how do I into Shame and Society

This isn't a proper post, Google docs wasn't working n I needed to type

Questions to consider the whole time: why is this about shame and not guilt? What's the difference? Is there some kinda personality disorder that helps explain all this?

Okay so the thesis statement is not JUST "treat people as more than an amalgam of signifiers" though that is important. The point is that you aren't very good at using signals. This is my point from Pete isn't gay - you're looking at "likes cock" when you should be looking at "worked for fucking McKinsey" and coming to retarded conclusions as a result. "When you ask for a display of X, you select for people who are good at displays, not X."

There's also a separate argument here about how differences manifest themselves. Remember how school was The White Crew, The Black Crew,  The Lolcru, The Rugby Lads, Us Fuckwits (arguably a lolcru vassal state), and gyal? No one did that on purpose, it was just what happened. That's apparently what's happening across polite society, but always in the same ways. "Hobbies and neighborhoods segregate race like the lines of a coloring book, girl gangs harmonize vocal fry, even the wokest heterosexual men somehow dissociate from gays."

"I understand that any meaningful culture requires gatekeeping [this differentiation I'm talking about is essentially gatekeeping]. It is the fearful, hushed complicity that I am opposed to, because it treats the ephemera of unbelonging as equivalent to actual evil."

Everyone does shit that's bad like "watch the news even though it's well depressing" as a result of this social pressure, this fearful hushed complicity and it fucks us, and everything else, up.

"What’s it called when everyone trying their best makes things that much worse?"

The answer is the 2010s.

In the four south Londons post I explain métis and episteme. Tldr obscure things have to become LEGIBLE for society to function. HC goes one step further: "My thesis is that the same checkboxing that has occurred at the macro level is now taking place in the micro: the regulation of the interpersonal for mass appeal."

This part is just gold after gold so I'm posting it in full: "the kids who talk most about getting rich for its own sake are the children of immigrants. Martin Shkreli’s parents are Albanian janitors = American as a second language = paying $1 mil for a Wu-Tang album, a group now classified as “classic rock.” Contrast with The Rich Kids of Instagram, who still want money, but for the sake of activism, rehab, or…Instagram. Hey, why is Instagram our accepted proxy for status? Open to suggestions, but I think it’s the visual medium. Not only is harder to fake tagged restaurant selfies than knowledge of @dril​ tweets, status-by-text is insufferably obvious. On Twitter, you can see the seams where someone is trying to act cool, Instagram lets you hide class markers like a travelogue Kubrick (n.b. this also makes it better for advertisers)." There are so many pills in there you might OD.

Anyway, point is there's a SILENT social pressure to be "a good person" - eat healthy, Effective Altruism, The Correct Politics ™️, etc - and it's making you sad. You can easily lose your status as Good by hitting one of those invisible tripwires, and only some of them are intuitive. I'd say "price gouging life-or-death drugs" is pretty bait but Tai Lopez just talks like a tard and he's just as unrated. Do note that the people least likely, least able to adhere to unwritten social cues are tists.

Money was a simple way to check who deserved ratings. But when everyone is rich you develop these next things like Effective Altruism and lifestyle brands etc etc. You don't aim for a lucrative job, you aim for a "meaningful" job, as advertised by TEDx, and whoopsie: "millennials are going to a) start their careers later, b) invest more time and money in empty signaling in order to get a job, c) work for established megacorps rather than start their own businesses—which they don’t have the skills to do, and d) accept lower pay in exchange for a dubiously defined “meaningful.”" we snaked ourselves to the benefit of massive companies, as per.

"Godless 3rd generation immigrants living in post-scarcity zero-intrinsic-motivation Los Angeles [try really hard to fit in]. Capitalism is to blame only insofar as it has made them more equal, with nothing left to compete over except social currency."

When the rules are unclear and the social pressure requiring you to follow those rules is crushing, you're gonna have a bad time, whether you're breaking a rule or not. Dosh is dosh, coolness isnt measurable.

"Public shaming will not stop just because you ask the perpetrators to stop. How could they? Just let knock-offs depreciate their street cred? If gatekeepers were nice to posers their currency would Zimbabwe within a month. Throw in the process described in the intro, the fear of being shamed for not shaming others—and everyone turns into a rat."

If there are no consequences for following your bullshit rules then the rule makers, I.e. the rich ppl with nothing to worry about, are unimportant. This can't run. You have to shame others to keep your place in the hierarchy. I think this is why Trump is so abhorrent. He's rich and impervious to shame. It's over for rule makers.

"Local resources (wool, opinions about videogames) are exchanged for global currency (euro, opinions about gender)."

This is the metis to episteme pipeline. "How are vidya local?" You used to need to be a nerd to be well into it, it was properly gatekept, which limited the number of people who could be involved. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons they eventually left the gate open and BOOM anita sarkeesian zoe Quinn gamers are OVER. Look after your subcultures, lads.

"In this way, the global community dissolves all communities smaller than itself. Let me be explicit: I am against this. Not against immigration or sending aid abroad, but against the promulgation of a monoculture." This is why it is your moral imperative to back your ends, even if they're shit. LOOK 👏🏾AFTER👏🏾YOUR👏🏾SUBCULTURES👏🏾

"You’d kill a guy over breadcrumbs if breadcrumbs were the only privilege allowed. When social currency is only achievable through one set of values, then the game truly becomes zero sum." It's nearly over.

"It should be obvious, but it isn’t, because society has trained women (and men) to ignore such dynamics and instead look for creative nonfiction featuring non-binary characters. But guess what: the softboy has checked every sorry checkbox of Good Male Ally, and yet remains a manipulative asshole, because there is no checkbox for manipulative asshole, because recognizing manipulative assholes is metis, not episteme. This is not to say that checkboxes are useless: to the extent that they supplant intuition, they are worse than useless." You aren't looking for the right signals, you cretin. Male feminist in 2012 = good guy. Male feminist now = lmao how many assault charges we bringing against you, hun? "Saying “I’m a good guy,” is a Chekov’s gun for public masturbation. "Saying “I’m a good guy—and not the type of bad guy who says he’s a good guy,” is a confession to the Zodiac killings.""

Furthermore, movements are inefficient, as it were - you can't just go ay bb wan sum fuk no matter how Chad you are - on purpose. It makes it easier to check these dumb boxes. If we meet up immediately how would you know how I feel about Sleater-Kinney or AOC?

"I contend that shame-based monoculture brings with it a specific model for masculinity, femininity, and their relation, an equilibrium upon which disparate subcultures are quickly converging." This is what's over. Local arguments (tooting and mitcham > dulwich, Lancashire county cricket club > Yorkshire, ps2 > xbox) into global (Indians fighting about Man U, every subculture being "queered" at some point). This is why people FEEL like NPCs, how Scott Pilgrim could've ruined an ENTIRE generation of women. Disparate subcultures are quickly converging.

The Sarah Silverman vs Bojack thing is about social currency. Sarah says it doesn't matter, which as we've discussed ruins the lives of the rule makers. "uh, I spent three years after college doing dissociatives and reading Deleuze, now some chick with no mason jars is gonna tell me that’s worthless? Fuck outta here."

As for Bojack? Bit more difficult to parse what he means here. As Hoffer says, the conditions that produce extremists are similar even if their politics are different, and HC says their reactions to culture are increasingly similar, and they all amount to "no fun allowed." "In the battleground of ideas, positive beliefs are painted targets." The only way to combat this is to stop giving a shit, drink, smoke, swear, be a shithead. Still no positive beliefs, but in a fun way! Like... former Horsin' Around star Bojack Horseman.  "left does not equal right, but nihilism always gets big laughs at parties." HC thinks BH (the character, but more importantly the show) has no positive values, it thinks everything is shit - "It’s skeptical about factory farming and Big Hollywood, but also about doing philanthropy abroad or writing for a feminist blog." He says no one in BoJack NEEDS to be shamed because they're all either retarded (Todd, PB) or self-loathing (Diane, BH, PC) already. 

Diane makes a vague political point to no one in particular - how the fuck is one to respond to that, positively or negatively? "Disagreement is problematic, agreement is sycophantic. Correct response = “I’m making space for the marginalized voices of women and POC. Pass the blunt.”" This makes diane powerless. No one takes responsibility, no one CAN take responsibility. You cannot shame society itself.

The problem with Bojack is that he gets out of the all-pervasive shaming we see across society by sometimes acknowledging he's a cunt but doing nothing. I call this the Simpsons defence. In like s13 they buy a horse and comic book guy says you guys already did this and homer says who cares and the episode continues. The writers acknowledge they are useless hacks with no ideas left, but they don't actually have to do anything about it. Nor do you, fan of Bojack. You're calm. You're a bad person but it's fine cause you know and you'll sort it later.

One example of the unspoken social pressure I keep mentioning is that girls need to look powerful. Why? "Oids getting rekt" is only palatable when the oid started it. Hence, why all them videos are popular where a girl punches a guy and then the guy eventually fights back. Blade Runner 2049 has this, in luv and Mariette. More subtly, Her has this: all the women seem to know what they want - choke me with that cat, more tongue when we lipse, watch my film the way it's intended, let me take my consciousness beyond matter - and Theodore is retarded. Chris Pratt's character is also well stupid and his ting's a lawyer or something. Powerful women, weak, weak men, donc, it's fine when you break their hearts, or worse. 

Tangent: Kink did used to be taboo, and for boys, but now it's mainstream, and for girls. 

So oids write about how they wanna fuck Rishi Sunak, oids wear chokers in public, oids change the local currency of their hookup into the global currency of What Hookups Mean in 2020. Moids dont, because they don't need to, because "the thinkpieces of today were the male fetishes of yesterday." This is what FDS have nailed. Sex positive, kink positive feminism is just what blokes want and foids are therefore under unspoken societal pressure to want it too. "It’s damning that in female-demo Fifty Shades, Christian gets a backstory for his kink (abused as a child, doesn’t like to be touched) while Anastasia is a virgin who reluctantly goes along with it to please him;"

What's after that semicolon is way more interesting though: "but ironically, this vast infrastructure to give men what they want, doesn’t. Not because pop kink shows consent poorly or autotunes S&M—those are academic complaints—but because it makes domming into an expectation, into another performance of gender at which men must measure up." 

This is what I mean when I keep saying boys are gay. All we want is mommy gf to be way more useful than us. Theodore doesn't WANT to choke the lady on the phone with a cat, he'd just like some connection before bed. HC asks "what do men want?" The answer is "DEFINITELY not the 2010s."

"the backlash against [saying Daddy] is mostly from men, guys who talk in the Lawful-Good-Because-I’ve-Never-Been-Outside voice, “Well, I believe in sexual liberation, but this just seems…wrong.” Sorry, you sound like a teenager getting righteous about grinding at prom. Like, really? It’s 3 am and you’re gonna rock Nicole’s world with a Viennese Waltz?" You don't want to be Daddy, position of responsibility, position of superiority - you just want a hug! You fucking pussyhole.

And so? "When your sweetheart says, “Fuck me like you hate me,” it takes a few seconds to register and then you must choose. You can decline, if you’re a fucking pussy. You can go through the motions, though it won’t be convincing and you don’t want to, not during intimacy with the one person who’s supposed to be an escape from faking it. But how can you convince yourself to hate her? You’re supposed to turn off your childhood values and tune out the buzzwords that are blasted from propaganda screens 24/7 and reduce her to orifices deserving of loathing and spit in her mouth and squeeze her carotids and call her a worthless slut?

The honest move is to hate her for asking. For femdoming you into dominating her. For using you. For forcing you to be a man, not just here and now, but in the thousand microscopic acts of toxic masculinity necessary to put her into your bed. You hate her for her hypocrisy: for being so progressive, for looking so powerful, and yet still being—you tell yourself—programmed to submit."

And that's that. "Topping from the bottom" is by far the single most important part of LGBT discourse. Inescapable social coercion on her part to be fit, to be down to be treated like dirt. Inescapable social pressure on you to treat her like dirt, you pussyhole. Can't even fuck in peace. You are both nought but signifier, sadboi and arthoe, completely disconnected, but all the boxes have been ticked, everything LOOKS correct. Was it good for you too?

"Sounds bleak, but isn’t this what we wanted? Think about how perfect it looks when the camera zooms out from the hundreds, thousands, millions of lying and entwined bodies. The women look so powerful, and yet this does not diminish their delicacy. The men look so gentle, and yet this does not diminish their strength. Women with an intangible aura of power! Men wounded enough for plausible deniability! EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO SEE! EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO HEAR!" PEAK.

"I’ve noticed that some women tell stories about past relationships with a sort of compulsion... [with] words that try and fail to describe a wrongdoing that no checkbox quite fits." Can confirm.

"The prelude to these offenses is the same: The woman breaks character and the man’s worldview collapses. He’s performed so much, and yet…After everything I’ve done for you?" Social pressure stops you from being yourself and ruins your relationships, essentially. Treat her like a person and this won't happen (in the same way, of course AWALT).

So why, then?

Of course, MeToo is peak societal shame. It does not hit those with the most power, politicians hits those with the most social currency, entertainers. Biden will be fine, Weinstein will not be. It's not coincidental that Franken is the only politician to get properly done - he was in entertainment first. 

"For you, bystander, that's the benefit of #MeToo; to create the illusion that something is being done, that your social currency has brought about justice—the branding of flesh as torture, circa 2018.

Here’s the irony: by a completely unrelated mechanism, something is being done. Since the “workplace drama” of sexual harassment is, in fact, bad for business, harassment has to stop."

Unis know they are selecting for a display of X, they do not care about X in itself, they care that you will brand yourself correctly. Businesses do this too. Brand figures into everything from your next promotion to whether they'll believe your rape allegation. 

Rape allegations are, however, bad for the brand. Companies do not calculate whether the claim is right or wrong, they calculate how much trouble they'll get in if the case is publicised. People are more likely to believe a tiny blonde girl was assaulted than a Terry crews lookin ass guy, essentially, even though crews was assaulted. It just doesn't fit the brand.)

HC points out someone else saying "one of the traditional roles of branded content is that it is a trusted source." Traditional????? In any case, everything must have a brand, everything must be sellable, including you. But the brand must be shamed every once in a while, must trot out the Simpsons Defence or Bojack Defence, in order to survive. Why? "When a clickbait obituary says that millennials killed [a shitload of brands], the standard quip is that there was a “failure to innovate.” An alternate explanation is that if you innovate too hard, if you brand yourself too well, it’s impossible to back out—you get old and die with your demographic. 

Only controversy—only ritual shame and absolution—can drum up the publicity necessary for a generational rebranding. Hence the Zuckerberg hearings, the hagiography of the Parkland kids, and #MeToo." Gotta keep the brand fresh. We're a good company, and not one of those companies that just SAYS it's a good company.

That's on a grand scale. Remember, our thesis is local becoming global, the interpersonal being regulated for mass appeal. And so: "I notice that the crackdown on quid pro quo coincides with an acceptance and proliferation of camgirls, Venmo for nudes, sugar baby slash daddy couples, and internet-mediated sex work. I’m not hating: Doing sex work to pay for grad school is morally wrong only because grad school is never okay. But when a sex worker is raped, do you think the public will #MeToo in support? And even if they did, wouldn’t such publicity mean she could never work again? Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. At least it didn’t happen on company time." Whoopsie, looks like we snaked ourselves to the benefit of massive companies, as per. You now need to brand yourself in such a way that people will believe you got raped if it happens, but also in a way that men will think you're fit. Fantastic, I see no conflict there.

I asked why this is happening time ago. Here you go: "This is the final answer to the cui bono of shame: A gender war masking a culture war masking a class war masking a generational succession—not a war, but a massacre." This is a society-wide rebranding. Gen X-ers encourage it - 'Go Ahead Millennials, destroy us.' It's not like they were particularly good parents anyway, is it? "Just go do good stuff, you lot." Pathetic.

So that's why, but how do we get out? "We got into this mess by demanding that people appear as something that incentives told them not to be. If we want to do better than the past, we have to change the rules of the game. That’s only possible if we know what the rules are. ...such knowledge is only possible if we’re honest with each other—not confessing in checkboxes to the unseen masses, but admitting to each other the ugly marginalia between them. And no one will do that unless we are capable of forgiveness."

There has to be a way to do better. Not like do 👏🏾better👏🏾, where you still have the original sin, but some kind of method of absolution that isn't bojack-esque self destruction or Simpsons-esque shoulder shrugging. Actually do better. I don't know.