What'd I miss?
There's a lot going on.
Sometimes in life, obstacles have a way of presenting themselves.
It happens, and unfortunately certain things have to be placed on the backburner (you know, like a niche anonymous Substack).
Good news is I’m back- and quite frankly, in a better position physically and psychologically than I’ve been in a long time. There’s few feelings more gratifying than grinding out hard times and being there when the sun comes out.
Attrition can be a beautiful thing.
TL;DR- I’m back, and I’ll be reaching out once a week from here on out.
So….what’d I miss?
Let’s take a look…
Ah, yes. Let’s start off hot.
First of all, this is absolutely awesome.
Twitter is undoubtedly the modern day public square, and the levels of censorship and agenda-driven timeline alteration were simplying becoming too much to bear. This movement had reached critical mass with the “fact-checking” of COVID-19 related tweets, as well as banning and silencing of political opponents by Twitter’s brass. These trends hit overdrive when Twitter appointed it’s latest CEO, Parag Agrawal.
Agrawal was well on his way to continue to suffocate and stifle free speech and open discourse on the platform. His reign was not unlike Ellen Pao aka “Chairman Pao” (still one of the internet’s all time greatest nicknames) reign at Reddit in the mid 2010’s.
That’s where our hero Elon comes in. A massive 44 Billion with a B dollar bid to take over one of the world’s biggest platforms, with a plan to open up the channels of open public discourse and free speech once again.
Naturally, this was met with vehement opposition from authoritarian Progressives who have no interest in open discourse and debate. This direct threat to their deathgrip on the cultural narrative sent many people from the “pronouns in bio” camp into the stratosphere.
It was “If Trump wins, I’m moving to Canada!!” all over again.
(By the way, why did they all pick Canada when they said that, not Mexico? Isn’t that kind of actually racist?)
Lastly, another bonus to this development is that gauging a person’s reaction to this is a great way to “take their temperature” and have insight into their character (or lack thereof). The fact of the matter is, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a giant step in the right direction, but it isn’t some sort of conservative uprising. It will simply make the digital arena of public thought a level playing field. If people are so scared of a fair game, what does that say about them?
Developments like these are a great way to make virtue-signaling energy vampires show their true colors.
All this Elon Musk talk makes me think of the DogeCoin craze, and crypto as a whole.
Let’s see how that’s going.
Oh boy.
This is all a direct result of the Luna fiasco from a few days ago.
There’s a lot to analyze here (I’m never ever ever going to use “unpack”, fwiw), so let’s break it down into a few points:
Crypto is still brand new on a grand scale. If you’ve spent any amount of time in any crypto-related corner of the internet, you’ve heard the term “it’s still early”- and it’s true. Cryptocurrency is still very much in the Wild West phase, and thus things like this will happen.
I was getting wary with the mass consumer adoption of crypto. There are many conspiracy theories abound regarding the Luna incident, many involving major financial instituions and global players. Whatever it may be, a lot of the marketing campaigns and consumerism around crypto flies directly in the face of origins of the movement, which centered upon anonymity and utility. Once legendary basketball arenas were being renamed “Crypto.com Arena” and crypto DEX commercials appeared during SportsCenter roping in the normies, I knew we were really headed in the wrong direction.
Incidents like these will separate the men from the boys, which is actually good longterm for those with a deep interest in crypto. There will less “diamond hands, omg to the Moon!!” culture, and more emphasis on token utility and use case overall. Rough moments are a call for ingenuity and innovation to dig yourself out- crypto will be just fine.
Last bit on crypto- I personally believe we were on track for this anyway, even without the Terra/Luna nuclear event. The top signals were there.
Just DCA into BTC, ETH and LINK and you’ll make it, bro.
Alright..the Twitter rebirth, crypto craziness..what else do we have?
How is everyone feeling out there?
I guess not so good?
Mental struggles are understandable, especially coming out of a lockdown/pandemic and all of the nonsense that came with it.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that this is probably the worst time in recorded human history to be messing around with any sort of recreational drugs.
Fentanyl is no joke- it’s in every city in America. Mock me if you want, but it’s definitely a good idea to keep the party favors on the shelf for the summer.
Speaking of summer, girls love the summer.
Let’s see how the fairer sex has been doing.
……….
Here’s the actual definition of “dissociative”:
Yes there’s nothing sexier or cooler than a facial expression associated with a reaction to a horrific life-altering experience. Nothing more chic than a soulless stare likened to a post-op patient of brain destruction surgery.
Young women are by far the strongest and most impressionable consumer class, and the sad truth is that this trend will continue to grow and reach.
Back in my day (I really sound so old) the girls had Paris Hilton to emulate- she was far from a role model, but hey, at least she smiled.
By the way, I’m in the mood to get myself into some trouble, so let’s do that.
Going back to the insane topic of “lobotomy chic”- a lobotomy was an old psychotherapy method that is considered cruel and unusual in modern medicine.
It was a surgery that would sever the connections of the prefrontal cortex in the brain. Lobotomies were used to “cure” severe mental illness. In reality, all the procedure did was completely dull the patient of all capacity for thought, independence, personality, and ability to feel emotion.
So, here’s where I’ll put myself in hot water-
Here’s a graphic of how to perform a lobotomy:
Hmm…this looks quite familiar, a lot like another frequent medical practice I’ve seen left and right the past couple of years..
“Yeah but a swab is way different from a full-on surgery bro, don’t be crazy!”
Never heard of death by a thousand cuts?
Well, I’ve already said too much. Time to close up Pandora’s Box.
Moving on!
Probably a good time to cop some new clothes for the summer. A lot of physical and outdoor activity as well as gym time on the horizon, so let’s check out one of my favorite brands, GymShark.
Oh jeez.
Ok, I’m gonna have to drop it.
**NSFW inbound**
(This is what my friends and I use in our group chats to give everyone a heads up)
Ok. Here it is.
I don’t even know what’s going on here.
I’d love to provide some context as to what GymShark and Adidas were going for, but I just couldn’t deal with another outrageous social campaign. I think it was something to do with covering women’s breasts being sexist or something like that? A bit of a backwards promotional campaign by two companies selling sports bras, not sure they thought that one through. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any of these women on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition any time soon.
By the way, that’s due to come out soon, no?
Let’s look into that, maybe it’ll provide some nice eye bleach after this debacle.
Or not.
Look, you can be holier-than-thou all you like, this woman isn’t healthy. She’s also certainly not how 99%+ of the population would envision a swimsuit model.
On one hand this is disheartening, on the other (I’m being totally serious here) at least it’s a biological woman on the cover.
You have to wonder if this is all part of a greater demoralization scheme, or perhaps some type of engineering of the youth, who weren’t around for the Kate Upton or Tyra Banks normal cover models. Either way, woof.
It’s times like these that I wonder, why not just drive far, far away into the woods somewhere totally random and become a soverign citizen?
Maybe I’ll pack up my stuff and drive a couple thousand miles away and begin anew.
Wait, what’s that?
Oh. Probably not the best financial decision.
There goes that idea, I guess I’m just going to have to stick around.
Finishing up, it seems as if things are crazier than ever across the board since we last spoke. Up is down, black is white, fat is healthy, nudity is totally ok, everything is racist and we’re technically still in a pandemic!
However, there is a silver lining: We’ll have plenty to talk about 😎
It’s going to be a hotttt summer.
Stay safe, stay sane, and don’t catch monkeypox (dw, we’ll be getting into that, too)
Talk soon.
-John
May ‘22