Notices by 🇪🇷Götterdämmerung (gotterdammerung@glitch.social)

The average American college freshman discovers #subjectivism the way a child discovers a mirror. "My opinion." "My perspective." "My truth." They feel radical for the first time... unaware they're reciting the catechism of their civilization.

The USA doesn't merely permit individualism but industrialize it. From childhood one is told "be yourself," "choose your path," "define your identity."

The result is a marketplace of selves, which is hardly sovereignty. You're free to select among prefabricated options.

The naive subjectivism of this 18 year old is quite touching. They believe they've broken from tradition cuz they question authority. They don't see that suspicion of authority is itself their inheritance. They rebel exactly as expected.

This is the American paradox: a culture so saturated with individualism that it becomes collective dogma.

"You must have an opinion."
"You gotta express yourself."

Even authenticity becomes compulsory.

True individuality is quieter, more severe. It doesn't begin with "my truth" but with suspicion towards the self that culture has already shaped. It asks: which of my desires are truly mine & which are patriotic reflexes pretending to be freedom?

The young subjectivist believes they've escaped conformity. Nope. They're wearing its costume.

#Wikipedia is unreliable, they say, clutching their leather-bound encyclopedias like holy relics, as if truth only descends when printed by men in tweed who haven't updated an entry since the Cold War.

In 2005, on the internet, knowledge was no gated estate guarded by experts who confuse authority with inertia. Wikipedia's great sin is not inaccuracy but visibility. Its errors are public, argued over, corrected in daylight. Britannica's errors were embalmed in paper & sold at premium.

Critics sneer that "anyone can edit!" Sure and democracy lets anyone vote. Yet we don't propose reinstating kings (some of you do but that's another diagnosis). Wiki replaces the myth of infallible authors with something much more threatening: collective scrutiny. Truth under surveillance. Error with a timestamp.

The real fear isn't that Wiki is wrong. It's how it exposes the so-called authorities were wrong and got away with it because no one was allowed to check. Wiki puts expertise on trial.

History never repeats.

It just plagiarizes itself poorly.

@Daojoan

Our elites are a startup: KleptoKak, Inc.

Burn rate: the public trust.
Product: excuses.
Exit strategy: your pension.

#DailyLaws Sept 26
Let Go of the Past
At this point, I've seen it. The calcification in Real Time. Friends & family turning into monuments of who they were, not who they are. Hell, I catch glimpses of it in the mirror. The slow fossilization of a once-hungry mind.

I used to claw at the walls of tradition with bleeding fingers, tearing down inherited assumptions just to breathe. I used whatever tools I could steal: techniques, ideologies, hacks, heresies, anything to crack open the mold.

Upgrading from iPhone 13 to iPhone 17 isn't evolution. It's Stockholm Syndrome. A ritual of self-delusion wrapped in anodized aluminum & OLED lies. I'm not chasing progress. I'm paying for the privilege of being slowly suffocated by sleeker chains. The apps load faster so they can disappoint me sooner. The screen is brighter so I can see the enshittificaiton in high definition.

My iPhone 13 was the last whisper of restrain, back when apps opened without hissing a subscription in my face.

@joynewacc @palestine @aral
My final Blue Sky post.
Self-explanatory.

All I do is sit back, relaxed. The picture of indulgence. The smoke curls out like a sermon & before long they're infected. Not by nicotine but by my calm. They loosen up, they confess. They start imagining they want my life, or at least the version of it where time slows down & the world looks rich even if the people aren't respectable.

I sell atmosphere. The illusion we're untouchable for an hour. That's how you sway people - not through arguments but through moods.

You smoke in the company of equals - or if you're clever, in the company of those you want to feel like equals.

I don't drown my guests in trivia about leaf origins or aging processes. Nobody cares that the wrapper's from Nicaragua or the filler's Dominican unless they're already lost causes. Instead I make them feel like they've stumbled into a private society. A room lined with wood, leather & the ghosts of other guys' success. I let them believe they're in on the luxury.

#DailyLaws Aug 29
Infect People With the Proper Mood

I invite people into cigar lounges the way priests coax sinners into confessionals. Colleagues, friends, strays from the outskirts of my life, I bring them all into the smoke. The trick isn't the tobacco. It's the ritual.

Cigars demand stillness. You don't puff them on a treadmill or while filing taxes. You smoke sitting down, after a long day of pretending to be useful, after a meal that's fattened you up.

@Gargron Exactly! Their literacy is system bound. But that doesn't make it illiteracy. It makes it capitvity. Every generation reads the text history gives them.

And Gen Z reads shackles, still manages fluency inside the cage.

That's not dumber. Just darker.

@Gargron Calling GenZ illiterate cuz UIs are streamlined is like mocking pilots for not flapping their arms.

Literacy isn't repeating the struggles of the past. It's mastering the traps of the present.

Boomers debugged syntax.
Millennials tweaked code.
Gen Z hacks attention economies engineered to addict them.

If you think that's easier, you've already aged out of the interface.

@Gargron Yes then again Gen Z "decline" in tech literacy is just the baseline shifting. Millennials tinkered cuz systems were fragile. Half of the job was fixing what broke. GenZ lives in seamless ecosystems so literacy isn't repair, it's fluency. They don't code shit but breathe the interface.

Different skillset, same ratchet upwards.

Tech literacy escalates each gen: what was wizardry for Boomers became competence for Gen X, baseline for Millennials & oxygen for Gen Z. Falling behind shifts from quirky to disqualifying.

Boomers: clicking "Allow" is courage. We sigh then forgive.
Gen X: knows enough to fix it or find you. We don't intervene; we value self-preservation.
Millennials: if it spins, they rage. If it syncs they breathe. Baseline or bust.
Gen Z: interface is destiny. If you can't navigate you can't participate.

The immortal line by Margaret #Thatcher:
There is no such thing as #society.

The Iron Lady's Hallmark crad for Late Stage Capitalism. A slogan so bleak it makes Hobbes sound like Mister Rogers.

She envisioned us as pathetic little atomized consumers, free falling through history, bumping into each other only to exchange currency or germs. If we're lucky we die alone due to climate change, clutching our reusable tote bag, whispering "at least I offset my flight to Ibiza."

Under her gospel, collective action is a fairy tale & your only real neighbors are Amazon Prime & depression.

The fire department is just a bunch of heroic individuals who coincidentally showed up at the same burning house.

Thatcher didn't kill society. She just outsourced it to the private sector & sold the corpse for scrap.

Leave them hungry. Step away long enough for absence to sharpen desire.