Pump Up the Volume 1

Pump Up the Volume, Pump Up the Jam

A Gen X introvert's Baby Boomer dad uproots their family from New York and moves them across the country to a prefab Arizona suburb. Gifted a short-wave radio to keep in touch with his friends back east, the isolated and disoriented Mark finds an outlet for his existential angst as…
April 26, 202416 Comments
WotC Cynthia Williams

Wizards of the Coast President Resigns

The tabletop role-playing scene was rocked yesterday by news that Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams is stepping down. Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams is leaving the company at the end of the month. An SEC filing disclosed that Cynthia Williams, the president of Wizards of the…
April 18, 202413 Comments
Demoralization

The Pop Cult Demoralization Trap

  For years I've been charting the decline of all pop culture media while urging people to stop consuming content by companies that hate them. Recent days have provided a plethora of case studies illustrating why. Take this exchange on X from just yesterday: Related: Mark Kern – Calling All…
April 17, 20245 Comments
The Metal

The Downfall of Heavy Metal

Get get FREE books and first looks at my exciting new projects monthly! Join my elite neopatrons to read my new dark fantasy novel The Burned Book as I write it! Join on Patreon or SubscribeStar now. Ragging on Zoomers' taste in music has become common among older generations. Spend a few minutes sampling tunes that…
April 16, 202418 Comments
Stage Three Cancer

Nostalgic for Stage Three Cancer

A common obstacle to communication that can crop up between people with different outlooks and motives is the risk of talking past each other. This kind of miscommunication can arise on any subject. No topic of conversation is immune. Take Dunkaroos, for example. One man might point out that they…
April 12, 202426 Comments
The World You Were Raised to Survive In No Longer Exists

The School of Hard Knocks

The recent post on Generation Y drew a lot of comment. One of the most prominent questions pertained to why so many members of generations after X are seemingly unsalvageable. As Bruce Lee taught us, understanding the problem points to the solution. So let's examine Gen Y's besetting vice: terminal…
April 9, 202415 Comments
Richard Dawkins by Tom Jamieson

New Atheist, Cultural Christian

The man who was perhaps the most notorious purveyor of the New Atheist movement back in the aughts has dropped a bombshell in a recent interview. A famous atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explained he identifies as a "cultural Christian" in an interview after learning Ramadan lights were hung…
April 3, 202413 Comments
Comic Book Guy

Growing out of Comic Books

If you had the fortune of being a kid back when we still had a coherent society, and if you'd developed a taste for comic books, odds were that at least one adult in your life warned you against the habit. If the warning went unheeded, the common wisdom held…
April 2, 202418 Comments
Con Inc Crackup

The Coming Crackup of Con Inc

Unless you have a heart of stone, you've got to take pity on normie Conservatives' plight. Though still immersed in consumer culture, every brand they love to consume long ago sold out to people who hate them. Included in that regime-aligned rogues' gallery are the manufacturers of Conservative politics and…
March 28, 202429 Comments
Last Third Place Mall

The Last of the Third Places

Last week's popular post on the decline of the shopping mall drew robust comment about the societal consequences of losing that public forum. One key idea readers introduced to the discussion was the Third Place. Reader Sian writes: [T]he mall was the last Third Place. Previous and following generations definitely…
March 25, 202413 Comments