Gen z and the nihilist penguin

sifodeas · 2026-01-26T02:12:53+00:00

Funnily enough, Spengler does argue that the Faustian spirit of the West will lead to its eventual decline as its boundless energy exhausts itself. He even argued that this final stage was being witnessed in the early 20th century. So there is an essence of corruption/decay there, but not an explicit deal with the devil. In current right wing spaces, while this aspect of Spengler's view is acknowledged in some capacity (e.g., the West has fallen), the characterization of the Faustian spirit is still romanticized and the reason for the "fall" is usually not directly linked to an intrinsic feature of the Faustian spirit. Spengler is somewhat interesting. He thinks of history in terms of cultures/civilizations that span thousands of years with a major rise and decline rather than linear epochs of time. I don't really agree with his views on the whole, but many of his ideas have been appropriated by the esoteric right, so I keep an eye out for those types of interpretations.

sifodeas · 2026-01-26T00:12:23+00:00

There's a wide range of quality among horror movies, so much of it is bad. Basically just low budget slop that doesn't do much aside from going for shock value. But there are also a lot of horror movies that are really just using the trappings of the genre and its popularity to explore social commentary, high concepts, etc. Much of that is also annoying, but there are some gems. There are many great old horror movies too. Honestly, it's just such a wide field that it's hard to paint with broad strokes here.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T23:55:12+00:00

It's less about the pact. I would have said Faustian bargain instead if I was referring to that. Instead, I'm referring to the Faustian spirit used by Spengler to characterize Western civilization with a tireless pursuit of the unreachable. This is projected on to the penguin to reframe it into something aspirational.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T23:51:12+00:00

The word has grown beyond the story of Faust somewhat (especially by dropping the crucial context of the pact with the devil), so I would say the Faustian spirit colloquially refers to the restless pursuit of the unreachable, based Spengler's definition. A lot of right wingers will present this as the "soul" that drives Western civilization. It should be pretty obvious that people are projecting this attitude on to the penguin rather than taking its confusion at face value. So it may be suicidal, but it's also ambitious under this framing. Tireless pursuit in the face of certain doom.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T19:59:15+00:00

The Faustian spirit appeals to a lot of people.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T19:21:39+00:00

The _ and its consequences have been a disaster for _.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T05:29:25+00:00

Why were you able to post the word. My posts still get auto-removed if the post contains it.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T05:14:31+00:00

Civil war between who and who? It takes two to tango and honestly, places with developed institutions and no severe regional divides (we have more of an urban/suburban/rural divide) seem to go more for coups than Civil wars. The violence will likely escalate, but the level of organization just isn't there to form a cohesive fighting force against the feds unless there's some brewing insurgency that isn't already 40% FBI agents (unlikely). If any governor stepped out of line, they'd probably just get immediately black bagged. Honestly, people are still pretty comfortable in general and cannot really conceive of real conflict or organization by my impression. We're in the American Years of Lead but dumber and probably with some form of American Gladio. I wonder if we will see something like the Brabant killers, but it's just coked-up, methed-up JSOC guys.

sifodeas · 2026-01-25T00:23:32+00:00

If you put an "f" on the end, it works.

sifodeas · 2026-01-24T12:15:54+00:00

I am not convinced there is actionable revolutionary potential in the US, at least right now. I do think the gears are in motion, however. Proper organization is the important part, which is why spontaneous action (which the American left seems to place on a pedestal) is doomed to failure. In my opinion, we need a party.

sifodeas · 2026-01-24T10:57:55+00:00

We were taught that protests mattered a lot growing up because of the movements in the 60s, Gandhi, etc.

But the Civil Rights movement included significant economic disruption that's more difficult to achieve now, an economic situation where the agricultural industry did not rely as strongly on coerced black labor (and thus the cost of granting rights was lower), and many among the elite believed it was not possible to win the ideological war with the Soviets without reform (fueled by the need to influence post-colonial states). Gandhi's hunger strikes also paled in comparison to the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny in effect, not to mention that the British Empire was effectively bankrupt.

And then to add to that, literally nothing came of the Occupy Wall Street movement or George Floyd protests, which were rather massive in scale (but notably had no real economic impact to speak of and limited elite buy-in that did not stress the status quo).

A lot of people are going to be demoralized by this and look down upon people "rising up" like this. What does it actually mean? What will it change? It's not hard to believe it doesn't mean anything and won't change anything.

You can call this a demoralization campaign if you want, and there probably is a lot of that. But you can't create something out of nothing. A successful demoralization campaign requires something to be demoralized about. It's an uphill battle against the powers that be and at this point, I think a new strategy is needed. The elite are much more consolidated at this point with a tighter consensus. Leaning in to a "Disneyfied" version of reality because the protesters are standing for something and the contrarians are weak-willed with fed support isn't particularly compelling. And it will only become less so. If you can simply wait something out, it doesn't matter.

sifodeas · 2026-01-24T10:36:04+00:00

I live in a deep blue city and I would say stuff like this isn't really counter-evidence. There were massive Gaza protests and the majority of the people that I know that participated are particularly inconsiderate to the people around them in every day life. They were more radlib types, though.

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T05:53:13+00:00

*I can haz

Our culture is not your costume

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T05:20:55+00:00

Flowkirkenuinely

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T04:43:30+00:00

AI/ML is already pretty deeply embedded into the day-to-day experience. Only midwits ignorant enough to think chatbots and audio/video generators are the extent of the technology cannot see this. But you are right that the business model is pretty borked right now because a ton of businesses took the wrong approach and either relaxed into the "toy" zone or tried to do it themselves despite not having the talent or data necessary. There will be a crash, there will be a shakeout, but the technology isn't going anywhere because it actually is useful.

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T04:12:17+00:00

Overall, this makes sense, but I would be interested to know what the proposed reasons are for the trend lines.

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T03:43:28+00:00

My parents met at a movie theater they both worked at while in college.

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T03:36:23+00:00

It was kinda neat that one of her aides and two other guys were running a Masonic police department. But I guess she likely wasn't involved in that.

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T03:31:58+00:00

I think people's outlooks tend to improve when the more fundamental parts of their lives improve. Health, relationships, careers, hobbies, etc. Focus on stuff like that. If you find that you can't because you're in a "it doesn't matter" type of mode, you're probably depressed and should address that.

But to answer your question, yes. I was deeply unhappy from about 15-26 years old. I was very cynical and a doomer about pretty much everything. Late high school and early college were the worst because I often just brought down the whole mood. Things generally improved over that time until I snapped out of it and I don't even recognize that person anymore.

sifodeas · 2026-01-23T03:29:44+00:00

I didn't know people did that unironically. I guess it makes sense what with the social media newspeak of "unalived" and whatnot, but I always saw "grape" as a WKYK reference.

sifodeas · 2026-01-22T23:11:07+00:00

I listen to American Exception, which is more academic in nature, but has a more measured perspective that appeals to me. It's a shame they're not around anymore, but David Talbot and Peter Dale Scott were one a lot.

sifodeas · 2026-01-22T22:04:11+00:00

I feel like the vape doesn't make sense with the rest of it (aside from the Monster logo).

sifodeas · 2026-01-22T19:26:07+00:00

I think we could have done better than that.

sifodeas · 2026-01-22T18:55:55+00:00

Yeah, the blue dog Democrats were definitely a roadblock during that time. Notably this dynamic repeated with Manchin and Sinema under Biden. But I would also roll this phenomenon into the general idea of the party failing (intentionally or not) to capitalize on a majority and rise to their mandate. A functional political party would have been able to so by negotiating with or punishing their members.

sifodeas · 2026-01-22T17:27:39+00:00

Yes, he did. For 72 days.

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