wanted to surface this Youtuber who's done a lot of work as a Tumblr historian. I don't know that I always agree with her takes or framings of the story, but she is surfacing a lot of context for many obscure movements
While it may be enjoyed by a small minority these days, there is absolutely such a thing as not online. Obviously some people are more online than others. Pretending otherwise just looks like you're trying to make an excuse for your admitted addiction to TikTok.
I have some podcast episodes under “the computer room” tab that are very in the weeds. Start with Adam Lanza fan art and then “you’re going to be a teenager forever.” Gio’s content corner and alex Kaschuta’s show both explore right wing niches. Josh citarella does a phenomenal job at the intersection of the left & internet culture. If there’s a specific topic, happy to guide you.
Thank you! Nothing specific, just trying to survey the landscape and make sense of all of these different groups and stuff. Your writing has helped of course!
I would suggest “Strange Rites” by Tara Isabella Burton as she does a great job of tracking the strain of nihilism you mentioned—because it is far older and deeper than most people realize. And “The Culture of Narcissism” but I forget the guy’s name. Also tracks those sinilar trends. They may be helpful in your research; as always, thank you for a great essay.
An obvious 20th century academic comparison would be the extent to which general "modernization theory" (allegedly societal universals cross-cutting effects of economic growth, secularization, rise of technology, etc) bolted onto specific "area studies" (individual regions and countries). One might consider "area studies" of different online communities to
be their own specialties vs a vis algorithm etc theories that might be placed in the position of modernization theory and similar narratives. In this a university having an individual internet/culture or media major is like having "Asian studies" - silly, you're going to have to be more specific (alas we can predict the moronic right and left responses, the right would say woke/waste of money, which it would indeed become to some extent in the current climate)
> Reforms were made, and there hasn’t been a postal shooting since 2006. Why don’t we ask the same questions of schools? What is it about those environments that leaves vulnerable kids demoralized, alienated, desperate? Instead, we fixate on SSRIs — which was also a major object of fascination during postal worker shooters, by the way — missing the environmental conditions that may quietly feed the problem.
What I find interesting is that you are one of few thinkers who still thinks that the reason for school shootings is because shooter *lacks* something. Current "woke" thinking is that white male school shooter is lashing out due to "aggrieved entitlement". The problem, the argument goes, is not that they have too little but that they have too much privilege and feel entitled to more.
Such thinkers have been awful quiet since the wave of trans shooters, tho. Because under their logic trans people are privileged now, too.
The most remarkable thing /leftypol/ produced was the tape of the board owner sucking off a /tv/ janny which got leaked and overlaid with the national anthem of the Soviet Union.
If you haven’t heard of the video game “Postal,” you might find it interesting. I remember playing it when it came out. I feel like it was the precursor to the edgelord nihilistic worldview in some ways.
Good points on how this field needs to be studied with precision, but you’re definitely in a bubble if you think the online is the new every day. Go to a rust belt town and see how many people are online outside of watching TikTok videos and scrolling their FB feeds. They just want to do their birthday parties and weddings. They are not plugged in and spend less than an hour online a day, if even that.
Then there are the rich who pay people to do all their online chores for them so they can be fully embodied in the physical. This is becoming more visible daily.
It's definitely bifurcating but remember, I'm not writing this from a post in BK. I live among normies in the midwest. If I want to get coffee in the morning, I go to Dunkin Donuts.
the entire economy is digital. you cannot function without a smart phone in hand. try going to a foreign country. lose your phone you don't exist. in the 90s when the post office shootings.. look. I don't know if any of the folks up down this thread are writers. or readers trolls what. anybody attacking this. the fuck. I was on a real world alt weekly news desk in santa barbara for the post office shooter the kid who mowed down students with his car. remember. the internet barely. how does anybody not get this. let me explain. before twitter. have you seen zodiac for fuck sake. sociopaths killers asshole trolls bullies. they wrote letters. thousands of what are now crazy fuckhead with an opinion on twitter or chan where the fuck ever. those letters. we published the ones that said something. something we had not or something that mattered. published one or two nutters if they were funny or worth noting. dropped the thousand other nutters assholes weirdos in a box. the real nutters the manifesto vibes the ransom notes might get passed to somebody up the chain. the back page classified ads, now. they were paid. were terrifying if you analyzed the shit. all the dark shit was yeah happening. the criss cross the interstate highways truck stops the car culture all of it perfect for murderers etc. it was much easier to disappear. now the psychos assholes weirdos are yeah congregating on twitter. twitter is not the. twitter is the bathroom wall. journalists on fox, fucking tucker carlson moved all over the political map from. please fucking get it. I don't have time for this shit. when journalists in the 90s saw what rule 34 meant. what the fuck it meant on the ground. pay the fuck attention. if you're a troll fuck off. if you're a writer. please get it.
《There’s no such thing as “very Online” or “not Online.”》
I refuse to participate in this ethos and I believe I still can. I believe we dont have to live this way, and Ill do my best to be in the real world more.
Im not insulting nor am I mad at you here (I like your writings) nor am I disaproving of internet studies at all, I just read that paragraph and found the idea of life centering around the online world repulsive.
the point the author makes is that internet culture does, objectively, deeply effect all of our lives, no matter wether we participate in it or not. i’m not sure how can argue with that, it’s a statement of fact at this point. this isn’t about *belief* as so many of the critiques of this seem to imply, it’s about an actual material analysis of information flow through the internet.
I was about to write almost the same comment as Strabo, but more nitpicky: it's not like I refuse to believe internet shapes our world; it's that I see it shaping people at different speeds, suggesting exactly that there are very online people and not online people.
My view of this is that being very online (or perhaps "very disembodied") affects the brain via simple neuroplasticity, prioritizing a development and hardening of analytical/systemic thought networks (executive network) at the expense of several different networks, in particular the salience and default networks that depend much more on embodied experience.
This is, IMO, one of the reasons behind radicalization or even the rise of incelism and nihilism.
Or not just this, but the fact that giving just "one type of food" to the brain makes this process become a feedback loop, and the individuals experiencing it lose a ton of soft skills, in favor of (yep) conspiracy theorizing, nihilism, "black-pilling". All stuff that comes from basically over-analyzing things and *wanting* to conclude that "the system is winning" and there is no individual agency. This because that neurological network is not about agency despite being called executive. It's about theory only. So if the brain uses it so much that it's the only "trained" one, it will also try to paint reality in such a way that it's always about theory and collective systems, because otherwise it would feel utterly useless.
Obviously, people who are not online or at least retain a moderately sane embodied life in the real, don't fall into this trap as much. But are then victims of those who do, who desperately try yo confirm their views, even if it means killing someone.
I think you'll like my new article A Theory of the Internet https://open.substack.com/pub/ellismarte/p/a-theory-of-the-internet
Where did you watch those movies?
YouTube!
Dot com?
wanted to surface this Youtuber who's done a lot of work as a Tumblr historian. I don't know that I always agree with her takes or framings of the story, but she is surfacing a lot of context for many obscure movements
https://www.youtube.com/@STRANGEONS
I’m a big fan of her stuff
While it may be enjoyed by a small minority these days, there is absolutely such a thing as not online. Obviously some people are more online than others. Pretending otherwise just looks like you're trying to make an excuse for your admitted addiction to TikTok.
Are there any podcasts out there covering this? Or covering adjacent?
I have some podcast episodes under “the computer room” tab that are very in the weeds. Start with Adam Lanza fan art and then “you’re going to be a teenager forever.” Gio’s content corner and alex Kaschuta’s show both explore right wing niches. Josh citarella does a phenomenal job at the intersection of the left & internet culture. If there’s a specific topic, happy to guide you.
Also
https://vincentl3.substack.com
And nefarious Russians have been on fire w big picture stuff
Thank you! Nothing specific, just trying to survey the landscape and make sense of all of these different groups and stuff. Your writing has helped of course!
We need the Katherine Dee book, now now now. <3
https://substack.com/@taibbi/note/p-173512789?r=1ytv81&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action.
I would suggest “Strange Rites” by Tara Isabella Burton as she does a great job of tracking the strain of nihilism you mentioned—because it is far older and deeper than most people realize. And “The Culture of Narcissism” but I forget the guy’s name. Also tracks those sinilar trends. They may be helpful in your research; as always, thank you for a great essay.
She’s a friend of mine! We’re seeing each other this week.
An obvious 20th century academic comparison would be the extent to which general "modernization theory" (allegedly societal universals cross-cutting effects of economic growth, secularization, rise of technology, etc) bolted onto specific "area studies" (individual regions and countries). One might consider "area studies" of different online communities to
be their own specialties vs a vis algorithm etc theories that might be placed in the position of modernization theory and similar narratives. In this a university having an individual internet/culture or media major is like having "Asian studies" - silly, you're going to have to be more specific (alas we can predict the moronic right and left responses, the right would say woke/waste of money, which it would indeed become to some extent in the current climate)
> Reforms were made, and there hasn’t been a postal shooting since 2006. Why don’t we ask the same questions of schools? What is it about those environments that leaves vulnerable kids demoralized, alienated, desperate? Instead, we fixate on SSRIs — which was also a major object of fascination during postal worker shooters, by the way — missing the environmental conditions that may quietly feed the problem.
What I find interesting is that you are one of few thinkers who still thinks that the reason for school shootings is because shooter *lacks* something. Current "woke" thinking is that white male school shooter is lashing out due to "aggrieved entitlement". The problem, the argument goes, is not that they have too little but that they have too much privilege and feel entitled to more.
Such thinkers have been awful quiet since the wave of trans shooters, tho. Because under their logic trans people are privileged now, too.
If we have too much materially, we are still missing freedom.
Well said.
The most remarkable thing /leftypol/ produced was the tape of the board owner sucking off a /tv/ janny which got leaked and overlaid with the national anthem of the Soviet Union.
If you haven’t heard of the video game “Postal,” you might find it interesting. I remember playing it when it came out. I feel like it was the precursor to the edgelord nihilistic worldview in some ways.
Thank you! I think I've heard of it
Good points on how this field needs to be studied with precision, but you’re definitely in a bubble if you think the online is the new every day. Go to a rust belt town and see how many people are online outside of watching TikTok videos and scrolling their FB feeds. They just want to do their birthday parties and weddings. They are not plugged in and spend less than an hour online a day, if even that.
Then there are the rich who pay people to do all their online chores for them so they can be fully embodied in the physical. This is becoming more visible daily.
It's definitely bifurcating but remember, I'm not writing this from a post in BK. I live among normies in the midwest. If I want to get coffee in the morning, I go to Dunkin Donuts.
the entire economy is digital. you cannot function without a smart phone in hand. try going to a foreign country. lose your phone you don't exist. in the 90s when the post office shootings.. look. I don't know if any of the folks up down this thread are writers. or readers trolls what. anybody attacking this. the fuck. I was on a real world alt weekly news desk in santa barbara for the post office shooter the kid who mowed down students with his car. remember. the internet barely. how does anybody not get this. let me explain. before twitter. have you seen zodiac for fuck sake. sociopaths killers asshole trolls bullies. they wrote letters. thousands of what are now crazy fuckhead with an opinion on twitter or chan where the fuck ever. those letters. we published the ones that said something. something we had not or something that mattered. published one or two nutters if they were funny or worth noting. dropped the thousand other nutters assholes weirdos in a box. the real nutters the manifesto vibes the ransom notes might get passed to somebody up the chain. the back page classified ads, now. they were paid. were terrifying if you analyzed the shit. all the dark shit was yeah happening. the criss cross the interstate highways truck stops the car culture all of it perfect for murderers etc. it was much easier to disappear. now the psychos assholes weirdos are yeah congregating on twitter. twitter is not the. twitter is the bathroom wall. journalists on fox, fucking tucker carlson moved all over the political map from. please fucking get it. I don't have time for this shit. when journalists in the 90s saw what rule 34 meant. what the fuck it meant on the ground. pay the fuck attention. if you're a troll fuck off. if you're a writer. please get it.
the shift in visibility and form matters -- you're right
fucking wake up. how does anybody not understand this. you're typing into a box in the cloud.
《There’s no such thing as “very Online” or “not Online.”》
I refuse to participate in this ethos and I believe I still can. I believe we dont have to live this way, and Ill do my best to be in the real world more.
Im not insulting nor am I mad at you here (I like your writings) nor am I disaproving of internet studies at all, I just read that paragraph and found the idea of life centering around the online world repulsive.
the point the author makes is that internet culture does, objectively, deeply effect all of our lives, no matter wether we participate in it or not. i’m not sure how can argue with that, it’s a statement of fact at this point. this isn’t about *belief* as so many of the critiques of this seem to imply, it’s about an actual material analysis of information flow through the internet.
I think it’s less about centering and more that even if you don’t watch tv it still shaped your world
I was about to write almost the same comment as Strabo, but more nitpicky: it's not like I refuse to believe internet shapes our world; it's that I see it shaping people at different speeds, suggesting exactly that there are very online people and not online people.
My view of this is that being very online (or perhaps "very disembodied") affects the brain via simple neuroplasticity, prioritizing a development and hardening of analytical/systemic thought networks (executive network) at the expense of several different networks, in particular the salience and default networks that depend much more on embodied experience.
This is, IMO, one of the reasons behind radicalization or even the rise of incelism and nihilism.
Or not just this, but the fact that giving just "one type of food" to the brain makes this process become a feedback loop, and the individuals experiencing it lose a ton of soft skills, in favor of (yep) conspiracy theorizing, nihilism, "black-pilling". All stuff that comes from basically over-analyzing things and *wanting* to conclude that "the system is winning" and there is no individual agency. This because that neurological network is not about agency despite being called executive. It's about theory only. So if the brain uses it so much that it's the only "trained" one, it will also try to paint reality in such a way that it's always about theory and collective systems, because otherwise it would feel utterly useless.
Obviously, people who are not online or at least retain a moderately sane embodied life in the real, don't fall into this trap as much. But are then victims of those who do, who desperately try yo confirm their views, even if it means killing someone.
Thats fair. I dont deny the internets the new TV.