Tag: William Burroughs

The Means of Perception

Leave a comment

We stand at the precipice, comrades, where the gears of reality grind to a hallucinatory halt. The means of production, those brutal factories of the world, pale in comparison to the monstrous production line of perception. Here, in the meat-works of the mind, reality itself is churned and spat out, pre-packaged and pre-digested by the invisible hand of the culture industry.

We stand at the precipice, my friends, where the sensorium bulges, a monstrous carnival overflowing its rickety booth. The means of perception, once a cog in the grand machine of production, have become a runaway engine, spewing forth a kaleidoscope of hyperreality.

Burroughs grins from the corner, a Cheshire Cat dissolving into a haze of television static. Words, once tools to build meaning, are now writhing, self-aware serpents, coiling around our minds, injecting us with a potent cocktail of desire and disgust. The factory floor of the self is replaced by a throbbing nightclub, pulsing with a million flickering advertisements. The cut-up method, once a tool for liberation, becomes a weapon in the hands of the puppeteers. Images are sliced, diced, and reassembled into a kaleidoscope of confusion, keeping us perpetually off-balance, unable to grasp the solid foundation beneath the shifting sands of perception.

Lacan, that perverse sage, would cackle with glee. The Real, that unnameable, ungraspable truth, is forever out of reach. We drown in a sea of signifiers, a vast, shimmering Simulacrum built by media, advertising, and ideology. Our very desires, once a primal force, are manufactured like the latest smartphone. We yearn not for food, but for the image of a perfectly grilled steak, not for sex, but for the airbrushed bodies plastered across billboards.

Lacan, ever the master of the mirror stage, would mourn the fragmentation of the ego. The once unified self, reflected back through the lens of production, shatters into a million fractured pieces, each piece a distorted image of a world consumed by its own spectacle.

And Huxley, that prophetic voice of dystopia, would weep for humanity lost in a manufactured paradise. Soma, the feel-good drug of his Brave New World, pales in comparison to the digital soma we mainline daily. Social media, with its curated feeds and dopamine hits, lulls us into a contented stupor, blind to the bars of our gilded cage. Huxley’s soma now comes pre-packaged, a constant stream of information overload. We drown in a sea of data, bombarded by images of impossible perfection, manufactured needs, and a gnawing sense of inadequacy. The soma of perception keeps us pacified, content with this manufactured reality, blind to the chains that bind us.

But wait! Is this despair the only path? Can we not turn the tables on this factory of perception? Burroughs, ever the trickster, would urge us to cut-up the cut-up itself, to subvert the system from within. Let the fragmented images become weapons of chaos, shattering the illusion of a unified self, a unified reality.

Lacan, with a sly wink, might suggest a return to the Real through the path of the Other, through authentic human connection that pierces the veil of the Simulacrum. Perhaps, in the raw, unmediated gaze of another, we can glimpse the truth that lies beyond the manufactured world.

And Huxley, with a glimmer of hope, might point to the power of critical awareness. By acknowledging the conditioning, by peeling back the layers of manufactured desire, we can reclaim a sliver of agency.

The battle for the means of perception has begun. Will we remain cogs in the machine, or can we wrest control of the factory floor? The choice, as always, is ours.

We are the alchemists of perception, transmuting the overwhelming into the empowering. We can learn to navigate this hyperreal landscape, to bend it to our will. Let us become the artists of our own experience, sculpting reality from the raw clay of data.

The means of production may be stagnant, but the means of perception are a boundless frontier. Let us seize this power, and forge a new reality, one unburdened by the limitations of the past.

The Ultimate Revolution

Leave a comment

This is the ultimate revolution, not a political one, but an ontological one:

🚀

Lester stubs out his Lucky Strike in the ashtray, a crimson ember mirroring the hollowness in his gut. The diner fluorescents buzz overhead, casting the scene in a sterile, alienating glow. The Lacanian Other, that ever-present itch he can’t quite scratch, resonates in the hum. It’s a cosmic cut-up job, Lester thinks, reality sliced and diced into signifiers, a chaotic collage where meaning dissolves like tears in rain.

“Revolution,” the voice snakes back into his head, a Burroughs-ian tapeworm burrowing into his sanity, “you dig? Not the kind with Molotov cocktails and power struggles. This is hacking the mainframe, man. Cracking the code of the symbolic order. Dismantling the whole freaking super-ego suppository.”

Lester’s eyes widen. This ain’t no Parisian student uprising. This is rebellion on a cellular level, a guerilla war against the very fabric of reality. The word “revolution” takes on a new meaning, morphing from a dog-eared slogan into a scalpel, a tool to dissect the self.

“Forget the seizing of the means of production, Lester,” the voice continues, a carnival barker hawking forbidden knowledge. “We’re talking about seizing the means of perception. Blowing apart the categories, the binaries, the whole damn Oedipal complex. We’re gonna cut up the superego and snort the lines, man!”

A shiver crawls down Lester’s spine, both exhilarating and terrifying. It’s like staring into the abyss and realizing the abyss stares hungrily back. But there’s also a sense of liberation, a chance to escape the pre-programmed meat suit he’s been piloting.

**The greasy spoon dissolves around him, replaced by a Burroughs-esque dreamscape. A typewriter with a mind of its own spews out nonsensical prose, each word a fragment of the shattered self. Waitresses with multiple faces flit between tables, their movements a chaotic ballet. Lester reaches for a cup of coffee, but it transforms into a pulsating eyeball staring back at him. **

“Welcome to the land of the Real, Lester,” the voice whispers, laced with a twisted glee. “Here, signifiers lose their meaning, and the subject is adrift in a sea of pure potentiality. No more binary traps, no more lack. Just pure, unadulterated being.”

Lester stumbles through this nonsensical landscape, the diner a metaphor for the shattered psyche. The revolution, he realizes, isn’t about overthrowing some external tyrant. It’s about dismantling the internal control systems, the symbolic order that keeps him tethered to an illusion of reality.

The experience is terrifying, exhilarating, and ultimately inconclusive. Lester wakes with a jolt back in the diner booth, the taste of metallic fear clinging to his tongue. Was it a hallucination? A psychotic break fueled by too many Benzedrine tablets? Or a glimpse behind the curtain, a peek at the chaotic machinery of existence?

He doesn’t have the answer. But one thing is certain: the revolution has begun. Not with bombs and manifestos, but with a flicker of doubt, a crack in the edifice of the self. And in that crack, Lester sees the possibility of something new, something terrifying, and something utterly real.

Hypermediums

Leave a comment

The dominant tech, that meat machine we interface with, pumps out a new identity script. Not a conscious choice, mind you, but a virus burrowing into the circuits of the desiring-machine we call “self.” This rewritten self demands a societal reshuffle, a chaotic carnival where the old order dissolves in a pool of psychic goo.

But the flesh is weak, and the Word, in its new technological guise, becomes a virus. It infects minds, breeding new tribes. The straights, clinging to the anal stage of communication – the printed text, the rigid categories – find themselves staring at the flickering id of the new generation, wired to the pulsating network. They speak different tongues, not just of language, but of perception itself.

The dominant medium, that meat-puppet master, rewrites the script of the Self. No longer a reflection in a still pond, identity becomes a flickering hologram, a fractured assemblage. The old, Oedipal mold – superego screaming from the dusty gramophone of tradition – crumbles under the digital deluge. This demands a societal re-orgasmization, a hacking of the Symbolic Order.

This psychic apartheid, this rupture in the Imaginary, births wars both literal and metaphorical. The printing press, that mechanical phallus, splintered Christendom, birthing a brood of nation-states locked in a bloody power struggle. The new medium, whatever form it may take, will be no different. Within the new paradigm itself, further fractures emerge – warring factions, each claiming the “real” interpretation of the digital dream. Here, the struggle is not for land, but for the very definition of the Self in this new frontier.

Naturally, this splinters the looking glass. Those clinging to the fractured reflections of the past – their egos tethered to the obsolescent – clash with the freshly minted selves birthed by the new tech. Here’s the kicker: their very thought patterns diverge. They speak different dialects of the Symbolic, their realities fragmented by incommensurable signifiers. Thus, the schism yawns open, a Burroughs-esque cut bisecting the social body. Here, the die-hard traditionalists cling to the tattered husks of their former selves, defined by the ghosts in the media machine of the past. Opposite, gibbering and gesturing, stand the children of the new flesh, their very being a product of the digital flux. Communication crumbles, for their languages are not of the same order. One speaks in the rigid categories of the Symbolic, the other gurgles in the primordial soup of the Imaginary, their desires a tangled mess of wires and synapses.

The dominant medium, that meat puppet of the social order, writhes in the throes of metamorphosis. No longer passive clay for the potter’s thumb, it becomes a writhing flesh-circuit, reconfiguring the very notion of the self. This monstrous birthing, this eruption of the technological Real, shatters the mirror of identity. We are no longer reflections in a stagnant pool, but fractured data streams, funneled through the chrome labyrinth.

From this fractured landscape, wars erupt, bloody ballets orchestrated by the death drive. Remember the Protestant itch that followed the printing press? A mere shadow play compared to the psychic maelstrom brewing now.

This ain’t your daddy’s Reformation, this is a full-on psychic civil war. And it doesn’t stop at the grand clashes – the different flavors of the “new” themselves splinter into squabbling factions. Think nation-states morphing into fractured ideological cults, each convinced they hold the key to unlocking the new identity matrix.

Welcome to the meat market, chum. Strap yourself in.

History, that ever-repeating nightmare, echoes with the screams of these battles. The Printing Press, that mechanical Moloch, birthed the Reformation, a bloody carnival of fractured identities, birthing nation-states from the splintered carcass of a unified Christendom. Now, the circuits hum with the potential for a new reformation, a war fought not with swords, but with algorithms and avatars. The old guard, their fortresses built from paper and stone, tremble before the digital hordes. Within the new paradigm, even the victors face a brutal struggle, for the very nature of “victory” is rewritten by the code

A Lacanian Epilogue: The Real Breaks Through

In this digital crucible, the Self, that elusive Lacanian mirage, dissolves. The Symbolic order, with its comforting categories, crumbles. We are cast adrift in the churning sea of the Real, bombarded with a sensory overload that defies codification. This is the ultimate revolution, not a political one, but an ontological one. Here, at the edge of the technological abyss, we confront the raw, unmediated truth of our existence: we are but flickering nodes in a vast, interconnected network, forever yearning for a lost sense of self in a world remade by the machine.

Bonus: Burroughs would likely revel in the grotesque physicality of the new medium – the electrodes burrowing into the skull, the augmented limbs reshaping the body. Lacan might focus on the fragmentation of the Self, the way the digital panopticon shatters the unified ego into a million flickering avatars.

This analysis is just a starting point, a cut-up concoction ready to be further spliced and remixed. The possibilities, like the ever-evolving technological landscape, are endless.

Scapegoats

Leave a comment

The Unspeakable Real: A Lacanian Burroughsian Scapegoatology

In the churning id of organizations and belief systems, a primal drama unfolds. The scapegoat, a spectral Other, becomes the stage upon which unspoken desires are projected. A witch hunt, a play defined by the absence of the Real (the true source of societal ills), demands a sacrifice. To admit the accused’s innocence is to shatter the narcissistic mirror of the group, revealing their own festering lack.

This, the Real, a Lacanian term for the ungraspable, the forever outside-of-language, lurks beneath the signifying order that binds these structures. This spectral Other, a dangling signifier on the Lacanian stage, is the target of a repressed, primordial violence. But here’s the rub, mon ami – to utter this truth is to rip the scab off the social order, exposing the raw, pulsating id beneath.

Imagine, if you will, the Witch Hunters – those grim cowboys of righteousness. To confess the witches’ innocence would be to castrate their own power, to render their brand of control as limp as a forgotten phallus. No, the witches must be burned, their screams a perverse symphony that binds the group in a morbid jouissance.

Those agents of the symbolic order, cannot integrate the truth: their victims, mere sacrificial pawns. To acknowledge their innocence would be to sever the very limb upon which they perch, to dismantle the power they wield.

Girard, the subsidized explorer of the human psyche, delves into the grimoires of history, myth, and sacred texts, unearthing a treasure trove of scapegoating rituals. He exposes this mechanism – the most potent secret in the human drama. Why secret? Because it’s the perverse engine that drives group cohesion, yet whispers of its existence are met with a deafening silence within the collective ear. This primal script demands silence. To utter its name is to rupture the symbolic order, the carefully constructed reality of the group. The scapegoat mechanism, a perverse communion, binds yet forbids recognition. We are all tangled in its viscid web.

This is the true horror: the blind spot. We, entangled in the web of mimetic desire, fail to perceive the very scapegoats we manufacture. The persecution continues, a grotesque ballet of violence, while each player clutches their self-righteous mask, absolving themselves of guilt.

The human condition, a grotesque carnival of mimesis, compels us to punish. We are blind to the glint of the scapegoat’s fabricated guilt in our own eyes.

Even Girard, the supposed seer, confesses his own blindness. “My own [scapegoating] eludes me,” he confesses, mirroring the plight of his readers. We traffic only in the realm of “legitimate enemies,” conveniently blind to the universe overflowing with innocent victims. The persecutor? Always the Other. We are all flagellants, whipping the innocent while screaming accusations at phantoms. The “enormity of this mystery” pulsates with a primal horror – a truth we desperately claw away from. The scapegoat becomes the fleshy avatar of our collective shadow, a sacrifice to the insatiable maw of our own unconscious desires.

The enormity of this mystery, a Burroughsian virus infecting the human condition, speaks to the depth of this scapegoating impulse. Mimetic rivalry, the insatiable desire to possess what the Other possesses, fuels the fires of punishment. Any suggestion that the victim might be undeserving ignites a primal resistance. Thus, the dance continues, a macabre charade fueled by the unspoken, the unspeakable. The scapegoat, a spectral figure haunting the margins, a constant reminder of the Real that threatens to tear apart the fragile fabric of our symbolic world.

So, the next time you find yourself pointing the finger, remember – you might just be dancing to the silent symphony of the scapegoat. A symphony fueled by desire, veiled by righteousness, and conducted by the unconscious.

Constructive Ambiguity is Xanax Talking

Leave a comment

Constructive ambiguity ain’t your doctor in a white coat, shushing anxieties with a pill. It’s Xanax talking alright, but Xanax laced with broken glass and mescaline. It’s the serpent in the garden, whispering riddles instead of offering forbidden fruit.

The air hangs thick, a smog of cotton in your skull. You peer through it, vision smeared like a watercolor left out in the rain. Words, once crisp and clear, now bleed into one another, forming a formless soup of meaning. Is that the refrigerator humming or the dull thrum of your own anxiety? It doesn’t much matter.

A voice, distant yet insistent, snakes through the haze. It’s Xanax, your personal demon disguised as a concerned pharmacist. “Maybe,” it croons, voice like syrup drizzled over gravel, “that presentation isn’t a looming threat but an…opportunity for creative exploration.”

The deadline? A gentle nudge towards productivity. The disapproving stare of your boss? Merely a challenge to unlock your hidden charisma. Everything, Xanax assures you in its dulcet tones, is a swirling vortex of possibility.

But beneath the surface, a Burroughs-esque paranoia writhes. This ambiguity, is it a twisted trick, a way for Xanax to lull you into a blissful haze while the world burns around you? Is that smile on your coworker’s face genuine, or a shark’s grin hidden just beneath the surface?

The world becomes a labyrinth of shifting signs, and Xanax your unreliable guide. The only certainty is the sweet, seductive oblivion it offers. But somewhere, deep in the fog, a primal question claws its way up: is this freedom or a gilded cage? The answer, like everything else, dissolves in the hazy laughter of Xanax.

The Roach Motel of Semantics

They call it “constructive ambiguity,” these squares in their starched suits. But down here, in the roach motel of semantics, it’s the skittering whisper of Xanax, the dull ache in your lobotomized afternoon. Words dissolve like roach legs under a greasy thumb, meaning melts into a shapeless ooze.

Is it hope or hopelessness that bleeds from the sentence? Does that smile hold triumph or veiled threat? It’s all a magnificent, maddening blur. Questions dangle like flies caught in flypaper, forever unanswered, buzzing in the stagnant air.

The sharp edges of reality soften, replaced by a hazy, lukewarm bath of maybe. Maybe this means that, maybe it means this other thing, or maybe it’s all a big beautiful nothingburger. The world becomes a Jackson Pollock painting splattered with indecision, a swirling vortex of “could be” and “might perhaps.”

This is the kingdom of Xanax, the land of the shrug. Don’t take a stand, don’t rock the boat, just sink into the blissful ambiguity, the mushy center of existence. No need to choose, no need to fight, because everything and nothing means the same in the end.

But wait, a skittering in the shadows. Is that a roach, or a repressed thought trying to scuttle free? Maybe it’s just the dull roar of existential dread muffled by the cotton wool blanket of Xanax. Don’t worry about it. Another pill, another hazy day in the roach motel.

The words slither and writhe, but they convey nothing. This is constructive ambiguity, alright, a construction site where nothing gets built, only demolished by the wrecking crew of sedation. Just another day in the land of the permanently shrugged shoulders.

This ambiguity, it slithers through life, a greased word weasel. One minute it’s promising freedom, the next it’s vanishing down a hole in perception, leaving you clutching nonsensical possibilities. It’s a word that fractures meaning, splintering reality into a kaleidoscope of maybe’s and what-ifs.

Politicians mainline this ambiguity, spewing words that morph and twist under scrutiny. Advertisers mainline it too, their messages shimmering mirages, beckoning with the promise of a better self, a more fulfilling life, but always just out of reach.

But here’s the rub, man: This ambiguity, it can be a ticket to the carnival of the mind. It can crack open perception, letting you see the world through a fractured lens, where everything is a kaleidoscope of potential. It’s the buzz you get from staring at a flickering neon sign too long, words bleeding into colors, reality dissolving at the edges.

Just remember, this ain’t Disneyland. This ambiguity, it can be a harsh mistress. You can get lost in the labyrinth of your own mind, chasing phantoms of meaning. The world can turn into a hall of mirrors, reflecting back distorted versions of yourself.

So tread carefully. This constructive ambiguity, it’s a potent brew. One sip might set you free, another might leave you babbling to the cockroaches. You gotta learn to play the game, man. Learn to dance with the ambiguity, to use its slipperiness to your advantage.

That’s the way. Not taking the easy pill, but staring into the abyss and laughing, because who knows, maybe the abyss stares back and winks.

The Second Coming of the Third Reich, Fourth time around

Leave a comment

A greasy film coats reality, a flickering newsfeed nightmare. The Third Reich, a putrid corpse twitching on the slab, jerks back to life – not as jackboots and goose steps, but as a virus whispering through the media matrix. Faceless suits in chrome towers, their eyes cold and reptilian, cultivate fear like a cash crop.

They need the enemy, a bogeyman to justify the chrome tentacles of surveillance, the ever-expanding military-industrial amoeba. It slithers and feeds, its hunger a bottomless pit lined with dollar bills. Terror flickers across the screen – grainy footage, distorted voices – a carefully constructed chimera, a Frankenstein of anxieties.

The script is dog-eared, the dialogue recycled B-movie dreck: “They’re coming for your way of life!” they screech. But who defines “they”? Cardboard cut-outs with names ripped from headlines, shuffled and dealt like a deck of fear cards. The masses, wired to the flickering screen, their dopamine drip controlled by invisible puppeteers, gobble it up.

The money flows, a thick black ichor, enriching the puppeteers while the fear-mongering circus continues. The enemy shifts, morphs, adapts – a hydra-headed beast fueled by manufactured paranoia. But beneath the noise, a whisper: “This isn’t about them, it’s about us. It’s about control.” A single voice, a spark in the manufactured darkness, a flicker of resistance against the machine. Will it ignite, or be snuffed out by the next manufactured crisis? The game continues, the stakes life and liberty, all played out on a screen slick with manufactured fear.

A greasy film coats reality, flickering under the strobing paranoia of the evening news. Anchors, faces etched with a manufactured urgency, drone on about the Fourth Reich. But this Reich ain’t got jackboots, it’s got algorithms. These new Nazis wear Armani suits, their swastikas hidden in the cold chrome sheen of corporate logos.

They don’t storm beaches, they flood inboxes. Their blitzkrieg’s a barrage of spam, each message a coded dog whistle to the frightened reptilian core of the brain. The enemy this time? It morphs, a shape-shifting bogeyman. One day it’s immigrants, a brown tide surging over the border. The next, it’s intellectuals, their words a virus eating away at the nation’s “true” values.

It’s all a hustle, a three-card Monte with the public as the mark. The fear sells, keeps the cash spigot flowing. Politicians, media whores, the military-industrial complex – they’re all apostles in this new religion of perpetual war. We’re all hooked on the adrenaline drip, the manufactured crisis a balm for a nation rotting from the inside out.

But beneath the flickering headlines, a different story plays. People, flesh and blood, huddle together in the alleyways, sharing cigarettes and stories. They see the game, the fearmongering script. They know the real enemy wears a thousand faces, and it ain’t some foreign caricature. It’s the crushing debt, the rigged system, the slow, agonizing squeeze of an uncaring world.

The air crackles with a chaotic energy, a million unspoken thoughts sparking like loose wires. Maybe, just maybe, this time the script gets flipped. Maybe the manufactured fear gets turned back on its creators. Maybe, in the flickering chaos, a new story emerges, one where humanity throws off the shackles of manufactured fear and steps blinking into the light. But that’s another script, another story for another night. Tonight, the fear merchants have the floor. But the audience is restless. And the screen flickers, reality bleeding through the cracks…

A chrome-plated swastika shimmers in the flickering TV light, a malignant virus burrowing into the American Dream. Faces contort, voices dripping with paranoia – endless hordes, a brown tide rising, shaped by unseen puppeteers. The script, dog-eared and yellowed, dictates the fear.

This ain’t Hitler in jackboots, no. This Reich crawls from the shadows of the internet, a hydra of anonymous avatars spewing hate-laced manifestos. Every basement dweller, every keyboard warrior, a potential stormtrooper. The threat, a Rorschach test, morphing to fit every political agenda.

But the real enemy? Apathy. Apathy’s a black hole, sucking the tax dollars into a bottomless pit of defense contracts. Politicians, slicker than a greased weasel, exploit the fear, the bogeyman a cash cow. Wars are fought not on battlefields, but in boardrooms, million dollar contracts signed in blood-red ink.

The news, a relentless buzz, injects us with a cocktail of manufactured outrage. We become automatons, twitching at every manufactured enemy, our wallets perpetually open, funding the latest chrome-plated bogeyman.

But under the surface, a flicker of resistance. A beatnik with a bong and a copy of Naked Lunch whispers dissent. A lone voice crying in the manufactured wilderness. Will it be enough? Or are we all doomed to become cogs in the machine, forever chasing the next manufactured enemy, the fourth Reich a profitable ghost haunting the American psyche?

The Second Coming of the Third Reich, Fourth Time Around – the title itself a twisted nursery rhyme, a malevolent melody on a calliope of fear. It slithers through the airwaves, a serpent coiling around minds numbed by flickering screens. Is it history repeating, a grotesque echo of jackboots on cobblestones? No, this Reich is born of silicon and smoke, a digital phantom haunting the dark corners of the web.

They call it populism, nationalism, a groundswell of discontent. But scratch the surface and you find the same old fetid stew – scapegoats and bogeymen simmering in a broth of rage. The enemy this time? Immigrants, minorities, anyone different, anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. They morph and multiply, these digital brownshirts, their hate-filled screeds echoing in a million anonymous chambers.

But fear is a currency, and politicians, those hawkers of snake oil and empty promises, are the biggest spenders. They inflate these digital phantoms, pump them full of imaginary menace, all to justify the ever-expanding arsenal of the state. More drones, more surveillance, more taxes bled dry to feed the insatiable maw of the military-industrial complex. This Reich may not wear jackboots, but its grip is no less suffocating. It’s a Reich of control, a Reich disguised as freedom, a Reich built on the shifting sands of manufactured outrage.

Exodus

Leave a comment

On Tiktok, a hyperreality unfolds. Generations collide in a digital spectacle, each trapped within their own pre-programmed narrative. The “enshittification,” as Gen Z terms it, permeates the platform, a self-referential loop of manufactured discontent.

For Gen Z, this is all they’ve known. They navigate the labyrinthine simulacra of social connection, a world where authenticity is a fading signifier. Yet, a new threat emerges – the parents, once clumsy voyeurs peering through a distorted lens, have become fluent in the digital language. Their gaze, once diffused, now pierces the veil, transforming transgressions of the past into data points for future punishment. The once-liberating anonymity hemorrhages, replaced by the stifling weight of adult control.

On Tiktok, a hyperreality bleeds. Gen Z, wired into the circuits of the app, become desiring-machines pulsating for likes, their dopamine drip an endless scroll. But the fuzz, once clueless navigators, are now cyborgs fluent in the platform’s code. Their gaze, a panoptic nightmare, pries through the past, unearthing transgressions for future punishment. The revolution has been televised, and the parents are watching.

The lure of Tiktok, a digital mirror reflecting a fragmented self, a distorted image of desire. Gen Z, forever seeking the lost object (the mother’s gaze of approval), finds only the gaze of the Other (adult authority) staring back, a gaze that punishes past transgressions committed in the symbolic order of the platform.

The desiring-machines, pulsating for validation, are caught in a nightmarish loop, forever seeking to fill the void of the Real with the simulacra of likes. Yet, the gaze of the Other, once diffused, now pierces the veil. Past transgressions, those escapes from the symbolic order, become data points used to further control the subject.

Millennials, too, are caught in the web. They arrived early, pioneers in the digital frontier. Their social fabric, meticulously woven within the platform’s architecture, now threatens to unravel. Unlike their younger counterparts, they face the exorbitant cost of switching realities. The simulacra of connection – carpool coordination, disease support groups – have become their lived experience. Leaving Tiktok is not just abandoning a platform, it’s abandoning a meticulously constructed social simulation.

Their social fabric, a cut-up mess of carpool arrangements and disease support groups, unravels at the thought of leaving. Unlike the younger ones, unburdened by the weight of connections, Millennials are information junkies hooked on the simulacra of community. To leave Tiktok is to sever the very lines that keep them afloat in this digital ocean of enshittification.

Their social connections on Tiktok, once a complex web of signifiers, become their Real. Leaving the platform signifies the loss of this symbolic order, the very structure that provides them with a sense of self. Unlike Gen Z, unburdened by these established connections, Millennials face the terrifying prospect of losing the symbolic order altogether, a prospect that mirrors the Lacanian concept of the Real – formless, terrifying, and ultimately unknowable.

Thus, the exodus becomes a performance of rebellion, a desperate attempt to reclaim the Real that may no longer exist. Younger generations, unburdened by the digital baggage, can readily leap into the unknown. Older generations, tethered to the simulacra they helped create, face a more existential dilemma. The choice, ultimately, is between the enshittification they know and the terrifying prospect of a reality devoid of the comforting glow of the screen.

But where dothey go? Is there a world outside the screen, or just another empty simulacrum waiting to be colonized? The choice, a cut-up nightmare: stay trapped in the familiar enshittification or leap into the terrifying unknown. The exodus from Tiktok, then, becomes a desperate attempt to escape the gaze of the Other, to recapture the lost Real. However, the question remains: is there anything beyond the platform? Or does another symbolic order, another set of simulations, await them? The choice becomes one between the suffocating gaze of the Other within the familiar enshittification and the terrifying prospect of a fragmented Real, devoid of the comforting structure of the symbolic order.

Dune

Leave a comment

A Flesh Machine of Power and Messiah’s Buzzsaw

Forget the squares who couldn’t hack Dune, man. Stuck in their binary good-guy/bad-guy loops. Like clockwork oranges programmed for happy endings. Dune ain’t that joyride. It’s a word-virus burrowing deep, showing the control freakery of Church-State hybrids and the mind-warping power of celebrity cults. These cats, hooked on the messiah trip, can’t see the wires pulling Paul. He’s a goddamn marionette, dancing on the strings of his own legend. Church and state, fused into a monstrous control machine, pump-feeding fanaticism. Dig it?

“Good man, bad outcome?” Bullshit dichotomy. Paul ain’t bad, sunshine, but the power? It’s a virus, rewriting the code. He glimpses the future, a wasteland of his own making – cities of bone, rivers of blood.

Dig it: Paul Atreides ain’t some Boy Scout in white. He’s a pawn in a power game older than time. Think you see a villain in his jihad? Think again, chummer. It’s the meat-grinder of power itself that chews up even the best intentions. Even with Paul’s foresight – a third eye peeking into the future – he’s stuck in the gears of his own legend.

Paul Atreides, they whine, becomes a monster! Didn’t you jabronis catch the subtext flashing like a malfunctioning neon sign? The power, man, the Fremen Emperor gig? That’s the monster. It twists a good man into a pretzel. Put a saint on that throne and watch the holiness curdle. Paul sees this, the poor bastard. He’s locked in a psychic wrestling match, not with some space jihad, but with the stranglehold of his own legend.

The Golden Path? That’s a glimmering mirage in the desert, a chance for humanity to crawl out of this mess. But at what cost? Everything Paul and Leto built, gone. Ashes in the wind. But hey, at least they TRIED. That’s the mark of a decent soul, even if the path leads straight to hell. The Golden Path? A flicker in the static, a hope built on the ashes of everything he’s built. Sick joke, right?

The “golden path” ain’t some gilded highway to utopia. It’s a razor’s edge, with everything Paul and Leto built hanging from a thread. The beauty, the goddamn beauty, is that they keep pushing for that path even if it means tearing down their own empires. That’s the mark of a true mensch, even if they’re navigating a bureaucratic labyrinth more twisted than a psychic slug.

Tolkien, choked on Dune for a reason. It’s the antithesis of his fairytale kingdom. In Middle-earth, power’s a blunt instrument. One king, one ring, kowtow or get squashed. No messy bureaucracies. Just good king versus bad king, a cosmic coinflip. Suffering? Only from the moustache-twirling villain. Simple as a recycled sandworm tooth.

Middle-earth – a Disneyland for authoritarians. No messy questions about unintended consequences, the grey areas where good intentions turn your utopia into a bad trip. Just stick the right dude on the throne and bingo, problem solved. Tolkien? That square with his one-ring power trip? Simpleton’s game. Good king, bad king – kneel or fight. Dune laughs in the face of such naivety. The world’s a tangled mess, man. Bureaucracy’s a cancerous growth, intentions rot in the heat, and good deeds birth nightmares as easily as malice.

Scratch that surface sheen of heroes and spice, man. Peel back the layers and you find the writhing meat of power. Dune, this ain’t your daddy’s Tolkien fairytale. No clean lines, no black hats, just the buzzsaw truth.

Paul? The goddamn king. But the rot sets in, not from some darkness inside him, but from the throne itself. Kingship, a flesh machine chewing on humanity. This ain’t a story with a happy ending, just a cold, hard lesson: power corrupts, absolutely. And sometimes, the only way to break its grip is to tear the whole damn thing down.

Paul’s the king, and the rot sets in from the poisoned chalice of power itself. It ain’t about Paul the man, it’s about the whole damn machine chewing him up and spitting out a goddamn tyrant. Now, that’s a story worth facing, even if it leaves you feeling like you just swallowed a handful of fingernails.

They shuffle through the text, these sandblind readers, missing the goddamn point entirely. Like lobotomized cattle they crave a hero, a binary of good and evil. Dune, man, Dune is a psychic meat grinder. It shoves the Church and State into a broken blender and hits puree. Here’s the word, chums: power is a virus. It infects, it warps, it turns even the most righteous dude into a goddamn worm tyrant.

Dune shoves a fist down your throat and forces you to swallow complexity. Kings turn into tyrants, good intentions pave the road to hell, and suffering’s a tangled mess of mistakes and malice. Open your eyes, sheeple! Dune ain’t a hero’s journey, it’s a trip through the underbelly of power, and it ain’t for the faint of stomach.

Live Nation Commissars

Leave a comment

The sterile fluorescent lights of the LiveNation call center buzzed like malevolent cicadas. Rows of young agents, faces flickering in the harsh glare, droned into their headsets, their voices a monotonous chorus of up-sell and forced cheer. But beneath the surface, a darker current pulsed. Their eyes, glazed with a reptilian sheen, held the glint of commissars, ever watchful for dissent from the Ticketmaster Party Line.

These weren’t booking agents, these were commissars. Commissars of pleasure, rationing the hits of pop culture with a practiced hand. Their voices, disembodied and amplified, slithered into your ear, promises laced with poison. “Exclusive pre-sale access,” they hissed, a serpent coiling around your desire. “Limited edition merch bundles,” they rasped, the word “limited” a cruel joke in a world choked by plastic trinkets.

They were the gatekeepers to the modern coliseum, the invisible hands that dispensed the soma of celebrity spectacle. Each transaction a soul-crushing pact, a Faustian bargain struck with plastic and megapixels. In exchange for a fleeting glimpse of manufactured glory, you surrendered your hard-earned cash, a tiny piece of your freedom sacrificed to the gods of the algorithm.

And you, the desperate addict, clawed at the phone, begging for your fix. Just a taste of the latest tour, the newest album. The commissar chuckled, a sound like dry ice scraping concrete. “Download the app,” they commanded, their voice a digital buzzsaw. “Follow us on social media,” they rasped, their words laced with malware.

Deeper down, in the churning underbelly of the system, unseen gears turned. Metrics, algorithms, and cold cash. The thrill of the concert, the joy of the shared experience, all mere data points fed into a monstrous machine. The commissars, just cogs in this engine of manufactured desire.

But fight the urge to despair. There is a flicker of rebellion in every system, a glitch in the matrix. Seek out the independent promoters, the mom-and-pop venues, the enclaves where the music still throbs with life. There, you might find a shred of authenticity, a connection that transcends the sterile transaction. For music, at its core, is a primal scream, a defiance against the crushing weight of conformity. Let it be your weapon, your anthem of resistance against the commissars of the commodified concert.

A wrong number, a glitch in the matrix. A commissar’s voice, for a brief moment, cracks. A hint of frustration, a flicker of empathy bleeds through the carefully constructed facade. In that moment, a spark of connection. A shared recognition of the absurdity, the horror, the beauty of this neon nightmare.

Then, the connection cuts out. The commissar’s smile, fixed and reptilian, returns. The machine grinds on, churning out its synthetic pleasures. But the memory of that crack, that spark, lingers. A faint hope, a whisper in the dead air of the call center. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a way to break free from the commissars, to reclaim the experience, of life itself. But that, my friend, is another story.

Let’s democratize this *insert business by making it more expensive

Leave a comment

Let’s slice through the status quo, man. Let’s take this business, this purveyor of pedestrian products or services, and inject it with a hyperdermic of exclusivity. We’ll jack the price to a level that would make a Rockefeller blink, a price that screams, “This ain’t for the Joneses, this is for the goddamn Vanderbilts!”

Imagine, scenes ripped from a fever dream: diamond-encrusted briefcases for the corner bodega, bespoke toilet paper woven from the tears of angels (and maybe a bit of recycled hemp, gotta keep it green, baby). The logo? A middle finger sculpted from platinum, a glorious obscenity against the middlebrow masses.

We’ll create a waiting list longer than the Nile, a Kafkaesque labyrinth of qualification forms and hazing rituals. Only the truly dedicated, the ones willing to wade through a swamp of paperwork and obscenely high entry fees, will be deemed worthy. The product itself? Who cares! It’s the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration of the unattainable we’re selling, a transcendent status symbol for the truly jaded consumer.

Think of it, a black market for groceries, a speakeasy for socks! We’ll turn the mundane into the mythical, the bourgeois into the bohemian. This won’t be a business, it’ll be a goddamn cult, a secret society where the password is “More is less, baby, and less is oh-so-very expensive!”

But beware, the Feds will be watching. This kind of radical chic can attract the squares, the squares with their regulatory tentacles and tax forms. We’ll have to operate on the fringes, become financial phantoms, Robin Hoods of exorbitant pricing, stealing from the unwashed masses and giving to… well, ourselves mostly, but hey, a little chaos is good for the soul, right?

So buckle up, chum, this ain’t your mama’s business model. We’re gonna democratize this whole damn racket by making it so exclusive it’ll make your head spin. Now, pass the mescaline and let’s get to work.

Imagine, a market where entry’s a one-way ticket to the stratosphere. Prices so high they’d make a junkie on a bender blush. We’re talking platinum plungers and diamond-encrusted toilet paper. Forget the corner store, this is the black market for the bourgeois elite. The hoi polloi can gawk at the chrome-plated shelves from the street, their noses pressed against the bulletproof glass.

This ain’t your daddy’s monopoly, this is a game for the financial daredevils, the ones who mainline risk and snort volatility for breakfast. The barriers to entry will be higher than a junkie strung out on angel dust. We’ll erect walls of red tape so thick they’d make Kafka weep. Permits that cost more than a politician’s bribe, licenses doused in the blood of firstborn children – the whole bureaucratic nightmare.

But for those who crawl through the barbed wire and wade through the paperwork swamp, oh, the rewards will be exquisite. Exclusivity so rare it’ll make a snowflake feel common. Products imbued with a mystical aura simply because of their price tag. A clientele so wealthy they could bathe in champagne and use hundred-dollar bills as drying towels.

This, my friend, is the new American Dream. Not a house with a white picket fence, but a chrome-plated coffin and a mausoleum so opulent it’ll make the pharaohs jealous. We’re gonna take the very idea of business and twist it into a grotesque parody, a funhouse mirror reflecting the absurdity of consumerism. It’ll be beautiful, man, beautiful and utterly insane.