When I wrote the first part of this post, I already knew there would be a second. I thought I would wait a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks, but new stuff kept happening. 

In that post, by focusing mostly on the “lefty” side, I may have given you the impression that this was a partisan issue. Not true. It’s just that there’s a limit of stuff I can put in a single post. I do believe, and I certainly did believe in the days following that post, that the rightwingers were undergoing their own derangement. Then, *shit* happened. And, by that, I mean George Floyd and the current Sovonarolla-like puritan cultural revolution that, although still mostly an Anglophone phenomenon, is slowly forcing its way into the vassal states of the new Rainbow (+ black) American Empire which, like a Shoggoth-like creature, is undergoing expansive convulsion and slowly trying to devour and assimilate the entire world. After all, it felt a little weird to dunk on the Right while the wokelets were burning cities (or trying, these LARPers are quite incompetent.) So, I waited.

And now that I have waited… well, I just don’t care. (a) My opinion about Corona hasn’t changed: It was, and is, serious. She doesn’t care about how you perceive it; she just *is* (b) Americans choosing to make the issue of wearing a mask a political battlefield were silly, and (c) that the Right can’t into Culture and certainly not counter-propaganda. Yet those were minor issues compared to whatever the current nonsense is.

As I said (paraphrasing) in the previous post: If you thought Climate Change was going to destroy the world, but you couldn’t be arse not to use the car for a couple of days, yet a somewhat deadly flu makes you follow whatever the State orders you to do, what does that say about you? True, however, that train of thought can be extended, of course:

If you zealously followed all the Corona precautions yet the moment some thug is killed by cops you ignore them all and go out to protest (in freaking Sweden, if you want to make it even sillier) that, I don’t know, Black Trans Lives Matter, what does that say about you?

Well, it says you are an idiot. And, about me, it says that I was too naive, and my goals misguided. Those people don’t have hidden preferences that are now being revealed. They have no preferences at all. They are empty husks. At best, they have a couple of general prejudices that can easily be triggered. What is happening is not an apocalyptic revelation but the materialization of the hyperreality, where the media and the real world finally become one, and it’s impossible to tell them apart. Well, at least, if you are a moron. For example, why do teenagers in faraway countries protest the death of Geroge Floyd? Because it’s actually happening right before their eyes—on their phones, that is. That’s their reality.

And, although this may seem like an odd train of thought, this leads me to this blog’s other main point, which is what I have been trying to say for quite a long time even before this started but I might as well add it here: I’m out. For years I’ve tried to get ahead in this “Popular Culture” thing, to no avail. Books, short stories, articles, etc. For me, it’s not worth it.

Unless you become a neo-Amish, we are all going to get canceled or suffer the effects of other people getting canceled (you may not have social media or the Internet, but your cultural consumption will turn to shit because all the good people who make those things will get purged.) Hide in your cave if you want; what is going on will eventually affect you anyway. This is no collapse or Civil War as some anxious people like to yell, more like a senile decay punctuated by some thug stealing your shoes and perhaps toppling down a statue. Any statue, really. Also, you get fired because your girlfriend didn’t bend the knee on Instagram. Eat that, bigot!

We are also all in the middle of a puritan mass psychosis; the goals now are either to fight back (eye-for-an-eye, with lawyers if necessary) or just hide to survive. I don’t believe “creating art” is on the menu now. Maybe in a few months or years, but not now. Not for me anyway.

This is not news, though. For years I have been skeptical about the alleged future and success of the “indie” and self-published literature. I also have been highly suspicious of the counter-woke slogans and conventional analyses (“Go woke, go broke”, “The Big Five are going to disappear anytime soon,” etc.), but I mostly kept these things to myself to not upset the conservatives in my circle. I probably shouldn’t, but whatever.

I convinced myself that, although whatever I managed to get published had no future, at least it could work as a “portfolio” of sorts. Maybe to get a small job as a writer somewhere. It’s not going to happen. Not in this cultural climate. Certainly not in the English-speaking world, and, soon, not in the entire planet.

Everything I have written here or posted on Twitter has marked me as a dangerous heretic. But, then again, so is anything these days. So, no, I’m not going to invest thousands of hours in writing a book that, at best, 100 people will buy. I’m not going to wait for a magical snowball effect that will somehow kick in once I have written ten books. I’m not going to struggle for years and years so, when I’m 50, and miserable, and broken, after two decades of social media battles, I can finally get a modicum of professional recognition (or even, *gasp* a check as a professional writer) just to get canceled the next day by a bitter retard on social media who found a Pepe meme on my TL. Not worth it. So, *for now*, you win. 

And for those of you still foolish enough to believe you will avoid the rampaging hordes of neo-vandals…. perhaps, but no man is an island. And we are all pre-canceled. It’s not a matter of what hobby, fandom, or individual will or will not catch the infection. It’s already everywhere; the point is whether the host will manage to avoid it’s seemingly random activation pattern. And you can never be sure, because it’s arbitrary. We all have a Russian-roulette pistol aiming at our heads. It may go off… or it may not. And that’s what makes it so effective as a tool of fear. Of course, it can’t go off on everybody at the same time, but no collective uprising against this BS is in sight, so expect a constant trickle of cancelations (and the odd suicide) for the next few months, a few each day. Which is, certainly, not the end of the world! Outside social media, the “real world” is perfectly fine (well, sort of)! It’s stuff that just happens to *other people*, a tiny percentage, not you. And that’s how they want you to feel. Isolated and too grateful that this devil hasn’t chosen your home so you don’t even put up a fight.

“Please, at least let me have my books, video games, and movies, and I won’t say anything. Just leave me alone!” Not going to happen unless you make yourself so small, you become invisible and, therefore, irrelevant. Besides, I don’t want to leave you alone. I don’t want you to have “escapism.” In fact, I want this to get as bad as humanly possible.

“But I’m not a creator; I’m just a consumer! I still can enjoy new things!” Well, that forty-book-long saga you enjoy that much? Yeah, the main writer will eventually get canceled over some trivial shit because a jealous intern wants to take his place, and they will give the job to some diversity reject that will ruin everything. Every new movie? Every line will be written and then rewritten because of who it could trigger. Every writer and producer will be so terrified of who could weaponize the simplest misstep and use it to liquidate them, that they will go full woke to minimize the chance of that happening. Every great work from the past? They are going to get, eventually, either “fixed” or get a content warning at the beginning. Your favorite, let’s say, writer? Canceled over some bullshit and replaced by an autistic dangerhair transwoman (sorry for the triple redundancy.)

Does that mean I “give up”? Not at all. I said we are all going to get canceled, and I will never be a writer (and no, getting something self-published doesn’t make you a writer, that’s indie cope) because it’s not even worth it for me to bother trying to write down these stories.

But, if I’m going to get attacked, it should be over something important. Do you think I’m going to put up a fight that will blacklist me forever over whether orcs are “racist”? Lul. Over some dirty joke I told some fragile woman on Twitter five years ago? Nah. Don’t be like those people who lose their job because they said some milquetoast, apologetic liberal thing that would have been common sense five years ago but now is an irredeemable sin (e.g., “but white lives matter too”, “but biological women exist”, etc..) Just go bonkers and say/do something outrageous. If you are going to get destroyed, you might as well go with a bang. Also, remember, don’t stand up as an individual. You are going to get destroyed unless you are J. K. Rowling. If you want to make a statement, coordinate it with other like-minded people. One individual actor, writer, football players, and so on can easily be canceled, but not if twenty speak up at the same time. They assume that people will resist, but one at a time, so they can be destroyed in a game of whac-a-mole. They don’t expect collective action against them.

But to gove back to my main point. No, none of this nerd stuff is worth fighting over. Not for me. I would if I had a job in the industry, but I have nothing. As I said, for now, you “win”: It’s all yours. See this cultural landscape where nothing grows, and every sign of life and intelligence is squashed before it can rise? It’s all yours. What a prize!

Rot and suffer in this doomed world you have created. 

But I’m young, and there’s not a single example in history of a cultural mass psychosis lasting forever. Which means I will live to see the masses turn against you and rip you apart. Look up what happened to the already-mentioned Savonarola.

So what will I do now? Well, for once, I probably won’t bother with fiction, although there’s one book I will eventually write because I feel as if, otherwise, the muses would get angry. In any event, I promised myself that I would not pay an artist x5 of what I would eventually earn from the book to draw me a crappy cover, so until I can’t paint it myself, I won’t write the damn thing. That may take months, years, or forever.

Contrary to most people, who right now seem to want to distance themselves from “politics,” I may actually shift my attention to those issues, although in a serious manner (meaning, no op-ed cultural analyses and intellectual sperging.) Or not. Maybe I’ll start writing posts about cooking. Or nothing at all. However, my priorities have certainly shifted, so don’t expect many more posts about, let’s say, writing, literature, RPGs, book reviews, etc. I may write a few posts about the ineffectual strategies of the “Cultural Right” (whatever that is), though.

I already have a couple of shorter, essay-length books in mind, which should be easy to write. There are other things I will start doing, but I don’t want to reveal all my cards here. 

This blog is not dead and I will not take it down, but unless something changes, it will either see a reduction in activity or a change in its direction.

To follow me in other places: Twitter for dangerous subversive propaganda and shitposting, and Instagram for whatever I happen to be painting (mostly miniatures, but I’m also learning more traditional art.)