Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Look just shut up and get those battle station blueprints to the Rebels like you were supposed to.
The Empowered Nerd.
- Thread starter luka
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Look just shut up and get those battle station blueprints to the Rebels like you were supposed to.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n20/andrew-ohagan/whos-the-alpha-male-now-bitches
Someone, perhaps not a million miles from you, whose name we don’t yet know but whose face is camera-ready, whose conscience is clearing before the fact, is preparing a biography of his mentality in advance of a shooting massacre. He is almost certainly a he, and he is unhappy, and he is already fully armed. He is probably on Zoloft. He is likely to be a virgin with a history of isolation. He may be into hurting animals, or like Death Metal music, and there’s a strong chance he will have been said to have Asperger’s syndrome or ADHD. The movies he likes will tell a story about him and his displaced sense of self. There may be a girl who snubbed him. If he is older, it may be a boss who snubbed him but it’s more likely to be the whole of ‘society’. He may well be an expert in video games and have inscribed himself on a notional leaderboard, perhaps even taking up a role in life that mirrors a status he sees himself having in the game. He will write poems. He will watch porn. And there will be times when he doesn’t sleep for days, just drinking Coke, listening to music on his iPod and dreaming up scenarios based on the songs. He will hate jocks, the sometimes handsome and generally confident boys who snag the girls at school. Those he hates he hates with a vengeance. He might find girls disgusting. He believes he has a system of thought, his own, that education or company philosophy can’t get close to, and his feelings of inferiority quickly turn bombastic. He is lonely. And the biggest mistake he makes is to imagine there is nobody like him. Because quite a few are like him and some of them are already writing a long note to posterity.
The step from beta boy to Übermensch seems natural. One minute, Chris Harper-Mercer was bemoaning the fact that no girl liked him, that he was nobody and invisible and without status among his peers. The next minute he was telling a ‘lucky one’ that he could live while everybody else died. ‘I am God’ is code for ‘I am nobody.’ Anders Behring Breivik spent eight years preparing a manifesto of 1500 pages, an encyclopedia of wrongs. ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ sets out his hatred of Muslims, Marxists and multiculturalists, building a case for genocide, and reads like it’s torn from the pages of a novel by Don DeLillo. Breivik emailed it to a thousand people the morning he went out and bombed a government building in Oslo, killing eight, before travelling to a Workers’ Youth League summer camp on the island of Utøya, where he spent an hour and a half on a shooting spree that killed 69 people. He then surrendered. Breivik’s manifesto is so much a part of him that nothing can take him off-course. Afterwards, his only regret was that he didn’t kill more people and he feels certain that he will be hailed in the future as a great hero. He sees himself as a knight templar, a hero of the modern crusade, blond, green-eyed, tall, armour-plated, and ready to command legions in their fight to purify the world. For him, technology’s great purpose is to make possible a counter-jihad, and the internet, the West’s great contribution to the deepening of the collective soul, will enable this. ‘Optimally, you will send your announcements only seconds before you initiate the operation,’ he advises.
Someone, perhaps not a million miles from you, whose name we don’t yet know but whose face is camera-ready, whose conscience is clearing before the fact, is preparing a biography of his mentality in advance of a shooting massacre. He is almost certainly a he, and he is unhappy, and he is already fully armed. He is probably on Zoloft. He is likely to be a virgin with a history of isolation. He may be into hurting animals, or like Death Metal music, and there’s a strong chance he will have been said to have Asperger’s syndrome or ADHD. The movies he likes will tell a story about him and his displaced sense of self. There may be a girl who snubbed him. If he is older, it may be a boss who snubbed him but it’s more likely to be the whole of ‘society’. He may well be an expert in video games and have inscribed himself on a notional leaderboard, perhaps even taking up a role in life that mirrors a status he sees himself having in the game. He will write poems. He will watch porn. And there will be times when he doesn’t sleep for days, just drinking Coke, listening to music on his iPod and dreaming up scenarios based on the songs. He will hate jocks, the sometimes handsome and generally confident boys who snag the girls at school. Those he hates he hates with a vengeance. He might find girls disgusting. He believes he has a system of thought, his own, that education or company philosophy can’t get close to, and his feelings of inferiority quickly turn bombastic. He is lonely. And the biggest mistake he makes is to imagine there is nobody like him. Because quite a few are like him and some of them are already writing a long note to posterity.
The step from beta boy to Übermensch seems natural. One minute, Chris Harper-Mercer was bemoaning the fact that no girl liked him, that he was nobody and invisible and without status among his peers. The next minute he was telling a ‘lucky one’ that he could live while everybody else died. ‘I am God’ is code for ‘I am nobody.’ Anders Behring Breivik spent eight years preparing a manifesto of 1500 pages, an encyclopedia of wrongs. ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ sets out his hatred of Muslims, Marxists and multiculturalists, building a case for genocide, and reads like it’s torn from the pages of a novel by Don DeLillo. Breivik emailed it to a thousand people the morning he went out and bombed a government building in Oslo, killing eight, before travelling to a Workers’ Youth League summer camp on the island of Utøya, where he spent an hour and a half on a shooting spree that killed 69 people. He then surrendered. Breivik’s manifesto is so much a part of him that nothing can take him off-course. Afterwards, his only regret was that he didn’t kill more people and he feels certain that he will be hailed in the future as a great hero. He sees himself as a knight templar, a hero of the modern crusade, blond, green-eyed, tall, armour-plated, and ready to command legions in their fight to purify the world. For him, technology’s great purpose is to make possible a counter-jihad, and the internet, the West’s great contribution to the deepening of the collective soul, will enable this. ‘Optimally, you will send your announcements only seconds before you initiate the operation,’ he advises.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I think he's talking about them in the terms they see themselves in.
I don't think 'alpha' males are anywhere near as into this 'alpha/beta' stuff as men who perceive themselves as 'beta'.
Actually this piece on trolls is perhaps relevant here too
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n24/richard-seymour/schadenfreude-with-bite
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see these trolls with their ultra macho anti-women agendas as being athletic bully boys visiting 4chan inbetween visiting the gym and going to frat parties.
I don't think 'alpha' males are anywhere near as into this 'alpha/beta' stuff as men who perceive themselves as 'beta'.
Actually this piece on trolls is perhaps relevant here too
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n24/richard-seymour/schadenfreude-with-bite
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see these trolls with their ultra macho anti-women agendas as being athletic bully boys visiting 4chan inbetween visiting the gym and going to frat parties.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Er, I think that's exactly the point - the confident, buff guys are what the internet shut-ins wish they were, but aren't, and consequently despise.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Yeah that goes without saying (even though I said it).
What I think is interesting is that this beta/alpha stuff is really the obsession of the self-styled 'betas' (as of course it must be, since the alpha males aren't concerned with how to get girls when they're already getting them)
What I think is interesting is that this beta/alpha stuff is really the obsession of the self-styled 'betas' (as of course it must be, since the alpha males aren't concerned with how to get girls when they're already getting them)
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I thought "entitled nerd" got it pretty well. I've also heard "internet man-babies", particularly for the sub-class who act like they're the victims of Stalinist oppression if the latest edition of their favorite game franchise doesn't have bouncy enough tits in it.
you
Well-known member
This article runs very similar to Berardi's book Heroes. Tbh I do not like either's line. I think pointing to alienation, disenfranchisement etc are mis-leading. Most of these (white-men in more affluent countries) people's gripes seems to be that they are not allowed to be automatically dominant, respected and privileged. I think rather than focus on how they are not these things it is better to ask why people still feel they deserve to be these things.
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you
Well-known member
Berardi's examination of Breivik's writings mainly. Breivik sees most of the worlds problems as being connected to the demise of the traditional family and the 'feminization of men'. Essentially he wants a older world, I hear.
I do not know for sure how people feel. Let's get this obvious truism out the way. But, look at the cultural materials these people tend to be smothered by. Hollywood depictions of masculinity, sexist gamer culture and phallonarcissistic heavy rock coupled with the ruse of neo-liberal economics implying to them that they are unique individuals with every right to rise to the top and get the girl if only they try hard and listen to their heart. Much narrative is aimed at framing spree-killers as being somehow 'let down' or being 'alienated' but let down from what? What does this line of narrative assume these people are entitled to?
I do not know for sure how people feel. Let's get this obvious truism out the way. But, look at the cultural materials these people tend to be smothered by. Hollywood depictions of masculinity, sexist gamer culture and phallonarcissistic heavy rock coupled with the ruse of neo-liberal economics implying to them that they are unique individuals with every right to rise to the top and get the girl if only they try hard and listen to their heart. Much narrative is aimed at framing spree-killers as being somehow 'let down' or being 'alienated' but let down from what? What does this line of narrative assume these people are entitled to?
you
Well-known member
The personal foci of such narratives can easily lead to assumptions along the lines of seeing them as symptomatic of problems. I'd argue, that if this line has to be pursued then it ought to be regarded as symptomatic of more right-wing and conservative dogmas still existing. Alienated youths are not the casualties of liberalism, they are causalities of toxic social conservatism that still dominates all the softly insidious modes of influence (media yadadada...)
you
Well-known member
But, even with this last option of emphasis, I feel uncomfortable. I dislike the idea of the privileged (in global terms) being our highlights of the fall-out of either liberalism or neo-conservatism. The woes of anti-social white boys should be the last option for our canary in the cage.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
My thing with these shooters is that I can relate to them to quite a worrying extent. I was an awkward dorkward dickwad of a teenager myself, and I busied myself drawing muscular men with guns in my exercise books and vaguely admiring the Columbine killers for taking down the jocks. (The popular and long debunked narrative of Columbine.)
I never actually harboured fantasies of murdering anyone, of course, but I can relate to this idea of fantasising about prepotence when you're impotent. It's surely of note that a lot of geek culture is, in a sense, highly masculine and fixated on war? Warhammer, Call of Duty... Even Star Wars is full of heroic blokes carving each other up with laser swords. Death Metal has always seemed to me a generally benign outlet for frustrated aggression, and all the metal fans I've ever known have been singularly affable and peaceable fellas.
Not sure what being white and middle class has to do with this, but then I'd have been unaware of what that had to do with my identity generally at that age. Perhaps because it provided me with a different cultural framework for my fantasies?
Of course, back then the current vogue for alt-right/troll/men's rights stuff didn't exist, or at least I wasn't aware of it. Perhaps I'd have been sucked into that if I'd been more isolated? Instead I had 'rap battles' which were typed out on angelfire forums and video games.
I never actually harboured fantasies of murdering anyone, of course, but I can relate to this idea of fantasising about prepotence when you're impotent. It's surely of note that a lot of geek culture is, in a sense, highly masculine and fixated on war? Warhammer, Call of Duty... Even Star Wars is full of heroic blokes carving each other up with laser swords. Death Metal has always seemed to me a generally benign outlet for frustrated aggression, and all the metal fans I've ever known have been singularly affable and peaceable fellas.
Not sure what being white and middle class has to do with this, but then I'd have been unaware of what that had to do with my identity generally at that age. Perhaps because it provided me with a different cultural framework for my fantasies?
Of course, back then the current vogue for alt-right/troll/men's rights stuff didn't exist, or at least I wasn't aware of it. Perhaps I'd have been sucked into that if I'd been more isolated? Instead I had 'rap battles' which were typed out on angelfire forums and video games.
luka
Well-known member
Oh no I get it. I know this argument. It goes like this
Why are poor people in England always moaning. They got iPhone, sky TV, lager, skunk, air max. People in Ethiopia only eat one grain of rice a day and look at them, always happy and dancing and making the best of things.