luka

Well-known member
Why not start a thread here and talk through one or other of the things you've been thinking about recently? everyone here is Broadly sympathetic towards you, even if, like John, they're a bit pissed off or confused or disappointed or whatever. We like drugs and symbols and occultism and trees and bushes and flowers and clouds. We don't think flowers belong to nazis. Why not have a fun and useful conversation instead of this strange show trial one which no one is really enjoying. You keep coming on here so why not join in properly? Have a laugh. Play along.
 

luka

Well-known member
New character new personality emerge from chrysalis no more wire reviews, freed from institutional enslavement, having a laugh with the lads, back and forth banter on the forum, explicating psychedelic overview visions of the pulsating cosmos. All the lads going, "we just treat her as one of the lads, sometimes we forget she is not an actual lad, well. to us she is a lad" totally accepted in the boys club.
 

Nina

Active member
I'm up for that luka - positive and beautiful and cosmic and whatnot. I'll maybe put together an opener after the meeting in park tomorrow when, whatever happens, which I'm sure will be nothing!, I want to move on, and even if people still keep trying to get me sacked or no-platformed or whatever I have to carry on and not get down about it all, and writing something with content rather than just trying to defend myself all the time is a much better idea for everyone heh
 

luka

Well-known member
Burgess Park Picnic Report please Nina. Ben Watson was threatening to go down with his band and soundtrack it but I think decided against it ultimately.
 

Nina

Active member
It was nice. Just a very few people, mainly women. I read a little statement and we had a little talk about talking and no-platforming. Then I went home. I've decided to get offline for a bit, just be outside and think and all that, but I really liked your idea luka. I think maybe in a few weeks I'll start a thread if I can get some thoughts together. I bascially am driving myself mad looking at stuff people are saying about me and it's getting too much so I've got rid of facebook and my website and I feel better already. I can't really care what people say about me on the internet anymore because it's upsetting and I can't respond to everything. If people want to keep using it to say stuff and get me removed from things I guess that's up to them but I just don't want to see it and I'll just deal with it when I get emails asking me about what people are saying or removing me from things. I just want to go outside and see people. I walk around and I just think 'where is all this stuff happening anyway? It's not really real and no one cares, and no one ever dies wishing they'd spent more time on the internet'.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yes well this what I was assuming. I wouldn't like it if everyone was digging into me either and im sure I would also be compelled to read every insult. What I like about the forum is we don't have to present fully formed ideas. We work together and of course we're not very clever or sophisticated but we pool resources and work together. It works very well for me. It's dialectical in the original sense. You can float something in a very tentative way and see if it sparks anything.

It's not like writing an article and trying to cover every angle. It's not the same kind pf responsibility. I think it's saner and more honest.
 

luka

Well-known member
What it gives you is a chance to float an idea or intuition without it having to be a definitive statement from Nina Power, trademarked and branded. It means you can say, I had this experience which suggested these things, I haven't thought through it but does it resonate with you lot? Can you work with it?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I think drugs outside occasional and disciplined use are a dead end these days (not that i am going to tell people not use them) but yes, what Luka said.

I also don't think it will always be this, i can see there being a time where drug use occurs frequently but in 2019 it feels wrong unless self-medicating. again only my opinion.

As for the internet, well... probably good to start a thread on that. Personally I'm not a fan of killing it mainly because it is essential to running global production successfully these days andd cutting out bureaucracy. but its existing social composition and who controls it certainly needs to be smashed.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
I've decided to get offline for a bit, just be outside and think and all that, but I really liked your idea luka. I think maybe in a few weeks I'll start a thread if I can get some thoughts together. I basically am driving myself mad looking at stuff people are saying about me and it's getting too much so I've got rid of facebook and my website and I feel better already. I can't really care what people say about me on the internet anymore because it's upsetting and I can't respond to everything
This is it. This should be an option. But it seems that the anonymous letter writes don't recognise this important rule (or guideline) and effectively . They are playing by internet rules and fucking up your actual non-internet jobs. However you feel about the details of what's going on surely any observer can see that one side of the argument (or a significant part of it) is not following the very simple rule of natural fair play. In fact more than that, it's not that they have accidentally crossed the line, they are very deliberately working their hardest to ensure that the rules don't apply here.
I feel quite angry about it. So sneaky and so much cowardice and bullying - while taking the moral high ground!
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
I noticed on who's online stelfox was composing a response to this but he thought better of it/bottled it. Either/or

File under "thought better of it". Bottling it would mean that I had something contentious to say. My only real takeaways from this whole fiasco are that I hate the internet and contemporary politics, and that the world of ideas isn't the best place to live in full time – it tends to go wrong quite often.
 

luka

Well-known member
File under "thought better of it". Bottling it would mean that I had something contentious to say. My only real takeaways from this whole fiasco are that I hate the internet and contemporary politics, and that the world of ideas isn't the best place to live in full time – it tends to go wrong quite often.

Hello Dave. I don't hate the Internet. The only place I am allowed to be as intelligent as I want to be is here. With my friends it is impossible. So this is a real lifeline. I owe a lot to the Internet. Like you I have a grudge against intellectuals. Partly because they make me feel inadequate but also All they seem to do is fall out with one another. But I don't hate the Internet.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Hello Dave. I don't hate the Internet. The only place I am allowed to be as intelligent as I want to be is here. With my friends it is impossible. So this is a real lifeline. I owe a lot to the Internet. Like you I have a grudge against intellectuals. Partly because they make me feel inadequate but also All they seem to do is fall out with one another. But I don't hate the Internet.

funny, I always just assumed you'd be the same in person as you are online. granted we're all probably a bit more of a character online where we have the luxury of crafting comments instead being on the spot in real time, etc.
 

luka

Well-known member
I am the same person of course but I can't talk about ideas or anything cos my mates are so dumb
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
Hello Dave. I don't hate the Internet. The only place I am allowed to be as intelligent as I want to be is here. With my friends it is impossible. So this is a real lifeline. I owe a lot to the Internet. Like you I have a grudge against intellectuals. Partly because they make me feel inadequate but also All they seem to do is fall out with one another. But I don't hate the Internet.

I don’t really have a grudge against intellectuals at all and am actually reasonably well grounded in theory. I’ve just always thought that people, in general, are smarter than a lot of us give them credit for and that if I can understand something, then there’s a fair chance that a hell of a lot of other people can, if it’s explained in the right terms. I remember Paul Morley talking about this once and it really struck a chord. I’ve always found journalism a more democratic form of analysis and idea transmission than academic work. Why explain concepts or give information to a closed circle of peers when you can get them out to loads more people? That said, you quite often need academics and nerds and obsessive nutters – Venn crossover very high for all these groups – to do a lot of the digging, in order to have the granular detail to reframe. So, yeah, no real antipathy here, just a different approach to things.

The thing that chafes me regarding both camps, though, is the rank egotism of believing yourself to be the person whose ideas need to be out there in the world - feeling that you deserve that attention and people to look to you for those explanations. It’s a horrible manifestation of neediness and something I was really bloody guilty of for a long, long time and am glad to have left behind. Given that I’m as bad as anyone else here, I can recognise strong elements of it in the woke left – which I largely don’t have any problem with – particularly online, and much, much more in alt-right provocateurs like Miller and weird, manipulative Pied Piper characters like Land. The former are generally people who want to create communities based around - sometimes quite proscriptive - ideas of what they believe to be right. The latter are abject narcissists in different ways. Miller just wants to be heard, regardless of where he has to go to achieve that end. Land just wants to lead, preferably into some fucked up singularitarian abyss, but it wouldn’t matter where really. A lot of people were surprised by his shift into techno-capitalist eugenics and all that shit, but I and quite a few others weren’t because it was all written out from the start.

I honestly don’t give a toss about either of them on a personal level. I’m against them and everything they represent and couldn’t care a flying what their pathologies are or what brought them to where they are. Nina - who I’ve recently exchanged emails with - and was always very fond of, I’m actually quite upset about. I’ve seen people headed down unpleasant political paths before and it’s often quite a rapid descent. That’s largely because it generally involves people who live in their heads and need to be part of a community of thought, so once that idea of self and the validity of one’s own ideas - which are, and particularly in these cases, everything that a person is - are under attack, they often tend to double down and stick by the people that offer that validation and sense of community. You can almost hardly blame them for it, given the circumstances. But for the fact that you actually can, because it’s all about choices. Still, it’s a difficult trajectory to change and I get that.

Anyway, this is not really going anywhere, so I’m just going to sign this off to Nina, rather than anyone else here, and say that I’m too fucking old to cancel anyone when there’s a chance of getting them back, that there are better people to hang out with and talk to, better ideas to discuss, better ways to emerge from uncomfortable situations that you’ve made for yourself than chucking everything away. Some of those better people might even be here. Looking at you Eden and a few others.
 
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poetix

we murder to dissect
So I was reading this old (2013) account of an anti-fascist protest at a Death In June concert, which includes extensive quotations from DIJ's Douglas Pearce in which he complains about the dilution of EUROPA's breeding stock by swarthy foreigners and incontinently-breeding povvos, bigs up European colonialism as a civilising force, extols the symbolic resonance of the Totenkopf symbol and waxes lyrical about how wonderful it is that there are still a few old Nazis banging around that you can have a good old reminisce with. All pretty compelling evidence that the guy's not just dicking around with far-right themes and symbols for the lulz, he's actually pretty emotionally and ideologically committed to racism, eugenicism, mystical nationalism and that death-culty warrior ethos bollocks that milquetoast Nazis are always so entranced by. None of which ought to be news to anyone who's actually listened to the music, but never underestimate the power of denial I guess.

Anyway, I read on to the comments, which of course are full of DIJ fans going "how dare you authoritarian zealots try to suppress our free artistic expression! Imagine thinking it's a good use of your time to picket a concert by a folk band! DIJ have never hurt anyone, they're just exploring the darker side of human nature! Your the real fascists!" etc etc, and I had an eerie sense of having fallen into a wrinkle in time.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
So I was reading this old (2013) account of an anti-fascist protest at a Death In June concert, which includes extensive quotations from DIJ's Douglas Pearce in which he complains about the dilution of EUROPA's breeding stock by swarthy foreigners and incontinently-breeding povvos, bigs up European colonialism as a civilising force, extols the symbolic resonance of the Totenkopf symbol and waxes lyrical about how wonderful it is that there are still a few old Nazis banging around that you can have a good old reminisce with. All pretty compelling evidence that the guy's not just dicking around with far-right themes and symbols for the lulz, he's actually pretty emotionally and ideologically committed to racism, eugenicism, mystical nationalism and that death-culty warrior ethos bollocks that milquetoast Nazis are always so entranced by. None of which ought to be news to anyone who's actually listened to the music, but never underestimate the power of denial I guess.

Anyway, I read on to the comments, which of course are full of DIJ fans going "how dare you authoritarian zealots try to suppress our free artistic expression! Imagine thinking it's a good use of your time to picket a concert by a folk band! DIJ have never hurt anyone, they're just exploring the darker side of human nature! Your the real fascists!" etc etc, and I had an eerie sense of having fallen into a wrinkle in time.

Yes the persistence of this stuff amazes me.

There was a time when the ambiguity used by outfits like this gave them some leeway, but I really think there is enough information out there now for everyone to make up their own minds. And most people have made the right choice.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Other life asked me to post this here. Said it would be relevant

My son Oli (who originally played Mario 64 aged around 7 in around 2007, on an N64 emulator on my PC) says:

There was a point where basically any 3D game world was intriguing
Because it had that level of depth that 2D games did not, and it was easier to envision them as real, and interconnected
So like
In Mario 64
I spent ages trying to climb up the sides of levels
Because there had to be something on the other side
Why wouldn't there be?
The mechanic of having paintings you jump in that take you to other worlds was genius
But also frustrating for me
Why couldn't I just somersault my way there? That'd be more fun anyway
The other thing with that game
Most levels have some grounding in reality
Like
No bottomless pits
Or infinite voids
But the levels inside the castle
Like the slides
Or the pre-bowser challenges
Well they were basically set in purgatory or some shit
And that was terrifying
I imagined Mario falling through this infinite void forever
Because I missed a jump
Shit is scary when you try and apply that kind of logic to it
 
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