Plumes of dust flitted through the ghost of the man’s boot steps as he walked over the old hardwood floor. Carefully, he knelt down on arthritic knees, aching slightly from the strain. He ignored the pain, lifting up the floor boards to reveal a ghastly white skeletal face. Almost all of the meat from the bones have long rotted away, devoured by the hungry mouths of bacteria, rats, and insects. Some bits here and there still clung to her ribs and hips, but they too would soon be gone. Gingerly he lifted her skull from her improvised tomb and brought it to his face, gazing through the empty holes where one brilliant green eyes had looked back at him. As he he had done before, and will do again, he brought her decayed teeth to his lips in a gentle kiss. Cradling her in his arms, he stood back up and walked to an old wing backed chair covered in plastic. Resting himself, he produced a stainless steel flask of whiskey from the breast pocket of his Carhartt chore coat. The farm had failed years ago, the land so dry and empty that even now, a decade later, the bank had still found no one else to buy it. He came here about once a month, to share a quiet drink with his beloved wife. He always loved her dearly, and likewise he knew he would maintain that love until his own death.
Pouring a glass for himself, and a smaller one for his love, he sat still for some time before taking the first sip. The liquor burned his lips and left a dull, earthy taste in his throat. Where once he sat and drank fine scotch, next to the fire, his wife no doubt consumed in some old Agatha Christie novel beside him he now shamed himself with cheap bottom shelf swill. This was no Laphroaig single malt, no, some blended – vaguely whisky flavored grain liquor. Still, it got the job done all the same, he figured. He’d had to make a lot of life style changes since everything went under. He spends his days restocking shelves at the local grocery store, and every month he wonders if he will be on the street by the next.
A decade ago, they were the perfect picture of American mid-west success. Their children played with wooden swords and hand sewn dolls stuffed with corn husks. He had a few migrant workers who would help during the harvest seasons, and his wife made extra money on the side teaching the local children to play piano. One terrible year, the corn simply did not grow. They couldn’t understand why, they had done everything right – adequate fertilization, plenty of water, good seed – everything. But it didn’t grow. The next year, it didn’t grow again. When you live the life of a farmer, you’re only ever really one bad crop away from destruction, and his family had survived two. “Why don’t you look for work somewhere in town?” His beloved suggested. It made him furious. He doesn’t work for other people, other people for him. Why would she emasculate him like this? It wasn’t enough that his crops failed – no – she wanted his balls, too! Or at least, that’s what it felt like to him at the time. If he could go back and do it all over again, he would. He would go into town and get a job just like she asked – just like he would eventually do anyway.
The fighting went on for weeks as the accounts at last drained to nothing. The children had fallen ill – a case of the mumps that just wouldn’t leave the poor things. They suffered for some time before they finally died. He struck his wife for the first time ever, on the car ride home from the funeral. She suggested he find work again. Without thinking, he threw his arm back and cracked her across the face with the back of his hand, his knuckles bursting the blood vessels in her nose and causing blood to stream out of her, mixing with her tears. They were both silent the rest of the way, but he did feel bad. Not bad enough to apologize of course – he was a man after all, and men don’t apologize.
Not long after, he woke up early with the sun just rising outside of the bedroom window. He felt renewed – for the first time in months, he was actually in a good mood. With a sudden change of heart, he whispered, “You know, maybe I could go work at the hardware store or some-” but he was talking to no one. As he opened his eyes he realized his wife was no longer in bed with him. Unusual, he is normally the first one awake. Shambling down the stairs he saw her carrying a large duffel bag outside to her car. “What are you doing?” he asked – begged, really – as he already knew. “It’s over” she said. “Please don’t make this worse, Peter. I’m sorry.” Her eyes were sad and distraught, but he could see that she meant it. He pleaded with her not to do this, not to leave him. If she left, he would have absolutely nothing anymore. “We already lost everything, dear” she whispered. “It’s time to let go. It’s time to move on.” But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. This was the final straw, the final emasculation that she would make him suffer
It was like watching himself from afar – he could see his body moving but he was not really in control, as his rough hands closed into fists, which came crashing down on to the top of her head. “What the fuck are you doing!?” she screamed as he struck her again, this time hooking her jaw on the right side. She crumbled to the ground, unconscious. He kicked her face in bare feet, her teeth scraping his toes causing him pain. He shouted and became more enraged, stomping her neck with the full weight of his body. He felt her spine snap and knew immediately that she was dead.
As the memories flooded back to him, sitting in that old chair staring at her fractured skull. Her eye sockets glared at him with hatred as hot tears streamed down his face. He ruined everything, and there was no coming back from this. Finishing his glass, he dumped hers over her face, the alcohol staining her face and washing the dust away, pooling on to his worn out jeans. He brought her skull to his lips once more and kissed her for the last time. “I’m so sorry”, he whispered. The ghost of her face saying back to him, “I don’t forgive you”. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out his old Buck folding knife. He told her he would always love her, and then opened his wrist length wise up his left arm, then his right, and finally he cut into what he was pretty sure was his jugular vein, just under this right ear. As the acidic scent of iron filled his nostrils and the warm, wet blood streamed across his back and chest, he closed his eyes, and tried to remember when she was happy. His last thought was of her face, violent and full of hate, just before he struck her for the last time.
The druid walked in through the smoke, shining pink columns of salt beset her on each side, shimmering in the blinding light of a bonfire lit behind her, deep within the altar. She raised her arms high above her head, gilded bracelets dangling nearly to her elbows. She was all but skin and bone, years of fasting and sleep deprivation had taken their toll on her body. But her spirit bloomed, glowing white and pulsing around her. She was drenched in sweat, naked save for the long red scarf flung around her shoulders.
From the huddled crowd, an old woman emerged, shrouded from head to toe in a ceremonial woven robe. In her arms she cradled a rumpled pile of cloth. Gingerly, her old feet found their way up the heavy stone steps to the altar. Kneeling unsteadily, she extended her withered arms as far as they could stretch, passing bundle to the glowing woman before her, eyes aflame. The priestess took the child into her hands and pulled the wrappings from it. It was a boy, still messy from birth, umbilical cord dangling from its belly. The priestess said her prayers quickly, expertly dancing through the words via years of repetition. At the zenith of the recitation, she ripped the cord from the baby’s belly, shoving her bloodied fist into the air, presenting the cord to the sky.
She lowered her arm, bringing it to her mouth. One snap from her jaw and it was cut in half, once more and it was gone, swallowed nearly whole. The priestess screamed, chest heaving as all the air drew from her lungs. The crowd returned her scream, a savage cry which cracked and carried through the rocky canyons of their desert home. The sands seemed to glow white with the moon and fire as the air grew thick. A deep, blurry tone filled their ears, which made the hairs stand on the backs of their necks. Their god was among them, now.
The druid dropped to her knees, holding the child in the air. Slowly, bathed in the light of the fire, the child began to float above her hands. Higher and higher, the child lifted into the sky as its screams grew fainter and fainter. Then it was gone. This was the moment of truth. Would their god accept their gift? If the child had a flaw, a simple defect, the sacrifice would be rejected, and they would surely starve. The crowd, the priest and even the fire itself seemed to wait with weighted breath, perfectly still and totally silent. Just as quickly as it was gone, the screaming came back. Faint at first, though getting louder and fast. You could feel the tension in the air finally snap. Nearly one hundred hearts, broken at once, as an entire village realized there was no hope left for them.
The child landed with a disgusting thud against the stone floor of the altar, immediately crushed into something more resembling a puddle. The child’s mother was the first one to break the silence. Her broken howl shook the very steps themselves. A horrific, utterly destroyed wail followed by deep and inconsolable weeping. Her husband wrapped a blanket around her sunken shoulders, whispering affirmations in her ear. The priest stood, defeated. This was her last chance as well. As is their custom, two apprentice druids emerged from behind the columns and stretched the red scarf around her neck. Each taking a side, they pulled, strangling their mentor. The priestess arched her back and began to spasm, deliberately expelling all of the air from her lungs. The apprentices held firm, averting their eyes as the priestess squirmed and seized upon the rocks. With much gurgling, and sloshing as her body wretched and raved among the smashed entrails of their failed sacrifice, her soul left her body, and she was dead.
So this is a subject I’ve wanted to really dig into for a while. I’m sure you’ve noticed that capital-v Vikings are fucking in right now. I probably waited too long, because I think if that bubble isn’t bursting right now then it’s just about to. With the release of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla I think we can very safely say that Viking nerds are officially in the mainstream, if the award winning televisions series wasn’t already enough. How many dudes have seen with the Ragnar undercut pony tail look? How many dudes have you seen with Icelandic staves proudly displayed in ink somewhere on their body?
Gross
Yes, that’s my arm. And that’s a Vegvisir, an ancient Nordic rune of protection, that as legend has it, when worn will prevent the person wearing it from ever getting lost.
…only, that’s completely made up. The truth is this symbol was recorded in the mid 1600’s by Christian Icelandic grifters occultists. There is nothing ancient, or in fact Nordic about it. Yet, it’s everywhere, and it’s so pervasive that even I, someone who is by all accounts an absolute neckbeard for historical accuracy fell for it. I fell for it so hard I got it permanently drawn on my body. Forever. Sigh. So, what happened? Well, a lot of things. This is going to be a pretty big subject that I think I’m going to have to devote multiple posts to. 2014 me was a whole different animal than today, and no, I didn’t get that ink in prison (even though it looks like it – more on that later). I was an alcoholic, in a career that I hated. I was losing friends and alienating myself from my family, in a downward spiral, completely out of control. On top of the alcohol, I was crushing up pills in my car on my lunchbreak, unable to cope with the stresses of daily life.
It was during that time that I tried LSD for the first time. Total game changer, my alcoholism was heavily mitigated on the spot. I just didn’t feel like I needed it anymore. Over the course of a summer I tried just about every psychedelic I could get my grubby sausage fingers on. Shrooms, peyote, a gaggle of various, probably dangerous research chemicals like 2-cb, 25-i, and a dozen or so others I can’t remember the names of. Eventually, I made it to the big leagues. Sat against a wall, in a humid bedroom during a house party in the middle of nowhere, a bone thin man with a big platinum blonde mustache offered me a hit of DMT. Already rolling on a couple points of MDMA and 2 or 3 squares of acid, I thought – yeah – this is a good idea. That’s a good thing for me to do.
As the shitty EDM music blared from a tv with only one working speaker, I put the glass pipe to my lips and said goodbye. I remember filling my lungs with the strange chemical tasting smoke, leaning back, and when my head touched the wall – it happened – In a moment that was at once horrific, exciting, painful, ecstatic and suicidally depressive, I felt my entire conscious reality just melt away. I was no stranger to taking a trip at this point, but I was gone. Over the hills, and far away I flew, leaving everything, and I mean everything behind. My entire sense of self was completely disintegrated. It was like looking in a mirror and truly realizing how absolutely full of shit I am. My whole personality, as I understood it, was made up. I did and do so many dishonest things…from the clothes I choose to wear, to the way I speak, to the way I trim my beard. How I eat, the shampoos and soaps I buy – all of it a carefully crafted mirage of a human being. I bought my clothes thinking, other people will like this, I brush my teeth thinking other people will smell my breath. I understood that everything I did was a front – completely pointless outside of impressing other people that I ultimately do not care about, and who do not care about me.
Who am I? Nothing. It’s all gone. Black void, empty, silent, sleep…
I drifted away. I wasn’t hallucinating, I was just gone. There were no thoughts, no feelings, nothing. Like I was dead. I drifted in this limbo for hours and hours, somewhere in the dreamy haze my psyche was slowly rebuilding itself. CPU offline//HARDWARE MALFUNCTION////REBOOT.exe//. So I open my eyes back up. I look around and see 7 other feckless oafs like me, eyes glazed over, mouths agape. I look at my watch. It’s been roughly 10 minutes. I stand up and walk out the door. Didn’t even bother grabbing my hat, jacket or cigarettes. Just picked up my keys and drove home, terribly and completely sober. Probably more sober than I’d been in my whole life. I didn’t really think about anything until the next day. I was just blank all night. I didn’t really sleep, I just sort of laid in bed with my eyes closed, watching abstract shapes and patterns move across an empty black void. Somewhere in there…I could feel something real happening. A new reality starting to form just for me. In other words, the cycle of lies began anew.
Boy, I felt like I new man when the sun came up and I crawled out of the covers. But what kind of man am I? What do I feel? What do I like? I’m free of all the pretention of my previous existence. I understood deeply that everything I had ever done in my life had led to this moment, and I was glad that happened. I wasn’t really depressed anymore, at least, not for the time being. I didn’t feel like I was being shafted by the universe, like my life was unfair. I felt like unfair wasn’t even a real concept. I understood that there is only the way things are, and the way things aren’t. I began searching for identity, for something to really grab on to. I’d been drifting my whole life, moving from subculture to subculture and never really getting anywhere. My mother was for lack of a better word, distant. My father even more so, having never actually met him at all. So I didn’t really have a family based identity to fall back on. I’ve had friends sure, I’ve had exceedingly excellent friends that I will never be able to express how thankful I am of them – however…I never really felt entirely like one of them. So who am I?
I started researching genealogy and discovering my ‘roots’. I knew my grandfather’s father was an Irish immigrant, so I always kind of felt a little Irish. I also knew my grandmother’s family was vaguely “Norwegian” at some point or another, probably hundreds of years ago. So I looked into that. I learned about Norse ethnic groups, and the Irish, the Welsh, even going farther into groups like Picts, Saxons, Anglos etc. I started to feel more and more connected with the aesthetics, stories and mythology of 9th century northern Europe. Having always been a big fan of mythology a lot of this came naturally. I remember, in a pivotal moment while reading the Havamal on my phone while I should have been working seeing the words “You are your deeds” – modern Norse pagans believe that who you are is determined principally by your physical actions. It’s beautifully simple – If you play video games all day, you’re a gamer. If you tell lies, you’re a liar. If you do good things you’re good, and if you do bad things you’re bad. Pretty hard to argue with that. So I read more, and more. I joined Facebook groups for Norse pagans – called Heathens – and learned about the different groups within the culture. I knew that there were some, often calling themselves Odinists or Folkish pagans, who believed in the supremacy of the Nordic race. They view Christianity as a Jewish trick – a two thousand year old ruse to fool white people into worshipping a Jew. They tend to create heavily insular (and ethnically homogenous) groups, sometimes going as far as building entire communes where they live according to what they believe to be Viking age cultural values.
The real trick with these fuckin’ guys is that what they think are traditional Nordic values are…really just right wing modern conservative values. The way they worship the Nordic pantheon is even reminiscent of Christianity (or at least mono-theism) by focusing mainly on Odin – sometimes including Thor as the son or companion god to Odin – to the near exclusion of others. The women in these groups will usually say something about Freya or whatever, but don’t ask them to go deeper. They live what is essentially puritan lives, raising traditional families with the woman being subservient to the man. Anyone who is a student of Norse history will already see the holes in this particular façade.
The other kind were more like me – they follow what they call Asatru, and are doing their best to recreate the spirituality and cultural values of the ancient Norse while striving to maintain an open and welcoming community to everyone. They understand that none of us are actually Vikings. Hell, even if we lived in the so-called “Viking Age”, we still probably wouldn’t have had the career of Viking. It’s not like literally every person who lived in 9th century Scandinavia was going on raids and exploring strange lands. Most people were simple peasantry governed by feudal lords, not unlike basically anywhere else in the time period. Sure, sure – women were considered heads of household from a managerial point of view (even if they technically had less legal rights than men) and of course there are pieces of things unique to Nordic culture, but I feel like the image a lot of people have in their heads about ancient Scandinavia is something like a mish-mash between Conan the Barbarian, 300, and the shitty Beowulf movie with Angelina Jolie. It wasn’t really that bad-ass, is what I’m getting at. Most people’s lives would consist of raising a family and tending to their needs, along with the typical agrarian village life. The Asatraurs really get this aspect, and they are often firmly against the other, more goose-steppy side of it all.
Having said that, I feel it is safe to say that a lot of people really getting into this kind of thing are, like I was, searching for some kind of deeper identity. We as human beings are drawn to symbols, so when we decide we’re going to be Norse Pagans, we want a symbol! But not just one symbol, lots of symbols, so you can pick your favorite! Everyone knows Mjolnir, the enchanted hammer of Thor, but some of us want more. So we find more. Usually online and from less than reputable sources. If you were to type into google, “Viking symbols” or, “Viking runes”, you’re going to see three specific images over and over. Namely, the Vegvisir, the Helm of Awe, and the Valknut. These are extremely popular and it’s not hard to see why. They look freaking awesome! I mean just look at this thing
That’s fucking sick, right? It’s on an Amon Amarth album cover and as any self-respecting Heathen knows, Amon Amarth fucking rules. The Valknut, we are told, was a symbol for those devoted to Odin, and it’s a very serious commitment. Sometimes it’s said that only the famed Berserker was allowed to wield the mighty symbol. So that’s got to be legit! Well, not really. Sure, it was on the Nene River Ring so it certainly existed during the correct time period, but was it Odin’s symbol, and does it mean anything particularly special? Honestly, probably not. We don’t know that much about it, but we do know the Germanic people found importance in the number 3 and multiples of 3. We can look at the triskelion, a symbol connected to Celtic culture but found all throughout Europe, including Germania at large. It, like the valknut, is connected to the number 3 and is found on all kinds of stones, jewelry, weapons and embroidery. They are both symbols used by people of all walks of life, and both seem to represent the same idea: The Realm of the gods, the realm of mortals, and the realm of the dead. The truth is, there is no historical evidence to believe this symbol was set aside for berserkers, or that it held any kind of special significance outside of any of the other spiritual symbols of the time.
So why the confusion? Well, simply put, eventually it’s going to come down to at some point someone just making some shit up and putting it out on the web. Someone who probably wanted to feel like a big strong Viking warrior. And you are, buddy! You’re so big and strong and your mother and I are very proud of you. The Norse Paganism community is very unsurprisingly filled with a very particular kind of dude. You know this dude, too. He wears Gruntstyle T-shirts. He has a beard, which is 90% of his personality. He purchases items with the word “tactical” in the name even though he has never been in a fight. He orders the hottest wings on the menu and then makes sure to comment how he “can barely taste them” even though his eyes are blood red and he’s sweating through his backwards ball-cap. He has either a tiny car that sounds like a huge truck, or a huge truck that sounds like a decommissioned coal train.
So that guy couldn’t afford an HBO subscription for Game of Thrones, so he watched History Channel’s Vikings instead. He watched the scene where the Norsemen first arrive in England and raid the church, and the Vikings were really big tough guys and the clergy were very small and weak. This gave him a big ole rager, and since all the characters are white, and he’s white…they must be his ancestors. So there you go! Viking blood runs through my veins! Look at my blue eyes and quiver, you cuck. He googles “viking tattoos” and ten minutes later he’s calling his local artist to set up an appointment. Couple days later he’s in a few Facebook groups and badabing badaboom you got your modern “Vikings”. D…deus vult, or something. M…moan…lobby? 100% chance this dude has a Punisher sticker somewhere on his vehicle and/or YETI cup.
So how did I get sucked in? I was never really that guy, though I did get a little high and mighty with my beard genetics. Mostly I just wanted to belong, and if you’re a big white guy with a beard, they’ll definitely accept you in any of these circles. I’m going to go much farther into detail in the next part of this (what I’m legally allowed to call an) article. I’m going to discuss groupthink, indoctrination, and the way algorithms sometimes work against us. Thanks for reading, I don’t know why you did that.
Seriously, you probably are. Reality, I think, is just a little more subjective than we probably understand. There’s been a million books and articles written about Law of Attraction, and that’s not really what I’m talking about anyway. I find the typical LoA belief system to seem a little…well a little mean sometimes. I think it can give people an easy excuse to blame the conditions of someone’s life solely on them. Like if someone is poor, it’s because that’s the energy they’re putting out into the world, so it’s their fault. I’m really not into it like that. What I think, is that through deliberate and conscious acts of will, you can assert your own perception of reality onto reality at large. I’m sure there have been times in your life when you have wanted something really, really bad. Maybe it was the attention of an attractive person, or maybe an approval for a loan, or a specific birthday present. You wanted this thing so hard that you just knew you were going to get it. You knew it deep in your heart to the point that you were not even worried that you wouldn’t. And you did! You got the thing just like you knew you would. Did you know you were going to get it as a prediction and nothing more, or did knowing you were going to get it, actually make it happen? I get that this can imply that you could do bad things to yourself too, like pretending to be sick to get out of work, and then a couple days later actually getting sick. Did that happen because you lied? Well, kind of….maybe. If you ask me, you knew you were lying, so the only thing you were really putting out there is that you lie. But, since everyone believed you, their perception is that you were sick. Maybe you were a little too convincing, and now enough psychic juju is out there circulating the astral plane to give you the sniffles. You must be careful because your words and intentions can be powerful in lots of different ways. In his only good book, Nocturnicon, the occultist Konstantinos lays bare a lot of the things many modern magicians leave behind the curtain. Mainly, that when you break it all down to the low fuckin’ dirty ass truth of it, it doesn’t matter what school of magic you delve into. It doesn’t matter what order or secret society you may have paid your way into. All of it is for the psychic drama. Freemason rituals are powerful because of the camp of it all. First you join a secret society plagued by rumors of global conspiracy and deep mystical powers. You work your way through a few circles (which, conveniently, involve larger and larger “donations”) and soon you’re in a circle, surrounded by other men dressed exactly the same as you. An old man with a big white beard is holding a sword to your heart, and the men are all chanting quietly as you recite well practiced vows of secrecy and obedience. And let me tell you…it works.
It works because of the psychodrama. It sticks in your head, it feels important. It feels real. So you don’t open your mouth about the secrets of the club. You are a Mason for the rest of your life, exactly like you said you would. Like you knew you would. With enough psychodrama you can make yourself believe just about anything, and once you believe a thing, and you live your life according to the thing, and you react to the thing regardless of anyone else seeing or believing the thing, then isn’t it essentially real? If you cast a spell that makes you happy, believe that it works, and feel happy…I mean…didn’t you do it? Didn’t you just really cast a spell, that really worked? Now, the skeptical part of me immediately says, “Alright, so conjure up a turkey sandwich, then.” And… that’s fair. There’s clearly limits, but I don’t think we really understand how the limits work. I don’t think it’s as simple as a straight end-to-end bar. It’s a spectrum of success and failure, as most things are. Maybe you can’t conjure up a physical object in a puff of smoke, but maybe you can inspire the kind of psychodrama necessary to get you a job, so you can afford to buy turkey, bread, and delicious, delicious mayonnaise. Or maybe you go a different route, maybe you psychodrama your way into a disability check. The opportunities are really endless once you get out there into the abstract. Pretend you’re a schizophrenic long enough, and I bet you’ll start hearing voices. Try it for yourself! Tell yourself that you don’t like your own favorite food. Write it down. Say it over and over. Meditate, chanting, “I hate pizza. I hate pizza. I hate pizza”…do that for a couple hours every day for a month and tell me you could go for a slice. Betcha can’t. Betcha won’t even try, because you know I’m right.
Autonomic intelligence has been selling narratives in comment sections online, 4chan, Reddit, giants like Facebook and Twitter, for some time now. Meaning that abstract mathematical algorithms are dominating the proliferation of culture. Special interest lobby groups – Outfits like Cambridge Analytica and their ilk are backed by neo-feudalistic billionaires who pour money and endless resources into the creation and maintenance of specific narratives. This product is probably more widely sold than we imagine, with multiple groups and corporations having access to it already. Intelligent chat AI’s are fine tuned to deliver specific narratives i.e. Q-anon bullshit to specific audiences like 4chan. Right wing subreddits, local news network Facebook pages, and any other area where impressionable people spend time without being really engaged.No doubt some interests are indeed state backed and funded. All of these Russian hacks and bots we keep finding are just the tip of the iceberg. When you’re dunking on some troll online, that troll might actually not be a human at all.
Of course, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking- “Well, sure Nox, but that wouldn’t happen to me. I’m not a Q-anon conspiracy freak, I’m not some boomer conservative or alt-right neo fascist dweeb!” Well that’s where you’re wrong. That’s where you’re dead wrong my friend. We know that US intillegence agencies infiltrated leftist groups as early as the 1960’s, in a time where you had to send a physical agent to a real life location undercover and literally blend in with other functioning human beings. Why on Earth would they not be doing that today, where the only disguise they need is an anime cat-girl avatar and a list of pronouns? It has never been easier to infiltrate and subsequently break apart any subversive or subversive-fronting group in existence. It also seems reasonable to assume that were there government bodies wanting to ensure that no anti-establishment forces actually rise against it, it would be a good idea for that body to pit these groups against each other. It must be extremely easy; these groups already hate each other by their nature. You’re just not going to get a Green Peace x Aryan Nation collab. It’s not gonna happen. If these groups are always kept busy with infighting and petty squabbles against each other, no one actually does anything of significance to change the legal structure of the nation.
“Today in the United States we have somewhere close to four or five thousand data points on every individual … So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people.” — Alexander Nix, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, October 2016.
That was 2016, it’s 2021 now, you don’t think they’ve advanced their methods? This is how the matrix is constructed – they profile you, learn absolutely everything about you. Remember that they can see things you’ve forgotten. Do you know every page, comment, link and picture you’ve ever liked, across all of your social media platforms? They do. They know and have read every message, and analyzed every picture you’ve got. They know all of the websites you visit, they know the shows you watch, the music you listen to. The clothes you wear. They know all of your deepest secrets, everything you’ve ever expressed online. I keep saying ‘they’, but what I really should be saying is ‘it’. It – the Egregore formed via the network of data collection, analysis, and targeted advertisement – knows all. It sees all and knows all. It knows you better than you know yourself, and it knows just what you want when you want it. You ever been craving a certain food, and you see an ad for it pop up out of the blue? The horrifying truth is that the algorithm correctly guessed that you would want that food, on that day.
And since it can do that, it obviously has the power to influence you. It speaks your language and knows exactly how to manipulate you. It can make you angry or scared, and then it can offer you relief and keep you coming back for more and more. It’s no surprise that so many people are being radicalized online. Of course they are. It’s like turning the entropy dial on max and walking away. You’re just feeding everyone themselves over and over, more and more and more. Leftists get more left. Rightists get more right. Everything feels glib and unreal now. We are a people driven by image. I think we are broken fundamentally and trying to project an image of some kind of identity. Just like I’m doing by starting this stupid blog. Just like we all do with nearly every choice we make. Our perception of identity ultimately shapes our perception of reality as a whole. When that is broken, it’s like the whole world is broken. Don’t you feel like the world is broken? I know that most of the time, I sure do.
Barbarian Perspective 
