we could joke about and discuss were substantially different to what is permitted today.
This comment really resonated with me, as I've lately set out to rewatch a bunch of (mostly comedy) shows from the 90s and 2000s.
Even content from as recent as 2010 feels like a foreign country to me. Three things immediately stand out to me:
1) There are the precursors to woke shit, but they're still muted and framed as counter-culture. The _assumption_ that woke _has already won_ is completely absent. Look at eg how 1990s Simpsons treats the character of Lisa, or how Futurama occasionally mocks Leela's feminism. It's there, and there's a wink-nod "look at our point of view" to it, but they're the butt of jokes, and not to be emulated.
2) The content is actually good. A lot of us complain about woke media in 2023 but honestly, if woke media was _actually good_, would most of us complain? I think we would not. When proto-wokeshit is injected to <2010-era content, it's _actually funny and thought-provoking_. Eg. all the pro-gay messaging in Whitest Kids U Know sketches
3) The focus of the content is much more universal. Virtually all media in 2023 exists in this weird nexus of pop culture references, inside jokes, and sly nods to current cultural moments. Media from 15+ years ago is not like this, and instead frequently focuses on human universals. Even when they are intentionally parodying current events (eg South Park), the parodies are internally consistent enough that they're still enjoyable even if you have no knowledge of the underlying content. Meanwhile in comparison, basically every media property from 2017 is, in one way or another, About Trump, and is nigh-unwatchable now that that cultural moment has passed
It really is great reading things written by people who agree with you on almost everything except what they want - like Scipio appreciating Hannibal's brilliant but doomed strategies. Power to power, radicalism as a form of escapism, outrage as a feminine exercise of power, visual ugliness as propaganda, self-acceptance as an unproductive expression of narcissism, egalitarianism as a way to moralize conflict against one's betters, etc.
Ironically, I think the least correct thing you've said (besides the obvious 'gays want to rape kids' stuff, but that's basically par from the course from the losers of history) is that the 'scientific bureaucracy' could possibly ever be manipulated into or, this having been done, convince anyone of anything as extreme as racial crime statistics when liberals still run around thinking COVID is going to end the world, all facts and statistics aside.
Of course, your aims certainly vindicate my own actions - helping young boys get on estradiol, engaging in tremendous amounts of litigation against companies for transphobia, encouraging fellow trannies to improve themselves rather than to accept themselves - in the context of ensuring that gynandromorphs stay a powerful cultural force and retain our legal protections. Some insane people may get their genitalia inverted, but fighting for their right to do it is a necessary sacrifice to keep the momentum going. After all, if you're expending all your energy fighting something that insane and stupid with ineffective laws and online polemics, how are you ever going to even practically conceive of TTD except as a form of the very same radical escapism you abhor?
I will add that the 'transexual [sic] version of Obergefell' you're worried about has already happened - R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes. As always, your work instills a great pride in my 'side', as unbearable and disgusting as they may be at times, for the extent to which they have made your own position more or less unwinnable. After all, as you yourself concede, your best shot at winning is effectively trying to convince women not to like the latest Spider-Man, and the endless flood of female-beloved media that follows in that very vein. Amazing!
"When all women are arrayed against all men, they not only make men miserable, they make themselves miserable, too, but it occurs with a bit of lag time and so they are never quite able to figure it out."
There is a lot that is interesting and insightful in this essay, but let me all boil it down based on the conclusion: Men have to become more feminine. That's what it says. You want us to think like, and manipulate like the 'longhouse'. Very appealing to incels which is why they remain celibate involuntarily, and then become women. 'Let's make tradwoke!'
You have a great talent for storytelling, for understanding and creating art. Lean into that. Not this. I'm not sure if this was meant as a sort of parody or not, but it seems clear that most of your audience isn't taking it that way, so unless you are serious maybe rethink the strategy.
' the only way we’re going to do that is by mastering the feminine modality of social control.'
That's the way that it reads. Particularly the last few paragraphs. You want to manipulate women to your worldview in the same way that you perceive they have been manipulated unto wokism. You accuse them of being essentially unthinking, of simply using the tools and forms of thought that they are provided. It is true that women are made to follow their husbands but such hollow and cynical manipulation as you propose will produce the same thing that it did before. What you will create is only a trad-skinned woke, the fantasy of the Third Reich that only existed in the imagination of Neonazi larpers and Hollywood screenwriters and their disciples. There is such a thing as a witch's tool that is wicked in any hands and I think that you have found one,
What I am proposing is neither hollow nor cynical, merely realistic. The more you interact with a crowd, the more you come to understand the nature and limitations of crowds. I highly suggest Gustav Le Bon's book on the subject. There is simply no way to organize a mass society which does not involve psychological orchestration of the citizenry. Your online tough guy masculinity act leaves you ill-equipped to think about the concepts I am proposing.
Sounds like trad-skinned woke to me. 'Realism' is just a way to sell a shit sandwich by pretending that it is the only thing there is to eat and that goes double for justifying propagandizing. Sorry still not that appetizing.
With you the new boss really is the old boss so why get rid of the old guy at all?
Just a single data point, I know, but fwiw I would totally pay $20-$40 for a collection of your best essays over the last 7 years, read by someone in a collected audiobook. This would be an amazing commute or roadtrip listen.
I find it really notable that the entire response from the Spiderverse: ATV fanbase (all teenagers mind you), from all the analysis I've seen online, basically none attempted to back up the only responsible member of the cast: Miguel. He's only imagined as a foil to Miles, but he's really what Miles fears: growing up, facing adulthood.
Miguel is not simply a white man, but literally the antithesis of every other character. He's responsible for the entire organization, responsible for making the tech, does basically all the work, get's nagged & foiled by midwits who don't deserve their jobs, imposing, doesn't take bullshit, & above all else actually has gone through the ringer. He's been tested physically & mentally. Miguel fears growing up & death, but by doing so rejects being someone like Miguel.
This whole movie really shocks me. A white guy being explicitly written to be the genesis of all the actual progress, from the tech to the AI bot to the fighting, & Miles as a black teen isn't the hero: he's still a child yet to grow up being coddled by everyone else, including his so-called allies.
Fantastic essay, one of your best. Took me a bit of time to get through it, I'm ashamed to admit, I've been hacking through it before bed all week. Finally wrapped it up tonight. There's just so much going on in here. You could cut this up into 17 separate think pieces.
I always think that which is why I end up listening to each essay multiple times. No one explains this as well as ZHPL
It's a testament to Zero HP's ever-questing mind that a tributary paragraph and footnote in an essay about a children's movie says something so monumental about wokeness that I had to reread it five times: That it only seems to have abated because it has won so conclusively.
It was such a monumental "Do you think that's air you're breathing now?" moment, because everywhere else all you hear is that the era of wokeness is over, that the tide is finally shifting. You read this, and you realize that's because we just haven't noticed, because we're fish, and woke is water now.
It's a point a lesser substacker would have milked for a five part essay, and it's thrown in here as an afterthought, just another eddy in a torrent of ideas coming at you.
Loved this:
“We don’t believe in authenticity, because we think that if the inner reality of the self is weak, or flawed, or deficient, then we also have an obligation as a self to destroy it and re-make it into something better”
And this:
"We have contempt for people who fail to embrace their duty to become superior."
Some great ideas in this essay!
As to Spiderman, I enjoyed the movie for aesthetics alone--The rest is just what I expect from this type of film. Always found the Spiderman story the most grating of the franchises anyhow, so a minimally-sacred cow to be led to slaughter.
Re point 5 Id argue fag liberation was technologically assisted it came about more because of modern antivirals than any other factor even legal or moral the same way women's lib came about because of the pill. But this is merely small quibbles about chronology than any real dispute great piece.
it came about before modern antivirals though...
Antibiotics, not antivirals. Fag liberation was only possible after the antibiotic revolution.
A small fragment of your essay remained buried in me from the first time I read it, and now reading it again two years later, I see certain paragraphs and sentences as mountains and peaks in a raised-relief map.
"End of the world" stories are childish and they appeal to children, because metaphysically, they fail to distinguish between the universe of an individual and the universe itself. - Yes, I was guilty of this when I equated my personal sob story with Yeats' poem The Second Coming.
'...it’s far more likely that social media was the first time we ever truly saw ourselves from the outside in a way that was accessible...' - Yes, the magic mirror in my pocket showed me how I appeared from the outside: as an infantile whore. One that played the parts of the victim, villain and heroine all at once.
'We don’t believe in authenticity, because we think that if the inner reality of the self is weak, or flawed, or deficient, then we also have an obligation as a self to destroy it and re-make it into something better'. - Yes, the magic mirror once showed me an image with the words 'Let Me Destroy You'. Fine. Destroy the shameless childish whore. There is a better me, one that isn't mentally asleep or wallowing in self-pity. I was never "good enough all along", I did have to grow and change myself. The terrain map of your words changed because I changed.
I used to think the online-IRL boundary was a fairly solid wall, but when you're up against a Kraken, the wall is as effective as the Maginot Line was for the French. My hard-won awareness of the Kraken's use of the gig economy has made me stronger. I stay alert because I know that if ever I dissociate or fall into poems and Boschian paintings as I once did, I would have to face the tentacles. I'd rather not.
Another look in the mirror, another whore. It seems all the deficient parts of myself are to be described with this terrible, stinging word for the purpose of destroying them. The mirror offered a guide, The Myth of Mental Illness, a book that also allowed me to see myself from the outside. Szasz says that a presumption of illness is like a presumption of guilt at the onset. Instead he wants me to acknowledge that I've been role playing. Roles can and do become habits, he says, and playing at hysteria or schizophrenia becomes an ingrained habit. It jogged my memory about what you said about DFW in an interview. What I failed to understand then is that his role playing was the cause of his suicide.
To put it bluntly then, I have to destroy the part of me that is a role playing whore before it destroys me. I will do that.
I'd like to relate something to you despite knowing that it bolsters your argument about women's overuse of anecdotes. Many years ago, a group of teenage boys in a different land made clandestine moonshine, and ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. The mother of one of the boys beseeched the doctor for advice and asked how had "we" allowed this to happen. She was looking to blame a repressive society for her troubles. As the woman recounted later, the doctor made it clear to her that it was she who was at fault and unless she changed herself her son would not change. She did heed his advice, harsh though it was, and her son eventually became a doctor in his own right.
I remembered this anecdote because too often women, including myself, are unaware of their effect on men. I thought about why the recommendation engine showed me not only whores, but other hideous beings including shoggoths, and it is this: a woman who acts out her worst self leads to men who act out their worst selves. A woman's worst self is foolish and contemptible, but a man's worst self is downright dangerous. Therefore it is imperative that I confront my worst self and destroy it.
I have acted shamelessly toward you, from my initial loss of self control, to the hide & seek games, the letters that disengaged from reality, role playing while comparing you to both a serial killer and the wizard of oz, all the while alternating between infantile and lugubrious. The last time I apologized for my hysterical outburst, this time I apologize for my immoral behavior. At some point I will work up the courage to look in the mirror again but not before I become a better woman.
In your interview with FlightAstral you spoke of having a honed disgust reflex, and I wonder if this is what allows you to remain in control in the midst of all this madness.
I allowed my own disgust reflex to atrophy over the years, and that is my fault. It is the reason I acted so shamelessly, and allowed the bad habits of a game-playing schizo to take over. What's more, I allowed myself to be repeatedly terrorized by my own fears, and the mirror taunted me with a dominatrix. I will not be continually tormented by the thought of becoming something I fear. I can only destroy the part of me that is Galatea from GSH by feeling disgust at myself and my past behavior. Edit: It took a lot more soul-searching to actually destroy this part of myself, and I confront this in the next post.
I must learn to hone my disgust reflex in the physical world too. A garishly painted car emblazoned with Storm of Wakanda elicits a response from my reflex even in its atrophied state. If the intent of the red dream car was a warning to wake up, then the Storm car is a warning of danger from a man acting out his worst self. I honestly don't know if I'm imagining the car as a threat but it fills me with unease. If the driver is looking for a delusional game-playing slay queen, then it portends actual danger.
I've read, re-read, and misunderstood your work over the years that I've known you because I was in a death slumber. Reading the interview again, your candid words delivered a jolt to my heart. I would thank you but no one wants to be thanked by someone they hold in contempt. If and when you no longer hold me in contempt and feel that I've earned a reply from you, please let me know, and I will thank you properly.
To actually follow through with Szasz's prescription of recognizing and correcting game-playing behavior I have to recognize the games that I played and confront why I played them. At one point the mirror reflected the characters from Wicked back at me as the worst aspects of myself.After playing a game in which I was both Dorothy and the wicked witch and defeated her/myself, I played another game in which I embarked on a delusional dream to save you from what I perceived to be an evil woman/dominatrix. But the mirror showed me this woman, which means I am her. At that time I didn't recognize the mirror, but now I do. I play these games to defeat her, but I am her.
You said that world-ending crisis/resolution tales are a means for the protagonist to come out of the closet. You also said that words represent dead ideas so I write these words to finally destroy the worst part of me that plays games.
I didn't just role-play the protagonist in The Silence of the Lambs, I role-played the actress herself who is, in fact, a lesbian. As long as I don't accept this part of myself, it morphs into a dominatrix, or Galatea, and in its most demented form, a transgender serial killer whom I have to kill. As the protagonist of my poetry-addled stories, I accept the lesbian part of myself, or else I will forever be playing crisis/resolution games. I apologize for likening you to all manner of weak characters during my game-playing. A far more apt way to describe you is as an incredibly strong Kraken - the slayer of slay queens. Please, do not unleash any shoggoths on me.
I apologize for inflicting so much poetry on you just to come out of the closet which is frankly a banal event in this era. I have no intention of living an alternative lifestyle, I think it is possible to have 'alternative' feelings while still conforming to a hetero-normal way of life. I make a choice here to not allow confused sexuality to be my defining characteristic. Culture, religion, and upbringing matter more to me. If your Nietzschean-Christo ideals offer a path to redemption, then I ask for your forgiveness in order to be redeemed.
Brilliant and outstanding! You elucidate the conceptual roadmap to a solution, as well as the praxis for getting there. Bravo!
> Watching movies and TV from the aughts feels like you’ve traveled to a different country, because the things we could joke about and discuss were substantially different to what is permitted today.
This comment really resonated with me, as I've lately set out to rewatch a bunch of (mostly comedy) shows from the 90s and 2000s.
Even content from as recent as 2010 feels like a foreign country to me. Three things immediately stand out to me:
1) There are the precursors to woke shit, but they're still muted and framed as counter-culture. The _assumption_ that woke _has already won_ is completely absent. Look at eg how 1990s Simpsons treats the character of Lisa, or how Futurama occasionally mocks Leela's feminism. It's there, and there's a wink-nod "look at our point of view" to it, but they're the butt of jokes, and not to be emulated.
2) The content is actually good. A lot of us complain about woke media in 2023 but honestly, if woke media was _actually good_, would most of us complain? I think we would not. When proto-wokeshit is injected to <2010-era content, it's _actually funny and thought-provoking_. Eg. all the pro-gay messaging in Whitest Kids U Know sketches
3) The focus of the content is much more universal. Virtually all media in 2023 exists in this weird nexus of pop culture references, inside jokes, and sly nods to current cultural moments. Media from 15+ years ago is not like this, and instead frequently focuses on human universals. Even when they are intentionally parodying current events (eg South Park), the parodies are internally consistent enough that they're still enjoyable even if you have no knowledge of the underlying content. Meanwhile in comparison, basically every media property from 2017 is, in one way or another, About Trump, and is nigh-unwatchable now that that cultural moment has passed
It really is great reading things written by people who agree with you on almost everything except what they want - like Scipio appreciating Hannibal's brilliant but doomed strategies. Power to power, radicalism as a form of escapism, outrage as a feminine exercise of power, visual ugliness as propaganda, self-acceptance as an unproductive expression of narcissism, egalitarianism as a way to moralize conflict against one's betters, etc.
Ironically, I think the least correct thing you've said (besides the obvious 'gays want to rape kids' stuff, but that's basically par from the course from the losers of history) is that the 'scientific bureaucracy' could possibly ever be manipulated into or, this having been done, convince anyone of anything as extreme as racial crime statistics when liberals still run around thinking COVID is going to end the world, all facts and statistics aside.
Of course, your aims certainly vindicate my own actions - helping young boys get on estradiol, engaging in tremendous amounts of litigation against companies for transphobia, encouraging fellow trannies to improve themselves rather than to accept themselves - in the context of ensuring that gynandromorphs stay a powerful cultural force and retain our legal protections. Some insane people may get their genitalia inverted, but fighting for their right to do it is a necessary sacrifice to keep the momentum going. After all, if you're expending all your energy fighting something that insane and stupid with ineffective laws and online polemics, how are you ever going to even practically conceive of TTD except as a form of the very same radical escapism you abhor?
I will add that the 'transexual [sic] version of Obergefell' you're worried about has already happened - R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes. As always, your work instills a great pride in my 'side', as unbearable and disgusting as they may be at times, for the extent to which they have made your own position more or less unwinnable. After all, as you yourself concede, your best shot at winning is effectively trying to convince women not to like the latest Spider-Man, and the endless flood of female-beloved media that follows in that very vein. Amazing!
"When all women are arrayed against all men, they not only make men miserable, they make themselves miserable, too, but it occurs with a bit of lag time and so they are never quite able to figure it out."
Beautiful, because it’s absolutely true.
Can we please get the article on slavery? 🇳🇴
Seconded 🇸🇴
I think we have our playbook, gentlemen.
I couldn’t imagine that film being so bad💀
There is a lot that is interesting and insightful in this essay, but let me all boil it down based on the conclusion: Men have to become more feminine. That's what it says. You want us to think like, and manipulate like the 'longhouse'. Very appealing to incels which is why they remain celibate involuntarily, and then become women. 'Let's make tradwoke!'
You have a great talent for storytelling, for understanding and creating art. Lean into that. Not this. I'm not sure if this was meant as a sort of parody or not, but it seems clear that most of your audience isn't taking it that way, so unless you are serious maybe rethink the strategy.
that's not what I'm saying at all
' the only way we’re going to do that is by mastering the feminine modality of social control.'
That's the way that it reads. Particularly the last few paragraphs. You want to manipulate women to your worldview in the same way that you perceive they have been manipulated unto wokism. You accuse them of being essentially unthinking, of simply using the tools and forms of thought that they are provided. It is true that women are made to follow their husbands but such hollow and cynical manipulation as you propose will produce the same thing that it did before. What you will create is only a trad-skinned woke, the fantasy of the Third Reich that only existed in the imagination of Neonazi larpers and Hollywood screenwriters and their disciples. There is such a thing as a witch's tool that is wicked in any hands and I think that you have found one,
What I am proposing is neither hollow nor cynical, merely realistic. The more you interact with a crowd, the more you come to understand the nature and limitations of crowds. I highly suggest Gustav Le Bon's book on the subject. There is simply no way to organize a mass society which does not involve psychological orchestration of the citizenry. Your online tough guy masculinity act leaves you ill-equipped to think about the concepts I am proposing.
Sounds like trad-skinned woke to me. 'Realism' is just a way to sell a shit sandwich by pretending that it is the only thing there is to eat and that goes double for justifying propagandizing. Sorry still not that appetizing.
With you the new boss really is the old boss so why get rid of the old guy at all?
Your fiction is still bad ass though.
Terrifying
Just a single data point, I know, but fwiw I would totally pay $20-$40 for a collection of your best essays over the last 7 years, read by someone in a collected audiobook. This would be an amazing commute or roadtrip listen.
when I hit ten episodes of the podcast I intend to produce exactly such a thing.