❝
In the shimmer with a glimmer, came a slight breeze
softer than cotton, was its faint whisper
the crop swayed, my mind jogged
from this did flow, the following sentiment:
Even the richest red poppy-petaled flower —
with the very most resplendent, voluptuous and succulent gum-filled pod,
— does fade and evaporate to nothing
when I compare it to thee.
❞
I kept hearing “Es Jay double-yous” and I thought to myself, ‘you what?’ and said aloud to him, “what can I do!” So, like many nowadays would do and, according to him, what I should do, I went to the internet and looked it up:
Social Justice Warrior
A pejorative term for an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism.
So “SJW” is a negative frame of reference for hmmmm, let us say — and by no means exclusively — people of a left-wing liberal persuasion. The quid quo pro would be, I guess, ‘the neo-conned’ of the right-wing (you know, the type that were deaf to Ms Christine Blasey Ford’s heartfelt testimony). Man Alive! We’ve uninvited and unwanted grinders ‘n’ grabbers telling us what’s wrong from right — I’ll add to this compendium of delusional luminaries Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Jair Messias Bolsonaro &, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. From where this compulsion to delve into this particular warren came from, I do not know but, I just got [digitally] distracted as per bloody effing usual. (Today’s rabbit hole however, was literal and epic.) I think it began by me reading something to do with the build up to America’s 2020 presidential elections and the mention of Qanon in relation to one L. Boebert, restaurant owner and devout gun carrier. From there, I got to some New York Times podcasts which both expressly considered how the internet is changing humankind as we know it:
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§ / Caliphate Rukmini Callimachi seeks to understand ISIS (داعش). 1 of 12 | 06:28 2 of 12 | 23:47 |
§ / Rabbit Hole Kevin Roose investigates what happens when our lives move online. 1 of 9 | 5:18 2 of 9 | 27:49 |
Both journalists ^ are deeply dedicated and totally impressed me. I’d like though to emphasise just how profoundly I was moved by Rukmini Callimachi’s professionalism and her meticulously investigated and cross checked information. It’s a world away from click bait and polemic knee jerk presumption. I do say and do mean, Thank Nature for such individuals. A world away too, are are the articles collated here:
From the Longform archives I stumbled upon a 2015 two-part interview with the said Rukmini Callimachi:
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❝
Faces open phones
Snapchat has filters
Instagram takes selfies
Facebook now ‘auto’ tags
TikTok takes the bloody lot
❞
Think about it, we most of us (a) don’t want to be conformist and conventional — we don’t want to accept the fact that in all likelihood we are automated animals with next to no free will — (b) we want to be a creature of some distinction and significance yet (c), we want to affiliate with others who think like us and see the world as we do. I won’t harp on about echo chambers and Cambridge Analytica but rest assured nearly all of those silly young boys who got radicalised and for a semester or so wanted to make their computer game lives come true and transform an insular existence to a communal one, did soon realise that dreams and fantasises are better off staying as such. Just consider the lunacy of new year’s resolutions: in principal everything’s paradise, in practice its pedestrian and prosaic (it is banal, boring, dreary, dull, monotonous, mundane, repetitious, run-of-the-mill, tedious, tiresome, uneventful, unexciting and so very fucking humdrum and bereft of excitement).
You see, the so-called dark/deep web ain’t at all as hidden and unknown as some would like it to be (and dare I say, some believe it to be). You really would be delusional if you thought TikTok (ByteDance) wasn’t lovin’ it, loving the fact that they’ve scored the biggest coup against the decadent capitalist West since inception — i.e., the December 1949 clashing of egos in Moscow between Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin. Unbridled, unabridged, verbatim they’ve now a trove of data — much of it innocent and inane, not withstanding — gait, voice and 3D facial info of titanic terabytes. No ICT/SM entity worth its silly.con isn’t tracking every move we make, every step we take, in private/incognito mode. Just because a coder says do not cache/index in the meta-head, does not mean that every deliverer of the internet isn’t caching and logging and instantaneously mirroring every upload, change, view and comment. The notion of total deletion is fanciful. So, you see: Qanon and 4chan etc. etc., the light-right, alt-right, neo-conned and digital Es Jay double-yous are simply providing ICT/SM entities (and critically: the agencies of the state with whom they are symbiotically in cahoots with) priceless reams of data.
I know nothing, and I ain’t supposing that I here by do but, I do somehow see the need to be different (against the powers that be) but affiliate and bond with others — what every Qanon believer, 4chan /w3/ contributor/viewer and loyal follower of angry-man-with-a-web cam wants (whether or not they know it) — to be partially reminiscent of the hero-worship the LSD-addled Jim Jones did attract in his heyday.
And yes, I know that many were essentially kept prisoner and that well over 300 young children in that now overgrown Guyanan jungle commune (no,: “camp”) were given no choice in the act of revolutionary suicide that they sacrificially performed. If ever there was a reincarnation of the mythical Kurtz, J.J. of Jonestown was surely he.
This is the end. . . my beautiful friend: the end. Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain, where all the grownups are insane:–
^ = Another day where I’ve been wholly blown off course by the internet and my plans of getting familiar with the cognitive sciences ahead of the coming semester are fast fading… ‘cognitive dissonance’ is a term I do keep hearing and one that I am keen to get to grips with.
Anna Bidoonism 