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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   34806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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We're All Sitcom Characters Now

If you've ever watched a successful long running sitcom, you've seen it happen. The characters start out mostly normal with a quirk or two. Maybe a little neurotic, or slow, or promiscuous. Four seasons in and the characters have all become deranged parodies of themselves. All their most entertaining qualities have been heightened, everything relatable or normal has been squeezed out. The character that was a little slow is now a straight up drooling retard. The promiscuous character obsessively fucks everything that moves. The neurotic character is only a step removed from Howard Hughes in his final days. You watch the last episode and the first episode of a sitcom, and you'll barely recognize the characters.

It's obvious why it happens though. The writers and actors give the audiences what they want. Sitcoms are (or were?) a cuttroat business. There was little room for artistic integrity, vision, or any other high minded concepts. Give the audiences what they want, or they'll change the channel and the show will be cancelled. Just shut up and do it!

I regret to inform you that we are all on a sitcom now. Everyone is enmeshed with an attention economy. Be it farming engagement on twitter, or upvotes on a reddit clone. And unlike actors who only have to inhabit their roles for hours a day, for a shooting schedule that might be weeks or months out of a year, those enmeshed in the attention economy must be in character 24/7. On social media, on streaming, on podcast, on youtube, all at once, all the time.

Some have whole heartedly embraced this. Twitter is full of people being characters, allowing the algorithm or engagement to tweak the dials on their personality. Like a second subconscious that lives in the cloud. Catgirl Kulak comes to mind. He's out there using an AI catgirl as an avatar, staying more and more in character as some sort of neo pagan feral/trad nordic catgirl with hot takes. It's a dangerous game he's playing, existing more and more in a fictional role. But there are others. The preposterous performative pro-Elon or pro-Trump nonsense I saw and tried to avoid on twitter this last week was really something. Twitter super users who've built their brand on being staunch partisans like Catturd out there acting like absolute charicatures of themselves. They're just sitcom characters anymore, and rapidly approaching the braindeath of the latter seasons. Others I don't think fully understand what was happening to them. I wonder how much upvote driven personality disorders had to do with certain flameouts here.

Because eventually every sitcom hits the wall. The characters have been intellectually and emotionally abused and lobotomized to such a point where there is no humanity left in them to ritualistically beat out for the amusement of the audience. It gets it's final season where the writers attempt to rehabilitate them just enough to send them off into the sunset.

There are no writers to rehabilitate you when the algorithm is done with you, and you've lived inside a cartoonish and horrifying version of yourself for attention for years on end.

We're All Sitcom Characters Now

Lot of small/middle accounts on twitter are perfectly normal and don't try to engagement bait or make a brand. And something like 80% of twitter eyeballs are allegedly people who barely if ever post.

I know quoting Vonnegut is a midwit reddit thing, but his line from Mother Night is applicable here:

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

People in the attention-based economy are relearning it the hard way.

What I never liked about Kulak was that, whenever he wrote about something I knew a lot about, it was clear he was making a lot of stuff up and had only a very superficial level of knowledge.

Kulak is a dude who shilled rich man's aella, Addison Moore, a super high end escort who is active on twitter.

Hearing about him makes me a little sad. He's slightly older than me and would post long detailed threads on the subreddit when I was just starting university. He had an accident that @FiveHourMarathon linked to once and became deranged.

His final post was for calling for arms against Mirpuris in the UK, something I'd encourage in an ideal world, unfortunately, fedposting gets you and your movement killed since people actively look for ways to stereotype you (hello charlottesville). Calling for violence online is stupid, doing it for a right wing cause is even worse.

Him and Trace changed after leaving, kulak changed a lot more but trace did too. There are plenty of alums that are popular on twitter, covfefe anon, cremieuxrecueil (allegedly trannyporn0).

People I know who are unaware of themotte genuinely think he's a Canadian girl of rhodesian ancestry. He plays along despite fucking podcasts where his voice is octaves deeper than the average guy.

cremieuxrecueil (allegedly trannyporn0).

Wait, what? I always wondered what happened to TP0. That would be interesting if it were true.

People I know who are unaware of themotte genuinely think he's a Canadian girl of rhodesian ancestry. He plays along despite fucking podcasts where his voice is octaves deeper than the average guy.

Yes, he's neither cat, nor girl, nor kulak. It's always amusing to me when people think he's a woman.

I looked at his Twitter this am and regret it. Essentially, and this hasn't always been true I think, I am on the opposite side of most of his rants. I won't link them because they don't need signal boosting. I also notice he is followed by Jordan Peterson, for some bizarre reason.

People I know who are unaware of themotte genuinely think he's a Canadian girl of rhodesian ancestry. He plays along despite fucking podcasts where his voice is octaves deeper than the average guy.

I just assumed they were Trans.

He seems unhappy, I wish I could have spoken with him when he would comment on my posts. He is quite smart, canda is a good example as to why you should not have mass migration, the migrants there are rarely decent ones, many blue collar punjabis and gujratis who explicitly have very narrow views with regards to ethnic loyalty.

I get why people miss the 90s. Back then, the quality of people moving was not as bad. His accident, increasing amounts of fedposting, the canadian situation explains his current views. I hope he comes out of it ok. There are very real legal ramifications for what he posts at least in Canada. People here have been quite helpful to me, seeing someone whose name i recognize and have spoken with before spiraling hurts a little.

I saw one of his tweets shared in a random (very left-leaning) discord server. I had no idea how to explain that he was legitimately unhinged.

I do think a lot of the conversations that used to happen here have moved to TPOT and postrat twitter. It’s a great space and there are surprising number of present and former mottizens there. Mostly pseudonymous of course but occasionally it’s come up in PMs or via dogwhistles. The notable thing with Trace and Kulak is that they kept their pseudonyms constant between here and there. A lot of people either have separate aliases on twitter or just post under their real name. I’m still trying to figure out which of you here is JD Vance.

I do think a lot of the conversations that used to happen here have moved to TPOT and postrat twitter.

What is TPOT? As with acronyms in general, Google is pretty useless at figuring it out.

It stands for "This part of twitter" and there's a know-your-meme about it here.

“That Part Of Twitter”. Not that it’ll make it any easier to search.

I don’t know what their deal is, but I think they’re related to the “vibecamp” thing. Which is also intentionally vague and a e s t h e t i c.

He had an accident that @FiveHourMarathon linked to once and became deranged.

What are you referring to?

He had a biking accident that caused him issues with his arm, his hand took a while to get back to typing properly again. The libertarian ideals you can skirt by in college when you wish to use them to avoid showing off your power levels don't work after a while.

cremieuxrecueil (allegedly trannyporn0)

Oh! What is the proof for that? Or is it just wishful thinking?

I have heard credible testimony to the contrary from a guy who definitely knows one and claims to know the other, but no hard proof of the negative. They are, as you'd expect, pretty similar people.

It's been alleged here by many multiple times, unless it's an inside joke I'm unaware of, many strongly suspect that he was trannyporn0.

He was unfortunately doxxed. It actually happened a while ago but he was until recently not famous enough for anyone to pay attention. As per longstanding convention on this board I won’t link to it; suffice it to say he was an interesting poster then and still is now, although nobody is immune to the negative effects of Twitter power-use and hot take bait.

Him and Trace changed after leaving, kulak changed a lot more but trace did too. There are plenty of alums that are popular on twitter, covfefe anon, cremieuxrecueil (allegedly trannyporn0).

I am a little bit torn on this one. For instance with Trace, I think he is more authentic after leaving his anonymous motte persona, except at least from what I observed he is now more into gay stuff and mormonism - probably stemming more from his personal experience and history. I think he was more interesting in his fictional anonymous personality writing about whatever here on The Motte, when he had to mold himself into The Motte ethos. In a sense rules here are also some sort of algorithm forcing some people into writing style, that may not be natural to them. And they may be better for it.

How I escaped from the Superclusters has aged well.

Are you sure Kulak is a man? I've listened to the Kulak podcast and it's a woman's voice. Voice changer? Just a very convincing fake voice?

I was very surprised, but I guess some of the essays are about subjects which a woman might theoretically be more likely to write about than a man.

I knew him before he was on twitter- he’s been a man, the cat girl persona started as a joke and then he figured out he’d get more engagement if he played it serious. I think it was around the time Lukas did his ‘why you should steal a woman’s photo to impersonate one online’ thread. Likewise the paganism is also fake- he realized that getting into it with the Christian nationalists would expose him to an audience that agreed with them on most things, but didn’t want to have to follow fundy Christian sexual morality.

I think it was around the time Lukas did his ‘why you should steal a woman’s photo to impersonate one online’ thread.

Could you please link to this thread? Sounds interesting.

I think you are correct about the cat girl persona, but the paganism seems to me to be more ‘genuine’ (in the sense that he doesn’t like Christianity and isn’t just doing it to appeal to atheists, not in the sense that he is some kind of actual pagan). He never seemed to be Christian except in a vaguely aesthetic way when he lamented the decline of Anglo-Saxon (and thus to some extent Anglican) Canada.

Oh I don’t think he’s ever been a serious Christian, or particularly liked Christianity beyond instrumental purposes. But, as you note, he isn’t actually a pagan.

Are you sure Kulak is a man?

Yes, and you need to seriously reevaluate your thinking if you ever thought this is anything other than 100% certain.

I've listened to the Kulak podcast and it's a woman's voice.

I don't know what kind of ladies you go out with, but even trans FTMs rarely go that deep.

Well, shows what I know. Must be a voice changer or something. (That is not the kulak voice I was familiar with)

Yes, and you need to seriously reevaluate your thinking if you ever thought this is anything other than 100% certain.

Just imagine me looking up from my post last week to mug at the camera like a character from The Office.

There is no fucking way Kulak is a real woman, any more than he is actually a Rhodesian catgirl; that kind of autistic obsession with combat screams male. At most, Kulak might be a transwoman, but I doubt it.

It is very easy to have someone else dub over your lines. You can hear Kulak's real voice on several episodes of The Bailey.

I wish we'd get newer episodes. I'll go and listen to the older ones, thanks for the link.

Having some knowledge of the inner workings of the podcast, I can say that there have been half-hearted discussions of resurrecting it with a new host; @ymeskhout is definitely done with it.

what happened? @ymeskhout has been offline or at least offline here for a year now. What exactly went wrong?

I think he had a very legal way of thinking and the Motte's general move towards 'fuck the legal argy-bargy, this is bollocks and you know it' style argumentation didn't sit well with him. Couple that with repeatedly trying to litigate J6 & Trump's prosecution and he started getting dogpiled a lot. Not entirely without reason IMO but it can't have been much fun.

Reasonable. Formal law, police, courts, all are modern left wing centralising forces that ideaologically are being seen as impediments by everyone whos not a normie idealist. The anti law stance is however kinda ard since you risk jail time saying this out loud in place. I do wish for him and others to come back, this place will never be an echo chamber, its still helpful to hear different perspectives.

He started his Substack and wanted to focus on that; additionally, in general he had grown quite distant — ideologically and otherwise — from some of the other original core participants. I have some (although not a ton) of insight into more of the behind-the-scenes specifics, but out of respect for individuals’ privacy I will not share what I know.

What actually happened? anything you can share without violating ones privacy?

I have personally set x.com to 0.0.0.0 in my computer's hosts file and I encourage anyone reading to do the same.

Frog put the cookies in a box set x.com to 0.0.0.0 in his hosts file. "There," he said. "Now we will not eat any more cookies be tempted to interact with x.com and turn into sitcom characters".

"But we can open the box remove the entry from the hosts file" said Toad.

"That is true" said Frog.

Eh, I've always been far better at not buying candy than not eating it. YMMV, of course. It costs thirty seconds and is worth a shot.

I used to do this with reddit.com but always ended up removing the entry after a few days.

I don't know about that. I removed Reddit from my bookmarks toolbar, and my use dropped off a cliff. Sometimes a 10-second barrier is enough to stop an impulsive decision.

Absolutely. Part of the problem with social media is that it's so convenient, removing the convenience removes that 'I'm bored, oh X is right there in my notifications telling me Elon Musk has explained "the implication" to Trump, what's that about?' action.

But I'm also the kind of person who gets very upset when someone tells me to just not use fast travel if I don't like it.

I don’t see this as all bad, to some degree everyone is acting. You don’t curse in front of grandma even if you do in other places. You don’t dress the same for work as you do to just hang out. As long as the character you play is something of a decent human being, it’s probably not harmful.

Yeah that's what I was thinking. In a way I think this might be a good thing - I think being 'an individual' is hard for a lot of people. It's certainly a pain in the ass in my opinion. Also I have nothing to back this up as usual but I think it's healthier to be an unique example of an archetype than to just be an individual in this identity focused world, because it gives people an anchor to cling to when they get cancelled.

I mean im not convinced that most people have a singular self in the sense that they have a core. Identity forms quite often from reactions to things or events, roles taken on, etc. so it seems one can use those deliberately by finding a not terrible set of identities and using them.

One example of a fairly sane YouTuber is a woman in her thirties who has turned her life into what life would have been like in 1940. Of course she’s very well aware of tge LARP, she mostly does the aesthetics and trying out the fashion and lifestyle. She’s pretty grounded. It’s obviously apolitical, which I think helps because it seems once political stuff enters the equation, you’re going to end up radicalized in one way or another.

Can you link? I enjoy that sort of thing; there was another couple who did the Victorian version with an icebox instead of a fridge etc.

I tried it myself once but it turned out that lighting even a small room with candles is surprisingly hard. You need a fairly serious candelabra if you want to be able to read a book after dark.

I tried it myself once but it turned out that lighting even a small room with candles is surprisingly hard.

Which is why you use oil lamps. Really easy to regulate light levels with as well.

This would have been my next step but a relative (who had used them in anger) told me that they stank and to use electric lights and be grateful for them.

In…in anger?

He hated them :P

But no, it’s a phrase about using weapons for their intended purpose (“he owned an antique blunderbuss but had never fired it in anger”).

The phrase is often extended to non-combat items. In this case, what I mean is that he used for its intended purpose in its intended context (making light in a place without electricity) rather than as a LARP.

Apparently it’s a British English phrase: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30939/is-used-in-anger-a-britishism-for-something

I can't remember this ever being a problem and I even tried lighting a lamp i had at home and tried to see if I could detect any notable smell, which there was only a very mild one.

Googling a little it seems like kerosene can have a pungent smell when burning but that the oil that is sold for indoor lamps is purposefully made to smell less.

Perhaps your relative got the wrong kind of oil or used a bad lamp where the oil didn't burn clean?

Quite possibly - this was in a remote area in the 60s.

Thanks for doing the hands-on research, I’ll give it another go when I can.

Bright oil lamps (with a mantle) are very late Victorian -- they're actually slightly newer than the incandescent electric light.

Wick based lamps are plenty bright and the only kind of lamp oil lamp I've ever used, and those are earlyish Victorian.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=A5A9RSHS7es?si=_-o10eeIryBiuOsV

It’s called vintage dollhouse.

What do you mean tried it yourself? Tried going without electricity or tried going full Colonial Williamsburg?

I was going to spend a week without electric lights (plus no PC etc.). Partly for the romance of it, partly because I thought I might sleep better and be perkier if I let myself go with the natural day/night cycle.

I bought a lantern and some slender beeswax candles, and didn’t realise that this was good enough for mood lighting but not nearly enough for anything practical.

I've tried turning off visibility of things like individual post scores, but that does just risk you changing to focus on notifications, instead. And given the extent twitter has driven people completely bonkers, that might be worse than the karma farming. There's always been worries about the masks we wear molding the face -- and even some theories about using that to improve ourselves -- but having the masks get molded in turn is Not Great Bob. And then what exactly it seems to be driving even the boring people toward is kinda disturbing.

You can do some efforts to de-algorithmify yourself, but that's only going to get the worst of it, and maybe not even that. And it's pretty incompatible with having a career or even a renumerative hobby online. Even some offline small business work is becoming increasingly hard to kick off without it. I'd like to advocate some level of in vino veritas, but a) I don't drink, and b) that doesn't seem to work great for those who pick it up. Trying to actively avoid collecting enough of a following maybe helps? But I dunno if that's just because I wouldn't notice the microscale examples of the trend, either.

The one bright spot is that Flanderization does, at least in part, reflect another trait specific to media, not people qua people. Ted Flanders didn't turn from slightly-religious neighbor into a fundie just because time's arrow flew, but also because the shows writers needed something new for each episode. "Simpsons Did It" is a problem for South Park, but it's also an issue for The Simpsons itself; even if most viewers won't recognize the psuedorerun, the show's staff and a lot of the commentariat will. If you have to get a column out for your tech column the weekend and three videos M/W/F, you start diving into this sorta A/B-to-death-testing because you don't have anything else, and the content doesn't have that much to start with.

For normal people, that doesn't quite work that way. Yes, history rhymes, and I'm probably one of the worst people on this site when it comes to bringing up ancient history from the long-ago days of two years ago. But anyone that hasn't let the mask embed into their skull can and probably will find something new because the world is filled with new stuff. Get a hobby, touch grass, fight the dandelion infestation on your front lawn again (fuuuuuuuuuuuck), talk about cooking.

Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask.

fight the dandelion infestation on your front lawn again

I've never had a problem with broadleaf weeds. Are you against using herbicide? I find spraying the whole yard is a waist, I spot spray broadleaf's with 2,4-D. Hit the dandelions before they go to seed and I just have to walk the lawn two to three times.

I've always wondered who were the psychos poisoning their own lawns in order to prevent beautiful flowers from growing

A number of question I have for people with this sentiment:

Do you have a yard?

Do you have a "nice" yard?

How much time do you spend on your nice yard?

Possible question: What climate zone are you in?

I do not define "nice" as being a perfect uniform lawn - there are some amazing "natural" or zero scaped yards - they take 4x the amount of time as my yard. I am not an HOA guy, I don't judge people who don't value a nice yard.

In my opinion the easiest most time efficient "nice" yard is grass. I don't want mud, I want to walk barefoot in my yard, I have a big dog. I don't care what exists in my yard as long as I get the utility I desire as efficiently as possible. Somehow I have ornithogalum umbellatum in my yard and I don't mind it at all. I have oaks from squirrels in my yard and I let those grow to see if I can get a nice one to replace the elms. I would love if I could do a clover yard but it will die in the winter and my yard will turn into a mud pit. Dandelions are not as bad but will still contribute to muddy spots that the dog will expand as he runs around during the winter.

I would love if I could do a clover yard but it will die in the winter and my yard will turn into a mud pit.

You need to move to a place that has a four-season climate.

You mean move away? Clover dies back in winter.

As does grass. But at least both are covered by snow.

I've tried both 2,4-D and glysophate, using those powered wand things, and giving the base of each plant a two-second count. The dandelions definitely don't like it, but either I'm missing a lot of them or they're springing back after each application. To be fair, the previous homeowner had let it get bad to start with, and I'm not great with or consistent about lawnwork, so they've gotten a lot of opportunity to dig in.

((For how bad, I spent a day with some kneepads on and filled a 5-gallon bucket to the lid fourteen times, and didn't even get through all of a pretty small front lawn.))

It's making some progress, as has switching from a reel lawnmower to a powered one to better prevent them from getting to seed after spraying them, but it's been a lot worse than I'd expected even after bringing out the big guns.

What do you guys have against Dandelions? They are free flowers.

I don't mind most 'weeds', but dandelions are particularly prone to killing other nearby plants, and then spreading aggressively to any areas that don't have complete grass cover or deep mulch. I used to have some clover I was trying to cultivate in the lawn proper and a handful of local flowering plants in a nearby garden area, but the dandelions have pretty eagerly smothered them out, and sometimes doing the same to grass. If you have near neighbors, it's also kinda rude to give them your problem, too, and even if you're aggressive about mowing and weeding it's hard to get every dandelion before it gets to seed.

Most of my problem is downstream of having irregular hours and not having consistent opportunities to weed. If you can consistently stop seedlings early, they're pretty easy to pull away from any garden crops you want to keep and at least plausible to prevent almost all from getting to seed. If you don't have those constraints (and don't want the clean-uniform-lawn), they're a lot more tolerable.

For me it's outcompeting the grass and then die back in the winter leading to mud.

Do you genuinely not understand it? The beauty of the lawn lies in its neatness and uniformity. Random weeds in random places break that uniformity. The result does not good even when the dandelions flower (which is a relatively small fraction of the year).

fight the dandelion infestation on your front lawn again (fuuuuuuuuuuuck)

I'm waiting for it to stop raining long enough to put down something for the crabgrass currently threatening to destroy the overseeding I did last fall. I feel your pain.

I had a personal experience almost turning into one of these sitcom characters. The pull is bizarrely tempting.

A little before the election I made a deadpan joke about a domestic annoyance that was completely misinterpreted and then quote tweeted by a major culture warrior. I got so much insane negative attention from that. Death threats. People following me around the Internet leaving shitty comments. Even phone calls of people threatening me.

It got so tense I was looking out my front window regularly and making sure I had my gun nearby whenever I went.

And then it subsided and I was relieved, but a major recurring thought since then has been "I should troll these fucking idiots again. Maybe I can make some money off of this"

I don't. But I can see how if I had a different temperament this would be totally irresistible.

Especially when there's a whole grifter-industrial complex geared towards helping randos turn their 15 seconds of fame into a flash-in-the-pan celebrity career (hawk tuah, anyone?)

Is there such a complex? I thought one of the notable things about the Hawk Tuah girl was just how unusually shrewd she was for being able to leverage that one viral street interview into an actual internet celebrity career.

Nah, there's PR firms and Publicists and brand consultants and such that can leap into action to help a budding microceleb try to extend the limelight with a preset path for leveraging their one claim to fame into public appearances, social media, and maybe some acting or singing gigs.

https://countrychord.com/hawk-tuah-girl-haliey-welch-now-shares-the-same-publicist-as-justin-moore-bruce-springsteen-and-2024-just-cant-get-any-weirder/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hawk-tuah-girl-hailey-welch-1235937553/

Organic celebrity just isn't a thing these days (if it ever was). Used to be you could be a viral meme and ride that horse for a bit until the anxiety got to you.

And of course, she got in trouble for her memecoin because she trusted a entity that specializes in memecoin rugpulls (note, they sell a physical rug product on their website).

There's a whole ecosystem that will try to latch onto any potential niche in the attention economy to monetize the moment.

Personally, I don't even remotely enjoy juggling around a zillion different names (IRL, ToaKraka, a single-purpose name that needs to be active only on certain rare occasions, a single-purpose name that used to be active but now is inactive due to my lack of energy/willpower, a few single-purpose names that are inactive but can be used if necessary…), and I wish that I could just operate under a single unified identity. But I feel like your analysis goes too far. None of my pseudonyms tries to project a unique personality. They speak with exactly the same personality—just on different topics. Your analysis applies, not to "everyone", but only to those public figures who actually try to project unique personalities on social media.

Also, you forgot to link to the definition of "becoming a deranged parody of oneself", flanderization.

None of my pseudonyms tries to project a unique personality. They speak with exactly the same personality—just on different topics.

It might actually be a good sign if they did. If even different fake online faces are only shaped by their own incentives and not each other, then your real life face is propably safe.

Similarly, literally nobody in the 12+ years I've been using it has grokked that my username is "Face H".

So nobody has bothered to ask what became of Faces A-G.

I thought the facehugger got you before you could finish typing your username.

FaceH would be clearer in this regard than faceh, which I assumed was a whole word with some private meaning for you, pronounced "FASS-eh." This is not to doubt that you have circulated through faces A to G, just to say this may explain why no one has asked.

I mean, I was happy to allow those perceptions to continue. "Facea," "Faceb," "Facec," etc. all seem like they could be valid words, so they work quite well as pseudonyms. It just made it easier to keep straight in my head.

This was before password/account managers became standard, so it was helpful to have an organizational system for identities.

And since I stuck with FaceH for so long, I myself pronounce it approximately "Face-ah" in my head.

I did wonder if the name derived from "face". I didnt think of a letter being alphabetical numbering without any indication its not part of the word.

I read it with a hard C, as Fa-cheh.

Mustafa Faceh, Turkish nationalist.

That's what my brain basically did with it.

Yeah I always categorized it as a name like Louis Freeh, a former FBI director

Any big plans for Face I?

Then people will start wondering about Face II.

lol I've basically decided to start integrating almost all my online identities, so no need to spin up a pseud for any new sites or to tackle any new controversies behind a new mask. The seal has been broken between most of them.

Face I will only come about if I am cancelled so thoroughly that I'm forced to live in a cabin in the woods or a sailboat in the Indian ocean.

And in that case it'll probably not be a username but just the signature I put on the drone-delivered pipe bombs I'm sending out to get revenge on industrial civilization.

I'm reminded of Demolition Ranch.

For those not aware of the name, Demolition Ranch is a guntuber who's been doing gun-tubing for quite a while, and recently stopped to focus on his family.

People have commented on how his later content diverged quite a bit from his early stuff, with sensationalist activities and click-baity titles and zany video cards.

When questioned about that, he basically replied that what was getting the most view count, hence the pivot. In other words, that's what getting him the money.

The attention and engagement economy, it seems, says alot about what the mass of humanity demands.

tubing ... recently stopped to focus on his family.

Luke Smith had left the internet for 2-3 years, until (sadly) returning a few weeks ago, with a bigger beard, to declaim the evils of the internet.

I think its also just the hypercompetition that results because 'attention' is a fixed resource, and so every single advantage you can leverage to capture it becomes critical, so everyone evolves towards using every little hack/trick to keep their content in the public eye, lest they be left in the dust.

Whenever someone makes the jump from doing content creation as a hobby/side-gig to full-time career you see the shift. Shorter videos, higher pace of uploads, and general drop in quality while minmaxing every little detail that keeps people engaged and improves ad revenue. The content becomes, fundamentally, an afterthought compared to the drive to attract more viewership.

Then they branch out into the other standard revenue streams. Patreon, a podcast, and maybe a livestream channel... then the death knell (imo)... political commentary.

Mr. Beast is perhaps the apotheosis of this pressure to keep wining attention. He's an apex predator in the environment, but at the cost of selling his soul to the algorithm daemons.

If there's one thing I have always and forever refused to do, its falsify my personality or my preferences.

I won't give something a 'like' on any social media site unless it is actually content I would genuinely prefer to see more of. I hand out dislikes liberally when it is even an option when I encounter things I would really rather never see again.

I will adjust my rhetoric to account for an audience's tolerances for controversy (call it 'discretion' or 'professionalism'), but I won't shift the message itself.

I have literally never stated a position on an issue that I wasn't prepared to at least half-heartedly defend. I try to state my positions on any issue with as much clarity and precision as can be mustered with the English language.

And I do hope my reward is that whatever AI-Algorithm God arises will not have to guess at my preferences and utility function and will thus be able to give me an experience that is very closely optimized for the things that I truly enjoy, and not just the things I pretended to enjoy to fit in or to trick onlookers into thinking I am at all different than what I am. If the GodGPT looks across the entire history of my internet usage, and sees what type of youtube content I liked, the type of subreddits I subscribed to, the arguments I got into, the songs I played, the films I rated highly (and low), the type of people I interacted with, going back for decades now, I think it'll have an easy time figuring out what type of world to stick me in to win my hedonic approval.

Like, many actors seem to get very frustrated when they get pigeonholed into playing a single popular role for years and years on end, or typecast into the same types of roles over the whole career. Imagine how bad it would be for a nigh-omnipotent computer deity to feed you up horrible slop content for the rest of your life because you kept pretending to like [popular thing] for so long that your entire digital footprint suggested that it was your favorite type of content ever. The role you played has become your life.

The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact of human experi­ence, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is from the Greek word narcosis, or numb­ness. The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system.

Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any ma­terial other than themselves. There have been cynics who insisted that men fall deep­est in love with women who give them back their own image. Be that as it may, the wisdom of the Narcissus myth does not convey any idea that Narcissus fell in love with anything he regarded as himself. Obviously he would have had very different feelings about the image had he known it was an extension or repetition of himself. It is, perhaps, indicative of the bias of our intensely technological and, therefore, narcotic culture that we have long interpreted the Narcissus story to mean that he fell in love with himself, that he imagined the reflection to be Narcissus! Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man 1964

Those who engage in this projection of their identity out on social media are narcissists plain and simple. The feedback they receive have none of the corrective mechanisms since that would reduce the use of the media, so there is an obsession by the platform too soothe and allow sycophancy to further lull in a narcotic state while allowing the further projection of their aspirational identity which they love. They aren’t in love with themselves they are in love with the identity they project on the world. Which in my view is a worthwhile distinction.

It is also worth noting projection out on the media isn’t strictly necessary. This state can be also achieved with watching content that “educates” like self-help, health and so on where simple act of consuming of the media fuels a narcissistic self-image which under no circumstances can be manifested in the real world since that would it would shatter the projection.

The first step towards walking in h spiritual path is reducing stimulus substantially. Luke Smith release a good video on this perspective yesterday. A massive reduction and replacing your internet culture war usage beyond this place with long form texts would make life much better.

My mannerisms resemble shock jocks, when I sparred, my movements looked like a worse version of the fighters I liked. People need to unplug, many people crystalise permanently and that's not where I want to be. The single worst conversation of my life was with an ssc reading rationalist who made ssc his emtier personality. Now ssc is the single highest iq place median iq wise like themotte or maybe hackernews. I hated every second of it and wished I never met the guy. If I meet anyone from this place offline, I'll not bring up culture war things or anything internet related.

Great post op. Approved!

The first step towards walking in h spiritual path is reducing stimulus substantially. Luke Smith release a good video on this perspective yesterday.

Tangent, but if I ever wanted to make a meme about "religion bad' I would pick Luke Smith, he's gone orthodox and has aged 15 years in the space of 2. It's the kind of rapid aging that I've only ever seen in vegans before. That copypasta about falling for every meme needs to be updated.

The /g copypastas are funny but I'd recommend him as an example of why you should consider faiths from antiquity.

I have a slight bias towards the orthodox due to them having more in common with Hinduism. Beyond that, Luke recommends people to leave this hyper modern system in all ways and recommends they start a family and be close to their kin, this is form his latest video.

He's not a coder, he seems sincere enough to me. Any man who discovers values of his forefather and encourages other to live by them like he does is a good person.

Though funny copypasta regardless. I really like /g

Did he age, or is it just the beard?

Don't know the guy, but just looked up the linked channel and yeah, that kind of beard always makes you look really old. And it's also really popular among the orthodox for some reason. I'm even sometimes surprised myself when I shave down how young I still look, and I never let it get that long.

Eastern Christianity has historically been hostile to shaving, eastern Catholics have the beards too(just typically a bit neater/better sculpted). AIUI modern Russian culture isn’t too hot on male grooming either.

There seems to be a relatively heavy emphasis on the "elder spiritual instructor" archetype in Orthodoxy, so I assume a beard is a status symbol.

You can go on his channel and judge yourself, this is his last pre-hiatus video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mVGRAD10cYs.

The "I've been a taliban prisoner for 17 months" beard goes a long way but I think he'd still look aged without it.

Can you link the video? Sounds like something I need to hear.

Here. I hope the links correct, it's the latest video on his channel.

Yeah, I like this place because it's long form and there's enough content that I can read it rather quickly and finish. Infinite scrolling loops are horrible.

They make you feel wierd when not on them. Even hacker news is terrible. Here, you have one thread and beyond that there's not a lot. Less is more.

If you think about Kulak, through, the character has gone through shifts. There was the ancap personality on this forum and - I think - the early days of the Twitter account, then the more fashy type of persona, now the same but with a strong pagan/anti-Christian component. Audiences shift and so do the characters.

You can just... not engage with most of that? There are places like Substack and this site that don't sort by popularity. You can also curate your feed to make the algorithmic sites useful. I use Twitter/X to keep up with bloggers I know, and Reddit is useful for AI updates and video game discussions. Youtube can be almost anything you want it to be as long as you subscribe to the things you like and don't subscribe to things you don't like. Just get off /r/all and Tiktok.

True, but in many cases you will have to actively fight the algorithm's attempt to get you to partake in whatever drivel is popular with everyone else, and watch out for its attempts to sneak in ads or other content that someone is paying to put in front of your eyes.

Twitter and Reddit both allow you to sort chronologically. I've just naturally stopped using most of the ones that don't have an option like that, such as Facebook and TikTok (I never got into TikTok in the first place, I bounced off hard). I also don't think "the algorithm" is necessarily always bad -- Youtube's recommended videos have exposed me to some truly excellent creators like Montemayor over the years. Sometimes I'll watch lower quality stuff like whatifalthist and my recommended will be populated by garbage for a bit, but that resolves itself after a week or so, and I could probably speed it up by marking those videos as things I don't want.

Ublock Origin blocks basically all ads, and is quite effective. I haven't noticed shills posing as users to be that much of a problem outside of stuff like porn.

I wouldn't use most sites, period, if Ublock Origin stopped working.

Here's a hot tip too, I've been using ChatGPT to help create custom filters to block out other types of content I find annoying. You can use it, for instance, to block a particular youtube channel from ever showing up in your feed or recommendations.

Huh, I didn't know Ublock Origin was that granular. I use it to remove upvote numbers on this forum already, but didn't know it could be used to block YT recs. Thanks for the tip.

I sometimes wonder if I'm the last user who still goes to each user's personal page a specific subreddit when I want to see something.

I remember Scott posting some twitter screenshots which had the UI text turned to some East Asian language. When he was asked about it in the comments, he basically said that this was so that twitter would show him trending tweets in that language, with which he then would not engage because he could not read them.

Short of not having a twitter account, this is probably the best way to prevent the algorithm from tempting you with outrage bait.

Twitter is full of people being characters, allowing the algorithm or engagement to tweak the dials on their personality. Like a second subconscious that lives in the cloud.

I may elaborate on this in another post, but even assuming zero participation in social media, the algorithm is always listening. Often directly through apps on your cell phone, and indirectly from every link you click, video you watch, search you make, how long your eyes linger on something while you scroll. The degree to which a crude homunculus of yourself is being constructed in the cloud, whispering to you through your screen on the margins of every page you visit is horrifying. It was not a rhetorical flourish to describe it as a second subconscious. I absolutely believe that.

It is a never-ending project to try to avoid feeding information to the Algorithms. No social media. Using minimal apps. Using a browser with as much blocking as possible to do anything online (such as watch YT videos). Never being logged into a site like Google or Amazon when searching or shopping prior to buying. How many lunatics are really willing to go to those lengths to avoid the creation of that second subconscious?

Yeah. Fact is that any device that with an internet connection is likely trying to nudge or otherwise cater to you in a way that will get you to alter your behavior, spend money, or even just cough up more information that they think they can use to sell you stuff.

And every time you give in it gets just a little better at predicting/manipulating you.

I like my Alexa devices, but the occasional attempt to say "hey we noticed you liked [X], just say the word and I'll charge you for [Z]!" sometimes make me want to send them off to the Bitcoin mines forever.

I've already precommitted to ignoring any attempts by a smart device to sell me on something I wasn't already intending to buy, unless it can send a big breasted brunette in a bikini to my front door to make the sale. Any marketing experts who are tapping into my motte account can take that as gospel truth and act on it as they see fit.

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