A slap fight broke out between a malignant narcissist and an edgy conservative™ this week. That’s to be expected from time to time. Edgytarians need to maintain their street cred by occasionally hopping the fence and counting coup over in blue check Twitter. You could get away with it as long as you were cool with Ben Shapiro.
This time, the edgy content creator miscalculated. He poked a sacred cow belonging to the priestly class during the high holy month of the Death Cult.
Since such an offense is now considered lèse-majesté, the edgytarian had to be made an example of. At first with reluctance–for the inquisitors knew that some demons, once released from their bottles, are excruciatingly difficult to bind once again–but with mounting zeal, YouTube’s Holy Office has not only excommunicated Steven Crowder, they’ve placed everyone to the right of David French under interdict.
Yet the palace eunuch whose dignity was offended remains inconsolable. In the latest of what will surely be a procession of guilt offerings meant to assuage his tantrum, YouTube’s canonists have issued a revised set of ritual laws akin to installing guardrails around the commandments.
It’s not even necessary to read between the lines. Our technopriest-oligarchs have made their edicts plain.
No words are to be spoken, no music played; no images graven, that might offend a sacred cow.
Even after the first Adpocalypse of 2017, when a host of content creators lost the ability to monetize their YouTube channels, heathen prophets, astrologers, and doomsayers warned of a second cataclysm on the horizon. Their prophecies largely agreed on the following signs:
The technopriests’ shame fuels the Second Adpocalypse. You will know it is near when the Orange Man arises in the West.
Following this sign, the technopriests’ Conservative slaves will be of no further use to them, for their service as gatekeepers was needful only while the pretense of openness lasted. You will know the end draws nigh when you hear their lamentations.
All humor is derived from noticing contradictions. But the technopriests can neither allow anyone to notice nor to point out the sacred teachings’ contradictions. You will know the end is upon you when all laughter ceases.
Digital gadfly Mister Metokur, one of the foremost oracles who made the prophecy above, has declared the internet end times. For his expertly informed take, watch the video below while it’s still available.
Jim’s analysis is sound as always, but I differ with him slightly on one point. Trump’s election–and the tech oligarchs’ shame-faced efforts to make sure they never get blindsided again–wasn’t the root cause of Adpocalypse 2.0. It was a catalyst that accelerated the natural arc of Big Tech dominance.
I don’t fault Jim for missing the main impetus of web Armageddon. The spiritual factors we’re dealing with tend to fall within agnostics’ blind spot. But the fact is, the current crackdown would’ve happened regardless of Trump’s election.
It’s been obvious for a while that Big Tech isn’t motivated by profits. This latest move, which will slash YouTube’s own ad revenue, is just another proof on the pile of evidence.
We can also rule out a purely political motive. Companies fearful of antitrust action don’t censor the sitting president’s supporters.
Though the liturgical language at the beginning of this post was partly tongue in cheek, it’s meant to reinforce a more serious point.
We really are ruled over by devotees of a heretical cult that’s warped the Christian concept of original sin into a form of blood libel.
What Adpocalypse II really represents is our rulers openly imposing a perpetual state of ritual impurity on straight, white, Christian men.
If you fall into any combination of those categories, our technopriest overlords have given notice that you are now a second-class citizen. Your sole purpose is to serve as a scapegoat for protected groups’ insecurities; then die.
To this end, the people in the ivory towers are locking down the internet. The digital frontier is closed. From now on, the web will be a carefully managed stream of propaganda and products our rulers want you to consume.
The natural first reaction to this news–especially from those who grew up with the internet–is desolation.
But we must consider: Recreating the America of the 50s or the 80s was never a viable option. Even if it could be done, the rot had already set in long before then. It would just grow back to smother us again.
The rot started when we compromised our Christian faith for worldly ends. Yes, the concessions enacted to end the internecine wars of the 18th century made sense between Christians. But when the door was opened to let other, incompatible parties into the arrangement, the seeds of destruction took root. The Enlightenment experiment was doomed.
One of the hardest realities for people older than Gen X to wrap their heads around is that whatever rises from the ashes of the civilization that the Death Cult has destroyed, it won’t look like the post-Enlightenment sociopolitical landscape.
Quaint notions like equality, individualism, and religious pluralism will have gone the way of the dinosaur. Our Death Cult overlords never believed in these ideas. They just used them as cover while they worked tirelessly to undermine society. Now the masks are off.
The internet might be one of those formerly cherished but ultimately detrimental innovations of the West’s terminal stage. If it will be gone soon anyway, maybe it’s best to just let it go.
It amounts to the same thing in the end, but no one works tirelessly with the express purpose of causing the society they live in to collapse. They'll work for a bit of license here, a bit of illegitimate recognition there, and then a bit of moral relativism and groupthink to balm their consciences. They'll rebel, like a screaming teenage girl, under the presumption that their foe will still put a roof over their heads no matter what, and then find to their horror that their presumption was misplaced. And all the while, the powers of hell orchestrate these pettiness into Social Movements.
But they, themselves, don't actually want society to collapse. At worst, they're like Dewey, confident that they can harness the wind so society goes their way forever. The difference is one between a battle of principalities and powers, and a battle of flesh and blood, and cannot be emphasized enough.
Brian Niemeier
June 7, 2019,
If you'd asked me even a year ago, I'd have said that the Death Cult really believed they were marching from victory to victory toward a sexy, shiny utopia.
But their current behavior belies that analysis. I've spent some time talking to Obama voters and the like. Here's my new model.
Obama rode to the White House on a wave of Leftist utopianism and white guilt. SWPL goodwhites voted for him on the promise that he would repair race relations and finally settle the blood debt over slavery. These were noble intentions from a certain perspective. Obama would have done the nation a service if he'd come through. It's all academic, since he failed.
Then Trump got elected. I trust I needn't elaborate.
The one-two punch of Obama's failed messiahship and Trump's victory shook the Death Cult to its core. Few normal people appreciate what a blow to the Lefts' collective id these two events were. The only modern analogue is the spiritual collapse Japan suffered when the Emperor renounced his divinity. For Christians, imagine someone finding the bones of Jesus, and it might be close to the Death Cult's existential crisis.
They were utopian. Now they've gone full Jonestown.
Durandel
June 7, 2019,
Problem is they want us, not themselves, to drink the cool-aide.
The people at the top want society to collapse. I believe some of those at the top really do Satan’s bidding and cooperate with the Illumined one, the Enlightener. And then many of the lower totempole footsoldiers are true believers in the shiny sexy socialist utopia opiate sold to these braindead masses to give them something to fight for to bring about Satan’s anti-work.
All faiths, whether the One True Faith or some lower “Faith” have different levels and roles to be played and manned. The Death Cult Puppet masters need puppets.
Unconcord
June 7, 2019,
Durandel: Did Jeroboam and his spiritual/literal successors worship demons because it would destroy Judea?
JD Cowan
June 7, 2019,
You can drink your own kool-aid, and I think that's what happened here.
They're cutting their arms off to spite their fingers.
xavier
June 6, 2019,
Brian
So we have la limpieza de la narrative combined with a new caste system based on ideological purity.
It's like they want to impose a secular inquisition with Chinese social credit and Indian caste system.
Wow what an awesome system so geared towards the common good and virtue
xavier
Unconcord
June 6, 2019,
"Social credit" occurs to me every ruddy day. Even if a social media giant isn't up to something, there's always a LimeBike or a forcible squeezing-out of 3G phones to get my mind in that gear.
Brian Niemeier
June 7, 2019,
That was always the intended end of multiculturalism.
Durandel
June 7, 2019,
You really think this is the end of the Internet? I’m think the internet is just going to reflect Western politics in that Globalism was always a dumb dream and a global internet was the same. If this is the beginning of the internet fragmenting into smaller and more local hubs, then it shows where socially we are heading.
Brian Niemeier
June 7, 2019,
Guys like Jim and Roosh maintain that the curtain is coming down on Internet 2.0–the Wild West, if you will.
Internet 3.0 will be wall-to-wall cat pictures and woke car commercials.
Anonymous
June 7, 2019,
Brian and Durandrel,
The Internet reminds me so much of the Spanish conquest of the America. You had these larger than life personalities that conquered and settled entire continents.
But because they were such loose cannons, the crown had to enforce its will and through very long suits that lasted some hundreds of years, the crown succeed.
The second part was a relatively quiescent and docile continent for many centuries. Sure the Brits and Dutch would cause havoc but the continent stayed loyal.
The next part is the wars of independence It was bloody, long and externally financed (the Brits wanted Latin America and to punish the Spanish Borbons for handing their Empire to Napoleon)
The last phase: local elites in cahoots with external forces that favour neglect as long as the produce and minerals get shipped. If not gunboat diplomacy and armed intervention.
That's the Internet trajectory.
xavier
Anabasis
June 7, 2019,
While YouTube and Twitter get all the attention, the business cloud companies are kicking off legal gun companies because of "muh values" or whatever.
Talk about a canary in the coal mine. If you're a business in Georgia, Missouri, Alabama — or maybe you just don't have enough rainbow flags around the office — it's time to look for alternatives and export your data. On the plus side, it'll be cool if companies start in-sourcing their computing resources instead of naively trusting "the cloud."
Brian Niemeier
June 7, 2019,
Banks and payment processors have been employing the same tactics. Even more than Big Tech, they're the real threat.
Durandel
June 7, 2019,
@ Brian – to your first comment, that is depressing. To your second comment, that is one of big fears of the near future.
Brian Niemeier
June 7, 2019,
Re: the internet, we can learn from the Buddha here. What you're invested in often ends up controlling you. Perhaps we should let go of what's not for us.
The banks are another matter altogether.
Careless Whisper
June 7, 2019,
Internet 3.0 sounds a lot like cable TV 2.0
Brian Niemeier
June 7, 2019,
Jim, or someone in his chat, made much the same comment.
I stopped watching TV in 2006 because to save money I cut the cable bill and only paid for internet and never looked back. Was there a watershed moment that killed this?
Anyway, I kinda get the point. The internet will be tamed, making it no fun so it will be abandoned. I wonder if the internet being tamed will still provide the dopamine hit the masses need, because I see many here being like me and just putting the phone down if all the internet has to offer is Boomer garbage.
It amounts to the same thing in the end, but no one works tirelessly with the express purpose of causing the society they live in to collapse. They'll work for a bit of license here, a bit of illegitimate recognition there, and then a bit of moral relativism and groupthink to balm their consciences. They'll rebel, like a screaming teenage girl, under the presumption that their foe will still put a roof over their heads no matter what, and then find to their horror that their presumption was misplaced. And all the while, the powers of hell orchestrate these pettiness into Social Movements.
But they, themselves, don't actually want society to collapse. At worst, they're like Dewey, confident that they can harness the wind so society goes their way forever. The difference is one between a battle of principalities and powers, and a battle of flesh and blood, and cannot be emphasized enough.
If you'd asked me even a year ago, I'd have said that the Death Cult really believed they were marching from victory to victory toward a sexy, shiny utopia.
But their current behavior belies that analysis. I've spent some time talking to Obama voters and the like. Here's my new model.
Obama rode to the White House on a wave of Leftist utopianism and white guilt. SWPL goodwhites voted for him on the promise that he would repair race relations and finally settle the blood debt over slavery. These were noble intentions from a certain perspective. Obama would have done the nation a service if he'd come through. It's all academic, since he failed.
Then Trump got elected. I trust I needn't elaborate.
The one-two punch of Obama's failed messiahship and Trump's victory shook the Death Cult to its core. Few normal people appreciate what a blow to the Lefts' collective id these two events were. The only modern analogue is the spiritual collapse Japan suffered when the Emperor renounced his divinity. For Christians, imagine someone finding the bones of Jesus, and it might be close to the Death Cult's existential crisis.
They were utopian. Now they've gone full Jonestown.
Problem is they want us, not themselves, to drink the cool-aide.
The people at the top want society to collapse. I believe some of those at the top really do Satan’s bidding and cooperate with the Illumined one, the Enlightener. And then many of the lower totempole footsoldiers are true believers in the shiny sexy socialist utopia opiate sold to these braindead masses to give them something to fight for to bring about Satan’s anti-work.
All faiths, whether the One True Faith or some lower “Faith” have different levels and roles to be played and manned. The Death Cult Puppet masters need puppets.
Durandel: Did Jeroboam and his spiritual/literal successors worship demons because it would destroy Judea?
You can drink your own kool-aid, and I think that's what happened here.
They're cutting their arms off to spite their fingers.
Brian
So we have la limpieza de la narrative combined with a new caste system based on ideological purity.
It's like they want to impose a secular inquisition with Chinese social credit and Indian caste system.
Wow what an awesome system so geared towards the common good and virtue
xavier
"Social credit" occurs to me every ruddy day. Even if a social media giant isn't up to something, there's always a LimeBike or a forcible squeezing-out of 3G phones to get my mind in that gear.
That was always the intended end of multiculturalism.
You really think this is the end of the Internet? I’m think the internet is just going to reflect Western politics in that Globalism was always a dumb dream and a global internet was the same. If this is the beginning of the internet fragmenting into smaller and more local hubs, then it shows where socially we are heading.
Guys like Jim and Roosh maintain that the curtain is coming down on Internet 2.0–the Wild West, if you will.
Internet 3.0 will be wall-to-wall cat pictures and woke car commercials.
Brian and Durandrel,
The Internet reminds me so much of the Spanish conquest of the America. You had these larger than life personalities that conquered and settled entire continents.
But because they were such loose cannons, the crown had to enforce its will and through very long suits that lasted some hundreds of years, the crown succeed.
The second part was a relatively quiescent and docile continent for many centuries. Sure the Brits and Dutch would cause havoc but the continent stayed loyal.
The next part is the wars of independence It was bloody, long and externally financed (the Brits wanted Latin America and to punish the Spanish Borbons for handing their Empire to Napoleon)
The last phase: local elites in cahoots with external forces that favour neglect as long as the produce and minerals get shipped. If not gunboat diplomacy and armed intervention.
That's the Internet trajectory.
xavier
While YouTube and Twitter get all the attention, the business cloud companies are kicking off legal gun companies because of "muh values" or whatever.
Talk about a canary in the coal mine. If you're a business in Georgia, Missouri, Alabama — or maybe you just don't have enough rainbow flags around the office — it's time to look for alternatives and export your data. On the plus side, it'll be cool if companies start in-sourcing their computing resources instead of naively trusting "the cloud."
Banks and payment processors have been employing the same tactics. Even more than Big Tech, they're the real threat.
@ Brian – to your first comment, that is depressing. To your second comment, that is one of big fears of the near future.
Re: the internet, we can learn from the Buddha here. What you're invested in often ends up controlling you. Perhaps we should let go of what's not for us.
The banks are another matter altogether.
Internet 3.0 sounds a lot like cable TV 2.0
Jim, or someone in his chat, made much the same comment.
And it will suffer the same fate.
By TV 2.0 are you all referring to this?
https://www.forbes.com/2007/06/04/television-new-look-oped-cx_eh_0605tvnewlook.html
I stopped watching TV in 2006 because to save money I cut the cable bill and only paid for internet and never looked back. Was there a watershed moment that killed this?
Anyway, I kinda get the point. The internet will be tamed, making it no fun so it will be abandoned. I wonder if the internet being tamed will still provide the dopamine hit the masses need, because I see many here being like me and just putting the phone down if all the internet has to offer is Boomer garbage.