The vanguard

I’m afraid I’ve been unable to make a coherent post about the subject of the thread I’m sure a few of you reading this recently found this blog in. I got quite far in, I had a good three or four paragraphs written at one point, but I just kept getting lost down these stupid tangents about the validity of surveys that claim to represent a greater population and stuff like that. I wasn’t able to actually look at that particular study, because you need to create an account on some site and I don’t want to, but I read the shitty Washington Post article the graphs were from and was unimpressed. You can look for it if you want, but I’m not going to put a link just so they can get a few more shekels and they’ve found a way around people putting their articles through archive.is as well. Anyway other people in the thread already pointed out a lot of the problems with the study.

So there’s this idea that there’s a rise in people not having sex, and in particular young men. What’s amusing is that it has only recently become something that is no longer fringe to talk about, as I said there was a Washington Post article talking about this. If you’d even suggested such a phenomenon existed a few years ago you’d be seen as a weirdo virgin or something. I mean the thread yesterday (probably not yesterday anymore by the time I finish writing this), minus the mainstream article (and study it talks about) linked, wouldn’t have seemed out of place in like 2014 or 2015. People say r9k has changed, but it really hasn’t, there’s another thread up right now again about the exact same thing. Now back in 2014 or 2015 I would have kind of just gone along with the same assumed reasons for this (and every problem) that are always posted several times in response to the OP. See it’s like a weird game we all play, redoing the same conversations over and over, like a pantomime. For whatever reason though, maybe because I’ve been away from r9k for a good few months and thinking about other things, I had a different take this time.

What I wanted to get around to saying, the point I planned to end on, is that I think a lot of people actually want this to be true and are therefore willing to accept the result of this survey without questioning it. Which gets into a deeper issue, in fact maybe doing this in reverse will help me explain myself better. By the way I just want to say I do believe there is an increase in people not getting laid or whatever, I’m just wary of going overboard. I think it’s probably less than people think, and I also want to make a distinction between some beta normie guy who doesn’t get laid very often and an actual khv or incel or whatever you want to call them. I care about the latter, they’re my guys, I don’t really care about the former. Yet both would be lumped in together by this study, and a lot of the incels who want to feel less alone in their plight will go along with this as I’ve said. The distinction is important because, even if you’re the opposite of me and you think incels are scum and want the other group to be happier, you’ll help neither if you try to help both.

For me to explain why I need to first talk about what it is that defines this plight or experience of inceldom. So oftentimes there’s this joke that is made, how can incels exist when prostitutes exist? HAHA GET IT? Now none of the people it’s aimed at take that seriously, but I don’t even think that most of the people who make those kind of jokes do either. Some do however, you do get people trying to make the same point not as a joke, but they’re a small minority of people. You know the type, the kind to say something like “dude sex is just putting a penis in a vagina lole how can you care so much about it?” thinking they’re making some kind of clever point.

Sure you might say that using a term like “incel” kind of does make it more about sex, and can you blame people for assuming therefore that’s the point of the term, but I think the success of that name over others is more for gatekeeping purposes. I did intend to write a whole post about that but I never got around to it. The thing is those things were being said before when these online groups were using names that left them more open to infiltration like “foreveralone”, “TFL” (which is a bit before my time) or “robot”. Even on r9k which was kind of adjacent to those spaces, though people will deny it because it wasn’t always that way, the term robot did after a while (around 2013 or 2014) kind of become another synonym for this kind of person. Now “robot” as a term certainly doesn’t mention sex and yet this point came up even there.

No the thing that makes an incel isn’t the fact that they’re not getting laid, it’s the things that result from and the reasons for them not getting laid. That’s what they talk about, that’s what they bond over, that’s what matters. It’s not really the lack of sex itself, defining themselves by that is sort of a way of them filtering out people who aren’t going through the same things. Because the problems that they have, like I said, are either leading to them being unable to find sex and companionship or are a result of that. See before when using other terms you always got infiltrators and by putting this filter up you can kind of take away the ability for those people to infest and destroy another place to talk and bond.

After all, what is sex about really? To me it doesn’t seem to be about the act itself, frankly I think that’s something you can take or leave, although I will admit I do seem to have a rather low libido. I fell for the nofap meme for a while, and while all the posts and videos I’ve seen about it talk about how it’s incredibly difficult and you get all these urges, I had no difficulty at all. I could easily never do it again, maybe it’s because I’m depressed? I’ve also just figured it out from hearing people talk about how much more desirous they are both in real life growing up and online, maybe there’s something wrong with me I don’t know. Multiple friends back in school told me that I seemed kind of asexual, which isn’t true it’s not like I don’t want to, I just don’t need to.

So I’m not saying that incels or robots or whatever new term may come into use don’t care about sex, I’m kind of an unusual case. My experience is of r9k, I’ve only actually visited incels.me a couple times to lurk and the same for any other forum or imageboard of the same variety like wizchan, and yes there are always a lot of threads about sexual frustration but I’m convinced that that’s not what most of these people are preoccupied with. It’s a secondary concern, but if you spend hours every day in this place you’ll end up talking about secondary and tertiary concerns after a while. These sites are where people go to let off steam, they talk about all kinds of things.

No, to have not had sex means that in some abstract way (because of contraception and birth control and so on) that you have been deemed unworthy of existence. Because it is ultimately just the means of reproduction and while most sex being had in the western world today isn’t for that purpose it still is recognised in that way in a figurative sense. People have not evolved to conceive of sex differently than they have for the last couple hundred thousand years in a few decades, they can only recognise consciously that “safe sex” isn’t the same thing. Not that this stuff is even something most kids give any thought to when they’re first starting to get into relationships anyway. We all unconsciously recognise that you’ve essentially been deemed unworthy of passing your genes on, that who you are in the most fundamental sense shouldn’t be a part of the greater human project going forward. Yes, nowadays more in a metaphorical sense but that doesn’t really matter.

I mean why is there such a huge obsession with the word “virgin”, generally speaking here. I’m talking about society as a whole. It’s an incredibly common schoolyard insult, it’s almost an inevitability that someone gets called it in any internet argument (quite fitting that it’s recently been systematised you could jokingly say by the “have sex” meme), it’s something no one wants to be called. Do I really need to explain this to anyone? That losing your virginity has become the rite of passage for the modern age. Which is also why it’s only really an insult used against men, because having sex is only an actual challenge for men. Not that it was always this way, the word virgin used to be used only for women, think of the 72 virgins that are promised to muslims in paradise, and yet that has gradually become reversed and now the word is almost masculine gendered you could say. Isn’t that interesting? I’m sure I could go on a whole long tangent about it.

See, “I want to lose my virginity” is a phrase that is very common among teenage boys. It’s not “I want to have sex, I want to experience what it’s like” although I’m sure they all do. No, of primary importance is “losing your virginity”, because that is ultimately what makes you a man in today’s world and the respect you earn is what matters more so than the act. A lot of robots refer to themselves as the bottom of the barrel, or something similar, omega males, the dregs of humanity, the bottom 1%, and so on. Now you get men who are uglier, who are mentally and physically weaker, who are more awkward, who are more cowardly, more bitter etc. than a lot of them, but they are men. Those men are the ones who are getting laid less often, they’re the growing demographic.

The percentage of young men not having sex may have gone up (although I will say again, even that is being exaggerated I believe) in the US and seemingly across the rest of the occident, but the number of male virgins isn’t really. I can’t find the exact stats, frankly it’s impossible to find a study with both a large sample size that also has an accurate demographic representation. At least, for a layman like me with no academic qualifications or access I can’t find anything that I really think is that trustworthy. Yet, all the smaller studies and things I find and have seen posted over the years do pretty much universally say that over the age of 25 something like less than 1% of men are still virgins. So just because similar numbers are so universal across all of these surveys and polls and such I think we can say that is close to accurate. I think we can say that to be a male virgin past your early 20s is incredibly unusual.

Now I’ve talked about school shootings and similar kinds of violence a few times, and I think I have a unique take. Now I never endorsed it but I will be honest I wouldn’t do anything to prevent it either if I somehow could. Yet I’ve been thinking, maybe some people actually do understand these acts in the same way I do. Now this is a bit “out there”, and I’m not even sure I believe this myself but it’s something to consider. The term incel only really became a mainstream thing around last spring/ summer, but it had been in use for many years before that, in fact I’m pretty sure Elliot used it. This sudden change is of course because of Alek Minassian, who openly referred to himself that way. So after that there was a big scare and it was funny for all of us to see the cable news boomers trying to make sense of chan lingo as always, but I think this time was different. The hacker known as 4chan has been getting segments on news channels for a decade, but this actually took off among real people. Incels, a group that no one seems to be able to define, were apparently a terrorist group now.

So there was some buzz about that for a while, you can say it was a trending topic… ugh, but then it died down a bit. Now a little time has passed and you start to notice mainstream publications like The Washington Post (but there are others, I remember a Daily Mail one specifically) all coming out with articles about this supposed decline in sex rates and specifically among the young male demographic. It’s almost like an attempt to pacify this small group of incels by leading them to believe they’re part of a larger group all suffering from a specific modern phenomenon rather than just the same tiny subsection of the population they always have been. No, such a phenomenon may exist but the incel situation is something separate. The only change for them is the fact that thanks to the internet they can now get together and form communities of a sort and that may lead to some kind of intellectual evolution regarding how they see themselves and society, which as you’re all aware we do live in.

There doesn’t really seem to be any kind of incel ideology despite what a lot of clickbaity youtube videos and news headlines might imply. At most you could maybe say that a lot of self identified incels, which aren’t necessarily all of them, believe in some idea of the blackpill. There’s also the whole lookism thing which I think is very interesting, and certainly no one else is talking about it, but maybe it’s seen as more of a big deal among that community than it really is. Or a better way of putting it would be to say that a lot of incels gravitate to it as the single explanation for their predicament and I just think that’s not the case. There’s rarely one single explanation for any phenomenon in life.

Now it’s pretty far fetched to suggest that there’s actually a deliberate conspiracy going on, I don’t honestly think that’s the case. It’s weird that this is suddenly a more mainstream topic, but if there was a real agenda you’d think they’d put a bit more effort in. I mean I’m just a dumb wageslave writing these extended effortposts in my free time and I was able to write something more substantive on the subject. No, there’s probably not any conspiracy for you to find here. It’s just funny that there could be, and going through it illustrates something. That the incels are likely to be more docile if they don’t realise how tiny and despised they really are.

Looking backwards, looking forwards

Reading one of my earlier posts recently I made a connection that I’m sort of surprised I didn’t make way back then. I mentioned once I have this recurring intrusive thought or daydream of poisoning homeless people. Not any particular homeless individual, in fact I think the idea is that I’d specifically avoid the ones I know. See there’s a few who hang around near where I work, and sometimes I’ll give my tips or some of my tips to them after closing up. They’ve all come to recognise me when they see me now, there’s this one guy in particular who is very friendly. When I have to take the bin out to the sheds at the end of the shift and there’s not much room he’s helped me get it through the door a couple times. Yes it’s just a gesture, I can manage it easily enough and he’s there because he’s come to expect some change when seeing me ultimately, but nevertheless I appreciate it. I quite like these people, even if most of them probably rightfully earned their current situation, and I wouldn’t want any harm to come to them.

That’s the funny thing really, and I suppose I already did this bit in that very same earlier post so I won’t go on about it, but while I will judge these people for their poor character and decisions I don’t necessarily dislike them. On the other hand the strawmen I’ve conveniently just made up who would say I’m a nasty and ignorant person for doing so do tend to. Like I said I’ve already mentioned it before, but there’s a real disdain that most people have for the homeless and it’s a very visceral thing. It’s really a feeling of disgust, and it makes sense because they do often smell but it’s more than that, almost like they sense that their poor fortune might rub off on them. Even when I don’t have change or don’t want to give my change to one of them I’ll feel a bit bad and will always acknowledge them if asked, so many people just ignore them entirely. I mean completely blank them, they’ll be walking right by and definitely within earshot but they just pretend not only like they were never asked for money but like the beggar doesn’t even exist.

I said something else in that very same post as well actually, an insight which I lost as soon as I had it. I was worried when going back to reread some of these earlier posts that they wouldn’t hold up and would seem stupid and cringy but that’s not the case, unusually for something I’ve written and revisited after some time. There were a few things that I did in those earlier posts that I’ve decided to stop doing because of those reasons, but the general ideas and message I stand by in almost all cases which is what I’m talking about. Anyway, I said in that same post that ignoring someone is not something people do to those they don’t care about but actually to people they have a problem with. It’s not disinterest, if you’re being ignored it’s not because the person really doesn’t think about you, it’s a minor act of aggression. Not like being punched in the face or even insulted of course, but in principle it’s the same if not in degree. It’s a deliberate act, I think were my exact words.

I think this is why being “ghosted” bothers people so much, there’s this explanation that it’s because you realise how little you mean to them but that never sat right with me. That’s not what’s happening at all, let’s go back to the homeless people again for an example. See, the smartly dressed cubicle cucks and their heavily made-up female counterparts have to make an effort to pretend the beggar asking for help isn’t there, it’s undoubtedly a conscious act. They feel insulted that someone so gross and stupid (according to them, not me) would even speak to them, and again like I said in that post months back the deliberate ignoring of them really translates as “fuck off” or something like it. Being ghosted is no different, they’re basically saying you’re unworthy of their time and should fuck off. It’s not that you don’t matter to them, it’s that they have grown to dislike you or be annoyed by you and this is their way of saying so.

I’ve noticed as well that being ghosted seems to bother robots and people of a similar mindset even more so than it does normal people. Which makes sense when you think about it, because what is the thing that really seems to define a robot? Other than the obvious I mean. It’s this feeling of being ignored, of being left out. It starts young, and I literally cannot think of a single example of one of these people who doesn’t share this experience. I have had this experience, if you read MTW you’ll see that Elliot Rodger had this experience, it’s one of the most common things to see people lamenting on /r9k/ and in my very brief time spent checking out other spaces online populated by similar people I’ve seen it there as well. I mean you might think that this should mean they’re desensitised to it but I don’t think so. I think that it’s like irritating a wound, see a lot of these people retreat away from the world in their youth, which is partially what stops them from being properly socialised. The desire for companionship being so strong though, they search for relationships with other people online. The time away from the world has allowed for some healing, but then these online things break down as they always seem to and the scar is reopened.

I had another post very early on, my second or third, about school shootings. I feel like without the whole build up the hot take I have on the subject doesn’t have the same gravity so I’d say if you’re reading this and haven’t checked that one yet you should read it before this, but it’s not crucial. Essentially, I see school shootings/ mass shootings in general as performance art. The problem is that the message of the piece is not something I think the performers (the people doing the shooting, whether it be Elliot Rodger or the Columbine kids or whoever) are consciously aware of. I will say though, something I didn’t say in that post, that the increase in such events or at least the increased reporting of them is an interesting development. See take the example of Columbine, everyone always assumed they were bullied losers but they were actually relatively normal. They had a group of friends, one had a girlfriend I think, this is something that surprises people. It surprises people because it makes sense for school shooters to be losers, after all who is it who fantasises about doing that kind of thing? Even if only as an escapist fantasy, and they’d never actually do something like that, just like how I would obviously never actually harm the homeless. It’s kids who are bullied, kids who are meek, kids who struggled to find friends.

Now though, and there’s been a new one since that post actually but I haven’t taken the time to really read much about the story, you’re seeing a lot of these shooters more explicitly identify with this role or be identified with it. I’m not really here to talk about just shootings though, I think it’s bigger than that. After all, there was that guy Alek Minassian and he certainly fits in with this despite using a vehicle to attack the public rather than a firearm. So we all kind of know that it’s “losers” and now a more recent term “incels” who are the kind of person to engage in this sort of thing, even when it’s not, if you understand. Incel is a really interesting term, and I’ve had another idea for a post just regarding the term itself and why it over all the similar ones has come out on top in the public discourse recently, but right now I just want to talk about one particular thing regarding the term.

It’s something I’m sure I’ve talked about in a previous post, but I can’t for the life of me find it so maybe I never actually got around to that one. Does the term incel describe a kind of person, or an ideology? I mean of course it describes a person but I mean is it merely a person, is any young man who can’t get laid an incel? Or is it a young virgin male who also believes specifically in the usual things that are associated with the term incel? So, does being an incel also mean you have to be in that whole world of Chad and Stacy, of the blackpill, of the very term incel? I mean there’s the idea of the “hopecel” (which is one of the funniest words I’ve heard in a while) going around, which describes someone who would generally fit the incel archetype but doesn’t buy into the whole “blackpill” idea. The thing is, hopecels are considered a variant of incel (by incels, who are the ones who coined this amusing term) which leads me to believe that according to most people who would identify themselves as an incel it’s not about an ideology. To these people it is just what it says, a portmanteau of involuntary and celibate, someone who can’t get laid.

The problem is whenever incels are spoken about in normie media outlets they are identified as an ideological group. Even a terrorist group, lol. Any article on the subject from a major news organisation or even just a buzzfeed kind of thing (glorified blog that operates within the overton window) makes the preface that they’re not talking about all virgin men but merely the people who believe in the toxic/ misogynist/ hateful/ delusional or whatever other meme buzzword they have ideology professed on incel forums and other such places. This then filters down and nowadays the term incel when used in general public discussion also means this. So the question is really, what is this ideology? To me if there is one right now, and I’m not sure there is, it’s basically just a variant of the same “redpill” stuff that’s been here for over a decade. It’s really not much different than what PUAs, or MRAs or MGTOWs and so forth believe, other than a few admittedly crucial differences. It’s a lot like Marxism in a way, you have socialists and anarchists and Leninists and so on, but they all see one another as comrades when push comes to shove.

These crucial differences are, at least from my understanding, the “blackpill” and the acceptance of violence. So the blackpill is essentially the idea that it’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t know if Eggy’s video is the actual first use of the term but it certainly was the point from which it entered the meme lexicon. It’s kind of spread to certain alt-right circles, you see some of those e-celebs use the term but it’s taken on a slightly different meaning when they use it, thanks to the pol9k pipeline which I’ve already talked about before. It’s ultimately the same feeling, hopelessness, just applied to politics. I’m not going to go on another several paragraph long tangent about this, but I’ll quickly say that there are even within incel circles different ideas about what the thing to be “blackpilled” on even is. It doesn’t matter too much, the only thing that matters is that the blackpill has been taken, and now you see how hopeless your situation really is.

I think this is what leads into the second thing, the acceptance of violence. Now most people who identify with incels obviously aren’t violent and thuggish, if anything I’d argue that meekness is much more common amongst them (us?) than the public at large. Statistically speaking an incel is less likely to murder you than a normie, I’m not kidding. What I’m saying is that you’ll never get any kind of condemnation about what Elliot or Minassian or the most recent guy who killed those women in a bank did, in fact you’ll find jeering and celebration of it. This is in opposition to the people who identify with those other associated “redpill” groups I mentioned earlier, who will always claim that they condemn violence. I’m not saying this as a bad thing, I’ve done the same over and over in my time on /r9k/ if I’m being honest, laughing and joking about the victims of various shootings. In fact the picture I think I’ll use for the header image on this is a screenshot of my post from the infamous “some of you guys are alright” thread, if I’m honest I’m not 100% convinced that Mercer actually made that thread and it’s not just a coincidence but it’s certainly a likely possibility. I do find it kind of satisfying, I probably gave that impression on my other post about school shootings too. It feels like a kind of twisted justice has been had when I hear about one of these mass shootings, and I know for a fact that a great many people feel the exact same way.

Until that post about school shootings, or the idea I wrote about in it came to me anyway, I couldn’t properly explain why. After all the people who die in these shootings aren’t even the actual people who excluded or bullied the shooter (if he was bullied that is) in many cases, so it’s not like he’s getting revenge. The people are random, but of course as I explain in that post that’s the point. What unifies everyone who has “taken the blackpill” is this feeling that the thing holding them back from happiness and companionship is out of their control. Whether it’s how they look, or their meekness and lack of proper socialisation as a child or whatever, it’s random, or at least it feels random to someone raised in the individualistic culture we inhabit. It feels wrong to even be angry at the people who did exclude you, after all you’re told over and over that to expect to be treated well or even the same as everyone else is entitled. Again though, going back to the other post I was talking about, ignorance is deliberate. Which should bring me back to where I started this post.

Back to poisoning homeless people, hopefully you’ve figured out the connection already. Just like with a mass shooting or running your vehicle into a crowd, the beauty is in the randomness. Now I can kind of retroactively appreciate why this weird fantasy appeals to me, and again I want stress I personally wouldn’t ever actually leave little poisonous drinks around for hobos. There’s just something about the idea of truly random violence that has a kind of beauty to it. There was a thread I saw a few weeks ago on /r9k/, it was about some crime that had happened and how the perpetrator was found because of his relation to the victim. I don’t remember why it was made, but there ended up being quite an interesting point made about the perfect crime.

The perfect crime you might say, is one without any discernible motive. This example was given by an American, he said what if he were to buy a gun and travel to a different state and then shoot someone at random. Then dispose of the weapon, make sure no fingerprints or DNA evidence is left behind and never talk about it. How plausible this actually is I don’t know, but it’s very interesting to me that it was someone from /r9k/ who would think this way. Again, this idea of randomness of the victim comes up. Just another anecdote that stuck out to me. I think there’s really something to this, and I think that while it may just be unconscious now a very interesting potential development for the “incel community” if there is any such thing will be when people start to become conscious of this.

Nothing lasts forever

Ok, I’m trying this for the second time. So I’ve just recently finished reading the book Travels In Nihilon, which I mentioned I was reading a while back and I should have been finished with a while back also but I’ve not been reading very much. Really just for about 15 minutes a day, I need to try and include reading more as part of a new restructured routine I think. Anyway, I said I might have something to say about it so here we are. It’s quite funny how I found out about the book actually, I searched my own blog title up on google to see what would come up one afternoon and there was another site/ blog with a similar title. I wouldn’t recommend it, it was just hipster trash but there was a post about the five books that most influenced the guy and this book was one of them. I don’t remember the others and while I’ve been able to find that blog again I can’t find the specific post about these books. Anyway from the brief description the book seemed quite interesting. It sounded like it would be worthwhile to give it a read given the kind of things that were on my mind at the time, so I found a copy on Amazon and ordered it.

Now “nihilism” is a tricky word, because my understanding of what it means seems to be quite different to the author Alan Sillitoe’s definition. From what I understand it’s essentially a lack of belief, not necessarily religious belief but belief in any kind of worldview that presents a greater meaning or purpose to you. I suppose it’d be more accurate to call that existential nihilism, but this is another great example of my concept of the cultural definition. What might be referred to in academic circles as existential nihilism, is just called nihilism more generally and even by those people as a shorthand. I’m not sure if this idea of mine is my own, or I’ve picked it up from somewhere else without realising. It certainly isn’t a wholly unique idea, and I’m not sure if the term “cultural definition” is the best thing to call it either. It’s funny too because the position is in a sense quite opposed to my usual outlook, I mean you could argue that it’s “democratic” in a way. It doesn’t have to be, I personally haven’t said that either the public consensus on a definition or the “official” definition of a word that would be in the oxford dictionary say is the more “true” version. All I will say is that it seems like most people would say so, after all given enough time the official definition will change or at the very least a second definition will be added to the dictionary.

I would say usually there is more complexity in these official/ older definitions of words and terms as a general rule, and as more and more people have become literate this simplification of language has sped up. Now obviously there are cases where both the cultural definition (or maybe I should call it, consensual definition? or functional definition?) is similarly nuanced and even more so than the older version. It’s not just standalone words even, look at the example that got me started on this tangent. Existential nihilism as an idea, has just become “nihilism” at least according to most people who you’d meet walking around on the street. There’s also moral nihilism, and political nihilism, etc. but those ideas are only covered by the new “nihilism” in so far as a symptom of this existential nihilism that many people feel is very common nowadays and is referred to simply as “nihilism”. Maybe I’m not explaining this very well, what I’m saying is these other nihilisms have all been tied in to one because of this simplification of language and this in turn limits our potential understanding of things. Now those other equally interesting and separate concepts are seen merely as different aspects or facets of the same one thing. Which is not even necessarily something I disagree with, in this particular instance in fact I would actually say I do agree with that to an extent, but the problem is that that’s not just another thing to consider it’s the only way of seeing things for most people, because of all these different ideas being shoved together under the word “nihilism”.

The thing is, the word “nihil” in latin from which the English word nihilism comes just means “nothing”, but we already have a word for that in English which is of course “nothing”. It seems to me there are two kinds of word, there are those that describe something completely material/ physical like a tree or a chair and translate easily, and words that describe things that are more abstract or dare I say metaphysical which of course are much more difficult to translate. Now obviously the word tree or chair is also an idea, the platonically ideal chair is whatever Charlemagne’s throne and a block of ice with a fur blanket on top that an eskimo sits on for supper have in common, and they both are ultimately a flawed but physical example of “chair”. The word exists to help make sense of the physical world, as opposed to a word like say (keeping on topic here) “nihilism” which may affect our behaviour in the material world but is not trying to describe something within it.

What I’m saying is, the word “nihilism” is not the English translation of the word “nihil” from latin. Perhaps when it was used as a component of these other terms it was closer to being so, take the concept of moral nihilism for example. To best explain moral nihilism (or at least what I think it is) I’ll actually go back to the example of the chair. So like a chair, all the real world examples may be flawed but share in common a certain “chair-ness”. Well a rather common view nowadays is moral relativism, which is similar in that according to this perspective there are certain different moral frameworks that exist but have some kind of universal “moral-ness” to them. Moral nihilism in comparison would deny that there is any such “moral-ness” at all. So you see how the evolution happens, or seems to have happened obviously, I’m not an etymologist I’m just an uneducated shut in so don’t take my word for it but you can see how it might have gone. “X nihilism” is generally a rejection of whatever “X-ness” people suggest there is. So the word is more similarly used to the latin “nihil”, “X nothingness” or “nothing X” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Existential nihilism isn’t really something that you can just sum up in a few sentences, but I suppose the general idea isn’t too difficult to understand, it’s in the name after all. Essentially, the idea is that existence has no meaning or anything at all really. We just are, inexplicably, and for no good reason at all really. How strange it is to be anything at all, as Jeff Magnum put it. Now of course, seeing as existence kind of covers.. well everything. It kind of makes sense how this one idea in a way consumed all the others. It’s understandable why people might believe that falling prey to this existential nihilism might lead someone to be distrustful of any kind of authoritative worldview at all. This is why, I think that all of these have come to simply exist together under the umbrella word “nihilism”.

Now, a lot of people (often reactionaries or religious types) who are scared of nihilism taking hold in the public consciousness or even lamenting the fact that it already has in their eyes, will go on to suggest what they think will be the result of it. Generally, you get images of a violent and chaotic world. A place where the people are ruled by fleeting fancies, and immediate urges. Naturally any kind of order or regimentation falls apart, and the idea of working towards a long term goal is an impossible one. Certainly if there’s not a very real and material long term reward for holding off on fully pursuing immediate hedonistic desires. I’ll take the example of this large football stadium I live near to. Now I’ve lived near it for most of my life, close to a decade and a half, and to this day when walking past it it still feels impressive. I mean you have to be there in person to get what I mean, it’s more than just a big building it feels fucking imperial. Especially at night and when it’s all lit up. Whether there’s crowds of people on a game day swarming around it and revealed by it’s looming presence for the tiny creatures they are or on a normal evening when you can really feel almost invincible up on the plateau the thing is built on knowing you’re in a city with millions of people and yet all alone in this huge open expanse.

See the builders who worked on that, a great deal of them probably support a different team or maybe are even foreign workers who don’t care about the sport at all. That’s fine, I’ve never cared about football either, but my point is that these football stadiums are the great monuments of our time. Now it’s certainly preferable to live in a civilisation with the wealth to build big majestic buildings like this at least, but it’s still lamentable that they are no longer built for the higher reasons the great wonders of the past were. Yes, slaves and hired workers were required to build such structures (The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Hagia Sophia, The Taj Mahal, Hadrian’s Mausoleum, and even The Empire State Building) in the past but the difference is that these structures were monuments to the very civilisation that birthed them. The people who own these stadiums today are foreign oligarchs who care nothing for the nation that hosts the thing, or even for the actual game of football in many cases, just like a lot of the builders as I said earlier.

These stadiums (and of course it doesn’t have to be football, in the US it might be baseball or that weird version of rugby where they wear armour, Canada it might be hockey, etc.) are what we might call private sector works. Now of course the private/ public sector dichotomy is a modern idea, and you can’t directly apply it to the past but you can in some sense describe a lot of these older buildings as “public sector” works. I mean sure often emperors and kings funded these projects themselves, but their wealth and the government treasury were often the same thing. Can you even imagine a typical western democratic government decreeing any kind of monument or great building be built today? Of course not, yet people do want that, why is the Trump wall such a huge selling point after all? You can’t have multi generational projects and term limits at the same time. That’s how you really know that nihilism has taken root, when your society has no self confidence, no desire or will to project itself onto the world. When you believe there’s nothing special about your culture to celebrate (with monuments for example), no long term vision, but just a demoralising and ugly day to day pragmatism.

Which finally brings me back to what I was trying to say right at the start, and onto the actual book. Like I said, the author’s definition of nihilism really doesn’t seem to be accurate at all. My understanding of the word is what I have gone through already, basically what would more accurately be called existential nihilism. The author’s definition seems to be describing the symptoms, or more accurately what some people think might be the symptoms. It’s like someone describing a fever as malaria, when you can have a fever just from a bad cold or a bunch of other illnesses. “Nihilism” as it is used in this book really could be substituted instead with the word “chaos”, at least that’s certainly how it seems at first glance. Here’s the premise of the novel. There is this country/ state which is called Nihilon and the government of Nihilon is intent on pursuing “””nihilism””” as a policy. The blurb describes Nihilon as “a little known country, whose life and economy are based on nihilistic principles”. Now how this actually plays out in the book is that the government does all it can to create as much chaos and contradiction as possible in every regard, so there are laws demanding that you never be caught driving sober, and manual labour is seen as women’s work, and so forth.

Now going back to what I was talking about earlier, in a rather ironic way not only is the definition wrong but the use of this wrong definition makes the fictional Nihilon in one sense quite the opposite of a nihilistic nation. The policy of perfectly regimented chaos (as it’s literally referred to at one point in the novel) requires far more self confidence on the part of the ruling elite, represented by the shadowy President Nil, than any of the great and powerful empires of old and even the pathological and idealistic states of the 20th century. Think Best Korea, The Soviet Union or The Third Reich, and Nihilon is just as authoritarian if not more so than any of those places. The level of oversight required to enforce this state of chaos is immense, people’s lives are micromanaged in every way.

Now the book is set a good two decades after this regime has held control, and so naturally people have begun to adapt to the mayhem. The average citizen of Nihilon by the time our characters arrive is a bipolar petty scam artist with a sociopathic disregard for human life. There’s one passage in particular that really illustrates the level of control the government has. One of the characters is on an airplane and chatting to the guy next to him as they’re arriving in Nihilon, so before they even arrive but the airline is owned by the government I believe, and at one point after the stranger says something he shouldn’t a voice barks out at him through a speaker on the back of the chair in front of them telling him to stop. It’s claimed that the voice is President Nil himself, although no one actually knows what he looks like, regardless I think that illustrates the situation quite well. It reminds me of the telescreens from 1984. So throughout my time reading the book this was kind of on the back of my mind, the government isn’t pursuing a policy of nihilism, that’s a contradiction in terms. Not only that, but this is one of the most ideologically single minded regimes imaginable if anything.

It’s not until reflecting after I was finished that I think I really understood what the author was truly trying to express. See the plot of the book is that the main characters are sent to this mysterious country to write a tourist guide for the place, but while there a civil war breaks out between the government and the “forces of law and order”, a rival faction who claim they want to restore those very things. The main plot culminates in this assault by the forces of law and order on a facility in the mountains from where the government of Nihilon planned to send a rocket ship into space with two “lovers” in order to broadcast to the world the first ever example of sex in space. It’s a huge symbolic thing, again reinforcing how much vision this government has, and they’re unable to stop it in time. Nevertheless the forces of law and order still manage to take control, President Nil flees and the daughter of the old president of Damascony (the name of the region before it became Nihilon, also following a civil war a few decades earlier) is made queen.

Now President Nil himself appears only twice in the story, or three times if that voice in the airplane really is him. The first time is already quite a way towards the end, just before the assault on the compound in the mountains, and it is revealed that the whole thing has in fact been orchestrated by him. That’s the twist of the story, or one of them anyway. It’s already revealed earlier on that the guidebook mission was a cover, and that the main characters were unwittingly set up to play a role in the rebellion, but it’s not until this scene right near the end that President Nil is revealed as the actual person behind it. So this is shown to the reader, but the characters themselves don’t meet the man until the very end, the last couple of pages of the book. This scene is as the characters are leaving once and for all.

See after the new regime settles in it quickly becomes apparent that nothing has actually changed, immediately there are a bunch of new equally zany and inane laws passed as the ones from before only this time in the name of honesty and virtue or some similar expression. It really doesn’t come as much surprise, as during the earlier parts of the book it’s made clear that the people fighting for “law and order” and the nihilonian forces are basically indistinguishable. They’re the same feckless idiots and self serving swindlers as every single person in this god forsaken country. The very attack on the compound is emblematic of this, a completely insane event with legions of sportscars smashing against the walls and the queen being carried into battle in a medieval style litter, etc. It slowly becomes clear that this is just a big game to these people, like football teams the one they ended up supporting was arbitrary.

See then it starts to become clear, and as the characters are trying to get the hell out of this now clearly irredeemable shithole they have one last encounter before getting on the boat home. As they are just about to leave, there are explosions in the crowd and the characters dash into the boat for safety. All except one, Benjamin Smith, who is probably the most developed of all the characters in the book and the one with the most ties to Nihilon having fought in the first civil war when the place was still known as Damascony. He sees the man in the crowd, who we the reader know to be President Nil and as he goes to kill him President Nil smiles. Here’s a quote from this last passage of the novel, just as the explosions start to go off. “It was like a volcano erupting, a spectacle which showed Benjamin – though only for a moment – that Nihilon was a country for which nothing could be done, a part of the world that could no more be covered by guidebook than a jungle could”.

You see, President Nil smiled because it was in this moment that he knew he had achieved his goal at last, and he could die knowing that. He knew that because he saw the realisation in Benjamin’s eyes, that Nihilon had now actually become nihilistic in the true sense. I don’t mean that it had become chaotic, as I thought at first when reading the book the author meant by that word, I mean actually nihilistic. Remember what I said earlier about how some say a similarly orderless and nonsensical civilisation may be a result of a society that falls prey to nihilistic thinking, well President Nil seems to have almost done the reverse. By artificially creating such a world, he’s selected for the people who of course would thrive in it. The civil war was his big gambit, to see if all his hard work had paid off, and he was right. His long term policy it turns out, truly was nihilism after all. The only question really, is why he had such a goal.

Volcel gang manifesto

So, I said I’d talk in more detail about online dating. I’ve been told, a few times, that I’ve never actually made any effort to get a girlfriend/ lose my virginity. Mostly by “helpful” normalfags online but also once in person. A lot of the time online it isn’t specifically aimed at me, because I rarely ever moan or whine about not having those things anymore for reasons I kind of talked about in the last entry. Rather it’s aimed at “robots” or “incels” and similar kinds of people in general, who I do associate with. There was one specific post I read, unfortunately it was a while ago now so I don’t have a screenshot and I have no idea what thread it was so I wouldn’t be able to find it in the archives. The guy had made this thread, one of those ones you see fairly regularly or at least used to, saying he was the one who had the right advice that would help us out of the situation we’re in. It’s the kind of thread, the kind of person, who the whole bee urself meme was originally made to mock. Anyway, of course people reacted accordingly and insulted/ berated him and were just making jokes about the whole thing and I was going to give up on it and find something else to entertain myself with but then an actually rather interesting exchange happened.

At some point someone made what I think was quite an insightful comment, he said that this advice never worked before with incel/ robot types not necessarily because it was bad advice generally speaking. Clearly it worked for some people after all, but it assumes things that are true about the person giving advice are true about everyone. Now I’ll try and explain what he meant, or my interpretation of what he meant anyway, using the most well known of these little nuggets of normie wisdom “Just be yourself”. What they really mean by this is, stop being so inhibited (as if it’s so fucking easy) around other people, especially those you don’t know very well. Which there’s some truth to, it seems like when you’re shy or awkward people sense that you’re hiding something. Which I suppose in a way you are, you’re not being yourself dare I say and people can sense how contrived everything you do is.

The problem again, is that it’s not something you can just turn on or off. I can’t just act how I do around my close friends or on my own when I’m around other people it’s physically impossible for me. At least for the moment, although it’s starting to feel less and less possible that there’s much I can do to change that even in future. More importantly though is that underlying assumption that if you are somehow able to get over that, you’ll just be accepted and liked for who you are. There’s no reason that someone wouldn’t still be ostracised for their political beliefs, their social attitudes, etc. Given the tendency of people like me to gravitate to extreme ideas I’d say it’s actually fairly likely. The important thing to remember here is the assumption, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s not just this one example either, all the usual advice these kind of people share has it’s own because of course it’s all sold as universally applicable, which really means it applies to no one.

If you want to find out what it is specifically they are assuming is universally true, it’s the thing that actually makes these hot tips and tricks they have work. So of course in the example I chose it’s actually being likeable and not frightening to normalfags with your weird views on things. You might think I’m being unfair, that of course no one really thinks that everyone is a boring normal faggot like them. After all, they are aware that extreme beliefs exist so naturally people also exist to hold them. Fair point, they would agree with that if pointed out probably, but I think on a day to day basis they underestimate the amount of people who they would consider weird and feel uncomfortable around hugely. I could be completely wrong, but I genuinely believe they think of such people as a tiny fringe group. Of course this specific “be yourself” (and of course all similar statements) line is given by a particular type. I guess they’re what people might call a turbonormie, at least that’s one term I’ve heard used for them. This is most people, who just engage with the world in a very superficial way. People who talk about the weather and wear fast fashion. Yes that’s kind of a strawman or caricature, a modern archetype even, but that doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate. It’s a composite, so obviously it’s not going to describe any one of these people that well but don’t pretend you don’t know the type.

The thing is, people use advice that worked for them. So for someone who was kind of always one of these people but just was maybe a little socially awkward or shy as a kid being themselves worked. Maybe they were part of a certain clique or social niche while at school, even one of the ones who pride themselves on being different like the goth kids from southpark. See they think that because they were different in a very shallow way from most of their peers, that they’re similar to the incels and actual social rejects who remained that way into adulthood. The difference of course being that what made them different was fashion, and I’m not using that word to necessarily mean clothing (although of course, oftentimes that was a part of it) but rather something that can be taken off at any time, rather than something fundamental.

Then you have failed normies or alt normies or whatever other of these silly little terms you want to choose, people who can blend in reasonably well but are a little “off” maybe. Think of someone who has always been able to make friends, has had a few relationships, etc. but also has a few “weird” ideas. Of course “bee urself” didn’t work for them, but another little chestnut of advice these people will give is “fake it till you make it”. Again, because it worked for them. They were able to stay composed and appear normal long enough for it to happen naturally, so of course everyone must be capable of that. You know, and on and on it goes for all the various different kinds of people who think they’re helping you by just repeating what worked for them. They obviously don’t really care about you (not that they should care about people on the internet they’ve never even met, but they shouldn’t pretend to either) and are just looking to feel good for “helping” people. I got so sidetracked I completely lost my train of thought..

Right, the thread I was talking about. So in response to this comment, about how his advice might not be universally applicable and in fact might actually only work for quite a small group of people, instead of having a moment of self reflection he decided to double down. They were going back and forth for a while, and as these people always do when slightly pushed back on start calling you things, incel, loser, etc. So much for the whole good samaritan routine. Honestly the fact that they’re so quick to jump to those specific kinds of insults makes me think they’re there really just to feel less pathetic for a little while, and the contempt they really have is revealed in these moments. It doesn’t really matter though, what I’m trying to get to is a particular thing he said at one stage in this whole thing. I don’t remember the exact wording, but essentially it was something like “you’ve never even asked a girl out before, you’ve never even tried, it’s not my advice that’s wrong you’re just a coward”. The reason this particular example of something which as I said in the first paragraph is something people like me are accused of often, is the last part. I’m not going to try and disagree that I’ve never actually tried, because it’s a fair point, but I will disagree that cowardice is the reason. Well, maybe it plays a role, but it’s definitely not the main reason that’s for sure. See, I myself used to agree with that. I have for a very long time seen myself as a coward, but I think over the years there have been a few situations that I would have handled quite differently were I one. With anyone I was willing and able to be honest with, I would have openly referred to myself as a coward maybe even as recently as a year ago.

Which finally takes me to what I actually was intending to talk about when starting this, online dating. See we now have a way of getting into the “dating game” or whatever you want to call it, with the risk or scary part removed. Yes you still might be unsuccessful and be rejected indirectly by having no one “like” or match with you or whatever, but it’s all totally impersonal. The actual genuinely scary, terrifying even, prospect of asking out a girl you barely know or even a total stranger and very possibly getting shot down and/ or humiliated is completely done away with. By the time you get to any kind of interaction it’s been established there is a mutual attraction between the two of you, and by the time you get to meeting in person you’ve established you get along and have had time to get a little more comfortable around them. I don’t need to explain this, it’s the selling point. I’m just trying to stress what I was saying as much as possible, that we have an example of a way to bypass the scary part.

The thing is though, I’m not on any online dating site/ app. In fact I’d be more likely to cold approach a woman in public like the PUAs do than sign up for online dating. Both are very fucking unlikely of course, I’m not saying cowardice doesn’t play some role, but it’s clearly more than that. I’ve been thinking for a long time about what it could be, but it’s a tricky thing. What I think, is that it’s not so much that I have a problem with the modern idea of “dating”, but rather that there’s something different about the first relationship you have starting somewhere like that. I’m talking about on online dating especially, but also just asking a girl out in person. See the modern idea of “dating”, of serial monogamy if you prefer, is unbelievably cynical. The entire premise is that you will have several failed relationships, it’s not just expected it’s literally a given. Now people who have become cynical can get on just fine in a cynical system, but those of who have yet to lose our idealism not so much.

Now what makes online dating different, other than the safety I already talked about? Unlike other spaces for “dating”, it is explicit about it. Sure you had speed dating events and stuff like that but they’re a novelty, most people go to clubs and bars and places like that. So online dating managed to make the entire thing seem even more contrived, and there is the real issue I think I and presumably some other people like me have. See, the other way people meet as adults is they might ask out a colleague, or someone they share a hobby with. Sure, they still have to ask and that’s a scary prospect especially if you’ve never done it before, but the idea doesn’t feel wrong in the way that “dating” whether it be online or irl does. Going into the world with the express purpose of finding a gf, feels really wrong to me and I can’t explain why and that really bugs me. I think I even may have spoke about this before.

In fact I definitely did, I don’t remember exactly which post but it was not too long ago. I think the phrase I used was it gets under my skin, and it really does. People don’t say “I want to be in a relationship with this particular person” they say “I want a girlfriend” or I want to be in a relationship”. I don’t want to repeat myself if I’ve already talked about this, but it’s something that keeps popping back into my thoughts. Modern dating, the phenomenon that is taken to it’s ultimate conclusion with these shitty dating apps and sites but has existed in some form since the 20s, feels unnatural and of course like I said cynical. Even the example of the more naturally occurring relationships have that cynicism, the culture at large unfortunately also asserts this idea of the inevitable failed relationships for all, but that’s just the way of the world I suppose.

I also was about to go in a different direction there, so I’m going to go back a bit and do that. See the idea of being part of that whole cynical world might seem bad enough, but for that to be your first experience of romance is even worse. Most people’s first experiences, their first relationships, happen in their youth. Of course, these fall into the natural side of this dichotomy I seem to have set up here today. Kids and young teens can’t go to clubs and bars and they’re surrounded by each other all day because of school so they just do what they’re designed to do naturally. Most of them anyway, and those who don’t never seem to be able to get over it. Young love is almost universally seen as something special, it’s held up as this fantastic experience that can’t ever be replicated later in life. Nothing lives up to your first they always say, it’s the rite of passage for our current age. To know that you will never experience this is really fucking hard to accept. To know that the options might very well be either remain alone or join in with the bitter charade of modern dating is never going to go away. Especially because I can think of a few times where I got rather close, in fact there’s one particular memory that might stay with me until my dying day where I was literally only a few words away. I know from my time talking with similar people that a lot of them have similar memories.

There’s this film, Whatever, which is based on a book of the same name by Michel Houellebecq. I haven’t read the book, or any others of his although I’ve been told I should. In fact I was recommended some of his books by the girl I was talking about in my last post. Anyway there’s this scene in the film which is set in a nightclub, you can find it on youtube really easily if you’re interested, and one of the two characters (an older man, speaking to the other main character who is basically an incel) gives a short speech talking about the same exact thing. Of course it’s put much more poetically than in this post, and it’s a good film, so that’s why I’m mentioning it. Think of it like a wound, or more accurately just a hole, and after a certain point there’s nothing that can be done to heal it.

Think about the PUAs, people always say they’re trying to compensate for something or they’re broken in some way, all these platitudes without ever really saying what it is. I think it’s this, I mean I like to go on about modern archetypes and the PUA who was a loser/ really unsuccessful with girls in his youth is a huge one. Maybe it’d be more accurate to call it a trope even. More importantly though, are the audience for this kind of thing. Because the pick up artist community, is essentially maybe at most a few hundred men selling some kind of variation of the same scheme to millions. These few hundred, are in many cases an example of this late bloomer trope. Now the lesser known faces, the guys who just pay for the online courses or go to conferences of whatever these people do and then go out into the world to “pick up”, they’re who I’m really talking about. See, what they’re paying for and what “pick up artistry” is when you really think about it, is a revenge fantasy.

By calling it a fantasy I’m not saying it’s unrealistic, I’m reminded in particular of this one short video by one of these guys I saw a long time ago when I would occasionally listen to these people. I don’t remember exactly which one, and they all look and talk and dress the same anyway, but it was a video by this famous PUA talking about why you should cold approach. Now maybe I’m too trusting because anyone can go on the internet and tell lies, but for some reason I actually do believe that a lot of these men are telling the truth about the level of “success” they have with women. I mean sure I expect they’re embellishing somewhat but I don’t doubt that they’ve had lots of hook ups with very pretty girls. So anyway quick summary, the guy described himself (rather short, average looks, high pitched voice, etc) and said that he has been with various models and actresses and “10s” and YOU CAN TOO IF YOU FOLLOW THESE FIVE SIMPLE STEPS! I’m half joking, but no he was trying to sell his course or something anyway I’m sure.

There was one insight I got from this though, see he said that before you got to that point you had to get rejected a lot. This isn’t unusual, they all say this, but maybe this is a trend with me I’ll have to hear something many times before I notice it. What stood out to me, that for whatever reason hadn’t the other times I heard this, is that it’s exactly like a certain rather common cult practice. See in order to become the “new you”, you need to break down everything about who you currently are. You need to lose every aspect of your current identity, like I said you need to be completely broken down and humiliated, in order for something new to be built in it’s place. So, you can either force yourself through the gauntlet of rejection until your pride is completely smashed or you can refuse to take part and not lose who you are. I always like to bring these full circle, so often the conclusion these accusers make is that if you never made the effort that means that you’re not actually an incel, you’re a volcel. I’m not sure because I’d be happy to have a relationship if it were to occur naturally in the way I was talking about earlier, even if it’ll never be the same as what could have been, but if that’s not an option then I guess you can call me volcel.

The still beating heart

We have these /comfy/ threads on /r9k/, I’m sure most of you already know what I’m talking about. To the one or two who don’t though, essentially people will post art, photos, music, and tell little anecdotes that in one way or another have this common feeling of “comfy” linking them all together. Of course the word comfy, or comfortable, is far older than 4chan but the way it is used makes the /comfy/ of 4chan a unique idea. It’s a little like this Danish word. See in Denmark they have this word hygge, and there doesn’t seem to be a direct translation to English but from what I’ve read it describes a general feeling of cosiness/ warmth gotten from certain activities. So, drinking a hot chocolate while it snows outside or sitting near a fire place and listening to the crackling sounds as it gets dark out. Apparently this is a large part of Danish culture, the best way of putting it that I heard was from this one guy Meik Wiking who said that “Hygge” is to Denmark what “Freedom” is to the US. Now I don’t know how true this is, after all this guy is trying to sell this hygge idea it might be entirely manufactured but it certainly illustrates the concept quite well. The word exists in other Scandinavian/ north Germanic languages or something very similar but it doesn’t have quite the same weight to it. So in Norway it’s just their way of saying cozy or homely, at least that’s what I’ve gathered, whereas in Denmark it’s this central idea. You could say there’s the lower case and the upper case hygge. Similarly you have “comfy” as it’s used by normal people every day and you have “Comfy” the romantic ideal.

Now the two aren’t synonyms, I’d actually say that /comfy/ is far larger in scope. See /comfy/ is a bit different for everyone. The different things people put in those threads reflect their own sense of it. Sure there’s a lot of overlap, in fact a lot of things that would be pretty hygge would also be /comfy/ for many anons. You see a lot of the same images reposted often, but there’s quite a lot of different kinds of things. Deckard’s apartment from Blade Runner, a group of anime girls living in a caravan, a photo of a cup of coffee near a window. Ambient music, or folk, or something that just has nostalgia value and most wouldn’t find /comfy/ at all. Some anons like an old timey aesthetic and others prefer a futuristic place to imagine themselves in, hobbit homes and personal space ships. Even though there’s quite a lot of variety, and almost everyone is going to find things in those threads that they don’t get or understand why someone considers them /comfy/, there’s an understanding that the feeling experienced is the same in substance. I’m not really too happy with my explanation, but the explanation isn’t the purpose of this entry it’s just some preliminary information. Hopefully you already know what it is I’m talking about. No, what I’m here to talk about is the only real through line I can identify that connects everything that /r9k/ might consider /comfy/. Yes, the term is used site wide and in fact even outside of 4chan nowadays as it’s kind of spread out like everything does, but it did originate there. I know the /adjective/ meme is a more general thing too, but I’m not here to talk about 4chan shit. Honestly the “culture” for lack of a better term there isn’t something you can give a quick rundown on you have to just live in it, that why the whole lurk more thing came about. I mean I first started visiting maybe late 2011 and I still would be considered a newfag. Of course even that whole new/ old thing is only half serious, it’s literally just a website where people post pictures and make the same stupid jokes over and over. I don’t want to get side tracked here, these recurring /comfy/ threads are what I’m talking about and the idea may have spread and become diluted or changed but it doesn’t matter because I’m not talking about those cases.

One huge thing though is the amount of artwork or oc that taps into the greater board mythology, I’m using the term loosely but it’s definitely something that exists. I mean you have these figures, and yes the more famous ones are not board exclusive or even site exclusive, but they are most developed on /r9k/. The thing is, pol9k is a real thing and that demographic (not the best term, but the best I can think of right now) absolutely dominates the site now. The radicalised virgin, the 2010s upgraded version of the 00s neckbeard caricature. Very few if any individuals embody all of the traits associated with such a character but as a collective all of them show up frequently. So of course a lot of what develops kind of organically on /r9k/ is spread out quickly because /pol/ is so huge now and there’s that overlap thanks to this demographic and gets picked up by normals. Maybe the most famous example is the virgin walk image which existed as a standalone joke that was posted for years. One day someone made some absurd response image to it, the chad stride, and now a couple years later you have some facebook boomers making “Virgin thing I don’t like, Chad thing I do like” memes who have only ever heard of the hacker known as 4chan through fox news segments. Anyway that’s just another tangent, my point is that I’m well aware that most of these characters (pepe, wojak, spurdo and the various variants that have become their own characters after a while) both existed before the current “culture” on the board had developed into what it is today or even before the board existed at all and exist beyond it. You don’t get stuff like pic related anywhere else though, do you?

Yes I know it’s an edit, the original was from the poopoopeepee days though and that whole situation was an earlier part of this board mythology I’m talking about anyway. In fact that whole thing was a response to the characters becoming adopted by so many normies, which further goes to show how these little cartoony beings are inextricably tied up with the place. It’s such a lovely little comic strip as well isn’t it, really warms the heart. You see, these various characters seem to me to form a pantheon, and much like the gods of ancient Hellas these characters show up all over the artwork of various creative robots. You couldn’t really create a serious canon from all of these drawings and things, with a continuous story or something like that, it’d be impossible. These characters just are, they exist in all these separate stories and none of them at the same time, just like the hundreds of poems and plays and works of classical art featuring the Olympians. This is ongoing and like I said earlier organic, I deliberately chose a more recent and kind of shoddy image for the main picture of the post to help show this. There’s stuff like it being made often and by all sorts of people. Well, all sorts of robot anyway. These characters have certain traits we all kind associate with each of them, and we know when one is being used over another what they’re trying to represent. These characters personify various aspects of ourselves, and can be used to create a feeling of sadness or melancholy, of joy, of anger, and most importantly of being /comfy/. The funny thing about the things that feature these characters though is this sense of friendship or being at ease around one another these characters all seem to have when two or more are put together. Even in the ones where they’re messing with one another, and sometimes those can get really fucking weird, there’s this sense that they’re still part of this great and unbreakable friendship or even familial bond. Which again I can’t help but see in parallel to not just the Greek pantheon but Norse mythology as well. See a lot of people think there was this codified story of the gods in these societies, and all the famous folk stories featuring them were believed to be true. Of course that’s a very materialist and modern way of seeing things, and it misses the whole point of these ancient mythologies and the characters they feature. No, there’s stories where they fight and die and betray one another and come together to deal with greater threats and there’s so much no one could possibly believe it all happened and in some kind of order. Some stories might even outright contradict others, but yes if you want to see how the gods of antiquity were used in stories and sagas you should think about how gondola or wojak or that retarded version of pepe are used.

It’s funny to me because this sense of there being a friendship or bond is almost exclusive to the art featuring these characters, in the /comfy/ threads I mean. Almost everything else posted, photos or artwork or music etc. feels very solitary in theme. Maybe this isn’t surprising at all, this is /r9k/ after all it’s filled with isolated and lonely young men, but remember these threads are meant to be about what we find comfort in. So it is interesting that it is often (admittedly very pretty) art of empty bedrooms, or isolated winter cabins, or small ships floating through space. Fuzzy lo-fi music, usually pretty melancholy, that brings to mind the idea of a summer stuck indoors. All tied together with the things that people in the thread talk about, how they’re getting /comfy/ themselves. Naturally because it’s a bunch of NEETs and hikkis or sometimes wageslaves who are still very shut in the rest of the time like myself finding this comfort in old video games and films, simple things enjoyed from home like a hot drink and most importantly these threads themselves. Both alone, and in good company. In the wizards tower with a nice heavy blanket, with the Palantir at hand. See, I first started thinking about this when I made that post a couple of weeks ago. Why I like to romanticise my situation, cut off from people and it’s not merely cope or an attempt to make it more bearable. It’s because, I actually in some sense quite like it. I mean I long for good company sometimes to be sure, but I also take solace in being away from people when things become too stressful. I think I mentioned this before here but I actually used to have a very romantic view of the hikikomori archetype when I was a lot younger and still not necessarily on the path to aligning with it so closely as I do today. It’s because I (and I think it’s fair to say you can extrapolate to a lot of other robots too) have always been drawn to similar figures. The wandering ronin, the chivalric knight-errant, the wizard cooped up in his tower on the mountain, the drifter afloat in space and of course as I’ve mentioned before the ascetic monk. It’s these kinds of characters, sometimes drawn as variations of the /r9k/ pantheon I was talking about earlier and sometimes just reposted pics found anywhere online, that are the second major kind of figure that appears in these threads. Often as well, there’ll just be empty rooms, or city streets with no people (or blurry silhouettes) and similar stuff too. I know it’s a stretch to say that the modern hikikomori (as an archetype, just like I said earlier about something else it’s rare you’ll find any person in the real world who embodies all associated traits) is the incarnation of what all those other figures are for the modern world, it’s just a loser who can’t get laid you may say. Maybe you’re right, but I see a connection there.

So I said that the only time you have depictions of a more social existence in these threads is when the frogs and cancer patients etc. are used but that’s not entirely true. There are also occasionally pictures of children, there’s two images which I can think of right now. One is this drawing of a bunch of Japanese schoolkids doing some kind of project near a big window during what looks like a summer break, the other is of three or maybe four boys playing on an N64 in their pyjamas. I think it’s clear why this is, it’s a case of looking back on childhood with rose tinted glasses. I’m absolutely guilty of this, I’ve made several posts on here in which I’ve done it. When I think of friendship, I think of being a child. Why wouldn’t I, it was when I was a child that I actually had friends. Well, up until my mid teens anyway. Of course I still have friends now, a few anyway although I had many more when I was little, but we see each other at best a few times a year. Clustered around the summer as well, so most of the year I don’t see anyone. The only real group of people with whom I can engage in friendly activities with, laughing about stupid jokes, arguing about anything from politics to art, sharing feels both positive and negative, is /r9k/. Who, that’s right, are best represented by this pantheon I guess I’m calling it now. Again, I think I’ve spent enough time with the robots to say that a lot of them are very similar to me in some fundamental ways, and therefore it’s fair for me to extrapolate my way of seeing things onto them I think. So I think that this is why it’s those characters or children who are necessary stand ins in order for most robots to see any kind of social gathering as /comfy/. A lot of normalfags might see a pub or bar with “interesting” strangers to talk to as comfy, but to any robot such a place would be the exact opposite. Because these threads represent /r9k/, and not only that but they get at the fundamental robot truth more than any other. The only other recurring thread I can think off that comes close would be those Frog and Feels threads but they seem to have stopped or at least become way less common over the last couple years. You can’t help but see these /comfy/ threads as basically the church, or temple, of the board when you think this way. The place where the soul resides.

Your weekly dose of total claptrap

I mentioned a woman in my second part of The Cure retrospective thing I did, and that I remember her so fondly specifically because I didn’t ever developing feelings or oneitis or whatever you want to call it. It’s hard to explain exactly, but I think what I said in that post was that the acquaintanceship (kind of a weird term, but it would feel strange to use the word relationship for someone I only knew a few weeks) will never feel tainted or impure. See I always feel gross or perhaps… sinful whenever I am attracted to or interested in a girl. I’ve had plenty of oneitises, I can’t even remember all of them very well at all. I always feel like I’m doing something wrong, that my mere interest is a great crime of some sort. Of course I know it’s not, but it’s one of those deeper things that can’t just be rationalised away. I’m really struggling to explain things in a way that makes sense, I’ve already had to delete several paragraphs of a different attempt at this post. See I’ve developed a technique for this blog thing now, when I started I was completely unstructured and would sit here writing for 6 or 7+ hours in a row and start and finish a post in one frantic session. Now I’m generally writing for an hour or so a day and that’s why I’m sort of keeping to a schedule by finishing a new one early every new week. The problem is that my mind doesn’t work that way, my mind will be racing with ideas about a subject when I start but I can’t just turn that on and off or even direct it. After a few days with something I’ll start obsessing over something else and it’s hard to stay focused. I know I have to though, I know that whatever I started a post about fascinated me and inspired me to share it for good reason. Surprisingly enough finding ideas to talk about is not getting harder like I was worried would happen after a month or two, if anything it’s getting easier. Having an outlet and having to be thinking about things more has stimulated my imagination and I find myself monologuing internally about all kinds of pointless things more than I have in years. It is helping me to feel like a child again in a way, and that is something I’ve longed for greatly for some time.

I am getting a really bad case of writer’s block though, not that I would call myself a writer but you know what I mean. I’m trying and trying and today I actually have been here for a good three hours with nothing to show for it. I’ve written quite a lot but it’s just going nowhere or I can’t get to what I really want to talk about. I don’t know what it is, I just need some kind of in. I had this for a little while with some other posts but I eventually always managed to get on a roll and write some of my favourite stuff from this blog in some cases all in an evening. Right now it’s like a night when I struggle to get to sleep, I roll from side to side and it’s getting later and later and that makes me more stressed and less likely to get any sleep. I’m having that exact same frustration right now, I know exactly what I want to talk about but I just can’t do it. I have all these ideas for a really clever entry that ties all these seemingly unrelated things together and has a central theme and usually I think I pull it off but I don’t know what’s going on today. Well today and yesterday, I started writing yesterday morning but got nowhere and deleted what I did have written when starting today. Essentially I had a surprisingly busy weekend, both evenings I went out to a restaurant. Nothing particularly special, but I am kind of a shut in so for me anything I do outside of work or hanging around at home is noteworthy. The first evening I went with some family friends and the second it was a social thing for work. I was planning for this post to go over some thoughts I was having over the weekend and link the two evenings in a few interesting ways. The problem is that for every little thing I feel I have to preface it with loads of information and that just bogs me down and I end up with a bloated mess that just has to go. I think I’m losing track of what I want to even be doing with this fucking blog thing. I got carried away with this idea of it being my own spiritual successor to My Twisted World, but that was never the original intention and it’s already something entirely different. It also is affecting what I do and don’t write here, because there’s this part of me thinking maybe don’t talk about certain things because I don’t want people who might one day read this to see me in that way. I think I should just stop disregarding my original title for this blog, even though it’s a kind of cringy title, because it’s when I follow that that I do my best. This isn’t a fucking biography, it’s not Anon’s manifesto, it’s just me collecting my thoughts as best as possible and spilling it out in (figurative) ink on a page.

I mean the idea was never a good one, that whole embarrassing situation that kicked this fucking blog off would be the worst first impression if I wanted someone to get an accurate picture of who I am. Just the fact that it was what motivated me in part to start writing here will make it seem way more important than it is. No, I think I got a little carried away with myself. This is really freeing actually, I’ve also felt like I need to try and make this more biographical over time trying to gradually tell all the more important stories that have happened to me over the years. I don’t need to do any of that, you don’t need to know a bunch of useless sob stories. I should stop writing for an imaginary group of people who don’t currently exist and do what has been going down well with those of you who read today. Of course when these stories about my life are relevant to what I want to talk about I won’t avoid them, but I should never be trying to fit my ideas around telling the story it should be the other way around. The information about me should serve the ultimate goal, of expressing what I’ve been thinking about. Because my whole life I’ve been plagued by excessive thinking, and I think that in a “throw enough shit at the wall” kind of way it does sometimes lead to interesting places. So this should just be a catalogue of these thoughts, a simple idea and hopefully actually worthwhile to anyone who chooses to read. It’s what I said I was going to do in my original introductory post after all.

So on this second evening, the less enjoyable of the two but probably the more interesting one, I remember that same feeling of disgust or maybe disappointment in myself I talked about right at the start hitting me. If you read all of these you might remember me mentioning not too long ago some new people started, and one of them I almost started to develop feelings for but luckily found out she had a boyfriend before that could really grow into anything. Luckily really is meant here as well, I realised this at the restaurant while there with her and of course all my other co-workers. It was because, and I know this might sound silly, I was enjoying myself. I had a really nice time, and I was able to enjoy being around them and chatting (not that much I’m still incredibly shy, but I’m warming up to them all a little and spoke more than the last of these certainly) without anything else. I wasn’t enjoying it like I’d enjoy conversations with one of the many oneitises I’ve had over the years, where I would be glad it went well because it felt like “progress” of some kind. No instead of it being a means to an end, and my gladness being for having achieved that, my enjoyment was of the actual conversation itself. I just liked talking to her, to all of them but of course for the context of this issue I’m talking about she’s most important. I feel really bad that those feelings of mine were ever developing at all, so soon after meeting someone. It just goes to show how false they were, like I’ve said (not that it’s any revelation) before it’s just my lizard brain or instinct trying to find a mate and my conscious self trying to rationalise it.

The problem is what I talked about in a lot of detail before in another post, Living up to my shitty blog title I think it was. That we’re essentially all God having an animal experience, and asceticism and rejection of many natural behaviours being so universal is because the explicit rejection of instinct is the easiest way we can perhaps get in touch with our divine aspect. So a buddhist sitting cross legged up in the Himalayas without eating for days and a nun taking a vow of celibacy really are getting at the same thing. The idea of artistic integrity I think ties in to this actually, another thing which seems to almost have universal importance to everyone. Why? Well I think because all art, anything which doesn’t just serve survival but has a more abstract purpose, is again an attempt at getting in touch with this higher aspect of ourselves. So the reason you see so many people who think “pop music sucks” or “modern Hollywood is trash”, etc. all feel that it’s a product designed to materially enrich certain people masquerading as “pure” art. Whatever original artistic vision there was has been corrupted, it feels wrong to them in a way they can’t fully explain. Now of course it’s far more complicated than that like all things, but I can understand their attitude I think. This is a complete tangent though, I was talking about work wasn’t I? The problem, as I was saying, is this conflict we all have between our instinct and our better nature. Id and super-ego? Maybe I am more off in the clouds than most, because any kind of behaviour motivated by instinct alone bothers me on principle. Being a human though, means I am still ultimately subject to this instinct. So to keep me from going fucking insane I convince myself somehow of all this crap that isn’t true. It’s not just desire to “go forth and multiply” I care about this person I know nothing about deeply that’s it.

It’s complicated, because I really do still even now kind of doubt it’s just sexual desire. In fact it’s definitely not that exclusively because often my oneitis at any given time isn’t the most attractive woman in the environment. I suppose like those major motion pictures that feel so hollow to everyone I need something real and true to manufacture the product around. To create this person in my mind, I have to know just enough and see some hint at a person I could like or even love. Still, I’m actively searching all the time and I still kind of am manufacturing this purely to satisfy the better nature. The beast is still the one who’s ends are being served, even if totally unsuccessfully because I’m a fucking incel haha… Anyway, I’m doing a really bad job of expressing myself. I say that so fucking often it’s like a recurring joke at this point. Maybe this will illustrate things best, an example. Often people will say “I wish I had a girlfriend” or that most famous line of poetry “tfw no gf”. Now something about that has always got under my skin, really bothered me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. See it might not be purely a sexual thing for the person saying it, they aren’t saying “I want to get laid” or “tfw no sex” they want someone to love but still they look towards “the gf” almost as a metaphysical ideal rather than any real life person. It’s dehumanising. I guess what I’m saying is that.. I don’t love. None of us do. I think I’m trying to say two things at once, and failing to communicate either. To try and somehow bring things back to the start though, I found something out about that woman from my days training at that social event for work. I thought I was her replacement but it turns out she actually got fired. Something I found amusing, anyway. Next post will hopefully be a lot less shit.

Trust no one, not even the incels

Often at work people will ask me to charge their phone, it’s even quite common for them to carry their own charger around with them now so they only need an empty plug socket and I most of the time will do it for them. I’ll plug it in behind the counter somewhere and then they’ll come back in just before their bus arrives or after they’re done looking around and collect it. Most weeks I’ll get asked at least once, but the last time I was at the busier shop I had two people ask me at the same time. Or, slightly apart but both had to be charging next to one another for a little while. Describing these two reminds me of that couple I talked about quite a while back in that it’s almost cartoonish how these people live up to what is supposedly just the deluded worldview of the incels. First a woman maybe in her early 20s but could pass for early 30s, overweight and with a comical amount of make-up for a sunday afternoon. Of course she had a shit attitude, even her tone when asking me to charge the phone had an undercurrent of entitlement. Sure she was asking, but it felt like she was just going through with a formality and the idea of me saying no wasn’t even a possibility in her mind. I did think about saying no just to see how she’d react but I felt it’d be petty of me when I almost always say yes to other people who ask. Also having her around means she’s more likely to buy something, and other customers are more likely to come in. It’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed actually, how the shop can be dead for ages (sometimes for nearly half an hour) and then as soon as one person is there other people become interested. The way heads turn, sometimes people who’ve been outside paying no attention for some time, like hyenas is quite amusing to me. Anyway, second was a man of similar age maybe, now he was not a “Chad” but still someone I’d imagine is quite attractive to women. Trendy haircut, trendy fast fashion getup, handsome, not scrawny or chubby, etc. He came in a little after her, asked like he was expecting me to say no and seemed grateful when I didn’t.

I suppose you can already tell where this story is going. Her phone was lighting up and buzzing every couple minutes, and his phone didn’t go off once. It wasn’t off or on silent, because when I took the plug out to hand it back to him and the screen lit up I looked and the icon wasn’t there at the top. I know that’s fucking weird, and it gets worse because I also looked at her messages or at least the snippet that shows on the screen if you don’t press to see the full thing. I don’t remember what any of it was about, I didn’t see enough to, but I know it was various people messaging her. There were several names, both male and female. Now how is one supposed to react to admittedly anecdotal evidence that falls in line with their worldview so neatly? I’m certainly not going to be inclined to take these ideas (in this case, the whole “easy mode” meme) less seriously after this, and it’s hard to just disregard it even though supposedly that’s the rational thing to do because anecdotal evidence is meaningless right.. At least according to pseuds and contrarians, but pseuds and contrarians do get a bad rap and I think are a lot more valuable than they get credit for so who knows. I will say that confirmation bias, especially when it comes to people who talk about these kinds of things, is a real issue. An issue I don’t want to contribute to, especially as this whole blog does kind of a have a “we want the incel audience” vibe to it. I promise, it’s only partially intentional. So I need to be careful, but I have to say there’s no way I will be able to stop this incident from affecting my view on things. I need to be careful with this entry as well, it’s easy when you’re used to talking about this kind of thing with the sort of people on /r9k/ to forget that not everyone is up to date with the latest internet loser slang.

The thing is, the “ideology” of the incels is uncodified and is also only a splinter of a far far FAR larger ideaspace or subculture anyway. That’s why after literally thousands of articles, youtube videos, news segments or whatever no one actually understands anything at all about any of this shit. Not even the actual fucking incels themselves. Incels are something new because the term has recently become famous, even though I remember it being thrown around in 2014 on /r9k/. There was even a tripfag IncelManlet around that time but he just disappeared one day, press F to pay respects. Incels are a movement, they want to KILL people, and they all share a uniform set of ideas. Incel is just a term for a guy who can’t get laid but would like to, see anecdotal evidence above for why women can’t be incels (or robots, or losers, or nerds, or geeks, or dorks or etc etc forever) ;D. Not in spite of the fact that most of those guys would love for there to be, because of it. Another anecdote to illustrate what I’m talking about perhaps. This friend of mine I’ve mentioned before, we were chatting around the time of the Toronto van attack when the term incel was getting mainstream news coverage about the subject and at some point I said something like “you know I’m an incel right” because I didn’t like the mean spiritedness in his voice while having this conversation. Then there was some surprise, I’m surprised by his surprise because he knows I’m still a virgin and he knows I’m not asexual, and it ends with him saying I’m actually not an incel. Ask people on the internet who self identify as incels on places like /r9k/ or incels.me and they’ll give my definition in most cases (but not all, because there is no codified ideology of incelism it’s really just a collection of a certain type of guy within the larger internet “red pill” scene), which is what I stated above someone who can’t get laid. It’s the most straightforward term ever, celibate involuntarily.

I’m not quite sure what my goal is here, I don’t really have a plan but basically I’ve had a view of this world since around the age of 14 and I feel like a lot of people miss the forest for the trees because they not only pay attention just to the few times this world is brought into contact with our own but also because those who do try to understand it are overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed by the numerous slang terms and codewords which are always evolving, and they’re overwhelmed by conversations which rely on assumptions and the results of earlier conversations the outsider wasn’t able to experience. You’ve probably heard the expression “start with the greeks” if you’ve asked anyone about reading philosophy. The idea is that you can’t just dip into the works of a more trendy philosopher like Nietzsche or Descartes, because you’d be missing the context of a several thousand year conversation which these works are a continuation of. I’m not comparing the at absolute best two decade long red pill “discussion”, of which early PUAs like Roosh would be the greeks if we stick with the metaphor, to the canon of western philosophy (although plenty of autists would, and there is certainly a large contingent in this red pill world who would jack off the concept of western philosophy despite being the exact types who would be told to start with the greeks) but the metaphor works I think to explain why this world is so impenetrable to normies. You scratch just a little and the whole comparison falls apart, it’s the greatest minds of the aristocracy going over things for generations and a bunch of lower middle class and working class 20-somethings arguing over tiny details while generally agreeing on the same worldview. Apples and oranges, but both are fruit.

That’s what the discussion is, if we go back to this idea of a separate world then incels and pick up artists and MRAs and neoreactionaries and MGTOW and the Alt Right ad infinitum are all various nations and civilisations of this world. Sure, history is nothing but bloodshed and warfare but there are a lot of shared premises. Instead of agriculture, social class, a legal system or warfare you have the 80/20 rule or hypergamy, the sexual marketplace (and the fundamentally different and fixed roles of men and women in that), a rejection of the current social and political order, evolutionary psychology and probably more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. There might be some groups within this world that reject one of these while still following the rest, just like the Russian empire 2.0 (USSR) supposedly holding the goal of achieving a classless society or various hunter gatherer tribes and peoples like the Scythians or the Comanche that weren’t agricultural. It’s a case of being able to break the rules after you understand them. It’s kind of a weak metaphor, but I like to explain things this way because it’s how I think. There are patterns all over the place and I think when people are made aware of these shared patterns they better understand what it is that’s important to focus on, or at least what you want them to focus on. Of course if you stick with thing, there are certain “cultural areas” within both this world and the real world. Certain regions of the world where empires have risen and fallen clearly are more close to one another than groups on opposite sides of the planet who had minimal on no contact. Just how you can see a huge influence from Rome in everything that came after in Europe from Byzantium to the British Empire, or how Buddhism spread to cover quite a distance on both sides of the Himalayas, certain groups are much closer to one another in similarity while others might consider themselves so different people associated with them would be angry about me grouping them all together like this. There clearly is a link between it all though, and I think I’ve finally found a way to explain it so I’m not going to just let it go. I’m aware of the term “manosphere” but I think it’s not broad enough, I’d say the manosphere is like one of those cultural areas in this imaginary world that quite a few groups some of whom are still going strong and others that have completely dispersed are covered by. Think of it like you think of the idea of “The West” when looking at European history. The more I think about this world metaphor the more ways I find it to be applicable actually. Sticking with this idea, just like all civilisations have heroes and leaders most groups in this online world have a few e-celebs associated with them. There are also of course e-celebs in this sphere who aren’t directly associated with specific groups, just like there are heroic figures claimed by multiple nations and peoples. These people are who come to mind immediately if you talk about one of these groups. Most of them are pretty shit individuals so I’m not gonna talk about them, but you probably know or have at least heard of a lot of them.

I think the most helpful thing of all about looking at things this way though, is that I finally might understand my place in all of this after around half a decade. I’ve been heavily exposed to the shared ideas of this “world” and can certainly say I’m part of it but yet I always hesitate to say I’m a part of any of these groups. /r9k/ and the robots are the only group I’ve really stuck with and feel some connection to, but I’ve taken several long breaks from visiting the board once even leaving for over a year. I’ve always just enjoyed looking at the larger picture, which is why I’ve always seen this larger world/ visualised it that way (although only the last couple days have I been fully conscious of it), and so I’ve drifted around and seen things come and go. Anyone else remember true forced loneliness or “neomasculinity”? I’m just a rootless drifter, a people watcher, enjoying watching things play out without my direct involvement. I stick around for a while, and sometimes naturally I get a little too invested like during my /pol/ phase (gazing too long into an abyss..) but I always move on because there’s one thing that separates me from all the other people like me who inhabit this desolate world. I’m too self critical, no matter what that niggling voice is there telling me I’m probably full of shit. I can’t trust a single thought that goes through my head, I can never comfortably make an objective statement. That goes for this blog too, of course. It might all be complete nonsense, just the ramblings of a neurotic mess, you shouldn’t trust a word. This world is like the collective unconscious of young men the world over, and naturally it evolves as the population increases and the backgrounds become more varied. That’s what I mean when I talk about my worldview, the zeitgeist of this other world.

I read Herodotus’ The Histories about a year ago and what I liked about it so much is it was less of a history book and more like a travel guide for the ancient near east. Herodotus was able to explore this world in a time not only of constant change but where anywhere even only a thousand miles from home was completely mysterious. I suppose he had a better understanding than most of the “rules” or prerequisites of civilisation but he was more apart from any specific one than most also. I’m not planning on writing extensively about this stuff, although naturally this blog inhabits this world because my thoughts are influenced by it no matter what. So going back to the unintentional catalyst for this entry (because when I started writing a couple days ago I planned to go in a completely different direction), what does it matter? I’m sure most people like me would just shrug it off as expected, but that’s why they’re also not quite me because I’m always a bit thrown off when something conforms to my worldview. I’m always expecting something around the corner to make me question myself all over again. There have been plenty of times where that has happened, and yet I still consider myself part of this “world”. If the opposite had happened and the guy’s phone was blowing up with messages I’d still be here, but let’s be honest that wouldn’t have happened… because it didn’t happen.

Maybe it’s ok to just let this keep happening

Ok so before anything I just have to say that I’m obviously not an expert, I have no academic qualifications because I’m a dropout piece of shit. What I do have is way too much free time (if I’m not working I’m at home almost guaranteed) and an interest in this kind of thing. It’s hard to find the best place to start when it comes to this subject, I’ve thought about it so much for years now and I keep getting thrown off every time I think I’m getting somewhere writing this up. I’m just going too have to accept that I won’t cover everything I have to say in this post. It’s like when people say “I could write a book on X subject”, I keep getting sidetracked by other aspects of the issue. Basically, my idea is that mass shootings are a form of performance art and I’ll try to explain how and why I got to this perspective. I’m not going to talk about the gun debate, the mental health of these shooters, the very particular time and place of this modern phenomenon (the US in the last 30 years or so), how overblown the whole thing actually is and the disproportionate media coverage it gets when compared to literally any other fucking violent crime except maybe sandmonkeys blowing shit up, etc. outside of when it directly relates to what I’m trying to talk about.

So quickly some background information, there are two definitions of mass shooting and it’s important to be aware of each. Not just for helping to understand what I’m saying either, but also because all the major media institutions are aware of the difference and abuse that knowledge. There’s the official/ legal definition which I’ve posted a screenshot of above, and there’s what I suppose you can call the cultural definition. The cultural definition is much more limited, it’s really a kind of story that follows a similar pattern and has the same theme every time. For each beat there’s at least one exception but this is a general rule. The shooter is male, which is why in the only instance I can recall of a mass shooting orchestrated by a woman everyone was pointing it out constantly. I’m pretty sure she didn’t actually kill anyone though and she wounded only three people so that’s another example of her not fitting the official definition despite fitting reasonably well into the cultural one. Truly showing how women can do anything men can there. Second, the shooter is a loser or social outcast and probably a virgin or at least kind of unsuccessful with girls. Again, you can find counter examples but the fact alone that this isn’t a shocking statement is enough to prove my point about the cultural definition. The school shooter as a loser/ nerd is something firmly in the public zeitgeist. Third, the shooter is taking revenge. The story of the shooting is ultimately a revenge fantasy. The shooter is going after people who bullied him, or who shunned him or stood by and did nothing to help him in his time of need. Which is why the terms “school shooting” and “mass shooting” are so closely linked. All these kind of resentments centre around school, a place where the social hierarchy is much more overt than anywhere else in life other than maybe the military. You have Chads/Jocks/Alphas and Nerds/Losers/etc. and everything in between. Of course on closer inspection usually it isn’t actually that cut and dried but then if you look at a rainbow close enough the colours blur together you’re not gonna tell me green and red don’t exist. What I’m saying is that your average normalfag has this very specific idea in their head when you mention the term mass shooting. They think of the story as mentioned above and also usually the shooter is white or east asian in this mental image and there’s probably more but you get what I’m saying now I’m sure. The mass shooting has a second definition that we kind of all agree on but isn’t really written down or laid out anywhere in whole (other than above kinda…) and you can see it made reference to all across the western/ americanised world. People jokingly talking about “that white kid everyone thought was gonna shoot up the school” or even nerdy/ loser kids themselves daydreaming about shooting their classmates. The killer is a villain, an anti-hero or a protagonist depending on who you ask, but they all agree on the narrative structure.

Most actual mass shootings are gang related events, nig on nog crime which gets hushed up until the statistics are useful to create a false perception in the minds of the public. Because when someone says mass shooting you think of the two or three big news stories of the last few years, and now you’re being told that that is happening way more than once or twice a year. The second unofficial definition is something that has been deliberately placed into the public consciousness, or more accurately the seeds have been placed so it appears like people came to this shared view naturally. Really think about it, every time one of these specific shootings happens that fits the standard setup it’s a huge news story. Nasim, funny how we keep coming back to her, didn’t even kill anyone. Elliot killed six people, Chris Harper-Mercer (some of you guys are alright) killed 8. There was a shooting a few days ago in California where six people died, yes it got news coverage but it’s not still going now. These numbers are not that unusual in the grand scheme of things. Just go back and look at the aftermath of the Elliot Rodger shooting where the same amount of people died. They were interviewing people related to the story including his scumbag dad weeks after the thing happened. You can say it’s because we’re desensitised to these shootings but think about it. Before Elliot you had Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and a bunch more very deadly shootings but they weren’t enough? I’m having a really hard time staying on focus here, fuck. I made a mistake thinking I was up to this I really did. I’ve written so much and deleted almost everything to restart twice now. I’m not doing that a third time so everything from here on is staying. It’s fucking impossible to do this the way my mind works, because I get completely distracted and then get convinced that this tangent I’m on is crucial to my main point. No more preliminary bullshit it’s just bogging me down. I want to talk about my ideas, but I’m just not able to lay them out for people the usual way. Rambling aimlessly the way I did in the last posts and being a miserable git is easier and more enjoyable and actually quite cathartic, plus the few of you who have been here since the beginning seem to like it so far because you’ve come back for more. This is new ground, and I feel like one of the dorks who writes articles for Return of Kings when I read back this and my previous attempts to make this post.

Here’s the point, and if it has a ton of holes fine. I’m not writing a paper for an academic journal here I’m just trying to share the stupid shit that goes through someone’s head when they’re cooped up inside for days on end. School shootings are a performance, they follow a pattern just like a Punch and Judy show. Or at least those that do are highlighted, the more on script they are the more intensely so, while those that do not are disregarded. Elliot didn’t ever harm any of the people who actually bullied him or shunned him, he killed a bunch of random normalshits who were of a similar social standing to them. They were a representation of those people who he mentioned (by name in many cases) he was actually resentful towards, they were props in his big show. Cho talked about how he was doing what he did for “the weak and defenceless”, he wanted to make a point with what he was doing it wasn’t about getting revenge on his classmates. Adam Lanza went back to his elementary school for his shooting at the age of 20, he wasn’t avenging himself upon people he knew he was killing the school as a representation of the suffering he and millions of boys like him went through in schools across the western world. Look at the fucking most famous of all these shootings, Columbine. Eric and Dylan were in full costume, that black “trenchcoat”, edgy printed t-shirt, black boots ensemble is something that everyone is familiar with today two decades later. They secured themselves a legacy, something all performers long for. Bones put it perfectly in a song about the subject, “young dead suicidal superstar icons”. It’s well known that the fame is a huge motivator, and how not showing the faces or names of the killers is one of the best methods of preventing copy cat crimes but yet every time the exact opposite is what happens. I’m struggling to find it now but there was a paper and interview by this criminologist talking about it that was circulating in pol9k circles not too long ago. You can look for that if you’re interested, or just assume I’m making it up whatever suits you. These shootings are a spectacle, there are various different interpretations of what it all means just like with any good piece of art. They give losers all over the place something to fantasise about as well, they serve as a form of escapism in a sense just like many videogames, movies, books, shows, etc. When I was in school with that friend I mentioned in the last entry we would regularly joke about it. What groups of other kids we’d target, how we’d do it, shit like that. This is when I was at my most mentally healthy… Yes I said I was actually doing reasonably well and was hopeful for the future but we were still the weird kids. I had someone there with me though which also made it way easier, and I was young enough that the whole “they laugh at you now but they’ll be working for you one day” meme and it’s variants were something I thought had some truth. They also give the people who do bully and ostracise these kids validation. You can hear it when that bulldyke 56% face whore from the Florida gun grabbers squad talks about how she and the other normies actively ostracised him because “it was no surprise to hear that he was the shooter”. I suppose this kind of goes against my earlier point, because in the case of the Florida shooting Nick Cruz did personally know the people he was trying to kill. That clip isn’t hard to find if you haven’t seen it btw, the kind of thing that really activates your almonds.

I have to say, there is a kind of beauty to these events or performance pieces as I now tend to see them. Like I’ve said a lot of the victims are totally random. Yes a certain demographic is targeted but that really is the only trend. Some shooters go across the country, others target schools they once went to but students in a completely different age group, the message is that it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. It fits perfectly within the contemporary view of any hierarchy, that your place in it is random. These kids, the ones who shoot and the many many more who feel they can relate to those who shoot feel like their place which they’re of course unhappy about is random and unfair. What are the chances I ended up at the loser table? Whenever the normalfag hears about these shootings they can’t understand, how could you go and kill a bunch of innocent people? That’s the point, sometimes the best way to express yourself is to just fucking do it. Now people are dead, people like you, you get to experience that feeling of unfairness. The shooter is the performer, the victims are his props, and the normalfags who get sp00ked every time one of these attacks happens are the intended audience. If this were a youtube video essay I’d play Kids With Guns by Gorillaz as my patreon supporters’ names scrolled by now. There’s more I could probably say, but I don’t know what I’m doing and I think this is good enough for me. Not sure what I’m going to talk about after this. There’s two new people at work I haven’t met yet, sometimes interactions with customers can put me on a weird train of thought, who knows. Next time I’m bored with nothing but hours of scrolling through the catalog on r9k to look forward to, somewhere I’ve been an ungodly amount of times the last few years, I’ll write instead.