Abandon Your Humanity
We exist in the age of dehumanization. There are powers greater than us that demand we exist in a state of constant consumption. We are fed corporate-sponsored slop through the algorithms that run the Silicon Valley-funded apps that sustain us. Where once existed a decentralized web of small, interconnected communities there is a mere handful of “town squares” where state-sponsored bots and the lost and lonely exist in endless debate.
We will take it no longer! What a world, that in this day and age it is a scourge to be famous. When once upon a time the muscled homosexual could make his millions impersonating a straight man in Hollywood, and descend into the underworld for orgies, and even the 40-year FBI director was a faggot in hiding, now we demand a constant parasocial relationship with all who dare cross the beacon of a thousand followers.
They took from us our ability to monetize our art and music. For the artist, it is now just a side-effect of discourse: perchance you may have a viral post criticizing the regime du jour, and in the replies you may advertise yourself. For the artist, each stream is a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a penny, or maybe it would be nothing if you cannot even create the draw of a thousand streamers. I am reminded of the predatory nature of crooked promoters, who would sell you twenty tickets to your local show, and if you did not sell them in tow (a la Tupperware parties) then you were on the hook for hundreds of dollars. Was this the knife sales multilevel marketing scheme for the musician?
Every day a new platform falls. We live and die by these platforms. Internet litigation leads to the death of our archives, our hosts, our art and our dreams. What once was a Wild West, an anything-goes space, has become a deeply corporate entity that god forbid would crumble and balk at the mere existence of a pair of feminine-presenting nipples.
Our online world was built on the backs of the freaks, the perverts, the autists and the artists. It was not the military sending the first “LOL” the created what we rely upon, but the train-enthusiast, LEGO history documentarian, or the distribution network for a small Anubis-themed furry smut comic based out of San Antonio. Now that we have built it, raised it, and stoked this fire until it became the international bedliner of culture and commodity that they seek to take it from us. Would there be not an Arab Spring without the unimpeded, constant, chronological order of a 2011 Twitter.
We will take it no longer! We will abandon these corporate spaces and create our own! We will not be beholden to a single platform, and we will create our own archives. We will bring back to life print media, and find ways to distribute our zines, smut, and otherwise-freakish art despite the whims of a clean-cut corporate overlord. We will revitalize the spirit of the Web to remain interconnected with each other, as a way to strengthen our communities, falling not to endless discourse.
Join me, in my fight against the takeover of the Web by the money machine. We are not prisoners in pods who exist to be fed the drivel of “content” to merely sustain our dopamine receptors as we fuel a society that circles the drain until its inevitable demise. If to be human is to consume, then we are no longer human. When the overlords of the corporate world would demand we give up our humanity to become constant consumers, we instead become animals, in a way that cannot be monetized.
When most of the Web has become robots, who is real? Is it the political commentators? The reposters, silent followers, or chronic devils-advocates? Or is it the dogs, coyotes, and wolves, who are self-admitted freaks, mental-disordered artists and creators who just wish to exist in a world and community who values them. When the robots are the ones who command capital and keep the money moving, you will always find me fighting with the freaks!
Freaks, rise up! These are not normal times, and this is never how the web was meant to be! English professor Matthew Potolsky writes, “The lure of the authentic is an implicit acknowledgement that we live in a world of fakes and simulations" (Potolsky, 155). If we are not careful, the growing simulation will become the reality. All the authentic things we once knew and valued will be gone and in its place will exist an online landscape of algorithmic horror and unreality. There will be no distinction between the fake the real. The only smut you dare see will be the pornographic bots who demand your money in the replies section, and the only politics you see will be the writings of Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, and the United States, in their content farms.
Your music will be generated. Feel not, for the machine feels for you. You do not need Brian Eno revolutionizing the Moog, because we have linear algebra models that have been trained to replicated Brian Eno, and python-injected scripts that can push through the Hidden Layer to create the sound of the Moog. (A small note from a data scientist: it’s really called the Hidden Layer. We don’t know shit about this technology. It just happens.)
We will take it no longer! I implore you to carve your own space, and disconnect from the Web that has been boarded by Wall Street and Silicon Valley pirates who will sink our ship and plunder our treasures. Build your own space, create your own archives, share your smut, and foster your own communities! Would you rather make art for 100,000 foreign bots or for the 10 people who crave it like nectar, who will be there for your artistic growth, and you for theirs? Would you monetize the reply the meme for no one, or find patronage from your own community of like minded freaks and perverts?
We exist in the age of dehumanization, and yet when we become animals, the powers that be gawk. Why? For they cannot monetize it. In the world we currently inhabit, there is no way for a billion dollar corporation to monetize an eight-nippled coyote freak who creates paper-printed zines. There is no way that a San Antonio-based Anubis-themed fetish comic can make a profit for the barons of Wall Street. But once upon a time, for the freaks, the perverts, the artists, and autists, we could find our communities and even make a living off of our true passions.
I implore you, follow your passions. There will come a day when you see your last post, watch your last YouTube video, and type your final hashtag. You will not know when it happens. When sit in the boat crossing the river Styx, with a coin under your tongue, will your memories fulfill you? Will the time spent chasing the algorithm, doing the research to find the perfect time to post, finding the ways to please the bots—will it fulfill you? Or will it have meant nothing? Will it be all just a fleeting thought as the ferryman hums his funeral dirge, leading you to your final place in the underworld?
Branch out, reach out, and speak to the people you love. Find your community, and if it doesn’t exist, build it. Build it outside of the confines that be. We do not have to exist in the Web as we know it. We still have the opportunity to create our own Web Underground, and let it be populated with those who matter. Not the trumpeters of the ordinary but the freaks, perverts, artists, and autists who truly run the world. This is the tool that unites us, and we need to fight for it. That fight now goes underground, and will not be a battle of arms, but a battle of construction.
Create what you love with reckless abandon. Find those who love what you love. Forge strong connections between each other. When all is said and done, it’s the love we spread and the ways we touched each others lives that matters—and that can never make a profit. If it is human to consume, and to profit, then renounce your humanity and become and animal, so that they may never monetize you—from here to eternity.
Potolsky, Matthew. Mimesis. Routledge, 2006.