the case for a slop tax!

The Ideology of Contentmaxxing YouTube video by Aidan Walker

upping my YouTube thumbnail game and cashing in on the Clavicular viral cycle during its last gasps

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jtB...

One point @aidanwalker.bsky.social made about why we ought to take the some of the dumbest shit ever seriously is because of the way that the right wing has fully surrendered itself to extremely online brain rot as part of its political project. prime example right here:

probably my favorite podcast appearance i’ve ever done on my least favorite topic i’ve ever researched

waited too long, they should’ve continued the old thing. Unless they get involved in some controversy now, there’s no reason for anyone to pay attention — no good meta-narrative other than “she’s running again, isnt she?”

it goes without saying the kamala hq rebrand is hollow, hopeless, and a likely flop from an internet culture perspective

when will we as a society progress past the need for a yuval noah harari

Part of the audience pleasure, to my mind, comes from this knowledge: both Clavicular and Fuentes are entirely dependent on their viewers. Much has been made about the sadomaschocistic dynamic between Fuentes and the “pay pigs” that listen to him and take his verbal abuse on stream, but the manipulation goes both ways. For each of these men, there is no meaningful relationship in their lives other than the one with their audience. They are purely devoted to a constituency of slimy, broken people in the way that nuns are married to Christ. And each of these men, at this point, could never get a normal job. So all of their actions should be assessed as the moves of a man with his back to the wall and a loaded gun pointed at his head: they are desperate, and kept in a state of desperation by an attention economy that needs them to be in that position, by a transgression curve that calls for ever-more horrendous stunts. Each man is a kind of martyr. They inflict suffering on themselves to prove devotion to something immaterial. Like the mystic self-flagellating, or the stigmatic continually reopening the wounds on their hands so they remain gory for the faithful to see, Clavicular and Fuentes turn their lives, their bodies, into material proof of an abstract principle’s power. They strike, isolate, scar, and maim themselves to illustrate the supremacy of the simulation and its digital representations over the reality which their audience loathes.

really good piece by @aidanwalker.bsky.social on the "nihilism by default" embodied by influencers like clavicular and nick fuentes and consumed by younger zoomers who've never known anything other than an online, politically fucked world

howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/clavicular...

you can totally force him to back down. he’s a coward. for the past year, everyone’s been throwing their hands up going “there’s nothing we can do.”

well, now we know you can support street protests, mutual aid networks, and direct pressure. fuck the midterms. this matters more.

I seriously hope some fbi investigating chats have an “are we the baddies?” moment

Yeah guys guess what

Entire tv/film genres exist about the elite craft and secrecy. People aspired to be part of the organization.

Now you’re a Temu KGB

Investigate internally and show up please

Clavicular and contentmaxxing the next step after groyperfication

By @aidanwalker.bsky.social via @mattmuir.bsky.social . Doing the rounds, probably mostly among people who, like me, now cherish the lost innocence of a halcyon time before I knew his name.

Also, JFC, he hits himself in the face with a hammer. /subtext is for cowards.gif etc.

I pray that what happened today does not become the new normal, but as it stands there’s nothing but the people who can keep that from happening

the cover of a pamphlet on skibidi toilet showing a cameraman soldier

a page from a skibidi toilet pamphlet

back cover featuring a qr code on an ipad held by a robot hand

My new pamphlet “ON SKIBIDI: Cyborg Violence, Brainrot, and the Phenomenology of Digital Witness” coming to a handheld screen near you. Link in bio to the metalabel place where u can get pdf for $2.67

american canto is like joan didion but if she were kinda dumb

or maybe im delulu. idk

Thank you so much!! Means a lot to hear, and you give me hope as well

was this how y'all felt about obama? like for real... the feeling that we're in the story, rather than at its end or epilogue. people who look like me and friends I love fist-bumping, hugging, walking proud in the streets, all kinds. got me libbed out heavy
x.com/ZohranKMamda...

Aidan Walker on Bill Maher, Memes and More! YouTube video by The Back Room with Andy Ostroy

Watch the full video with @aidanwalker.bsky.social in THE BACK ROOM. We talk Bill Maher, memes and more! www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnT0...

I meant it more rhetorically, i didnt do any specific study! But it’s based off an essay adam aleksic wrote on substack where he delved into the phenomenon and classified reels

Did you catch his epic appearance recently on Real Time with Bill Maher? Writer, creator and internet culture researcher @aidanwalker.bsky.social's in THE BACK ROOM talking memes, Maher and more! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

@harpers.bsky.social a question

i am going to write a letter to the editor of Harper’s magazine about Gooning

last winter: eye of rah, bought a property in egypt, chopped chin

this summer; eeffoc, adrian, barbershop haircut, etc.

now: burger in vegas.

i hazard the prediction that we’ll see new standard collage elements emerge to go with that burger clip, seems to be how these edit trends work

the last time i wrote about gooning — spring of 2024. On a rainy afternoon in richmond, VA visiting a friend. Was on a deadline to get an explainer for the term “gooncave” posted to know your meme dot com by 5:30 pm. remember eating chicken tikka masala later that night. core memory.

have consulted the group chat and it looks like i gotta write something about gooning because print media has gotten a piece of story very well, but the depths still demand to be plumbed

one cause of the bothsidesism we still see, even today, is the left isn’t really foreign to the center like the right is.

when they get mild opposition from the left it hurts more because it’s in a language they understand, from the kind of people they respect, so it leaves a deeper impression

Are the Kids Alright? Aidan Walker joins The Mingle Project with Michael Smerconish (Ep 5) Vote on Today's Poll: https://www.smerconish.com/daily-poll/ Subscribe to The Smerconish.com Daily Newsletter: https://loom.ly/8oqcf-0

Episode 5 of The Mingle Projects starts RIGHT NOW, streaming live on the Michael Smerconish YouTube Channel with Special Guest @aidanwalker.bsky.social .
Tune in to watch 🎥 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGtLL3e7AHk

Watch the Trailer for The Mingle Project Episode 5: "Are The Kids Alright?" with special guest @aidanwalker.bsky.social
Full episode streams Thursday Oct 23 at 8 PM ET, exclusively on the Michael Smerconish YouTube channel. Subscribe ➡️ https://loom.ly/QzHOoAg

the defining image of the early 21st century is an agent of the state pointing a gun at a person, and a citizen pointing a smartphone camera back at them

we see this scene reenacted every day, around the world

and then i went home. the whole thing feels like a fever dream as i remember it now. whenever you see a swan, particularly when you do not expect to see one, it is some kind of sign from the universe. what it portends we cannot often know. and that, my friends, may be the point