Finding a Lost Generation

Welcome back to the wasteland!

I'm a bit sidelined physically this week, so I wanted to have something to chew on a bit. That said, it's also more of a trip down memory lane. It's still summer, after all! This is the time for that. It's also the 20th anniversary of YouTube, which ended up changing the entertainment landscape more than anyone thought possible.

When the internet first started taking off among the general public in the 1990s, the monoculture was not only still intact but was also the default assumption for the populace on how the world, universe, and everything, worked and would progress going forward. Message boards and chat rooms were full of what you might call "trolling" and silly behavior, but it was all on the assumption that it was for relaxing between life itself and that it was just a fun side thing. It wasn't yet life itself, and would not become a new home for millions.

That changed slowly through the 2000s as not only were kids born in the '90s growing up (usually completely unsupervised) on the internet, so too did Gen Y end up turning towards cyberspace more and more as an outlet for dealing with the post-9/11 world to find some stability where it once existed. Then of course there was the rise of social media from Myspace to Facebook to Twitter/X, but that was more of a gamechanger for the older generations. Before that happened, Gen Y was carving out its own ecosystem on message boards and comment sections based on cynicism, sneering contempt of once happy nostalgia while also depending on it at the same time. Pop culture also mutated for this crowd as a way to sustain identity in an era where corporate Geek Culture was concocted by corporations to siphon what little money they would have left by 2008.

I bring this up to show the epitome of what this era was like with a site that was called Channel Awesome. Back before websites became little more than content farms and the internet became flooded with bots, YouTube was just one site that was primarily used for a few things, all of which changed radically over time. The key development in its growth from illy home videos and pranks was the attempt to create a new ecosystem to forge an identity by people who largely didn't have any in a world that didn't want them to discover one.

Channel Awesome was (technically still is) a pop culture review site that focuses on nostalgia. They were not the first or second, but the one that first tried making it into an industry. Whether it succeeded or not is for you to judge.

In the '00s, the popular thing to do was to review the childhood's of Gen Y (and younger Gen X and older Millennials: remember, it's all a spectrum) kids to mock and skewer it and show how ridiculous a lot of what the audience grew up with was. Isn't it all just silly and meaningless? But somehow it's important to us, even though it's quite obviously terrible!

There were a few hallmarks of this upcoming genre of video review: snark, sarcasm, irony, and the obsession with "logic" and accepted opinions from Respected Professionals above all. Honestly, looking back at the era now, it's incredible how lock-step a lot of this was. You would not really find much in the way of dissenting opinions, because everyone was expected to think the same thing about everything. Contrarianism existed, because of course it did, but adherence to the monoculture (in this case, the accepted corporate "Geek" monoculture out of a paid Kevin Butler speech) mattered more than anything else. This was your "community" and you needed to belong there, which meant that you needed to be a Real Geek.

The above video does a very good job at highlighting the majority of the members that existed on the site two decades ago, even talking about where they ended up in the time since they started. It's a fascinating look at a time and place long since gone, and how and also why it would all eventually go away. Of course, the video is long, so be aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less interesting as a historical document on internet history that has faded away.

As for why it all went away, the answer is simple: it wasn't enough. The people involved, the audience, and the wider culture, was fracturing as the monoculture was dying in the 2000s, and as it was doing so, new priorities emerged and new identities formed. Those priorities and identities were manyfold, but they all sum up with the fact that those involved realized, at least, subconsciously, that none of this stuff was an identity. That's when it all shifted.

For myself, I bailed on the scene fairly early on when I realized the majority involved where content stewing in bitterness for the old days while also profiting (socially, at least) on those same old days, which made me question exactly what this was all for. No one wanted to create anything, they wanted to live in this weird bubble of pop cult aesthetics and slang divorced from not only the real world but any meaning that childhood might have actually had. The '00s were the hangover for Culture Ground Zero, where it was told products were all you needed to have an identity, the greatest lie Geek Culture told, and by the end of it, especially with the crash of 2008, that wannabe Gen X aloofness cracked and turned into a desperate bitterness over reality.

That's why you had so much anger in those days few remember to mention when waxing nostalgic over the "Old" Internet. The Nu Atheist/Skeptic movement was the first dividing line, deciding an entire segment of their former cohorts were now intellectually inferior and needed to be scrubbed off the internet with sneers that would make a middle-aged Karen politician in Current Year blush. You might think this unearned arrogance and hatred was a defining trait of that particular crowd, but no, it soon became the default way to operate online.

Through the 2010s, as that lack of identity failed, it also split up itself. Atheism +, progressivism, counterculture discourse, but one of the few things that refused to completely sever was that obsession with Pop Cult media. That obsession would even become a battleground in Culture War issues, because neither side could admit that the culture they grew up on not only no longer existed, but they were so focused on mindlessly clinging to their phony identity centered around it that they never considered passing it down to the generation just under them. A whole generation cut itself off from the wider world, because they had long since abandoned it.

Years later and they're still be arguing over the Hollywood system that hates them even as mainstream audiences have lost all investment in the entire affair long before they have. In other words, that pop cult identity is already gone and irrelevant, but they can't let it go. This is because it's all they have, and they need to still have that connection, because there isn't anything else for them left. Everything else is dead or problematic (which is just a euphemism for dead).

The above video that highlights all these many "content creators" (itself a demeaning term) and shows how just about all of them scattered away through all of the above madness that was the 2010s, is a good example as to lack of identity driving everything. Not to say they are fundamentally broken people or anything, but that what united them all together fractured as reality set in. There really wasn't any glue in the first place aside from those old corporate products.

Some of them did right the ship in their own lives, which is commendable, but the loss of shared monoculture is even more obvious when seeing the change in a whole cohort right before you. At the end of the day, all of the above people on whatever side of the conflicts they were on desired one thing: a community to be a part of, and a place where they could belong, and an identity that defined them. That is the real story here.

We've discussed both the book "Bowling Alone" and the madness that the 2010s set forth on an entire generation that had just dealt with the miasma of despair that was the '00s in earlier pieces, but they both stem from the greater issue, which is the lack of any real shared culture beyond products, transactional relationships, and a recitation of a youth that was the last time that connection existed. We are a culture of isolated islands connected by a bridge that fell into the sea long ago, and all we can do is rage about it. However, that does not change that said bridge is gone and not coming back. That world is over.

I don't want to be too hard on the people that do or like any of this stuff. It clearly has value. The wider point is not that it is bad that "geek" stuff exists, but that it's not an identity or a personality. It doesn't make you who you are. What you like to consume does not define who you are, and most of arguments around the subject of gatekeeping in regards to this always just amount to focusing on the phony identity aspect over the much more pertinent quality one, which shows exactly where the priorities truly lie in such discussions. It's still primarily thought of as a desire for a club away from the plebs, not a thriving art or entertainment landscape to grow in.

Art is an ecosystem meant to present a window into what the culture not only finds important, but how they live and what they believe. Without any of that, it's just product in a sea of other product, with no rhyme or reason or direction except to fill shelves. It's just consuming slop to consume slop and possibly harm the outgroup in the process of doing it so one can still feel they belong to an ingroup that doesn't care about you.

But what are they trying to belong to?

In fact, what are we belonging to right now? Are we any better than the young Geek Culture acolytes of the '00s, angling for an identity, or are we still the same lost sailors at sea? Are we still struggling to draw lines in the sand based on cliches, ingroup insults, and more Us vs Them rhetoric? How much more pared down do we need to get from the current state of things? Will it ever be enough? Will we ever be satisfied?

Right now, it's hard to say, but it won't always be that way. Enjoy the trip to the past and remember both the good and bad so we know what to take with us going forward. Because we're going to need it for what's coming up ahead.

Have a good weekend and I'll see you again soon enough.

Check out the Cirsova Summer Special! Only one issue left before the end of their 10 year, 40 issue run! Check it out for more exciting stories of action and adventure!

Destruction Incorporated

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Been a bit, but I don't want to waste any more time, so let's get into it. Not a long one today, and yet there is a bit to discuss.

I don't think I have to tell you much about the mess that is OldPub, the old publishing industry sometimes mistakenly called "TradPub" (there is nothing "traditional" about them), and how far they've declined. It's fairly obvious just from one perusal of the shelves of your local big bookstore that they are far beyond irrelevant despite all the money and "prestige" they have behind them. It's all flooded with Japanese manga for a very good reason, and that's because the industry has long lost the plot in connecting with the average reader. They have to outsource it now.

However, it is also good to remember how this all happened. There are are more and more people joining these niche spaces every day, trying to understand just what might have happened to lead us to this position where everything is so fractured. Why are bookstores completely barren of new material from this side of the world, why is what little there so formulaic and vapid, and why is a foreign culture leading the charge for our own entertainment instead? Not to mention, there are still plenty of older folks who have been around for a while who don't quite understand all of this, either, and mistakenly blame Japan for this situation. Lots of fingers pointing in different directions. All of them should be pointed at OldPub itself.

This is kind of an odd situation, if one thinks about it for more than a second. Theoretically, manga could be topped. However, what requires that to happen requires a total overhaul of how OldPub functions. It's simply not going to happen. There is way too much ideology and far too many fragile egos in play for any kind of reversal. It will all simply crumble away just as the infrastructure built by previous generations does. It is now Destruction Incorporated, and the idea of selling art and entertainment instead of religious pamphlets is far too absurd to continue. If it wasn't there would be discussions going on between parties instead of endless lectures from the failures in charge of the rusted mechanisms.

And to think it all started because the adults in charge forgot how to say no, and let in fanatics to destroy their own hard work from under them. It's not that absurd, however. In fact, it happened before! You probably even know to what event this statement refers to.

The blueprint for the sort of literary takeover that destroyed OldPub is epitomized by the siffy cultists way back in the 1930s, who then seized the industry in the 1940s and turned a market for normal people into their own fetish playground. The pulp revolution over the last decade specialized in the rejection of their frame of "Don't Read Anything Before 1940" to discover just how much fantastic writing was buried for petty political reasons and deliberately left out of print. You can read more about this specific problem in The Last Fanatics where I discovered it for myself as I was writing about it. If one cares about art at all, OldPub is a failure at preserving any of it.

For a more general picture of what is going on now, I suggest the above video showing how the Literary Cartel used the Fanatic blueprint to do the same thing to the wider industry. Books about nothing written to no one and heavily leaning upon gimmicks and the promise of becoming a micro niche celebrity is what the Literary Cartel decided to do to their industry. It's like its own Oprah's Book Club, complete with the advertisement of religious cult figures for whatever ideology OldPub wants to foist on you.

We live in an age off closed of silos where no one interacts outside of them or attempts to connect to a wider culture, or can even imagine one existing, therefore all that is left is ruling the tiny sandbox of the few peasants still unlucky enough to be there. There is no ambition to reach anything wider, nothing but lecturing, browbeating, and celebrating death and dismantling. Us Against Them, over and over again, repeat until infinity.

But how did they do this? What is the secret formula that allowed this cartel to create such a wasteland of entertainment and edification?

By creating a formula for doing it. Art formulas have not solved a single problem over the past century, but boy are they the main culprit in causing a lot of them!

The subject of formulas has become radioactive as a discussion point in recent years, though there isn't any reason it should be. It's very clear to anyone paying attention that every art formula that has popped up in the last 30 years or so does not work for the simple reason that none of them have produced classics or done anything but shrink the market into the exact situation it is in now. All it has done is enshrine fetishes as genres and to lash out at anyone outside (and even inside!) of the small and ever-shrinking spaces.

You don't have to like the current anti-formula (if that's what you want to call it) zeitgeist, but it is an inevitable kickback from people who had to sit aside and watch the destruction happen despite their plentiful warnings that it would lead to exactly this. The obsession with formula implies a distrust in the artist and the environment that might allow him to foster in, saying that in order to succeed there is somehow a one fits all pattern that will mold his unique vision into something Better. Though, again, if that were the case: why has it not happened yet?

The second video above from the same creator goes into the process of creative death through formulas in depth even more than usual video on the subject. The fact of the matter is that art requires identity given from the unique circumstances around the artist's life that lead him to where his is. If the only thing he has to express are the same buzzwords in the same delivery and from the same social positions and the same "Global Standards" approach to not rocking the boat as every other "individual" in the scene, then why would the audience be interested? At that point, it's all interchangeable and meaningless. What is the purpose of consuming slop like this?

When the people in charge tell you that shrinking is growing and ignorance is freedom, what is an artist supposed to gleam from it? How can you connect when the industry tells you that you are meant to be just another cog in the crumbling machinery instead?

Fanfiction writers in particular find the idea of being against the inarguable failing state of modern writing beyond the pale. After all, they saw how all the major IP franchises were brought down by fanfic-tier thinking and the resulting yawn the audiences let out in response. It doesn't even matter if the product "makes money" when it's out of the conversation in a few months anyway. At some point, instead of being a hobby, fanfic writing took over the corpo jobs to pump out more content. Nothing is being explored, because there is nothing left to explore in these properties, it's instead being rehashed and exploited.

This isn't to say there's no value in fanfic writing, but it has always meant to be what it was and never anything more. It's a hobby, not a career. By removing it from its context it has become as polluted as everything else in the industry has. Now there is no ambition beyond endlessly reheating and recycling so the dying system that hates you can stay afloat for five more minutes. What other reason would it have to act this way?

No one in the industry wants to do anything but put out Content, and that is proven, as the second video shows, to be the actual focus of Creative Writing courses in Current Year. It's far off from the purpose of writing, or even creating any kind of art, but is inevitable when the industry itself is run lock, stock, and barrel, by a small group of people who have very limited imagination or idea of what art is even capable of in the first place.

All they care about is the club. Just like the siffy crowd did way back in 1939 when they were figuring out a way to control the industry for themselves. That game has remained unchanged, regardless of the players in it.

This is the end result of unimaginative people running industries that are supposed to run on imagination. They not only cannot imagine appealing to people who aren't them, they think slogans and checkboxes are the end goal and height of art. There is nothing more than this.

How exactly do you reason with that? The simple answer is that you don't. The industry's death spiral is as comical is it is unbelievable, but it's also understandable in a climate where fanaticism is more important than connection. Say that right things and get rewarded, even if your actions don't match up with your words. None of it matters except cynical grifting and elbowing others out of the way for your share of the scraps, leading to a vapid climate of art and entertainment that chases all the normal people off. Eventually all you're left with is a gaggle of ladder climbers scrambling for the top rung that leads out of the sewer. It isn't taking you anywhere higher. Why are you even in the sewer to begin with? That's as much as can be imagined these days.

Without a monoculture to rally around, the audience will not demand better, because they have other options. Instead of complaining, they walk away, leaving the people in charge smug in the thought that their art must be top notch since no one is complaining about it. No, they just gave up on you instead, which is way worse. They don't even care enough to tell you they hate it. This should be the worst place for a creative to be, yet it's the one most strived for these days.

This leaves the "mainstream" to wither away, fighting for the last scraps as it all comes caving in. This leaves us all in those silos to pursue our own individual goals, never to interact with each other ever again. Whatever the end goal of all this modern nonsense is going to look like, I don't think anyone particularly knows or, honestly, cares.

Eventually there will be another monoculture again. It's unavoidable since it is part of human nature to need community and a way to express creativity in a way that benefits more than just themselves. Until then, however, all we can do is watch and observe as the Fanatic philosophy formulizes itself into death cult ritual and obliterates itself in the resulting purity spiral. And hopefully we never let this destructive behavior take hold again afterwards, though that is obviously hoping for a lot. It'll take a lot of time and effort, but hopefully it'll happen one day.

Regardless, Destruction Incorporated is simply the way the people in charge have decided to run things until the clock runs out. Let's see how it works out for them.

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The World Braindead

Welcome back to the wasteland!

I don't know where you are, but here the weather is beating me down and taking no prisoners. It's not unbearable so much as it is annoying, much like today's subject. As bad as the weather might get, you always know it's going to go the other way eventually. The world isn't ending, no matter how much some of us wish it was, but it has also always had its antis: people who just hate everything and want it to die. Sometimes they disguise it very well.

Today lets take a look at one particular movie that disguises itself as one of peace and love but is actually one of death and misery. It also took a long time for this movie to be exposed for what it was, even though it seems so obvious to us today.

We could talk about some of the most obvious subversive movies made. Pleasantville and American Beauty the most obvious ones people still talk about quite a lot. There are some less obviously subversive flicks like Forrest Gump or Wag the Dog, but are no less corrosive than the former two. Even though these films say one thing, they tend to mean something else, which is a nasty trick Hollywood used to be very good at pulling offer. 

However, back in the day it was also a lot less subtle and a lot more blatant about what the message, not that unlike how it is today after decades of trying the poison pill technique instead. The difference is how they focused more on selling a specific worldview back then that is currently fading in the world of Current Year, mostly because it failed and everyone knows it failed, even if they won't admit it. This makes the movie extremely hard to go back to.

The above video speaks about the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still which, for a long time, was looked on as a siffy classic film on par with Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Invaders from Mars. It was seen as one of the Big Ones--and important, to boot. They even had a popular band for a while named after the main character! To this day the film is also studied and looked on as an important building block in modern cinema. It goes without saying that the movie was popular and influential back then. Few movies surpass its cultural importance.

It's also not a good movie.

While the earlier mentioned three movies in this set still hold up, this particular movie does not. The reason is, even from people who agree with its general thesis, because the film is a clunky and ham-fisted lecture with plenteous logic gaps meant to make the audience take one lesson away from the movie in question with no wiggle room or alternate solution. It's a religious tract for the progressive world order of its day. You can see its entire playbook from the above video itself. Suffice to say, the movie does not hold up.

The message being sold in The Day the Earth Stood Still is the same as HG Wells book The World Brain that I discussed in The Last Fanatics. It is the beating heart of 20th century materialism that runs the engine of the siffy mutation formed through convention consensus in 1939. This thesis is the idea that humanity all subconsciously and collectively will come to the same beliefs and conclusions that are, shockingly, the exact same as the siffy author's worldview of the time period. In essence, it says humanity is destined to have an epiphany that siffy authors are actually their superiors and had it all figured out before the rest of you plebs. Do what they say and reach paradise or you are an evil monster who must be put down. As you can tell, things have not changed that much since The Day the Earth Stood Still released.

Therefore, keeping this philosophy in mind, the trick for these writers is to create a specific sort of protagonist, a creature above man that is not supernatural (because the supernatural is infantile and evil) which will guide humanity down the right path. He is clearly above the common piece of filth that is man, and must be portrayed as without progressive sin (progressive sin of its era) with all the solutions that lesser humans are too inferior to figure out on their own.

Once you see this is the one trick, much of what is called "classic" siffy absolutely falls apart, because this is what it is all hinged on. You can even see it done today, complete with new progressive sins and designated acceptable classes of acceptable targets filling in the villain role. It does not work anymore because the trick is obvious to everyone, but said writers have no other one to use, so they just keep using it over and over to diminishing returns and ever-shrinking cliques that do little more than decay into even more bitter beings. Truly the class of betters that should be ruling the world. At least, so they are still told by the people in charge.

This corrosive view of existence is also why adventure stories have always been demonized by these same types. In The Last Fanatics I covered the prevailing view of this set that aliens could never be portrayed as evil or malevolent. Humanity always had to be inferior, the lesser, or the most evil, because the other, the alien, was the Higher Being above them. This is because said anti-social writer considered themselves the outcast and the other, and always saw themselves as above the common man. Portraying an alien as evil is tantamount to calling them bad people. And that's just not possible! They're smarter and more special. The Important People tell them so!

Therefore, aliens could not be cast as anything else than Higher or else the writer and story would be labeled as x-ist or y-phobic and therefore discarded without further thought. Aliens are your betters, just like the other, and you need to process this immediately or get sent to a camp. (Or in the case of a particular siffy con, beat your chest about open minded tolerance while having your convention a few hours away from literal concentration camps). 

You see, Humanity is bad because Humanity isn't like the writerOther. Therefore, it's a personal affront to these types to express any creativity outside this narrow ruleset. Truly the "genre" of imagination and wonder.

Human beings being cast as an irredeemable evil is key to the playbook, since this framework is created by anti-social types who dislike reality and believe it would be changed for the better if they were in charge, but all they have done is made everything worse. You have to ignore reality, you can't argue, you can't discuss, and you can't offer alternatives. You are to shut up and be led by your betters, the ones who decided they know better but have yet to prove it even with having decades upon decades of institutional support from those who hate humanity even more than they do. What we are left with is a World Braindead, not a World Brain.

This attitude is what set the stage for the climate we are currently living in right now. That is also why it's falling apart and in constant need of propping up. It's a little like a circus tent falling down while those under it frantically run around to prop it back up. The end result is obvious, and those panicking are simply wasting their time.

All of this could have been avoided with the one thing such stories don't allow: self-reflection. This means self-reflection of the writer, not an attempt to project a faulty view of the world onto the audience so they can worship at your feet.

The Day the Earth Stood Still does not understand that change always starts with the self. The movie is obsessed with tearing everything down simply because it has its own superman to bully the world into compliance. It centers on demonizing locality and shared culture to prop up a bizarre individuality that is also part of a worldwide collective of acceptable beliefs and rules decided by the strongman. The one world future of Klaatu requires the right creature being put in charge to rule it all, somehow also embodying the everchanging goals of Progress at the same time. This is the world these anti-socials want. It isn't possible, but that's also why it's dying.

The movies, and these people, don't understand that if you want a solution to a wider problem, you have to start local. You have to connect with people you might not understand or might not understand you and come to a new consensus on how to build something better through both of your contributions. You can't wait for some top down revolution to do it for you. As has been shown, that isn't how we got here to begin with. We got here through laziness and flippancy, allowing rot to take hold and telling ourselves its Natural or some nebulous thing like History leading the charge. Decay is easy; growth is hard. We haven't really tried to grow anything in decades, just complain and hope for others to do it for us or punching holes in the boats of those trying. Well, that isn't going to happen by doing this. The proof for that is Current Year.

The only solution to the current state of the World Braindead is to not follow its example. To start small and focus on that. Give attention to what we can. It's the only option we have to counteract the destruction of Klaatu-types who want us to fall in line with their rotting materialistic view of existence. We need to build, not destroy.

The good ending to The Day the Earth Stood Still would have been to throw Klaatu into a furnace and call his bluff. But the narrative was specially made to not give the characters the choice: it's willful and blissful enslavement Vs deserved genocide of the human race. Bow to Satan or die. He'll give you the world and all you have to do is give him power to tell you white is black and black is white for the rest of your life. Isn't that a small price to pay for tolerance? For a world where everyone can be equal some of the time?

It starts with a rejection of the premise these 19th century materialists set up. Not just Doing The Opposite as many online stylize themselves and their image, but understanding what they got wrong in their initial thesis of what humanity is and correcting with a better and healthier vision. Live a better way free of paranoia, bitterness, and tired memes. Instead find one of belonging and growth. Start local, always. It won't start anywhere else.

We can only start from ourselves, not to change but to understand. What we've lost, what we need, and what we have, is more important than what could be. There is no Eden on Earth and there never will be. We have to start living for something better than failed utopias built by people who have proven time and time again to be full of nothing.

Klaatu's false premise and promises need to be rejected. The World Brain must be allowed to finally die. Only then can we finally move on from this pit we've lodged ourselves into, and only then can we finally have a new vision of the future.

It starts with ourselves and those around us, and that's where the focus should be. Until then, at least we can laugh at the absurdity of the Klaatu class and the World Braindead they have left in the wake of their failed ideas.

Not like the movie has much else of value of offer these days, just like the mentality that thought it up in the first place. It's all dead and rotted, so let's finally put it all to rest.

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Weekend Lounge ~ Character Rot & Unchecked Ego

Welcome to the weekend!

It's been a bit since we did one of these, so I wanted to pick something of a bit more obscure subject to cover. This time I wanted to cover the current practice of character rot currently plaguing modern mainstream franchises and revivals. It isn't just an ignorance problem, it's an ignorance problem brought about by stubborn ego.

A lot of talk is spent about why so many properties forcibly change old things to "fix" them while a loyal cadre of people who got into it for what it originally was always complain about it. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't the customers who are wrong in these cases: it is the creators who willing ignore what they don't like or understand about the property and set about to "repair" its perceived problems. All while pop cultists who will consume anything let them uncritically demolish it because they too do not care much about the issue.

For an example of this very problem I suggest the above issue from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and franchise itself that has had one nasty identity crisis its entire existence, but only really became a problem when a certain sect of western obsessives got their foot in the door and started making demands instead of approaching the assignment with pure intentions. What you get is the mess above that completely misses the original intent of the project.

We go on a lot about how ideology is responsible for these trends, but the truth is that it all stems from an ignorant misunderstanding of a subject then, instead of correcting course, doubling down the way the ideology tells you to. In the end, it's ego. While artistic ego is real, when working with others one is meant to reign it in and collaborate to make the best of both worlds. At no point should you consider it carte blanche to run roughshod over everyone else and assume you are the final arbiter of what is right and good.

It's a strange narcissism that runs in this generation of creators that seems to be just about everywhere, even when it's completely undeserved. Whether in comics, TV, video games, and even books, there is a disturbing lack of humility to be found in it, even in something like an old stalwart property from the 1990s. Every 20th century IP is infected with this mentality now, and it appears to be completely inescapable.

However, what's not inescapable is the change in the independent spaces and NewPub. There you don't have to go through any of this decay because it's all owned by the original creators who have no aspiration to sell out to a dead industry for a quick buck. It's about building, not cashing in and going home. We have a duty to create, and we're going to do it.

In other news, there's a new podcast episode on the Patreon. This one is over an hour long and is about tertiary characters and creations and how they matter more than we might think. I also go on a bit where I think the industry is heading beyond this modern rut. It's an exciting one!

We've got quite a lot to look forward to.

Thanks again for all your support, and I'll see you next time!

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Weekend Lounge ~ Book Moralization

Welcome to the weekend! It's been a wild week. Time to unwind!

With the destruction of OldPub over the last few decades, many have wondered exactly what comes next. How do we get people to read again, and how to we change the image of the hobby being for anti-social weirdos who make the hobby their entire personality? That is a tall order, but we might be starting to have some answers for it.

The main goal to get people to read can only be accomplished if it seems inviting from the outside and is seen as a "cool" hobby to get into. Right now, reading is neither, and that is because it has turned into a clubhouse for people without personality. In essence, like everything else currently being destroyed, it is being run by fanatics that wish to be looked up at and considered purely because they engage (or are seen to engage) in the act of reading. This is because of the (false) image created by 20th century Baby Boomers mad about movies and video games who wanted Reading to be seen as Above and Beyond such low brow art forms. It didn't matter what you read (as long as it wasn't men's adventure, genre, or horror!) but the act of reading by default made you a more imaginative and smarter person than someone who doesn't.

I don't know how I can accurately explain this worldview that mutates into the clownshow you see today, except to watch any entertainment that features books from the 1970s or so to the end of the 1990s (when it abruptly ceased due to Gen X getting in control of entertainment). You will see the act of reading treated as a sacred act on par with attending Church, where as long as you read a book you will Get Smarter. It doesn't matter how, but it will happen. Therefore those who write books are not only smarter than normal people, those who read books, and a lot of them, is not only more informed and brighter--they are who who should inspire to be.

Of course we know now that this isn't true. This mentality lead to the Kid Who Reads, a midwit type of person who believe engaging in an act raises ones IQ and should be inducted in the high priest class because they Read Books. It's been a disaster for the hobby.

The above video highlights where this mentality has landed today in the modern climate. Books are seen as status symbols for Smart People, again, largely from lame Baby Boomer propaganda, and used as little more than as an aesthetic for Likes and Shares on social media. Reading has gone from a hobby based on imagination and wonder into being nothing more than another fad on social media. And it was never going to end any other way.

Check out the above video, and ignore some of the comments that miss the point, to see just how off track the hobby has gotten and how much work we have to do to bring it back. It's going to take some work, but it can be done.

What we have to make sure of is that we never allow arts and entertainment to fall to this level of shallow novelty ever again. The last thing we need is more disposable culture.

That's all for this week. I'll see you when we're deeper into November and hopefully the weather stops flip-flopping from one extreme to the other. I want my fall weather already. Enough of this in between nonsense.

Have a good one!

Have some fun this fall with the newest issue of Cirsova! I'm in this one with my story Mirage Carousal! Nick's got a motorcycle, an Uzi, and a town ran by magic ahead of him. Can he find his way out? Read on and see!

What Ain't So

How does one fashion a future if the past build itself on lies? The answer is to dig until the truth is uncovered. Until then, we will be forever cursed to repeat the same mistakes.

Today we're going to swim in rough waters, so be aware of what you're getting into. At least it's going to be short and to the point this time.

The topic for today is the wonder and the fantastical, and how we've smothered it so successfully within the last half century. Not only that, but just about everyone involves fully admits there is a problem, but few wish to outright state where the issue stems from. I'm going to try to pin that down today, so be aware of controversial statements.

Let us start with the obvious issue: wonder restricted by systematic editorial pressure has been a net negative for writing. The battle to set up systems in wonder stories over the decades has been a problem for ages. It's also the strangest rabbit-hole I've ever gone down before in regards to writing and creativity, because it is obviously an incorrect approach, and no one will deny it. And yet, here we are in 2024 with a dead industry and a new one selling itself on not following those old mistakes that led to this mess.

This goes beyond "Science Fiction Doesn't Exist" and into something just as controversial: "Fantasy Doesn't Exist." If you thought future stories flew off the tracks back in the mid-20th century then you might not be surprised to learn the same about mythic stories of the past and tall fairy tales. However, it is the same mentality that led to the artificial division between the two and continues to stunt writers from aiming wider and connecting with where audiences are today.

We have to move beyond dead clichés formed over half a century ago and stop acting like they are eternal truths instead of what they were: marketing tools that no longer apply. Suffice to say, OldPub is dead, and so are their labels and categories. We're still figuring out just what that means.

If you're reading this, I assume you are aware of The Last Fanatics, the book I edited together from the post series here on Wasteland & Sky. What you might not know is that a good reason that series was originally written was because I was (and still am, honestly) trying to piece together and understand why modern storytelling is so at odds with the way it was done for thousands of years beforehand, and striving so hard even now to avoid connecting with normal folks. And no, "modern people be smarter now durr" is not a sufficient explanation for any change that has ever happened, it's a self-aggrandizing cope and a smokescreen for subversion.

I realize a lot of what I write on this topic either sounds hyperbolic or crude, but that is mostly because the resistance I've come across in regards to anyone who goes against the prevailing dead narrative is to be outright dismissed as if Canon Law had already declared the issue settled by people who never had authority in the first place. But not only has no such thing happened, the current state of the market is telling everyone that what we thought we understood, what we thought we had mastered, is incomplete at best and outright incorrect at worst. In other words, everything we knew isn't so, and we need to put aside ego and adapt.

This isn't to say I have all the answers, though obviously I think my opinions are right or else I wouldn't have them. The point is to look beyond sacred cows and golden idols and consider things from a bird's eye view. I understand this is difficult, but it's an honest conversation and back and forth that probably needs to happen before anything changes.

And we all know things as they are simply aren't sustainable. Memes and jokes aside, we do need a new approach divorced from the system that has already killed itself off. We should not strive down go down with that ship.

I want to talk about this topic because it is not only a sore point for a lot of older readers who grew up on the Way It Always Was (the "way" in question today which didn't exist before 1969), and those who want to push the "genre" into it's obvious conclusion (a systemic nightmare of political platitudes and overcooked tropes that barely go back to the 1990s), both of which ignore the oversized elephant in the room that this entire frame is busted in the first place.

"Fantasy" doesn't really have a meaning anymore that isn't vague or hinged on outdated mid-20th century tropes. And the distinction was only ever made by materialists who didn't want their grown-up science stories to mix in with childish make believe of silly nonsense that didn't correspond with Reality. When you consider that such meat robot thinkers barely exist anymore (read their genre of choice these days to see just how spiritual and religious they've become) and that it is the lowest selling "genre" today (which proves it does not connect with modern readers) and it is easy to come to the conclusion that something is off.

It is more than story quality, it is the human element. It no longer strikes at what is true to the modern man's condition. It is hinged a Fantasy/Science dichotomy that no longer exists. I know a lot of non-religious folks don't like it when I say this, but it is very clear from casual observation that materialists in the older sense are a dying breed.

Just as the stock geek crowd from 2013 no longer exists anymore, so too does the group that demands the material and the spiritual be cast off into their own ghettos have no power or relevance over the way things are today. In fact, sales show they should have been ignored even longer ago.

What is obviously unavoidable today is the entropy that modernity has been spending at least the last quarter century suffering under, which requires an honest critical reevaluation of what works and what doesn't. What was followed and left wanting, and what was abandoned without being tried. This is where a lot of folks will argue and split hairs, and it is where most of the dispute and heated opinions comes from. Fact of the matter is that where we are now is not sustainable and everyone knows it, so now it is time to see just where we skid off the road and learn what not to repeat--what we cannot afford to repeat any longer.

And some do not like that the pavement cracked on their favorite section of the highway. So I apologize for stepping on toes, but it's going to happen.

"Disney" is a catch-all for "Modern Fantasy"

The reason I attached the video about the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series at the top of the post is because I believe the line is part of the source of how we got off track and into the bunk genre distinction weeds. Much of the blame goes to Disney in how wonder stories were watered down over the past century, but little is mentioned on how the framing of a book line was used to manufacture a different Year One of its own sort. Mainly, it was used to spike the divide in adventure storytelling even further than it already had been with the death of the pulps.

For quick clarification, none of this blame goes to either Lin Carter or the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line itself: that is not what is on trial here. Mr. Carter's work was invaluable in salvaging work being buried by the modernist mechanized hell of then-modern publishing and keeping classics in print and in circulation long after Thor Power Tool demolished the market and modern media made reading look like a lame past time for sissies. The fact that the series still contains the best printed versions of many of the books in it is a testament to its quality--and further proof of the uselessness of the old industry in the ensuing years since.

What I am instead speaking of is the usual modern glorification of a puzzle piece at the expense of the greater picture. While too many treat Tolkien as Ground Zero of fantastical storytelling and use is every word and statement as gospel to follow unquestioningly, many others do the same to other writers, whether it be Martin, Jordan, or even Dunsany. That is fine in so much as everyone has a favorite writer they wish to learn from. When it becomes a problem is when one source or period is treated as all that matters in relation to the wider creative world.

Because, it should be reminded, creativity is the name of the game. If you don't think so then just use AI writing problems and model it off of your favorite 20th century writer. At that point, what's really the difference compared to how so many think things should be run today? We talk about artificiality being an issue then ignore that we've turned creativity into a trope checklist to be filed on shelves no reader is perusing anymore and wonder how everyone else has lost the plot.

It's called OldPub for a reason, and we are part NewPub for that very same reason. We are working to correct the mistakes we made, not repeat them.

We are deliberately playing in smaller and smaller sandboxes, breaking off away from the greater whole, and it is a problem that will only get worse the longer we turn away from each other and shrink into ourselves. We are always looking to build walls over the metaphysical and spiritual that we were never meant to build, and it has effected our understanding of older things that existed before our own borders sanctioned them off to begin with. We are still living off old mistakes not yet corrected.

And it is a problem. It is in fact the biggest problem we have today in regards to the writing world. You might complain about political or pseudo-religious nonsense filling the dying book store shelves and not being sold, but that was always the goal of an industry whose main purpose was to shape people the way the tastemakers decided they should be. It was always going to end this way. The question is how do you move on from it, because simply setting up in an earlier stage of an infection doesn't cure the disease. It will always end up in the same position again.

Let me try to frame this by using the above video example of a book line that is both important and has been slightly twisted from its original purpose. Please stay with me on this one.

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line was not made to "establish" Fantasy as a genre, despite popular opinion. That is how it was used by tastemakers after the fact. Here is the ugly truth: the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was made because of clubhouse materialists who thought Science was all that mattered and the immaterial was for deluded school children and slow-witted religious folk. I could give sources, but you can just read The Last Fanatics again and see their words about "Fantasy" for yourself. They absolutely believed that was true, and it took people like Lin Carter to show them they were wrong. The clubhouse kids and Futurians that were handed the industry are the ones who caused this unnecessary divide in the first place. The Ballantine line was created to contest these obviously wrong and ignorant views and show that there was value in what existed before Donald Wollheim spent the better part of a decade trying to destroy Hugo Gernsback because of an issue that didn't even matter. Little did Mr. Crater know, however, that his creation would lead to yet another mutation in the way things once were.

As a consequence to Carter's work, the conclusion was not that these old stories had value and should be treated with reverence and respect (though that was the intent), but that this was actually a completely separate genre of writing that new writers could follow if they wanted, but of course make sure it is systemized and modernized so that even materialists might indulge in this "Fantasy" fluff on a lark. In case you don't remember, this was John W. Campbell's original intent with Unknown magazine: to demystified the mystified. Keep it separated from the "real" stories while the psychic seers and technopriests are working on Fixing The World. The Science Club spent the back half of the 20th century trying to convince you that "Weird Tales was second to Unknown in influence" for that very reason. They needed it to be so.

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line was therefore an excuse to fashion the separation the Fanatics had always desired, to define something that never needed to be defined. You could write this Nonsense, you just had to file it over there away from the Real books. They now needed this distinction, however, because modern materialists had taken over wonder stories and the industry itself. and now they had a special shelf to shovel it off onto. That was what they always wanted: to get rid of the old ways and defang it.

I do not wish to drag down the creator of the above video, but his confusion as the why GK Chesterton should be included in a "Fantasy" line when his book is closer to a "surreal spy thriller" is very much the point of this piece. Chesterton wasn't writing a "Fantasy" story or a "surreal spy thriller" or anything like that. He was writing an adventure story that took place in a nightmare world. No distinction needed to be made when he wrote it, and neither did those who read it thought so, but we need that distinction now because we lost some semblance of understanding of what this is all about. We lost ourselves along the way in trying to partition off and wall ourselves away from each other. Mr. Carter clearly understood that, because he included the book in his line for a reason. Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten what they knew back then.

And so it is to this day that this separation in the "genres" exist that never had before the line was created. Every segment, idea, and approach, need be shuffled into its own designated quadrant never to meet again, and the technopriests can lead us to utopia in the mean time. This is how the industry was meant to go after the stumbling blocks of the late 20th century.

Until NewPub came around, that is.

Those writers and readers out there scratching their head on where to go next are beginning to understand the truth of the matter: the 20th century was wrong. What specifically it was wrong about, of course, is still not agreed upon nor where we should go in response to what has been learned. However, the answer most definitely does not lie in rehashing What Everyone Knows from said dead century, as it is very clear now that no one appeared to know anything--they were simply told what was so. And we cannot keep that charade up any longer.

The time for inflated egos, wild subversive mavericks of bad taste, and destructors ruling over the masses has come to an end. We are beyond that era, and it isn't coming back. Whatever comes next is still yet to be decided.

The reason we must reassess and reconsider our prior assertions on genres and creative boundaries is because we've already hit the limits on where those old ones could take us. You might say we could still do so much with those old ways so why abandon them, but I would say you could say the same about any era or trend. You can always do more, but you will never be able to do it all. That isn't quite how it works. We  don't choose when we leave one era for the next, it just seems to happen whether we are ready or not. And we can all tell we are entering new territory. We don't have any choice except to try and meet it head on.

This fear of the unknown is doubly bizarre in a sector that purports to understand the past and future better than any other, despite selling the least by far. We should have already seen these changes coming and prepared accordingly for what is on the road before us. Instead, we have dragged our feet for far too long and ignored the world spinning around us.

So what do we do? Just check out some of what NewPub has been up to in recent years. We're already on the way to whatever is coming next. We no longer need to pine for a past that rejected its own roots, or hope for an anti-human future that will never come.

Instead, we can accept what ain't so, and what one day will be. The 2010s are over. Let's just see where the 2020's will lead us now.

Star Wanderers has funded in two weeks! Now we can aim for our stretch goals to give backers even more. Jump on in if you have yet to!

Banned Brains

Average depiction of a modern Book Cultist

Sorry to say that for today I will be going back on the recent tone shift around here. I apologize, but it must be done. Recent events have proven to me just how hopeless OldPub really is, and we need to expound upon it here. Hopefully we can move on from this in future entries, but today, right here and right now, this must really be addressed.

You know the score by now. It wouldn't be the modern day if we didn't worship products, industries, and celebrities, despite how hollow they might ultimately be. It's been decades of decay, and still we cling to the bad habits of idolatry and materialism that led us down this rabbit hole in the first place. And somehow we are still hitting new lows.

The 21st century is a guerrilla war with bodies and rubble laying strewn across a blown out countryside. The thing is, all of the chaos you see from it are remnants of the 20th century, battles long since fought and won, or lost. We are still trapped here in this same forever war, firing at zombies that refuse to stay dead and ghosts we refuse to admit already are. It's a conflict long since over, with no reason to still be going, but still we fight over nothing regardless. We do this despite there being nothing left to go to war over. It's all already all gone.

And there are still active landmines buried all over the place for the survivors to still watch out for. One such place where they remain plentiful, is in the arts and the entertainment world. It is as if it were boobytrapped by those who laid down inside those buildings and died decades back. We're still fighting those ghosts today.

The most obvious example of this tiresome climate, is the old book publishing industry. OldPub destroyed reading as a hobby for normal people long ago, and they are very interested in keeping it dead. Destroyers can never stop destroying.

The worst thing that ever happened to the hobby of reading was mystifying it and turning a simple pastime into a personality trait for hipster types and loners. This has not led to anything good. The process of transforming something anyone can (and should) do into an identity for antisocial people has transformed the entire industry into an ongoing war against general customers and the Average Joe. It has chased normal people away from something they should already be doing normally by weaponizing stories instead of giving them what they want. Not only that, but the hobby has been refashioned into a (failing) industry based on syphoning money through said antisocial behavior to spread even more antisocial behavior, with plenty of money laundering, of course, and is even backed up by the public school system to continue this nonsense forever. One can argue, correctly, that this is a symptom wider cultural problem in the West, and not a recent one, but I am increasingly under the belief that this particular industry was where it all started from.

The book industry is patient zero to every modern ill the West is currently suffering from, and the one most diseased and closest to death from its long unaddressed and untreated sickness. Its death from self-inflicted wounds has been a long time coming. Were it not for NewPub, the entire system would have already collapsed by now.

As an example, take the scam known as Banned Book Week. This forged celebration centered on an ad campaign for Big Publishing is a way of mystifying the act of buying a corporate product as if it were some sort of suppressed religious text from the Enemy. But that isn't what it actually is. You've probably heard the justification for supporting it, too. "If it's banned then it must be worth reading!" they scream as they hand over their money to buy books that simply weren't placed on one random school's reading list in some random state once. That's right, the definition of "banned" means less than nothing. And these lists never have books that have always been and are still banned to this day, including recent ones scraped off of Amazon itself for dubious reasons. Why are these banned? Because they don't contain the Cult's religious tract in it. "Banned Books" as defined by OldPub simply means what stock they want to clear out that week. They have successfully convinced cultists that rule the industry that The Man is somehow in charge and fighting against freedoms or whatever vague nonsense they were taught by their cult leaders, and buying corporate product will help you fight back. Yes, book cultists actually believe this. Truth is, it's just a lie to spur the ingroup on to spend more money buying more cultist tract and give the illusion that they are some kind of warrior for the cause. It has nothing to do with books, banned or not.

Want an example of how it's a scam? The Bible, an actual religious book, is never on any of these lists or sold at the front of the store during the sham festivities. One of Solzhenitsyn's last books has been suppressed in the West since it originally came out, because no one wishes to discuss the contents within. Not much for freethinking, these freethinkers are. They do not think and they are not free; they are merely cogs in Big Publishing's machine. 

But weren't we told that reading was supposed to be about expanding your mind and growing as a human being? Is this not what it was sold to you as back when you were a rug rat watching carefully curated episodes of Reading Rainbow on the old PBS back in the day? Isn't reading a magical act that makes you whole, especially for understanding perspectives outside your own? Wasn't censorship of books supposed to be bad because it goes against this? How can you address ideas if you can't face them down or argue against them? By having the billion dollar corporations and their pals in governments and schools do the thinking for you, after all. 

If any of the above was actually is true then why do all of those frauds continue to ignore the elephant in the room with their mystical talk of books? Why do they still pretend to be oppressed despite being the oppressors and having billionaire friends in every space and adjacent industry, able to suppress whatever they desire? These people even brag about censoring their enemies. They aren't fighting the censors: they are the censors.

Reading is being destroyed as a hobby, it has been since at least Cultural Ground Zero, and all your heroes are the ones burning the books and suppressing competing texts to their cult beliefs. And no one appears to be the wiser.

Let us get blunt. OldPub is currently in the process of gutting old works (or pretending to do so in order to gain publicity for newer releases, which is no better) in order to appease a small cadre of anti-social urbanites who won't buy these books in the first place. OldPub is speed-running its collapse in real time, showing the rest of the world what a fraud it always was in the first place, and it's taking everything it dubiously owns down with it. This whole set was never anything other than a cult that existed to indoctrinate you into the fold.

By now you've certainly heard about what happened with Roald Dahl's works, editors without tact licking their chops over butchering his works for children. Why? Because they have decided his words are not as important as their message. Because they are the Masters of the written word, they have free reign over all words past, present, and future. They can do whatever they want, and you have to obey. And every single person in the industry right now, and those who still buy their books, is culpable for their current false king status.

This is not the first time such censorship has been enacted, and if you think the second hand market will help fight the insanity going on, you might be surprised at how bad things really are now. The cult is winning in their quest to destroy reading.

When publishers banned Dr. Seuss books (Forget about this one? The book worshipers in OldPub sure have!) several were banned from even being sold on eBay, in the second hand market, essentially informing readers they wanted contraband and that was just plain illegal. The billionaire corps decided you can't read these books so by gum you will NOT read them. They are your masters, and they know better. And every adjacent industry and platform rushed to help them do it. This is only the first example. It will happen again in the future, because no one is interested in stopping them from banning books they shouldn't own the rights to in the first place.

By the way, Dr. Seuss has also not made it onto the corporate-approved Banned Books Week, either. What a surprise, the cult has not decreed it important! Scammers live to scam, and we're all fine with letting them scam.

Right now, more than any imagined time portrayed in a Book Cultist's fantasies, we are living through a cultural book burning celebrated by an entire government-backed group of supposed freethinkers and progressive creatives who somehow consider themselves rebels. And it is being lead by every aspect of the modern world, including those who pretend they are not doing so. It's not censorship if the billionaire corporation owns the rights to the art it had no hand in creating, it seems. They have free reign to edit any book and prevent selling of any older version. They own the very being of art. It's very normal, you see!

Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl are merely two targets, and are easy ones because the publishers can strongarm (or inject infiltrators) into the estates of these long dead writers and get "permission" (permission they should have no rights to have, by the way) to do whatever they want to art they had no input in creating in the first place. This is a clear loophole to the copyright issue, the flipside of the one the Walt Disney Corporation has been abusing for ages to no reasonable pushback from anyone. If you think extending copyright indefinitely on creations no one alive today had any hand in creating is good for creativity, I have a bridge to sell you. Dante and Homer didn't need to be owned by Disney to survive the passage of time, but somehow everything today does? At this point, everyone should be seeing this scam for what it is.

As an example, look up who owns the rights too Robert E. Howard's work and marvel at the fact that somehow these people think they have any right to profit off his name or creations. It hasn't been owned by anyone affiliated with him in any way for nearly a century. All it takes is one of these types to smell blood in the water, and do the same his works they are planning for the above authors. And what right do they have to do such a thing to his works?

They have none. Nonetheless, they will get unlimited support from the Book Cult to fleece readers forever. Truly an industry of rebels and freethinkers.

If you think it will stop here, then you have not been paying attention. Once the precedent is set, it never stops. Especially in OldPub, when it involves anti-art and anti-reader action above everything else. Eventually they will work their way up to J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and by then it will be too late to do anything about it. The book cult will remake everything in its own image. And yes, they will be saved for last. And nothing will be done to stop them.

The longer this goes on, the worse it will get.

Should OldPub continue their war against normality, everything they own, including that which it doesn't, will be destroyed. And yes, they will push to obliterate even that which it should have no control over too begin with, like the classic fairy tales we so take for granted. Nothing can be hated by this crowd more than purity or beauty, so it must be subverted or destroyed. There is no other option. This is the poison of the anti-social mentality infecting its soul. Eventually it turns against what created it in the first place.

It won't stop with fairy tales, it merely begins there. Just like our modern wonder stories do, so will the infection that fights to kill them.

As you can tell, this isn't stopping. The cultists are only attacking harder and harder, and have no one to push back the tide against their advance. When you leave anti-social and hate-filled bugmen in control of your entire industry of art, don't be surprised when they eventually learn to hate it as much as they hate you. They will eventually steamroll it all. This is where we are now.

There will be no survivors, if this crowd has its way. No more connection to the past, just endless rewrites and scripture updates for the ever-changing modern dogma that our betters will decide on for the rest of us.

Leaving Fanatics in control of anything was always a terrible idea, and we are living through the result of doing such a thing long ago. Until they are flushed out back to the margins where they originally skulked out of, they will only continue to destroy and find justifications so they can keep doing it forever. When one has their hearts poisoned by evil and cannot be reasoned with, they must be stopped. Otherwise everyone loses.

And one should be vigilante, even among those he trusts. Infiltrators are everywhere, and getting support from those who sell themselves on knowing better. It is getting darker out there, and it feels as if there are less and less of those willing to stand against them.

Because these antisocial types are not only in OldPub, they are trying to squeeze into NewPub, as well. They are attempting to jump from their burning car into the neighboring train so they can crash that one too. And they are having old guard support from the industry to do so. Because destroying one industry wasn't enough for any of them.

We've been dealing with an industry on decline for longer than most of us have been alive. It's time to stop doing things like this. There is no excuse to be supporting people who not only hate you, but hate everything their industry came from.

There is no excuse for this one, sorry. I don't care if said magazine has roped in a Brand Name author or two for its table of contents, it doesn't excuse supporting subverters and destroyers of your industry at this juncture. They are not working to fix any actual issues, they just want to be kings of the junk heap and get back pats for saying the Right Things. There is nothing being fixed here, just more support of mindless cults.

I can't count the number of vanity projects like the above have been bandied about this sphere longer than I've been alive. They always have an initial pop from labeling and insiders pushing the project before instantly fading into obscurity afterwards, never attracting anyone other than a rabid fringe that disappears as soon as they see shiny keys elsewhere. If this sort of thing worked, they wouldn't still be rehashing these same tired ideas for well over a decade at this point to absolutely no fanfare or interest. And yet here we are again with the same failed nonsense.

These sorts of projects don't grow the market, they never grow the readership, they don't attempt anything new despite their cliched buzzwords being thrown around. The biggest red flag that is never addressed: It doesn't appeal to normal people, no wider audience. So who is this sort of project meant to impress? How many times are you meant to regurgitate the same idea and act as if it is fresh? Corporate buzzwords that don't even sell books in OldPub? Name Brand Authors from half a century ago being bandied about on crowdfund campaign pages? This isn't offering anything new, it is relying on selling ideas that haven't sold since the 20th century, if they ever sold in the first place. None of this exists to benefit the readers or the art--it's all ego. It's about the self over all, and that has been a problem with Fanatics in this industry since they seized control back in the late 1930s. They don't want art: they want to be a part of the in-crowd.

At what point do we begin trying to grow this space instead of deliberately shrinking it? How many more decades do we have to sit through where things just get worse and more insular while being told the opposite is happening by the same crowd censoring books and saying they are not censoring them? How long are they going to be allowed free reign to destroy? At what point do we stop playing stupid games without even any prizes?

As for censorship, don't think they will start with obvious examples like a 1984 or Brave New World. This industry has mastered only one thing besides virtue signaling to its cultist followers, and that is slowly boiling the frog, usually be distracting with Brand Names and misplaced nostalgia. By the time anyone notices they are being cooked, it will be much too late. And make no mistake, it is much later than you think.

Of course the censors will start with the more controversial, in their mind, yet less popular titles and authors before they move forward with bigger. That is also why they went after Ian Fleming's work. his is the source of a billion dollar corporate franchise, of course, so it needs to be wrestled away from its creator and made to be acceptable to the executives who get to profit off of it now. The same people who had nothing to do with its existence in the first place get to control the work now. Who cares if it bares little resemblance to what the original author wrote when we can rewrite what he wrote. All for the greater good.

What matters is that it says the right thing today in Current Year dogma. Because, again, that is all that matters to the zealot. You will have to constantly update it in the future, of course, but that is a job you give to your allies to justify a paycheck in a dying industry like this one. This is nothing more than another mean girls' table for people who never grew up.

And all the people who fancy themselves geniuses because they read books, because Reading Makes You Smart like the propaganda from the industry said, are so sucked into their cult that they do not even see what is going on around them. No, that is incorrect. They see it, but they are incapable of processing what is happening because they are the Good Guys. They can't possibly be in the wrong. No, as that Simpsons meme says, it is the children who are wrong.

There is no excuse to be silent over any of this, especially if you are involved in any form of art in any similar industry, even as an amateur or hobbyist. Yet, there is a palpable silence over this exact issue right now. We have case after case being reported, downplayed by the allies in the old media and ignored by the willfully blind Professional Authors. None of them are taking this seriously, and they are hoping you don't notice. The Book Cult have been dead quiet, talking instead about holding book conferences outside concentration camps in Chengdu and pondering how much money to give China while these Professional Authors can lecture on injustice to their home country out of the other side of their mouths. Because they loathe normal people more than they care about any form of justice, or any art. It's never been about anything else.

It's a scam; always has been and always will be. Antisocial hatred runs deep. There is no love to be found here.

Guess whose social media accounts are dead silent over the issue?

Not a word from the above crowd. Not a single solitary comment aside from self promotion and virtue signaling the same inane Book Cultist platitudes on their social media accounts. Because it isn't about the art, not really, and it never has been. It's about what you can squeeze out of it for yourself and get ahead of your supposed allies.

But be sure to check out the new adaption of their work streaming on the multibillion dollar streaming service right now! You don't want to pirate it, would you? That would be unethical! And we know this crowd is all about ethics. Things should be wiped out of existence if corporations can't pay me $$$ to terribly adapt my work in any sloppy and halfhearted way they decide to do it. Better for something too get wiped out of existence than me missing out on a single penny I could have gotten from desecrating what I made. I should also attack any reader who dislikes the changes because corporations are fragile little things who need my protection. Can't let a scorned reader potentially affect my bottom line. It's all so admirable.

These noble people even gave out wooden assholes at the Hugos once because the wrong people voted for their tiny, meaningless clique awards. Something they still seethe over at the drop of a hat today! They have their priorities straight. It's all about ethics and art for the people who really count! And those who count obey Big Publishing.

You won't see any wider pushback in OldPub or any of the old industries to this obvious insanity. It will not happen, at best it will be excused. It is always excused. Remember, this is the group that cared more about trying to take down the Internet Archive over fears they might not get a few pennies from it (more than what they are getting from OldPub, mind you) then they do about any form of creation or shared culture. It's all empty rhetoric meant to trick people. They will do anything to make a buck and scrap some clout to stand out among their allies in the unending struggle against normality. It's the mean girls' lunch table, because none of these people have ever moved on from high school. And they never will. They can't.

If anything, this whole scenario should give you definitive proof that reading doesn't make you smart. That's just another lie told by people who hate you and see you as a wallet with legs. Book Cultists are no different than those still obsessing over Disney or Funko Pops as if they are personality traits. They just go to WorldCon instead of drunk singles vacations to Disney World. It gives them the illusion of having principles or an identity because otherwise they have neither. There is nothing under the surface to be found except more Brand. It's all the same cult.

No, the only thing you can do is remember what is happening right now, record it into your mind in as much detail as you can, and really take into account how much these people hate you and wish to destroy everything around them. Make sure future generations see this nonsense for what it is. Preserve what you can, while you can preserve it, because in the next few years you will see a lot of things you have taken for granted disappear without a trace. It doesn't matter what it is, all of this is in danger of being erased, rewritten, or revised for modern audiencesthe cult, not unlike what I described happened nearly a century ago in The Last Fanatics. Those people never went away, they've just devolved into an even cruder mockery of what they once were, and they will decimate anything they can in their quest to claw their way to the top of their sad pack and rule as king of the junk heap. You will find no help from them, no respite from their constant barrage of attacks. They will destroy everything on their quest to destroy themselves. It is time to accept this nonsense for what it is.

Here's another harsh truth: the Book Cult also will work around the author to get what they want. Whether the author is a member of their ingroup or not does not factor into this. They will take what they want from them regardless. They are all disposable cogs in a machine, no different than any other random office job.

The most recent example of this happening is the news of censorship around author R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series.

The site in question is linked here

For those who don't know, Goosebumps abruptly vanished in the early 2000s because noble publisher Scholastic wrestled the rights away from its author and deliberately cratered sales and promotion to take it away from him. It is one of the many shortsighted moves the Book Cult has made to crush its own industry. They have control over the property now, including those totally coincidental Hollywood movies they keep making out of the series while the above censorship is going on. Can't have outdated word usage affect the modern dogma that needs to be spread among the sheepchildren.. This will also not be their last attack. They will never stop.

Everyone is a target in their path. This is the future looming ahead of us in the years to come. Assume no one else will preserve anything, and get to work doing it yourself. Prepare accordingly. Dark times are coming.

One of the most fascinating outcomes of the Cult of Books seizing control of reading as an industry has been their shift to worshiping multibillion corporations over appreciating the stories themselves. This is because the corporations make sure only the Good books with the Right messages will get printed, while the heretical competing texts will be filtered out. The new priest class has created the new official canon, one you must follow, and if it falls outside that limited ideological span then it is considered blasphemy and evil. It must be suppressed.

And this is what is happening on all the cases we have mentioned so far. There is nothing about quality factored in here, though their cult allies in education will make sure to force you to think it is quality work, but about purity. This isn't about reading, it's about obeying and being a cog in the machine of the new world. Obey your betters or be cast out.

There is no third choice. It isn't even a choice, in the end. Cults don't give choices: they give ultimatums.

It has gotten to the point that actual censorship of books exists in OldPub because it is Good For Them to be tampered with, as if constantly updating books like they were the satanic reverse of sacred scripture (in that must always change with the whims of those in charge instead of being eternal everlasting truth), is the end goal. This mutation of common sense really should show how degraded our culture is today and how much it's decayed. No one would have accepted this at any other point in time, except one with high levels of depression, heavy medication, self-destruction, and atomization, being ignored by the current cult in charge of it all. It's pathetic that we let it persist, at this point. And yet, that is what we do.

The solution to all of this is to keep a clear head. While Book Cultists, like every other person who turns their hobby into a personality trait, continue to spiral down the drain of worshiping their corporate overlords and justifying their hatred of everyone outside their silly club, you can bypass the whole lot of them by just being normal and continuing to be so. Just don't be one of them. The most rebellious thing you can be in a society that hates normality more than it does evil, is to just be a normal human being. Be something other than a cultist that lives off product and cloud and uses supplements to deal with the resulting alienation from their own backwards mindset. It shouldn't be that hard if you live the opposite life of literally everyone ruling these corporations.

What we need is a true revival of what we have forgotten, not more irrelevant corporate jargon used to sell more product to people only slightly less depressed than the one selling it to them. We need to aim higher than what we have now. This isn't good enough anymore, and it never was in the first place. Art is important, and should not be treated as a disposable commodity or worshiped like a cult tract. We should be ashamed at letting it get this bad.

Religious thought and worship belong to real religion, hobbies belong to everyone who wants to engage and learn, subcultures are meant for you to grow in and not for them to bend to you, and art is meant to connect instead of being ran by an iron fist by unelected commissars of the revolution. This is all backwards today, and it must be repaired before we can even thinking of moving forward from it. Whatever pathetic revolution these types think this is, they can never really win it. But they can take a lot of good things down with them along the way to the grave. Be sure to prepare accordingly. They still have further to fall, and they will most definitely not go quietly into the night once they realize how futile it is. They will not be able to lie to themselves forever and when they explode, we will get caught in the blast. Remember that, in the end, their motivator is hate, not stupidity. they know what they are doing. Never forget that.

We can't bend the knee to them anymore. We need to do better than supporting people who hate is. we need to push back against infiltrators like this:

I have never interacted with this account, by the way.

And that's the bottom line.

"This one hits HARD on several levels." ~ N.R. LaPoint