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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by axont@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

I mean like Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, etc. It's so blatant to me that their existence is about wasting people's time. They're pure sophists. They probably believe in everything they claim, or more probably, they have a flimsier understanding of truth/reality than we do and can believe contradictory things.

But none of that matters. They exist to waste your time. They're keys being jangled by fracking billionaires and possibly also the state department.

Yes I know the Sartre quote about antisemites and all but this is worse than that. It doesn't even matter that Shabibo or Dan Bongos knows they're playing a game, because reality doesn't matter to them. Fascists believe base level reality is pointless to explore, because there's a deeper core reality that affirms their every belief, even if that belief changes day to day or isn't internally consistent. They're not materialists, they're fixated on simply being correct and powerful and whatever dirty, stupid reality contradicts them doesn't matter. They're never going to care about scientific documentation about trans people, or studies about healthcare costs, or homelessness rates, or anything else, because it doesn't matter what they care about. They believe in a truer, super-reality above our own that makes them always correct no matter what happens. But again, that doesn't matter.

They exist to waste your time and mine. I know they're not going to truly go away and that I'm wasting my own time by even posting about this but jesus christ can these people just go away. They're an annoying swarming static noise of pure nothingness that for some reason everyone has to pay attention to. People I'd otherwise respect or listen to have to talk about them. Movie reviewers who otherwise might focus on interesting indie films might have to talk about whatever stupid slop Matt Walsh puts out.

Why does anyone talk to Charlie Kirk anyway? He's the worst offender to me because no one knows who the fuck he is. Where did he even come from? This guy simply appeared as if he were already famous for something. Just farted into existence and people started pretending he was valuable enough to have on talk shows and colleges and fuck who the fuck is this guy and why do I have to know about his stupid face

yeah I know, touch grass touch grass, I'm trying, but even just going out and about, talking to random people or meeting up with coworkers for tea or something these fascist media bozos have a way of infecting casual conversation, or like showing up in the corner of my eye on one of the TVs at a Chili's

Lenin had the right idea when he put a bunch of reactionary public intellectuals on a leaky tug boat and exiled their stupid asses. Please wake up, kind Vladimir Illych. lenin-sleeping

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[-] pastalicious@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

(I’m not very articulate and I’m just doing stream of consciousness so I apologize if this seems incredibly cliched or unhinged) I feel this every time I log on and use a major social media platform. The spectacle exists to waste our time and abstract and obfuscate baseline reality. ‘Online is not real life’ but they got so much of the west to buy into it by pushing journalists throughout the 2010s to embrace Twitter. My friend was given quotas by her editor for how many times she should tweet per day. It was done with eye rolling condescension at the beginning but she quickly bought in. Culture war shit does the same thing. You can make a difference online; change some minds. (I feel like this spectacle of ideological clashing was where right wing personalities flipped and won the youth… it has the same energy we all had back when Jack Thompson was the most hated person on the internet; we had a battle and we were righteous in being trolls). Doxxing extends its tendrils into the real world. People getting jobs because of their online presence. All of this makes you feel as though online has a real gravity and importance to it. But online is not real life, it’s a mediated space. It trains people to exorcise their frustrations via online simulated activism in the form of posting. It’s like watching Schindlers List and feeling like you’re good because you recognize the moral in the movie… and then never actually fighting for any justice in real life… except the simulation online convinces you even more that you ARE fighting for justice. It trains people to use anodyne language like unalive. Importantly, online is a totally flat reality. Death and logging off look exactly the same to online, it’s just an account that no longer posts. So posting is proof of life. Money controls online more than it can ever control real life so money has an enhanced control over everyone there. And almost every platform quantifies ‘engagement’ as a spectacle for all to see, so we consciously or subconsciously train ourselves to get those numbers up. We maximize our activity for what will get upvotes and retweets and turn everyone into audience and performer. (This feels particularly prevalent on the large platforms. You’re tweeting for the imagined millions of people you don’t know. On smaller discords and places like hexbear we at least know eachother and have more of a peer relationship.)

Everyone wants to log off and ditch the smartphone, so they must all feel this too. I don’t know what solutions exist once we log off, but it does seem like leaving the major platforms is the only way to avoid having all our revolutionary energy siphoned off, and the only way to build the actual relationships that we will need to affect anything. End of rant.

this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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