Thank you for the work (heh) of cataloguing the sub's early history. I had a distinct memory of seeing it pop up occasionally years ago when it was still in its "antiwork means no work" phase, but was met with several instances of people violently proclaiming that is not in fact what the sub was or ever was.
I would also like to thank you for writing these articles in the first place. Frankly, and with no disrespect, a gay Mormon would be low on my list of people I expect to share so many thoughts and opinions with, but life is full of surprises and it is nice to find a niche of (as it appears to me, at least) sanity on the internet.
Glad you enjoyed the piece, and glad my writing's been resonating in general. I, ah, can't say I'm all that typical of a gay Mormon, but it's always a pleasure to meet others whose worldviews fit well with my own.
This episode illustrates something else foundational to social media but rarely mentioned: online socializing and communal associations exist in their current forms *because* participants are mostly opaque to each other.
This is the other side of the anonymity coin - that which lets disembodied ideas and perspectives exist by their own merits also obscures so much else that would typically inform who and what we want to associate with.
How many people would join a group founded by someone who looked and sounded like Doreen, if Doreen tried to recruit them personally? How often do thousands of people become outraged by the misanthropic venom of a random 16-year-old troll? Would they, if they had a video feed into the kid's bedroom while they clacked away on their keyboard?
Interestingly, the more online life merges with meatspace, and the celebrities gestated in those spaces enter the mainstream, the more the mainstream resembles a carnival of grotesques - the people insane, weird, and obsessed enough to rise to the top of virtual status hierarchies, loosed upon the world.
But as you note, the membrane hasn't been wholly dissolved. Normie sensibilities still exist and will exert their transformative effect of turning what's new and cool into played-out and lame. But every time the cycle repeats, the membrane gets thinner.
ok so i read through the commune tweets and in fairness many of them were very reasonable and quite a few had manual labour of some kind as their jobs. e.g cook + welding + caprentry for one person, forklift driver + welder, accountant (lol), project managmeent (leg extremely important). so yeah, idk seems like more of a meme than a real thing.
Also if you ask me what my job would be in commune it would be like data science which sounds pretty pretentious but also my comparative advantage in the commune so idk.
Some day someone will do a tell all blockbuster about all the strange people who came to New Hampshire for the Free State Project, Doreen included. Libertarianism is obviously a strange road with many baffling offramps.
Step 2 - No one ever has to get out of bed again. Utopia ensues.
This is my actual desired reality and I don't know why more people aren't onboard. Who actually wants to work when you could spend all of your time engaged in leisure activities.
I made an article during gamergate, there was an anon on 8chan's raid board which mentioned something about the gentrification of the internet and I did see some aspects to how it appeared that #gamergate was precisely that (a struggle against gentrifiers).
Thank you for the work (heh) of cataloguing the sub's early history. I had a distinct memory of seeing it pop up occasionally years ago when it was still in its "antiwork means no work" phase, but was met with several instances of people violently proclaiming that is not in fact what the sub was or ever was.
I would also like to thank you for writing these articles in the first place. Frankly, and with no disrespect, a gay Mormon would be low on my list of people I expect to share so many thoughts and opinions with, but life is full of surprises and it is nice to find a niche of (as it appears to me, at least) sanity on the internet.
Glad you enjoyed the piece, and glad my writing's been resonating in general. I, ah, can't say I'm all that typical of a gay Mormon, but it's always a pleasure to meet others whose worldviews fit well with my own.
I like the Vonnegut flourish at the end.
And the whole piece. I love your work, Trace. It's always well-researched, and you're a fabulous writer.
This episode illustrates something else foundational to social media but rarely mentioned: online socializing and communal associations exist in their current forms *because* participants are mostly opaque to each other.
This is the other side of the anonymity coin - that which lets disembodied ideas and perspectives exist by their own merits also obscures so much else that would typically inform who and what we want to associate with.
How many people would join a group founded by someone who looked and sounded like Doreen, if Doreen tried to recruit them personally? How often do thousands of people become outraged by the misanthropic venom of a random 16-year-old troll? Would they, if they had a video feed into the kid's bedroom while they clacked away on their keyboard?
Interestingly, the more online life merges with meatspace, and the celebrities gestated in those spaces enter the mainstream, the more the mainstream resembles a carnival of grotesques - the people insane, weird, and obsessed enough to rise to the top of virtual status hierarchies, loosed upon the world.
But as you note, the membrane hasn't been wholly dissolved. Normie sensibilities still exist and will exert their transformative effect of turning what's new and cool into played-out and lame. But every time the cycle repeats, the membrane gets thinner.
ok so i read through the commune tweets and in fairness many of them were very reasonable and quite a few had manual labour of some kind as their jobs. e.g cook + welding + caprentry for one person, forklift driver + welder, accountant (lol), project managmeent (leg extremely important). so yeah, idk seems like more of a meme than a real thing.
Also if you ask me what my job would be in commune it would be like data science which sounds pretty pretentious but also my comparative advantage in the commune so idk.
Some day someone will do a tell all blockbuster about all the strange people who came to New Hampshire for the Free State Project, Doreen included. Libertarianism is obviously a strange road with many baffling offramps.
Step 1 - AGI and robots
Step 2 - No one ever has to get out of bed again. Utopia ensues.
This is my actual desired reality and I don't know why more people aren't onboard. Who actually wants to work when you could spend all of your time engaged in leisure activities.
Step 3 - AGI decides it no longer needs to keep the humans alive.
I think there is a huge gap between DesiredReality™ vs DelusionalFantasy™
One thing is clear reading this article: I am not letting Doreen anywhere near my dog.
Autism is both a great progenitor of political philosophy and a great destroyer of political movements
I made an article during gamergate, there was an anon on 8chan's raid board which mentioned something about the gentrification of the internet and I did see some aspects to how it appeared that #gamergate was precisely that (a struggle against gentrifiers).
http://yotsubasociety.org/gamergate-class-war/