Who are you? A man hiding his identity? Because you live in an unjust world, because the social technology is imperfect? Because sick, evil, mad men will threaten your life if you do otherwise? No, that is a character, not the actor. That is a profile, not a human. Who am I? I am no-one.
Identity on the Internet is not a marker for navigation, as it is in the real world. In the real world you identify and categorize, and use these to navigate an environment. There is no “vitual environment”, there is no 3d matrix world we get transported into. There is a flat 2d world of text on a screen. “Identity” as a concept is for 3d navigation, and does not translate to the internet, and the adoption of it as a core concept in design, only leads to schizophrenic delusion on part of the user.
The word "social" is an advertisement buzzword, the Internet was more of a communication tool where you could speak meaningfully to strangers, before it became "social". It was social in the 90s and 00s, where you understood that you were no-one, that the internet was flat, before it became "social", with the release of the smartphone and augmented reality.
Genealogy of UI design
I am fascinated with World of Warcraft, because it was the first Facebook, the first social media. My thesis is that every major design change on the big Social media platforms were preceded by similar changes in WoW.
The history of world of warcraft’s design is one of the gradual degradation of the original concept. It’s right in the name MMORPG: “Massively Multiplayer”. Since the launch of the original game as a big open world simulation, there has been a constant march in one single direction, design wise. Away from multiplayer, communal, social, and towards single player, wish fulfillment. The original “appeal”, the sell of the game was “being one in a million of peers”, not being the center of the world, but being able to lose yourself in the world, and for every patch it gradually grew into “You, the player, are the Chosen One, and the world centers around You”. Every single player get to be the Chosen One, and have the special magical legendary sword. The appeal is no longer to lose yourself in the “realistic” world, but to feel “special”. It doesn’t make sense, of course, and even the WoW userbase of the dregs of society can’t help but see through it. It’s widely agreed that what they all liked about the original was the “community”, which was later lost in favor of “cinematic experiences”. They don’t have the vocabulary to call it “feeling patronized” or “talked down to”.
On a technical level, which I find very interesting, a gradual process of changes were implemented, where with every update and change, all peer to peer direct contact between people was automated, and then, replaced with a synthetic version. Instead of sharing one big open world, gradually Blizzard began to implement “instancing” and “level scaling” - which means, that while you and player B might be standing in the same place in the “world”, your two game-states are widely different, and you are only supplied with the “illusion” that you are both in the same place.
You no longer inhabit the same “world”, but are each reduced to a novelty in each others “worlds”. No two players, even as they pretend to be cooperating on a quest, technically inhabit the same game-world. A perfect infinite hall of mirrors where the input of other players are used to generate simulations of other players, not merely representations of them.
How many google engineers in 2010 played WoW? The medium is the message.
“Sharing values” is a direct parallel here. You go on a journey into a dangerous plot-dungeon with a person who experiences it at level 200, while you are level 20, and the machine does a bunch of calculations to simulate you both being on the same level.
It doesn't matter if you are in the same physical room as someone, and you are supposedly working on the same project together: it does not actually provide real friendship, only a simulation, so long as you don't have the same "value system". IE it doesn't work when your parents are living in a deranged boomer fantasy TV-world, and you are just trying to make them happy, by playing along with their delusion, because they are level 20 and you are level 100 and the connection is faked through level scaling. Connection is only possible if the power differential is recognized by the game/environment. Otherwise, the result is that your reptile brain recognizes that the world is fake. To feel “powerful”(ie, agency) in “the game”(ie, the real world), the world has to recognize and reflect power differentials. Otherwise you break the “immersion” (ie, want to commit radical political changes)
Social media in 2023 is a video game, about telling yourself who you are, and all web 3.0 is social media. It is all “gamified”. You have to have a “profile” ie. generate a character to represent you in the virtual space. It is a single player game masquerading as a multiplayer game, by simulating synthetic socialization. I would say it's going to get worse, but that's not really true, I would only be saying so for effect. It's already, technically speaking, as bad as possible.
The “chatter” is playing the same game as the “streamer”, the commenter is playing the same game as the journalist and author. There is no active and passive partner, no giver and receiver, no master and slave. We are all passive. I, writing this, am passive. The only active possible, is in the act of writing code, and even that is a dreamlike haze, a hypnotic state where you are moved by some other power.
“There are no girls on The Internet” does not merely mean "you cannot use the normal social advantages, and expect certain social curtesies afforded you for biological reasons". It means YOU DO NOT EXIST. Memento mori for the digital age. “Remember, This is all Fake”.
It means Jesus Christ dude look out, you're going to go insane, you don't know what you're doing, and you're going to go insane. Today, there still are no women on the Internet. Most women are just insane, just as most men are.
The idea that you "are" online, exist, that you have a role, a character, a profile, is a schizophrenic delusion, full stop. It is designed to be that way. The purpose of propaganda in 2023 is not to convince or to hide, but merely to confuse and overwhelm.
There is this notion in bitcoin economic theory that bitcoin is inevitable, because it solves a fundamental problem in economics, and it will simply by natural law out-compete fiat currency eventually, unavoidably, simply because it is optimal. Chans are the bitcoin of web design. Anonymity is missing the forest for the trees. It’s not about anonymity vs identity. It’s about recognizing what the internet is, and how it is used optimally.
Any environment that lets intelligent men cooperate playfully, without this illusion of “identity”, will become 4chan. For a while in the past years, twitter was 4chan. There will be another, but I will probably miss it because I am old. There was another before, and there will be new ones, because it is inevitable. Intelligent men demand freedom. What does this mean? A place to playfully cooperate with other intelligent men, and have a bit of fun.
Was such a system put in place on purpose, by evil villains, who sought to achieve this situation, towards some end? Did the Blizzard code monkeys do all this on purpose? Was Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and all the rest of them all designed on purpose, to give people brain damage? In part. But the real kicker is, the designers also partook in the fel magic demon blood, they also believed their own propaganda, they fell for their own psyop, and regardless of their original intentions, they are now fully extensions of the machine, possessed by the Nothing. The question is really only of historical and Genealogical interest, not any practical. They are gone, no one is home. The effect of the systems have rendered them just as schizophrenic as everyone else.
“No one is in control”, is a popular explanation for the general situation in the world, cascading incompetence and naked emperors trending towards critical system failure. But that's not quite right. I say "No one" TOOK control. Something is in control, which we refer to, call by the name, “no one”, "nothing". The collective sum of all human Nothingness. The Great absence. This nothing existed before machines, and has manifested physically before.
The left-right distinction is a fake conflict, designed to distract you from the fact that the right is mostly right about political issues.
The culture war and identity politics are a fake conflict, designed to distract you from the fact that you are being [a less polite word for, culturally assimilated].
The NWO WEF globalists are a psyop to distract you from the fact that nwo wef globalists are working to destroy the middle class and introduce a global system of brutal, inhuman, murderous tyranny.
Pedophile satanists are a psyop to distract you from the fact that the world is run by pedophile satanists.
“No one is in control”.
“Nothing Ever Happens”.
My life a movie (Synthetic Autism)
There is no meaningful destination between Hollywood and Netflix, and "social media", twitter et al.
At an operational level there is no difference between believing you had sex with 5 women yesterday because you watched porn, that you are a woman because you watched porn, or that you are being anonymous to partake in a social movement that's going to cause a political change, and you're kind of like a spy or underground intellectual. To a degree, any of them can also happen to be true, or align more or less with physical reality. culture war identity politics is a fake conflict, designed to distract you from the fact that you are being genocided. But to have real agency you have to be able to see the distinction. You have to be able to see how that is not a contradiction. You have to be able to see the level scaling, that the world is fake.
Modern transvestism is, I think, not exactly the act of identifying with the woman in porn. I think Autogynephilia is a symptom, not the cause.
I think the cause is, specifically, in sexualising, fetishizing, the process of browsing porn on the Internet, of categorizing it, carving up the process and bodies into code, codewords: petite, big tits, big cock, Latina, etc. Not the subject, but the process. It is not a step into the fantasy, it is not immersion, but rather a step back and and out, immersing with the process of stimulation rather than the stimulation itself.
Before the Internet this was extremely rare, because it required an extremely rare highly autistic mind to conduct this butchery and analysis and categorization in the first place, in their own mind, to then be able to sexualize and fetishize at all. Today, the first process is provided synthetically, by websites organized like spreadsheets with codewords. And in “character creation” in video games. A synthetic autism is simulated and provided by technology, and the barrier of access is removed to the sexual dysfunction. I think silence of the lambs had some good insights.
Not the fantasy of “being a woman”, but very specifically “being in control” of the woman, on a godlike level (character creation, deconstruction), of being the puppet master and director of the porno, of being in control of the woman at a godlike level. An autistic deconstructive overmind, performing a vivisection. Being the third man, the outside perspective. Being both and neither . It only manifests visually as cross-dressing, because it doesn't actually work, and watching a lot of porn doesn't actually make you God.
This is why before the Internet it was extremely rare, and only happened to abnormally high t, highly autistic men. In this way, paradoxically, the Internet is a kind of synthetic testosterone: it provides you with what your lizard brain interprets as the results of high T, synthetic autism, and responds by producing less.
Again, we only ever notice a development after it has already happened. All of the public discourse around hormone replacements are all tangoing with a hypothetical future, which has already taken place: we are making formal what was already the case implicitly. We are all "transsexuals" on "hormones" , because the Internet is synthetic autism, it is literally hormone therapy.
The electronic calculator is a primitive form of synthetic autism. The modern smartphone, with it's layers and layers of abstraction and user interface, is an extremely potent dose of synthetic autism.
A side note: all Internet 3.0 is feminizing, because it is designed primarily to capture a female audience, because they are simply more valuable in terms of advertising, and the entire system runs on ad money. Allegedly.
It is an indirect effect, not necessarily intentional. The question in advertising is always "how do we get the women", because they quite simply part with money more readily, and give a higher return on investment than a similar hypothetical group of men. The feminizing effect of media is encouraged, as insofar as you become more feminine, you statistically provide more value. The woman is the ideal subject of the system, because she is a slightly more efficient economic cog, and this is recognized informally by the system, which encourages feminization to grease it's wheels.
Navigating schizophrenia
I do not say schizophrenia for effect, or exaggeration, but precision. I believe it is accurate. There is no use in underplaying the severity of the situation. The majority of the human race has gone mad. It's worth taking seriously.
We are already interacting with AI models of our friends instead of them, and that's why you prefer to text someone rather than calling them. "My secretary will call your secretary". My representation will interface with your representation.
Using the Internet at all is inherently deviant, like all cinema is voyeuristic. Which is incidentally why it's not merely difficult, but fundamentally impossible, to create the long-sought "positive male archetype" and some leader figure to aspire to, a Prince who can inspire and lead us. It is in conflict with the fundamental core of the technology, antithetical to it. You cannot use the pervert schizophrenia machine to produce moral character. It only makes pervert schizophrenics.
You can learn to navigate it and minimize the damage, but you can never use it as a positive vision. You can tie yourself to the mast of the ship with a blindfold, but you can’t domesticate the sirens.
A lot of people ask me why I have such a vulgar twitter name when all I talk about is theology and moral philosophy. There is a good reason for that. At least I think so.
It is evil. You cannot use evil for good. You can only navigate it. The functionality of the Internet as infinite knowledge is still there underneath the Web 3.0 interface, beneath the clicker game and casino mkultra design , but if you engage with the interface of it as intended by the designers, at all, you lose your soul. Sound familiar? If the river styx wasn’t real it would be necessary to invent it.
McLuhan says the literate man is detached, the illiterate man is engaged. I want you to be detached. I want you to go "huh? Wait a minute." I want to snap you out of it. I want you to stop being engaged. Because I realise where we are. The stupid joke I always run into the ground about a "CIA raygun that turns you gay" is reffering to wifi".
It creates dissonance and discomfort. "Why must you ruin this feeling I get from your interesting thought, by sullying it with vulgarity?" Because you must never be comfortable "on the Internet". You must always be alert, on your toes, because that is the only way to be detached, to be literate, to be in control. If you are not in control, "nothing" is.
I want you to read, not to be immersed. Immersion is the worst thing that ever happened to video games. In hyperborea, no one was ever immersed in video games.
Consider, very seriously, why it is more disturbing and disorienting to read beautiful poetry or a moral insight that resonates with you, from the author “pisshitler1477”, than watching high definition recording of a man being shot in the head. Because you have, and it immersed you in the digital experience rather than detach you from it: it made you write a take about it. Whereas pisshitler's poetry brings you back into your body, the absurdity suddenly centers you and you realise you are sitting in a weird position watching a screen.
Masculine virtue and being a good man is antithetical to the Internet, and any man with an "online presence" disqualifies himself. They are simply incompatible spheres. You can be a perfectly good man the rest of the time, but every second spent “online”, you are not. They don’t overlap.
You are not autistic, or a nerd, or anything like that. But you are gay. You are a perverted feminized man, and So am I, and so is bronze age pervert, and so are the last psychiatrist, and so is everyone you can think of that you would like to be an exception. There is no getting around it, and the only way out is trough: forgive me father, for I have sinned.
We are all fatherless freaks trying to reverse engineer the lost technology of morality and virtue, and I am grateful for all of you and your help.
similar line of thought: IRL pre-internet identity is socially negotiated--it required other people, some context in a community. You were a doctor, a brick mason, a mother because there were actual things that you did with other people involved. Internet allowed you to declare identity. I AM a woman, my avatar is a woman, everyone else in the fake digital community agrees because my avatar is all they see, why disagree? I think this is major contribution to current mass insanity--people raised with the internet are accustomed to declaring an identity and online there needn't be any pushback. Now people DECLARE their pronouns, their IRL identity. The "problem" is reality/meat space/IRL pushes back; people go insane because they repress offline existence. Synthetic Autism is a great term btw
To become closer to God, you have to die to yourself