Yo Adri!May 11

Reading this book on "occult memetics". Putting my rejection of the supernatural aside, there's good stuff in here.

The author seems to view culture similar to how (I think) structuralists do; that human ideas are the primary creator of culture, rather than environmental factors.

Show threadYo Adri!May 11
An important caveat: Richard dawkins's idea of memetics, that a meme is a unit of culture, is more of a metaphor than science. Dual inheritance theory is similar, and more scientifically studied. The author seems to have deference to dawkins's ideas.
Show threadYo Adri!

One of the pitfalls with people who are 1) not rich or powerful 2) believe they're enlightened or especially clever is it often contains very simplistic anti-establishment thinking.

This author tips his hand a bit towards this (a disdain for "globalism" and state/corporate sockpuppet accounts on social media without any specific references made). He's also got disdain for "anarcho-anything" though he concedes that decentralization is good for media distribution.

May 11 at 2:04amFedilab
Show threadYo Adri!May 11
The time period and slice of the internet (early 2010s armchair philosophy forums) that this book is inadvertently cataloguing is fascinating. Most of this book is actually about the internet, and this guy's attempts to manipulate a substance that seemed, even to me as a kid, to be dark magick; the sentiment of strangers online.
Show threadYo Adri!May 11
At around page 27/35, the author starts to speak about "synchronicity" which is a fancy way of saying "treating patterns in separated things as meaningful". The book starts to become tedious around here, but there's still some interesting shit.
Show threadYo Adri!May 11

He talks about his pet theory that the egyptian god kek was interfering with the 2016 election, which I'm nearly certain I saw floating around the internet at that time.

He speaks of Pepe the Frog as an Egregore, a spirit created by a group's thought about it.