BOOK CLUB: Kill All Normies Ch 6+7+CONCLUSION (Patreon)

Instead of pathetically trying to speak the language of this new right by trying to 'troll the trolls' or to mimic its online culture, we should take the opportunity to reject something much deeper that it is revealing to us. (p. 116)

THE END. Merciful end? 

The survey for our Kill All Normies Book Report will be posted in the coming week! We've already started on the second Book Report. Lots of pepes. 

Feel free to make it to this thread whenever you do! I will be going in to reply to some comments retroactively.

Sentence Structure

Chapter 6 is where I finally lost patience with the sentence structure thing."...'the Manosphere'. The term has been used to describe everything from progressive men's issues activists dealing with real neglect of male health, suicide and unequal social services to the nastier corners of the Internet, filled with involuntary celibacy-obsessed, hate-filled, resentment-fuelled cultures of quite chilling levels of misogyny." (p. 86)

There is no way in hell any human being can be expected to read this sentence coherently the first time. The commas and cadence are absolutely fucked. Like seriously why do you write like this did anyone edit this

I am thumbing through the liner notes in the book and I am realizing that maybe literally no one did. Not seeing any Editor credit or thank yous for peer readings. I know Zer0 Books is an alternative publisher, so maybe. I dont know exacly. Anyways it stays bad"So it is worth saying first that my descriptions here are, like my descriptions of the worst of Tumblr-liberalism, 4chan and others, not representative of what you might call 'the men's movement' in general but of the darker online underbelly that has flourished online." (p. 87)

THE DARKER ONLINE UNDERBELLY THAT HAS FLOURISHED ONLINE?!!?!?!?!?! MAYBE CHANGE A WORD? 

Just use brackets? Just do a clarity edit? Not that I'm always perfect (or bother to be when ranting out loud) but I sometimes help others with Clarity Edits, here's my first quick pass at the above paragraph.

"So it is worth saying first that my descriptions here are (like my descriptions of the worst of Tumblr-liberalism, 4chan and others) not representative of what you might call 'the men's movement' in general but of the darker underbelly that has flourished online." 

Like just clean these bithces uP!!! Brackets!!!!!

Look how lopsided this two part sentence is:

"At the same time as these anti-feminists were using the term to describe their awakening from the blissful mind prison of liberalism into the unplugged reality of societal misandry, the hard alt-right was embracing the term to describe their equivalent racial awakening." (p. 88)

Cut> WIND DRAG

SURELY there's another way to say that anti-feminists and the alt right were BOTH HAVING AN AWAKENING

Ok. Blood vessels. It's ok. That's all I shall say.

The Manosphere

Okay okay, but. I think Nagle does a good job describing online anti-feminist culture:

"...a sinister Darwinian guide to tricking the loathed female prey into surrender." (p. 89)

"...in the stark and vicious social hierarchy through which they interpret all human interaction." (p. 89)

"... an unconvincing voice of ultra-rationality to conceal what seems like a great deal of bitterness and hurt at rejection." (p. 95)

Overall it is hard not to notice the rampant Nietzchean envy and resentment  characterizing the paradoxical misogyny and yearning for "traditional values" within these mens movements.

After all my sentence by sentence anger I want to compliment Nagle's wry style for making me laugh when it does, and I have always enjoyed this kind of petty redundancy:

"In (Ann Coulter's) book 'Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America' explaining how 'the liberal mob is destroying America'..." (p. 101)

New Atheism & Male Space Sensitivity

Was VERY excited to see the continuity drawn between the New Atheist debate culture and online harassment reverie! Page 109 touches on this and the Rebecca Watson drama, which I had forgotten about, but is a perfect touchstone.

I think of it in terms of attention and spirit. Like, the same kind of attention is being capitalized on with a Hitchslap Religious Nut Owned Compilation and a Woke Feminist Owned Compilation. And honestly? The same spirit is tapped into for 3 hour drama videos that criticize e celebs morally. So hey. I think it's at least good to name it. It's a kind of resentful superior moralizing as entertainment that excuses transgression, and is a chaotic force that can fly in any direction. One that almost always flies off the rails too.

I don't trust communities with that sort of energy in either direction. Itchy Trigger Finger Cancel Culture Lefty spaces where heroes become villains immediately upon sin detection, and communities like The New Atheists and Anti-Woke crowds, where women and progressives are 'hated for destroying a male space with their feminine culture...' (p. 110)

Further, on gender in art, I also found this passage by Andreas Huyssen striking:

"It is indeed striking to observe how the political, psychological, and aesthetic discourse around the turn of the century consistently and obsessively genders mass culture and the masses as feminine, while high culture, whether traditional or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities." (p. 113)

btw look at that academic writing. Complicated, tons of commas and specifications, yet entirely effortlessly readable.

Subcultural Capital, Conspiracies & Clapbacks

I thought the Subcultural Capital theory had a lot more legs than the Virtue Scarcity one.

"Elite subcultural knowledge or hipness... was a form of cultural capital, through which members of the subculture gain entry. Bourdieu, from whom her term was adapted, argued that 'the deep-seated intention of slang vocabulary is above all the assertion of an aristocratic distinction.'" (p. 107)

"While cultural capital was once earned through being urbane and well-mannered, subcultural capital is earned, Thorton argued, through being 'in the know', using obscure slang and using the particularities of the subculture to differentiate yourself from mainstream culture and mass society... (many online cultures police) the boundaries of (their) subcultures through constant reclassification of hipness." (p. 107) 

[some paraphrase on that last line to focus on relevant bit]

I think this battle for anti-establishment subcultural capital is woven straight through most internet brain rot. The constant war to redefine what's cool and what's lame, and the desperate urgent desire to be on the side of The Cool. 

"It was the utterly empty and fraudulent ideas of countercultural transgression that created the void into which anything can now flow as long as it is contemptuous of mainstream values and tastes." (p. 105)

I am not sure that widespread lack of trust in traditional institutions is Cool and Useful. I think no matter what your politics are, you should probably find SOME tradition to connect with. Everyone needs community, landmarks, history, culture. You can't just build from Zero. And there are a ton of resources. It'd probably be useful in reforming or reshaping the world if we understood it first.

I have been trying to stay politically aware (local politics, not US politics lol) and I'm litreally just listening to the This Matters podcast on The Toronto Star and The House with Catherine Cullen. They do a good job. I have subscribed to a newspaper and I learn about shit there instead of social media. They do a good job. No one trusts our mainstream news sources. OK. Has anyone tried reading them?

Maybe we should at least TRY traditional media before we resort to the wild west attention vortex alternative. Maybe just... TRY it!

Furthermore, the price of trying:

My heart hurts really badly seeing people talk about a time before online harassment was an expected norm.

David French of the National Review:

"The misery is compounded when longtime friends and allies dismiss my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues as nothing more than the normal cost of public advocacy. It's not. I have contributed to National Review for more than ten years now, and have been deeply involved in many of America's most emotional culture-war battles for more than 20. I've never experienced anything like this before." (p. 118)

This in fusion with the terrible stories of Rebecca Watson, Anita Sarkeesian, just countless others, makes me wonder if it's possible to live in a reality where you can just... fuck up. Or argue. Or advocate. Or exist. Without threat of his terrible outrage machine. Is there some way to keep what we've gained while resurrecting what we've lost?

Ah. ok. That's my assorted thoughts this Sunday.

What are yours?

Conspiracies and Clapbacks Below!!