In case you missed it, Parks Gore, an early reader and a fan of The Modern Malaise, tuned into Boreas Podcast to talk about his journey through the shadowy valleys of contemporary male coming-of-age, one that included many – or rather all – of the challenges covered in the book: an obsession with Nietzsche, a body-building buddy group, online dating, and money Twitter. His impressions and advice on making it through.
One point from the talk I’d like to expand on is how social media, and X in particular, has turned into a digital analog of an archaic ritual grounds to which the revelers come out wearing masks (avatars) and act out or speak out the thoughts of the often grotesque and even demonic characters their masks represent. Parks mentions how he’s met people who had built big followings for their X accounts and found it difficult to stop acting out their account personas even if they got fed up with it. So, this is analog to ritual demonic possession - your mask has taken control of your mind and body and won’t let you alone.
Now, we all know that an orgiastic masquerade, like any other ritual, has to end in some sort of sacrifice of some victim. So the big Girardian question becomes, how does X end?
I am grateful to Elon Musk as much as anyone for restoring freedom of speech on X and giving us a space safe from the Orwellian claws of the Globohomo Media Monster. But all products have life spans. Facebook is past its peak, as are many other apps. X is supposed to be the “freedom technology,” and that sounds like a great gimmick for now, but something tells me that our rather obsessive and unhealthy relationship with that app isn’t going to lead to the Utopia. So, is X rather a scapegoating technology? How good is the freedom of ecstatic orgies?
Many users (as in, “addicts”) have noted and are noting the race-to-the-bottom aspect of X. The most polarizing angles gain the most traction. All analysis inexorably tends towards reptilian conspiracy theories. Obsession with enemies and loss of any fruitful objectives is spreading and normalizing figurative and literal gay-ness. Money is made off fear and suspicion. Shadowy characters embrace their demonic avatars and relish sowing stumbling blocks and spreading lies with lightning ease.
It all so obviously pulls towards generating culprits. The whole thing is an Internet version of villagers with pitchforks and torches looking for the big Ogre. The villagers are getting dumber and dumber in the process. And they didn’t start off clever, exactly, either. It’s a Girardian hell.
With all that, it’s starting to feel bad to be producing and bombarding y’all with content. I’m trying to keep it in-depth, quality, intelligent — honest, in short. I’m even trying to get back into some quality short fiction. Anything, anything but the mind-scrambling two-bit “takes” that are turning us all into retards.
Anyway, hope to stay in touch.
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