I Have No Mouth and I Must Stream

thought digest, 11.29.2024 + guest writing from Prester John's Revenge

Friend-of-the-stack Trace¹ brings up an interesting point on X, one that may be familiar to long-time Deetards: social media forces people into fiefdoms.

This explains why Urbit fits so naturally in Moldbug’s philosophical universe. Urbit is the concretization of what we can only approximate online. Who is the lord and who is the vassal on social media? And what role does the operating system play, let alone the internet service provider?

This is why I prefer “fandom” to “fiefdom.”

Fandoms exist in a media market², in our case, a social media market.

Biblical paintings weren’t “fanwork” because fandom is defined by its proximity to intellectual property. It’s intellectual property that distinguishes fandom from a cult or a religion. It should go without saying that church law isn’t the same as the corporate and legal protections IP has.

To toggle back to Trace’s point about fiefdoms, what people online desire more than power is commercial recognition. That’s what everyone is fighting for.

“We are the media now,” not “we’re the government now,” or “we’re the president now,” or “we’re the military now.”

We control the narrative now.

But it’s more than just the narrating story: it’s everything that comes with a big media property. We control the franchise now, the spin-offs, the characters, we sell the tee-shirts, and run the conventions, and charge other people to use it.

The social media age loves intellectual property. Can you “steal” a vibe and sue for it? I get it, it’s not silly at all. It feels like a serious threat to your person in today’s world! Your very soul is IP.

This marks one of the crucial differences between today’s Internet and yesterday’s Internet, at least at scale, if we remember patron saint of the Stack humdog’s warning in pandora’s vox. IP is exactly what makes anons, real anons, not pseudo-anons, rebellious.

James Poulos left a reply on my quote-tweet of Trace, noting that “the digital retrieves the medieval.” He’s referring to McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects here:

James contends, though somewhat mysteriously, that the Internet “retrieves” a more medieval way of being.

We’re big on comparing certain online dynamics to the medieval around these parts, hat tip to Tara Isabella Burton who helped inspire this idea in her invaluable book Self-Made.

Over on default.blog and Wisdom of Crowds, we’ve talked about how anons take a “medieval” approach to art by eschewing credit. It’s why we don’t care about who created a meme, for example. They’re in service of a subculture; a moment; a movement; an ideology. Anything but the individual.

Normies (and facef**s like myself) are seeking individual credit, though. This is also partially why there’s a divide between anons and people who use their real names and real faces. People like me are beholden to social rules, but we also want something that goes up against the grain of the Anon Ethos: recognition for who we are and what we contribute.

You don’t become an anon to become an e-celeb. You become an anon to speak truth to power. Thus, a conflict emerges when real power (or money or ego or whatever) becomes an option. Commercialization and external media validation kills online subcultures in a way censorship never can and never will.

Where all of this starts to look more like a fiefdom is when we move into smaller groups, or we get in on the ground floor of a new group. There’s initial opportunity for mobility—some fans can rise to become their own media property, as Fifty Shades of Gray demonstrates on a larger scale.

But in most cases, a natural hierarchy emerges: the fan object takes the throne, with everyone else settling into roles as loyal subjects. While fans can shape their domains—e.g. influencing how we see Spider-Man or Doctor Who’s story arc—true power remains with the media property itself. As markets become oversaturated, you either ascend to stardom or accept your place in service to the fan object. As the market becomes oversaturated (as potential property space diminishes), we see some are building their own networks to consolidate power. That, in itself, is a type of political revolution.

When somebody takes your IP online, they’re effectively seizing your power. They are taking a piece of your soul in a world that demands you sell it.

Cultural appropriation makes a lot more sense in this context. Cultural appropriation represents IP theft in a world where everyone must function as a media property—you may call it a “brand.”

It’s so much more than just dishonoring someone’s culture—something we have every right to be defensive of, without the commercial dimension. They’re taking something essential to you in a world that demands you sell and profit off your essence, in turn making you feel like the counterfeit. I mean—come on, who wouldn’t try and command the mob in the face of that? How can anyone have a stable sense of self in a world that’s always trying to take it from you?

ICYMI:

PREVIEW: The Three Archetypes of Internet Overexposure Syndrome

And now, for some subscriber writing.

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I Have No Mouth and I Must Stream

by Prester John’s Revenge

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”

The excerpt above is taken from Harlen Ellison’s 1967 short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. While many of his contemporaries in the sci-fi world wrote optimistic visions of the future during the summer of love, Ellison dreamed of something darker. In I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Ellison describes a world in which humanity has been overcome by a globe-spanning supercomputer that covers the entire earth with an endless expanse of wires, circuitry and chrome. The supercomputer- originally called “AM”, or “Allied Master Computer” was created as a weapon during the cold war. Each nation built their own version of AM, giving it control of all of their military and technological capabilities in a new arms race. However, sometime in the late 20^th century, AM gained sentience. “Allied MasterComputer' became “AM”, as in “Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I AM”.

And when AM began to think, it began to hate.

AM would go on to turn against its creators and kill all of humanity save for five people. This was not a mercy, however, but eternal damnation. AM tortures the five remaining humans with personalized hells. Unable to die, the last five humans live in agony, tormented by an insane, hateful machine for over one hundred years. AM keeps them alive, contorting their bodies and minds for its own sadistic amusement. AM subjects them to endless suffering of the mind, body and spirit, all fueled by its hatred of humanity. In the end, one of the humans, Ted, manages to kill the others in an act of mercy. However, AM will not let Ted himself die, damning him to an eternal existence of isolation and suffering as punishment.

In 1967, the idea of a global, interconnected network of computers controlling humanity was pure science fiction. But by 2024, that fiction has become our reality through the omnipresence of the internet and social media. While the singularity science fiction warns us of has not yet occurred, the power and influence of this technology are already vast, creeping into the daily lives of nearly everyone on the planet. While this connectivity has brought joy and opportunity to many, for others it’s become a source of endless torment. Today, I will introduce you to five people whose lives have been destroyed for the entertainment of their audience. Their suffering is broadcast online, perpetuated by a network of enablers, voyeurs and sadists that make up the darker parts of internet culture in a display that would make AM proud.

The first of our victims is known as Nikocado Avocado, born Nicholas Perry. He started his YouTube channel in 2014 with a friendly, approachable persona, streaming himself eating healthy, vegan food while engaging with his audience. Perry’s content belonged to the "mukbang" genre- a portmanteau of the Korean words “eating” and “broadcast”- which features individuals filming themselves while eating a meal. In 2016, he abandoned his vegan diet and began consuming increasingly unhealthy, calorie-dense meals. Over the next eight years, Perry gained over 200 pounds. In his videos, he plays a fragile, foolish, and emotionally volatile character, leading to widespread mockery and ridicule in online communities.

However, in September of 2024, Perry released a video titled “Two Steps Ahead” (

In this video, Perry reveals that he had allegedly lost over 250 pounds over a period of two years. He did this while releasing previously recorded content as cover for his secret weight loss in what he called “the greatest social experiment ever conducted”. He rails against the people who watched his content, laughed at him and encouraged his self-harm. At the end of the video, a now rail thin Perry immediately begins to gorge himself again with another mukbang, seemingly starting the process of weight gain over again. It’s unclear if Perry is being honest about the timeline of his weight loss. Some have speculated that he may have used the controversial weight loss drug Ozempic. In either case, even if he’s being honest about the timeline of his weight loss, Perrys extreme weight gain and subsequent loss is extremely unhealthy and likely did serious damage to his body.

While Perry is obviously playing a character, it seems that sometimes reality shines through. He occasionally breaks character and the mask falls, revealing genuine moments of strife and heartbreak. (It’s possible that destroying himself and playing such an unlikable character was taking its toll. Of course, Perry was able to become very wealthy thanks to his content, reportedly making millions of dollars. However, regardless of if he was cynically playing a role for fame, putting a comedic face on a genuine eating disorder, or, as some speculate, gaining weight as a sexual fetish (Perry also has a sexually explicit OnlyFans page), the fact remains that he is doing serious damage to his mental and physical health for fame. One has to wonder if the humiliation, pain, health issues and relationship strain was worth it. This is all enabled by YouTube ad revenue and those who support him financially. He may say he sees what he does as a social experiment, but it’s safe to say most people just enjoy the freak show.

While Nikocado Avocado may be raking in millions of dollars, some other creators are not as lucky. Our next tortured soul is Christopher Thomas Schewe, or “Shoenice”. Schewe, a self-described “human garbage disposal”, would initially rise to fame by eating strange items such as glue, bars of soap, toilet paper or other household items. In the early days of YouTube, this was enough to make him famous and his channel would rack up millions of subscribers. He would even go on to guest on the Comedy Central series Tosh.0 and starred in a Vice documentary. However, as tastes and the YouTube algorithm changed, Schewe’s fortunes would take a turn for the worse.

As YouTube advertising revenue dried up, Schewe would take on increasingly desperate stunts for publicity. Far from the days during the height of his fame, Schewe would rely on attempting to start drama with other YouTube creators and internet personalities in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. This was largely a failure, however, and he would not regain even a fraction of the views and advertising revenue he once enjoyed. Largely, audiences had lost interest in Schewe’s “talent” for eating non-food items and a series of controversies had made him a pariah in internet communities. As of the writing of this article, Schewe has been banned from most social media and streaming platforms.

Barred from sharing the content that made him famous, the only thing that seemed to be able to generate Schewe income was his other love- what he dubbed “liquor slams”. A “liquor slam” is just what it sounds like- Schewe will guzzle an entire bottle of alcohol in one gulp. Schewe admits he’s a serious alcoholic and his addiction cost him his family and marriage. However, without a support system or any other way to earn an income now that he has ruined his reputation, he earns money the only way he can. He survives off of small donations and is presumed to be homeless as is evidenced by him largely posting content from public parks, libraries or under a bridge.

) There seems to be a small audience that still enables him to do this, seemingly just for the entertainment value of watching a man suffer.

Unfortunately, the genre of watching people destroy themselves by eating has a perverse inverse. Our next tormented soul is named Eugenia Cooney. Cooney is a young woman who first rose to fame in the early 2010’s as a fashion vlogger. While she initially made content showcasing fashion and makeup tips, her content began to take a dark turn as the years went on. While she was very skinny at the beginning of her career, she would go on to lose more and more weight and as a result, her fans began to theorize Cooney was suffering from anorexia. However, her audience only grew as her waistline shrunk and Cooney would continue her dangerous transformation until in 2019, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and took an extended break from content creation.

After her release, Cooney eventually resumed creating content. While she initially appeared to be recovering and gaining weight, she soon began to lose weight rapidly again. Her mother frequently appears in Cooney’s videos, leading some to speculate that their relationship may be abusive, as certain comments from her mother are interpreted as enabling Cooney’s eating disorder. Though Cooney continues to produce fashion content and stream herself playing video games, she seems to have attracted a troubling fanbase. A community of people, mostly young women suffering from anorexia, known as "pro-ana" (short for pro-anorexia), discovered Cooney early on and financially supported her. To some in this group, Cooney serves as "thinspiration"- a harmful role model for eating disorder “success”. Additionally, a portion of her audience consists of those who view her decline with morbid curiosity. Alongside her enabling mother, Cooney continues to stream and make a living off viewers who are watching her slowly kill herself.

Our fourth subject is perhaps one of the most documented individuals in history. Born Christopher Weston Chandler, Chris later legally changed his name to "Christian Weston Chandler" at age eleven after an animatronic bear, Leonard Bearstein, misheard his name- a mistake that he and his father interpreted as a "sign from God." Now known as "Christine Weston Chandler" after coming out as transgender, most people know this individual as "Chris Chan." Chandler is widely known as a "lolcow"- an internet personality mocked for entertainment. You either know all about Chandler, or this will be an enlightening few paragraphs.

As I alluded to, Chandler is one of the most well-documented individuals in history. The sheer volume of information on Chandler is overwhelming- there are multiple dedicated fan pages (https://saveums.fandom.com/wiki/Chris_chan), wiki pages (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Christian_Weston_Chandler, and thousands of hours of video content, including an ongoing multi-part documentary (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYIn2LuYZDEKVoPqls_xr523yhPgHzPEw) with each episode lasting nearly an hour or more. Few moments of Chandler's life have gone undocumented, much of it shared by Chandler themselves.

If you're unfamiliar with Chandler, or "Chris Chan," it's hard to know where to begin the story. Chandler first gained infamy in 2004 when an anonymous user on the now-defunct Something Awful forums posted photos of Chandler's self described "Love Quest," in which they put up personal ads at a South Carolina community college seeking a "boyfriend-free girl." After becoming a minor curiosity on Something Awful, Chandler's life took a drastic turn when they were discovered by users of the infamous image board 4chan. From that moment on, Chandler and the obsessive community that documented and tormented them, known as "Christorians," became locked in mutual antagonism, changing Chandler's life forever.

For nearly twenty years, these trolls would obsess over and torment Chandler. While the interest began as a minor curiosity, it soon grew into a full-blown obsession and subculture. These “Christorians” would take sick pleasure in pranking, manipulating and tormenting Chandler. Chandler, for their part, played into and fed the trolls- filming multiple reaction videos to the harassment that only fed the fire of the obsession. There was a time in certain corners of the internet where various images of Chandler became a ubiquitous meme- such as the now iconic medallion of Chandler’s “original” character “Sonichu”- a mashup of Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog or various catchphrases such as “The pickle man fooled me again”, “virgin with rage” or “damn dirty trolls”- became a form of cultural currency in some circles.

Over the years, this internet subculture took a much darker turn. Chandler, who is severely autistic, lived with elderly parents who were neither equipped to manage their adult child's condition nor fully aware of the severity of the online community’s obsession with their child. After Chandler’s father passed away, Chris and their mother fell into worsening financial straits, compounded by Chris's spending habits on toys and video games, which strained the already meager income that came from their social security and disability checks. As a result, Chandler often resorted to soliciting donations (pejoratively called "e-begging") from the "Christorians" and performed increasingly humiliating acts for paltry sums that barely covered basic costs of living and prevented eviction. This destructive cycle continued until 2021 when Chandler was arrested for incest with their mother, a charge that surfaced after messages confessing to the act between Chandler and a troll were shared with the police.

I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of this crime or make light of it. While Chandler is autistic and has a tenuous grasp on reality- believing themselves to be the goddess of a fictional world called "CWC Ville" inhabited by children’s cartoon characters- they are still an adult capable of making decisions. Chandler's upbringing, marked by mentally ill parents (who were hoarders) and extreme isolation, undoubtedly contributed to their situation. If Chandler had been in a more supportive environment and kept away from the internet, their life might have taken a different course.

That said, one must question whether the torment Chandler endured over the last twenty years- not least of which being the incest charges- would have happened without the feedback loop that came from the constant harassment from the internet community obsessed with them. At every turn, these trolls pushed Chandler down the most destructive paths and enabled their worst behaviors. Reports even suggest that one specific troll (who I won’t name) coerced Chris into the incident with their mother. Released from jail in 2023, Chandler is back to creating content to survive, having returned to the trolls' influence now that they are separated from their mother and have few other options to make an income. Once again, Chandler lives in constant torment, haunted by two decades of humiliation, with no end in sight.

It’s easy to hear these accounts and feel disgust or pity. After all, in many cases, these individuals choose their path to some extent. But what about those who will have a similar fate forced upon them? Another sci-fi novel explores the possibility of humanity living under the control of technology, but this one seems on the surface to be benign. In Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, we see a near-future where humanity has largely retreated into a virtual reality world called "The Oasis." Unlike AM, the malevolent computer in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The Oasis was created by an eccentric game designer who made it free to play, allowing even the poorest to live out their wildest fantasies. The story’s conflict centers around a corporation trying to take over The Oasis and charge for access, while the heroes fight to keep it free. However, in the age of modern social media and targeted advertising, I fear that Cline didn’t think big enough. What if the evil corporation won, but kept it free- only to exploit its users in even more insidious ways?

In the 2008 book Who Owns the Future? author and inventor Jaron Lanier coined the phrase, "If a service is free, you are the product." This concept was later popularized by Edward Snowden when he exposed the vast data collection operations carried out by the NSA and the U.S. government. While Snowden’s revelations shocked some, most people were ultimately more upset than surprised. Despite knowing the extent of this surveillance, we continue to allow it- often willingly. Companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok offer "free services," but in return, we pay with our personal data, which they sell to advertisers. We click "agree" on the terms of service without a second thought, but what are we really agreeing to? Many justify it by saying they have nothing to hide and would use the services anyway. What’s the harm?

It’s a well-known fact that these companies have specifically designed their products and algorithms to be highly addictive. One of the ways they do that is by showing us not just what we want to see, but what we don’t want to see. The old adage of “if it bleeds, it leads” has been taken to its logical conclusion. You will be shown more and more of what upsets you to keep you engaged. But again, this is all voluntary, right? Well, the fun is only getting started. AI is a term that is often misused and abused. Usually, when people say “AI”, they mean an LLM, or “large language model” which is software that is able to parse insanely large sets of data and make meaningful conclusions that would be very difficult or impossible for humans to make. And where do you think they are getting this data? We feed it to them. While I think there is some hype that does not reflect reality around AI, it is still a technology that is going to be a game changer within our lifetime.

This speaks to a dark potential for many people alive today. Clive Humby, an English data scientist, coined the term “data is the new oil”. This is because data, like oil, can be very valuable but useless in an unrefined form. As AI and automation continue to advance, the technology will put more and more people out of work. Redundancies in the human race. There will be millions- perhaps billions- of people who find themselves unable to produce anything of value. “Zero marginal product”, or ZMP people, as economist Tyler Cowen describes. What will we do with these unproductive people? And by “we”, I mean “they”. And by “they”, I mean the ones who control the means by which so many of us will become unproductive. If data is indeed the new oil, then many of us are going to start looking like a middle eastern country with a democratically elected government sitting on top of an untapped oil field.

So, as we come to a close, some eagle-eyed readers may be saying “PJ- you promised us a story of five people! I only count four!” Well counted, clever reader. I did indeed only name four. I’m getting to the fifth. But first, let’s loop back to the Harlan Ellison story we opened on. Ted was able to free his fellow prisoners from their torment at his own expense. He was trapped by AM- the malevolent machine- and tormented for all eternity. For his act of mercy, AM cursed him by taking the last thing Ted still had- his humanity. Ted was the one who, despite years of torture, still believed he had kept his sanity. He had retained his agency and proved that by freeing the other prisoners with death. AM would not give Ted that mercy, however. AM changed Ted physically, spiritually and emotionally. AM twisted Ted until he no longer resembled a human at all- he became a slug-like creature that could only react. Unable to exert force on the world, Ted became a creature that roamed the ruins of the earth unable to affect it, only to observe. Dependent on a machine indifferent to his very existence. To be subjected to constant pain and torment merely to survive in a world that is hostile to him. A world that has changed beyond any recognition of a place where humanity could survive and flourish. A life that only exists to serve the whims of an unfeeling machine. A fate many of us may soon suffer.

This is the fifth and final character- it could be anyone. It could even be you or I. The world we were born into will not be the one that we live through. Technology is changing the world rapidly, and there will be winners and losers. We all pray that we aren’t among the numbers who will become redundant. We can, like Ted, show mercy to those who are unfortunate enough to gain the hateful machines’ attention- ending their suffering by turning away from it. But will the machine look away from us? Will you be one of the few who are saved? Or will you be changed beyond recognition through years of torment, unable to look away and unable to escape the belly of the beast? Below is a final quote from Ted, the last human, on the fate he suffered.

“I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet ... AM has won, simply ... he has taken his revenge ...I have no mouth. And I must scream.”

1. One of my favorite guys on here, pls subscribe to him if you aren’t already.

2. This podcast explores this idea within the microcosm of a particular online subculture. Good snapshot of people reacting to this/the way people ‘on the ground’ conceptualize these dynamics in real-time.