To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!
- E M Cioran
I am stuck, thrown. Wait, no, we all are. It’s all heading nowhere fast.
The ‘End of History’ is over and we’re caught in an awkward lurching motion, traumatised by the past and apprehensive about the unknown. A massive global edging.
Or: if we think of a system, perhaps merely an intended steady state — a balance carefully maintained, permitting the right amount of displeasure and reaction, ensuring the structure holds, consistency is maintained, anomie proceeds.
There are those of us, however, who recognise tipping points. Contradictions, inflection points — areas to leverage. To shake things up. I’m tired of the tradition of flaccid contemplation; I want to act.
There are also those who would rather do nothing — NPCs, plebs, peasants, those who simply live, mouthbreathe, shit, eat, expire, they are the new Noble Savages and they are complicit. Old Savages own property and complain about wokeness, Larvae Savages own nothing and enact wokeness online, but they are one and the same. For those of us in the know, they are a blockage.
Maybe none of this will be insightful. I have a habit of speaking in clichés, most people do, if they bother expressing themselves at all. Most of us entertain plenty of insights every day. Some of them might even be profound, tell us something about being human, give us something to work with. But what could eventuate from that but some vague notion of ‘progress’? We all saw through that one a while ago.
Anyway, I’m not a nihilist, a Luddite or an accelerationist, I’m just a hater. And I’m tired.
[working]
I also have a job. I’m a lowly sort of technocrat, I suppose. I move words and boxes around on my screen all day and things get easier for people. Friction is reduced, processes are smoothened and worn clean until there is nothing left, there is no obstruction whatsoever. Eventually, maybe, there is no role for human beings at all.
I’m hunched in front of my terminal, my eyes are tired and dry. A faint hum issues from the harsh fluorescent lights above me. My colleagues in the next row quietly discuss the latest episode of Farmer Wants a Wife in serious, faintly conspiratorial whispers. I notice my manager, Marie, approaching my desk and I quickly minimise the Family Guy hentai video I was watching.
Hey pal. She winks and points her fingers at me. Marie is an Old Millennial and comports herself like the main character in a mid-00s sitcom. Her knack for endless small talk and cheugy bon mots has mostly helped to conceal her offensive and incurable stupidity.
Ready for our 1 on 1 catchup? She slurps her coffee noisily. Marie wears a white t-shirt with ‘FEMCEL’ screen-printed across her immense chest in equally immense pink Impact text.
Like the t-shirt? I don’t really know what it means, something about computers. I found it on Instagram.
I nod.
Anyway, how are those projects going? I feel like you’ve been a bit quiet lately. Hey, is everything okay? You look tired.
I’m pretty good. I’m okay.
Just okay?
I’m fine. I don’t know, maybe a bit stuck.
Stuck? Who’s stuck? Hey, maybe you just need more… Are you seeing anyone at the moment?
Maybe you’re lonely? You know, I think I solved loneliness, well, me and my partner Bryan. You know why people get lonely and sad? They treat love like a resource, something finite. The truth is, it’s actually unlimited — we operate in a non-scarcity love economy. Bryan and I are ethically non-monogamous now. It’s great. We worked everything out in an agreement that we keep in our shared G-Drive. Bryan generally prefers to stay home and play with his synths, but I’ve been heading to speed dating ceramics classes, Hinge DnD, even roleplay gangbangs. I can fall in love as much as I want — as long as I add them to the Drive. It’s all about transparency and accountability, just like our team here.
That’s true. Thanks.
Bryan isn’t perfect; far from it. I mean, he’s basically a loser. But this way it doesn’t actually matter, I never have to compromise. Isn’t that wonderful? Shoot! I’m late for my next meeting. Hey, you can talk to me about anything you know.
She scurries off and I exhale slowly through my nose. My colleague, V, stops by my desk.
That was a big sigh, my friend.
V has taken a liking to me, despite very little input on my behalf. She is the closest thing I have to a work pal.
Don’t listen to Marie. Total NPC. But that’s leadership for you, huh. She smiles and I grin. Hey, you look tired. Sleeping okay? Anything the matter?
Everything basically, what isn’t, I want to say, but instead I cough and laugh in a way I hope sounds funny and derisory, and head to the bathroom to look at my phone.
[posting]
My hatred is at home online. I operate several highly trafficked accounts on all platforms. Through the interface, I effect immediacy, I accelerate the loop. The images collapse complexity and provoke cruel laughter. It feels good. I offer the people something they need: a barrage of cringe and mass abjection. It’s just a mirror to the way things are.
I started with noble intentions. Myself and others like me, we thought we could embed new ideas; redpill the online masses into a new paradigm, shorn of identity politics but mobilised against the powers that be. But times changed and we evolved.
Posting and platform logic meant that this drift was inevitable. You post to provoke engagement; people react; you mine new realms of provocation, and the window shifts. In this way, me and my followers circle a kind of drain — a spiral into a deviant schizocynicism. I drew something to show you:
[commuting]
You can tell a lot about people by the look they assume on a morning commute. For most, there is no ‘look’ at all; the daily toil is simply a fact of life, there is no aspect to be taken in relation to it, merely a stoic resignation to inevitability. People imagine themselves distinct and above this horde — the only one to be self aware in the wretched daily march. But that is false, and cope.
Once again I am packed into an overstuffed morning tram. My face is smushed into the armpit of a heavyset woman in her fifties who stares grimly, stupidly, at her copy of the newspaper. She smells like old catpiss and mothballs, and her hands shake.
To my right, an extremely jacked guy is wedged into a narrow suit, the seams struggling to contain him, he holds up his phone to his face, staring at the screen, mouth agape, scrolling furiously through clips of Gaza rubble and Joe Rogan, the reflected images dancing off his sunglasses. His elbows dig sharply into my ribs, restricting my breathing.
I am packed in with hundreds, no, millions of these people, and their stink is overwhelming. Not for the first time in my life, I fantasise about action. I lunge for the emergency brake and give it a sharp yank, passengers are thrown off their feet, necks snap awkwardly against hard plastic and metal, bodies are thrown against and through glass, viscera and stinking skin ripped and smeared on sharp edges. Decisive, dramatic. A statement. I would be remembered.
My stop rings and I edge slowly through the mass. The woman with the newspaper smiles kindly at me and apologises for being in my way.
I step off the tram, wrenched for a moment out of my solipsistic reverie. It really does feel absurd sometimes — this craving for the absolute. I don’t know.
I barely notice V approaching. She bumps into me playfully as we enter our office building. Another day.
