I’ve long thought the sugar and fat analogy works well to gauge a comparison between diets of food and information. Now it feels like we’ve intensified the process of refining stimulation - boiling it down to its most intense and nutritionally void form. You eat a piece of fruit for sugar, you at least get some vitamins and such. Eat a spoonful of sugar instead….
Bizarre AI slop feels like a bowl of sugar, following on from increasingly short, narrative-devoid videos. If people can’t learn to regulate their media diets, we’re in for interesting times.
Quick correction, Red Scare hasn't been even vaguely left-coded since 2020 (except the title, which remains as a curious artifact). They explicitly said they preferred Trump to Biden.
In the long run, it’s impossible to win democratically against a faction - like the far-right - that deliberately dismantles the levers of power for its opponents, while those opponents continue to play by the rules.
The only way to remain in the game is to adopt the same tactics, or even more forceful ones. This turns democracy into a game of attrition. And we probably have to live with that.
I wish you'd elaborated on the Ohio memes of the shithead because I don't want to have to dive into that cesspool myself to go see what those are about.
Oh, I could have done a better job clarifying what I meant about that--it's not the Ohio thing specifically (I actually don't know what it means) but it's the fact alone that he has memes hanging up in his office. He's internet-cooked.
I went through your piece thoroughly and had some notes. Our perspective will be different as I went through my culturally formative years primarily in the 1970s.
Your referenced period of “change” begins with Romney’s presidential campaign and extends to the present. I realize that you likely do not establish the initial reference point to the exclusion of the cultural and economic history that preceded the 2011/2012 campaign cycle, but I’ll attempt to offer context as to why I feel our current dilemma to be a multi decade descent that has only been slightly accelerated by recent tech adoptions.
I know well people who rose to prominence in the GOP from having grown up with them. They’re almost all retired or deceased now, but I was privy to the real time commentary regarding actual policy goals vs cultural presentation (aka propaganda).
Romney’s installation as candidate (I use those words intentionally) was one of the last gasp efforts of the GOP to distance themselves from their actual (or at least their DESIRED) voter base. He and Trump 1 pursued essentially the same policy goals and appointed roughly the same individuals to cabinet positions. Those who claim that Trump’s level of nepotism in political assignments is exceptional have not researched the Romney family nepo baby appointments. Has everyone forgotten Trump enabler and sycophant Ronna Romney?
The Romney family were just a bit more subdued (though in a remarkably awkward way) regarding racism and loathing for socioeconomic classes other than their own. Trump and Romney were cut from the same cloth. Rich kids who were supplied sufficient wealth to manipulate systems to their benefit, though both maintain steadfastly that their stations in life are evidence of a highly functioning meritocracy. Confirmation bias… I think they call it.
The “Young Republican” online conversations would have been entirely common in the Vegas / Utah young male Mormon social groups of the 1970s. Back then, it was just sniggered over on hunting trips and church dances, not digitally recorded for eternity.
Musk is not ideologically driven beyond whatever he feels will benefit him. The Sieg Heil cosplay routine was to ingratiate himself with the Bannon side of the “true believer” Trump triangle.
BTW, the TBs didn’t buy it. I knows me some of those Idaho types. They hate nothing more than the poser opportunistic adoption of their ideology. Seems odd that Musk wouldn’t have someone advising on the relative risk vs benefits for these type of actions.
The poser Edgelords of today strike me as no different than the “let’s shock Mom and Dad” crowd that adopted ornamental Nazi imagery in the form of tattoos and/or band names from the 1970s on.
The NF and BM in the UK…? Actual ideologues. Enoch Powell? Full on fascist. Most of the kids / bands that got claimed as National Socialist adherents or adjacent as part of the Skinhead, Oi!, or other such subcultures? They couldn’t define what fascism was, let alone the finer points of Nazism vs garden variety authoritarianism. I know because I knew a lot of people in the music industry at that point. We had a black bass player that took to wearing Nazi memorabilia as a signal of tribal “rock” rather than “funk” allegiance. We had a talk about that bit of absurdity.
Me: “Is the whole Hitler Youth thing really necessary on the sleeve artwork”, regarding a Joy Division single.
Producer: “It doesn’t have shit to do with the band or the music, but you gotta admit, it looks cool.”
The problem is that the edgy vibe of all the Nazi visuals tends to culturally normalize the underlying philosophical concepts, even if the consumers don’t realize the actual history (and/or present) of the movement.
For those of you who still consider Clapton a “God”… he was/is one of the most blatant fascists to ever exist in public life, as was Bowie, though they both got reputationally scrubbed by Record Companies to claim that it was all drug use that temporarily Nazied them up. I’ve worked in a drug abuse shelter from time to time, never heard a single fascist comment. Eric is just a gutless shitbag (and somewhat neglectful parent), end of story.
So far as I know, Clapton never employed Nazi style point adornments, despite being as NF/ Enoch Powell as possible. The true believers don’t necessarily require the club swag.
So, sure, the platform manipulations and algorithms have accelerated and amplified the worst voices, but this shit has always been with us.
As a kid in Vegas who was trying to hammer shit out on a guitar, I purchased relatively crappy guitars from the local pawn shops and took them to a local repair guy who would turn them into playable instruments. As fate would have it, he happened to be an actual camp survivor, tattoos and all.
He never brought up that aspect of his history. His daughter explained it to me as I started hanging around his shop in hope of learning how to do guitar setups myself. Thanks to the Clark County joke of an educational system, I had learned absolutely zero about the Holocaust… as a Junior in High School. Not a whisper about it ever.
I had a side thing where I did tech theatre for both my High School and a local startup theater. I had mentioned to the shop owner that there were a variety of plays/musicals being considered for production. He brought out a well worn copy of Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”.
For those of you unfamiliar with the work, I’ve attached the Wiki. It’s from 1959, though in my opinion is entirely applicable in our current situation, even in tech platforms. Substitute “Influencers” for Rhinoceroses and “Platforms” for Towns and it will suddenly make sense in a modern context.
I tried to get either my High School or the startup theater to produce it.
The High School said it was “too heavy” and went with “Up the Down Staircase”.
The theatre said it was “too heavy” and went with “6 Rms Riv Vu” (though at least on that one I met genuine badass Jack Palance introduced by director Ramon Bieri, so… antifascism was absolutely discussed from a Ukrainian viewpoint).
Then, as today, genuine (or even metaphorical) analysis of topics important to keeping the Nazis at bay always falls subordinate to easily digestible light entertainment. It’s worse when you’ve got self important (delusional) asswipes like Andreessen looking over one’s shoulder.
Best to all. Thanks again for your perspective and efforts.
> "you are not talking to human beings. You are talking to a computer."
quite literally: https://substack.com/@cryptadamus/note/c-169801331
Oh, wonderful
I’ve long thought the sugar and fat analogy works well to gauge a comparison between diets of food and information. Now it feels like we’ve intensified the process of refining stimulation - boiling it down to its most intense and nutritionally void form. You eat a piece of fruit for sugar, you at least get some vitamins and such. Eat a spoonful of sugar instead….
Bizarre AI slop feels like a bowl of sugar, following on from increasingly short, narrative-devoid videos. If people can’t learn to regulate their media diets, we’re in for interesting times.
Quick correction, Red Scare hasn't been even vaguely left-coded since 2020 (except the title, which remains as a curious artifact). They explicitly said they preferred Trump to Biden.
I'll take the correction with thanks - I haven't kept up with it.
Democracy as we know it is probably done.
In the long run, it’s impossible to win democratically against a faction - like the far-right - that deliberately dismantles the levers of power for its opponents, while those opponents continue to play by the rules.
The only way to remain in the game is to adopt the same tactics, or even more forceful ones. This turns democracy into a game of attrition. And we probably have to live with that.
Free speech will suffer the same fate.
I wish you'd elaborated on the Ohio memes of the shithead because I don't want to have to dive into that cesspool myself to go see what those are about.
Oh, I could have done a better job clarifying what I meant about that--it's not the Ohio thing specifically (I actually don't know what it means) but it's the fact alone that he has memes hanging up in his office. He's internet-cooked.
The internet is still being poisoned for profit.
"new startup idea from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s a16z¹: a tool to let you control thousands of bots that act "as human as possible".
¹ Owners of large stakes in this platform, The Privatized Public Square (AKA “X” AKA “The Everything App”), and (soon) TikTok
(h/t Pedro L. Gonzalez)"
https://substack.com/@cryptadamus/note/c-169801331
"AI deepfakes are no longer hypothetical as they’re shaping elections, impersonating politicians, and fabricating coups."
https://open.substack.com/pub/thedisinformationobserver/p/this-week-in-disinformation-13b
Greetings again, thanks for your efforts.
I went through your piece thoroughly and had some notes. Our perspective will be different as I went through my culturally formative years primarily in the 1970s.
Your referenced period of “change” begins with Romney’s presidential campaign and extends to the present. I realize that you likely do not establish the initial reference point to the exclusion of the cultural and economic history that preceded the 2011/2012 campaign cycle, but I’ll attempt to offer context as to why I feel our current dilemma to be a multi decade descent that has only been slightly accelerated by recent tech adoptions.
I know well people who rose to prominence in the GOP from having grown up with them. They’re almost all retired or deceased now, but I was privy to the real time commentary regarding actual policy goals vs cultural presentation (aka propaganda).
Romney’s installation as candidate (I use those words intentionally) was one of the last gasp efforts of the GOP to distance themselves from their actual (or at least their DESIRED) voter base. He and Trump 1 pursued essentially the same policy goals and appointed roughly the same individuals to cabinet positions. Those who claim that Trump’s level of nepotism in political assignments is exceptional have not researched the Romney family nepo baby appointments. Has everyone forgotten Trump enabler and sycophant Ronna Romney?
The Romney family were just a bit more subdued (though in a remarkably awkward way) regarding racism and loathing for socioeconomic classes other than their own. Trump and Romney were cut from the same cloth. Rich kids who were supplied sufficient wealth to manipulate systems to their benefit, though both maintain steadfastly that their stations in life are evidence of a highly functioning meritocracy. Confirmation bias… I think they call it.
The “Young Republican” online conversations would have been entirely common in the Vegas / Utah young male Mormon social groups of the 1970s. Back then, it was just sniggered over on hunting trips and church dances, not digitally recorded for eternity.
Musk is not ideologically driven beyond whatever he feels will benefit him. The Sieg Heil cosplay routine was to ingratiate himself with the Bannon side of the “true believer” Trump triangle.
BTW, the TBs didn’t buy it. I knows me some of those Idaho types. They hate nothing more than the poser opportunistic adoption of their ideology. Seems odd that Musk wouldn’t have someone advising on the relative risk vs benefits for these type of actions.
The poser Edgelords of today strike me as no different than the “let’s shock Mom and Dad” crowd that adopted ornamental Nazi imagery in the form of tattoos and/or band names from the 1970s on.
The NF and BM in the UK…? Actual ideologues. Enoch Powell? Full on fascist. Most of the kids / bands that got claimed as National Socialist adherents or adjacent as part of the Skinhead, Oi!, or other such subcultures? They couldn’t define what fascism was, let alone the finer points of Nazism vs garden variety authoritarianism. I know because I knew a lot of people in the music industry at that point. We had a black bass player that took to wearing Nazi memorabilia as a signal of tribal “rock” rather than “funk” allegiance. We had a talk about that bit of absurdity.
Me: “Is the whole Hitler Youth thing really necessary on the sleeve artwork”, regarding a Joy Division single.
Producer: “It doesn’t have shit to do with the band or the music, but you gotta admit, it looks cool.”
The problem is that the edgy vibe of all the Nazi visuals tends to culturally normalize the underlying philosophical concepts, even if the consumers don’t realize the actual history (and/or present) of the movement.
For those of you who still consider Clapton a “God”… he was/is one of the most blatant fascists to ever exist in public life, as was Bowie, though they both got reputationally scrubbed by Record Companies to claim that it was all drug use that temporarily Nazied them up. I’ve worked in a drug abuse shelter from time to time, never heard a single fascist comment. Eric is just a gutless shitbag (and somewhat neglectful parent), end of story.
So far as I know, Clapton never employed Nazi style point adornments, despite being as NF/ Enoch Powell as possible. The true believers don’t necessarily require the club swag.
So, sure, the platform manipulations and algorithms have accelerated and amplified the worst voices, but this shit has always been with us.
As a kid in Vegas who was trying to hammer shit out on a guitar, I purchased relatively crappy guitars from the local pawn shops and took them to a local repair guy who would turn them into playable instruments. As fate would have it, he happened to be an actual camp survivor, tattoos and all.
He never brought up that aspect of his history. His daughter explained it to me as I started hanging around his shop in hope of learning how to do guitar setups myself. Thanks to the Clark County joke of an educational system, I had learned absolutely zero about the Holocaust… as a Junior in High School. Not a whisper about it ever.
I had a side thing where I did tech theatre for both my High School and a local startup theater. I had mentioned to the shop owner that there were a variety of plays/musicals being considered for production. He brought out a well worn copy of Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”.
For those of you unfamiliar with the work, I’ve attached the Wiki. It’s from 1959, though in my opinion is entirely applicable in our current situation, even in tech platforms. Substitute “Influencers” for Rhinoceroses and “Platforms” for Towns and it will suddenly make sense in a modern context.
I tried to get either my High School or the startup theater to produce it.
The High School said it was “too heavy” and went with “Up the Down Staircase”.
The theatre said it was “too heavy” and went with “6 Rms Riv Vu” (though at least on that one I met genuine badass Jack Palance introduced by director Ramon Bieri, so… antifascism was absolutely discussed from a Ukrainian viewpoint).
Then, as today, genuine (or even metaphorical) analysis of topics important to keeping the Nazis at bay always falls subordinate to easily digestible light entertainment. It’s worse when you’ve got self important (delusional) asswipes like Andreessen looking over one’s shoulder.
Best to all. Thanks again for your perspective and efforts.
"we are evolutionarily unprepared for the devastating psychological consequences of the internet."
Yes! I've been writing about this too:
https://sassone.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/url-vs-irl/
What you're describing sounds an awful lot like the inverse of the Lawnmower Man...