debunking the "all-natural” industry
dated 27/03/2025
by now, you’ve heard the warning: “don’t eat that, it has chemicals in it” or “that medicine is dangerous—it’s full of chemicals”. this is bullshit.
first, let’s establish the obvious: everything is made of chemicals. the oxygen you breathe, the water you drink, the organic apples you pay extra for—they all have chemicals. the claim that something is “chemical-free” is literally and factually incorrect. water contains dihydrogen monoxide (h₂o). apples contain a mix of fructose (c₆h₁₂o₆), malic acid (c₄h₆o₅), and a host of other compounds. even the human body itself is a biochemical melting pot of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates, and yet the term “chemical” has been culturally hijacked to mean “artificial” or “toxic,” while “natural” is romanticized as pure, safe, and superior, despite the fact that cyanide, arsenic and hemlock are all natural. nature is not your protector—it’s just biology. this fear-mongering has been carefully cultivated by industries that profit from said fear—alternative medicine, the organic food lobby, the booming wellness market that sells you “chemical-free” shampoo at a 300% markup, detox teas, essential oils and homeopathic remedies—these industries have invested millions into convincing consumers to reject scientifically vetted medicines and treatments in favor of unproven, and frankly useless, alternatives.
the distinction between “natural” and “synthetic” is, chemically speaking, meaningless. the molecules in an apple do not magically become more dangerous if they are synthesized in a lab. vitamin c (ascorbic acid) is the same compound whether it’s extracted from an orange or manufactured. the body doesn’t care about the origin—it only cares about the structure and function of the molecule. once you reach the molecular level, it does not matter where a molecule comes from. a molecule is defined by its atomic structure, not its source.
part 1: medicine
there are three major reasons why scientists synthesize drugs in a lab rather than extracting them directly from nature:
1. purity and consistency. a lab environment ensures that every dose of a drug is chemically identical. when relying on plant extraction, you get variability in potency due to environmental factors (a medicinal plant grown in one region may have different chemical concentrations than the same plant grown elsewhere).
2. sustainability and scalability. some natural compounds are incredibly rare. paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug, was originally extracted from the pacific yew tree, but yew trees grow slowly, and harvesting them for medicine is environmentally unsustainable. today, paclitaxel is synthesized in labs, making it widely available without harming ecosystems.
3. improvement and safety. modifying natural compounds often makes them safer or more effective. many plant-derived compounds contain toxic impurities that need to be removed before they can be used in medicine.
for centuries, people chewed on willow bark to relieve pain and fever. the active ingredient in willow bark is salicin, a compound that, once ingested, is metabolized into salicylic acid, the true pain-relieving agent. however, consuming raw willow bark or even crude salicylic acid extract has severe downsides—causing intense stomach irritation and bleeding. in 1897, chemists discovered that by slightly modifying the molecular structure of salicylic acid—specifically, by adding an acetyl group—they could create acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin). this new compound retained the pain-relieving properties but significantly reduced stomach irritation. this is how aspirin became the first widely used “synthetic” drug, i use quotation marks because aspirin is a chemical derivative of a natural compound, and that modification made it better and safer. the body processes aspirin the same way it processes salicin from willow bark—it doesn’t “know” or “care” where it came from. it may be chemically distinct from raw salicin, but that distinction is an advantage, not a flaw. synthetic does not mean “bad” or “unnatural”; in these cases it means improved, optimized, and more accessible.
another perfect example is penicillin. discovered by alexander fleming in 1928, penicillin is an antibiotic derived from the penicillium mold. initially, scientists extracted it directly from mold cultures, but this method was inefficient as it took enormous amounts of mold to produce tiny quantities of the drug. by the 1940s however, chemists had learned to synthesize penicillin in a lab, meaning they could produce it reliably, in large quantities, and in a purified form. the final product—the penicillin molecule—was identical to what the mold naturally produced. meaning, if you take lab-made penicillin, you are consuming exactly the same molecule that the mold produces. the only difference is that lab synthesis allows for controlled, large-scale production instead of relying on unpredictable natural processes.
part 2: food
now let’s talk about food by defining the battlefield. what exactly is a “chemical-free” food? nothing. it doesn’t exist. the spinach in your salad contains oxalates, which can contribute to kidney stones. the almonds in your “all-natural” snack bar contain amygdalin, which breaks down into cyanide. meanwhile, the scary-sounding preservative in your bread, calcium propionate, is there to stop mold from growing and poisoning you with mycotoxins.
food processing
let’s get one thing clear from the jump: ultra-processed junk designed for maximum addiction and minimum nutrition is garbage. the artificially engineered “cheese” in neon orange powder form? trash. the corn syrup-laden sludge passed off as breakfast? a tragedy. the chemical cocktail of hydrogenated oils and stabilizers that ensure cheap will outlast humanity? disgusting. but not all processing is bad. fermentation is processing—without it, you wouldn’t have yogurt, beer, sourdough, or kimchi. pasteurization is processing—it prevents milk from turning into a bacterial bioweapon. even slicing and freezing are forms of processing. yet, you don’t see anyone refusing to eat frozen blueberries because they’re not “raw” enough. the issue isn’t processing itself; it’s how and why food is processed. consider white bread vs. whole grain. white bread is stripped of fiber and nutrients, bleached for a pristine aesthetic, and pumped with stabilizers to survive on shelves for weeks. whole grain bread, on the other hand, retains fiber, micronutrients, and actually provides sustenance. both are “processed”, one is just significantly worse. the same goes for meat. a fresh steak? great. a hot dog made from mechanically separated animal scraps, nitrates, and enough salt to dehydrate a camel? a different story. processing is a tool—it can be used for good (increasing food safety, preserving nutrients) or bad (turning food into an addictive, nutrient-deficient product that fuels obesity and disease).
artificial sweeteners
aspartame, sucralose, saccharin—every few years, one of these gets dragged through the media cycle as the latest cancer-causing, metabolism-wrecking horror. actual scientific reviews, including those from the FDA, EFSA, and WHO, have found that these sweeteners, when consumed in reasonable amounts, are safe. meanwhile, sugar—the real metabolic wrecking ball—is consumed without question, even as obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disorders skyrocket. if artificial sweeteners were half as dangerous as some claim, diet soda drinkers should be dropping like flies. they aren’t. what’s actually killing people? excess sugar consumption. yet, people will fear aspartame in a diet soda while drinking a 50g sugar-loaded “natural” smoothie.
“natural”, “clean”, “chemical-free”, etc.
the same industries that demonize “chemicals” and “processed food” are selling you their own version of it—just with better branding. an $8 bottle of “all-natural” juice is still full of sugar, just without the scary-sounding additives. a $12 detox tea is a useless diuretic that makes you pee more, doing nothing to “cleanse” your body (because that’s what your liver and kidneys already do). a $20 “organic, non-gmo, gluten-free” snack bar is essentially a sugar bomb with a premium label. the organic industry, worth over $480 billion, wants you to believe that its products are inherently superior. the truth is that organic farming still uses pesticides—they just have to come from “natural” sources, some of which, such as copper sulfate, are actually more toxic than synthetic alternatives, but you won’t hear that from the people selling you organic kale chips for triple the price. as for the argument that organic farming is better for the environment, it’s not. large-scale organic farms rely heavily on tilling—one of the most destructive agricultural practices for soil health and carbon emissions, and organic crops yield significantly less food per acre, meaning more land has to be cleared to grow the same amount.
part 3: the beauty industry
let's break down how this cycle works:
1. invent a problem. claim that a perfectly safe ingredient is dangerous.
2. offer the solution. sell an overpriced “clean” alternative.
3. use science-y language to sound credible. mention “toxins” and “hormone disruptors” without using any real evidence.
4. create an enemy. blame “big beauty” or “corporate chemicals” to make people feel like they’re rebelling by buying your product.
this will always work because the majority of people don’t fact-check these claims, or any popular mainstream claims for that matter. so let’s debunk some of the most commonly marketed bullshit:
1. patented formulas are meaningless. if a company patents a face cream that contains retinol, niacinamide, and some random plant extract, that patent doesn’t mean that this combination does anything special or revolutionary—it just means they were the first to file paperwork for it.
2. “clinically proven” is in fact, not clinically proven. what this really means is that the brand ran its own small, unregulated study on 10-20 people under purposefully controlled conditions, cherry-picked the results, and manipulated its data to make their product look good.
3. “medical grade” is a lie. there is no legal definition of “medical-grade” in skincare. any brand can call itself as such without proving anything. over-the-counter skincare is legally limited in potency, meaning it can’t sell prescription-strength ingredients without a doctor. these are profit-driven companies, not research labs.
4. “dermatologist recommended” claims are glorified sponsorships. this phrase is meant to make you believe a product is medically vetted, when in reality it means one singular dermatologist was paid off to endorse it. it’s a vague, unregulated marketing phrase with no verifiable data behind it.
5. “paraben-free” is not an advantage. parabens are some of the safest and most effective preservatives in cosmetics, and are used to prevent the growth of bacteria, mold, and fungi on products people put directly on their skin. the scare around them started when a single, flawed study claimed parabens were linked to breast cancer because they were found in breast tissue, but what the study didn’t mention was that there was no evidence proving that parabens caused the cancer. in fact, the amount of parabens found in the samples were so low that it was scientifically meaningless. but the damage had been done and companies rushed to replace parabens with other preservatives—many of which have worse safety profiles, such as phenoxyethanol, a known skin irritant, and sodium benzoate, which can form benzene (a carcinogen) when combined with vitamin c.
the beauty industry has succeeded at scaring people into rejecting “synthetic” skincare products in favor of essential oils, many of which are highly irritating, photosensitive (making skin more vulnerable to uv damage), or even toxic at high concentrations, such as tea tree oil (causes severe allergic reactions), lemon oil (makes your skin more prone to burns) and lavender oil (disrupts hormones in children when overused). but because these things come from plants, they get a free pass, while lab-engineered ingredients like niacinamide, retinoids, and ceramides—which are rigorously studied and scientifically proven to benefit skin—are treated like the devil.
conclusion
nature does not tailor its compounds for human health. science does. the “natural”, “organic”, “chemical-free” industry doesn’t want you to think critically, it wants you to panic, distrust experts, and spend more money on products that make you feel safe rather than actually being safe. so before you buy into the latest health scare or miracle cure, ask yourself—am i being informed, or am i being sold to?
a woman's right to choose
dated 17/03/2025
anti-abortion politics do not merely “ban abortion”, they fundamentally redefine what it means to be a person (or more accurately, a woman) under the law, because if you cannot control your own body—if the state has more authority over you than you do—then you are not a full citizen. you are property. abortion is not a negotiation. it is not a policy debate or a moral gray area. it is a fundamental right. no condition—economic, social, or medical—needs to be met for someone to deserve the ability to control their own body. that is not up for debate and it is not up for legislation. the pro-life movement dresses abortion up in morality, calling it “saving babies” and “protecting life”, but at its core, it is about one thing and one thing only: power. it has never been about life, it has always been about control.
pro-life activists claim to care about life, but they do not fight for universal healthcare, maternal care, or child welfare. they do not advocate for contraception, comprehensive sex education, or financial support for parents. they will celebrate the criminalization of abortion even when it leads to women dying in hospitals, being imprisoned for miscarriages, or seeking care from back-alley butchers. if they truly cared about reducing abortions, they would be the loudest advocates for:
how to outsmart the rat race
dated 10/03/2025
so, you’ve decided to take the healthiest approach to corporate survival: complete emotional detachment. good. work is not your identity, it is a place where you exchange labor for money, and nothing more. true disengagement is an art—too obvious, and you’ll get called out; too subtle, and you’ll accidentally find yourself caring. so here’s some of the shit i’ve learned in the workforce over the last seven years:
1.) never eat the complimentary snacks
this is your first test. every office has them: the tray of muffins by the coffee machine, the free bagels in the breakroom, the candy dish on your manager’s desk. it all seems innocent enough, but in the animal kingdom, eating is one of the most vulnerable states a creature can be in. lions don’t hunt when they’re full. deer get snatched mid-chew. when you take that “complimentary” granola bar, you’re signaling two things: 1.) you accept the corporate ecosystem as your new home, and 2.) you now owe someone something. food is bribery. it creates obligation. it creates loyalty. even worse, indulging in the homemade cake your coworker brought in or the freshly baked cookies opens the avenue to conversation. now, not only are you complicit in the office snack trade, but you’ve also entered a slow burn of social debt. once you’ve accepted their food, you’re on the hook. you’ll soon be expected to offer the infamous “just a little something” from the bakery and be condemned to suffer through forced camaraderie with the person who witnessed you devouring their bait.
2.) never leave later than 5:00 on the dot
at 4:59 pm, you should already be in the mental loading screen for exiting. never wait for someone else to leave first (they are cowards, you are not). your bag should be packed, your tabs should be closing and your body should be angled ever so slightly toward the exit. by 5:00 pm, your chair should already be swiveling from the force of your departure and by 5:01, you should be physically gone, or at the very least logging out with the efficiency of someone disarming a bomb. no slow shuffling, no guilty glances. if someone tries to stop you with a “quick question,” do not take the bait. nod vaguely, keep walking, say “let’s talk tomorrow.” most importantly, never apologize for leaving “on time”. your time belongs to you. act like it.
3.) never use the enthusiastic exclamation point more than once per email
this is a balancing act. the corporate email exclamation point is a fragile, high-risk tool—wield it carelessly, and you lose all control. one (!) signals warmth, approachability, a human touch. two (!!) marks you as overeager and desperate to please. three, (!!!) and you are no longer a professional but a rabid golden retriever. once you establish yourself as a multi-exclamation-point emailer, people expect it from you. and when the day comes that you send a deadpan “thanks.” without fanfare, people will start to speculate. are they mad? are they quitting? did something happen? beyond that, they’ll approach you and ask how you’re doing. this is an emotional tether, cut it off at the source.
4.) never get too good at a useless task
there are two kinds of work: 1.) the work that gets you promoted, and 2.) the work that you get stuck doing forever. if you accidentally reveal that you’re exceptionally good at formatting powerpoints, congratulations—you are now the powerpoint person. you will not be promoted for this skill, you will not be rewarded for this skill, you will simply be expected to do it forever. this is how corporate feudalism works. if you show talent for something unimportant but convenient, that is now your thing. the solution? do it well enough but not so well that it becomes your identity. rotate mistakes. send the wrong version. format it in a way that makes people slightly uneasy. sigh heavily while doing it. let the moment stretch until someone else, some eager fool, offers to take it over. this is how you win.
5.) never write smiley faces on post-its
post-it notes are for transactional communication only. the moment you add a smiley face (or god forbid, an exclamation point, refer to above) you have compromised your position. you are signaling friendliness. you are signaling openness to further conversation. an acceptable post-it note reads as follows: “fyi: [insert client name] called at 2:00, request for call back.”
an unacceptable post-it note reads as follows: “hey! :) just wanted to let you know [insert client name] called! no worries, i told them you’d follow up! :D”. the first note establishes boundaries. it is a dead end. the second invites engagement. it encourages a response. it suggests you are the kind of person who can be approached at any time for anything. soon, people will be stopping by your desk “just to chat”. they will linger. they will ask about your weekend plans. they will start asking you for favors. the solution? keep post-it notes cold, precise, and to the point. no greetings. no sign-offs. no personality.
6.) never use custom emojis or gifs
emojis are a slippery slope. the moment you drop a :dancingmonkey: in a thread, you’ve officially indicated that you’re “fun” and “engaged”. this will result in more people tagging you in non-work conversations, an increased expectation that you participate in “just for fun” channels and someone, at some point, assuming you care about team morale. stick to default reactions only—thumbs-up, checkmark, neutral face. above all else, never, under any circumstances, participate in the gif exchange. gifs are a sign you’ve abandoned any pretense of professionalism and a quick road to the darkest recesses of corporate small talk. what might’ve started as an innocent exchange inevitably escalates into a flood of animated nonsense. stay out of it. save your energy for real work—or at least the appearance of it.
7.) never offer to “grab something” when you’re getting coffee
the phrase, “hey, i’m grabbing [insert drink of choice here]—anyone want anything?” will ruin you. you have volunteered yourself for servitude, low-level obligation and most importantly, rapport. this means you’ll field questions about everything from weekend plans to whether oat milk is just a “fad” or “actually good”. that innocent gesture has now branded you as a social entity. and if you don’t offer? well, you’ve just made it clear you’re too good for a simple, mutually agreed-upon office transaction, and now you're the person who’s “too busy” for a quick favor.
8.) never volunteer to take notes in a meeting
the note-taker is the weakest link of the meeting. they are now responsible for organizing everyone else’s thoughts and following up on things nobody will take responsibility for. it is unpaid clerical work disguised as “helping out”—and you’re especially at risk if you're a woman. women are expected to take on such tasks—scheduling meetings, taking notes, managing office supplies—that don't lead to promotions, salary increases, or recognition, and only ensure that the office keeps running while everyone else focuses on the “real” work. you are not a volunteer, you are an employee with a defined role. in the event you’re asked to do so, inquire on the formal process—what format is required, who to send the minutes to, etc.
9.) never have “your” desk decorated
a desk is a workspace, not a personal shrine. it exists to serve work, not your ego. most importantly, it is not yours. when you inevitably put in your resignation notice that desk will soon be occupied by the next faceless drone. adding photos, plants, or little trinkets tells the world that you’re settled in, complacent even. once your desk starts to resemble a living room, it’s too late, and you’ve invited others to get comfortable around you. a bare desk is an invisible boundary. it says, “i am here for the work, and nothing else”. keep it functional, sterile, and free of any markers of personal investment. if you were fired today, you should be able to clean out your desk in under 30 seconds.
10.) never make eye contact with someone who looks like they need help
you know the look: wide-eyed, confused, helpless. if god forbid you make eye contact, you will become their lifeline. they will come to you when they can’t log in to their computer, they will ask you how to print on company paper, they will drag you into the kitchen to show them how the coffee machine works. the acceptable response to somebody aimlessly wandering around the office is avoidance, the unacceptable response is any sort of recognition. angle your chair away from open spaces, walk with purpose even if you’re going nowhere. if someone enters your department and starts asking questions, do not acknowledge them. unless they’ve called your name, they are not addressing you. if they approach you directly, state that you’re busy and will get back to them when you’re available. make it clear that you’re completely off-limits.
11.) never start a work email with “sorry for the delay”
apologizing for taking time to respond sends the message that you are on their schedule, that you owe them an expedited response, and that their time is more important than yours. the moment you apologize, you imply you should have responded faster. you should not have. you are not on anyone’s timeline but your own. responding at a pace that suits you is not a sign of inefficiency, but of control over your time and workload. apologizing signals that you’ve conceded to an expectation that shouldn't exist in the first place. your time is valuable, and the speed at which you work is not dictated by someone else’s urgency.
12.) never rsvp “yes” to an optional work event more than once a year
“optional” work events (which, let’s be real, are not optional) are a subtle power play. decline too many and you’ll be punished for it in one way or another—whether through exclusion from key projects, unspoken judgment, or being labeled as “a bad sport”. attending once a year however, positions you as cooperative and a team-player. anything more than that and you’ve set a precedent. your absence will be noticed, and your “commitment” will be questioned. nothing says company loyalty like volunteering to events that exist purely to make managers look good and foster the illusion of fun. attend once, show you’re game, and then keep your distance.
13.) never acknowledge when something breaks
do not, under any circumstance, bring attention to a malfunctioning printer, poor air conditioning or a flickering light in the conference room, do so and you’ll have volunteered yourself as the problem-solver, or at the very least, as the person who will follow-up on it. do not acknowledge the broken thing, do not even approach the area near the broken thing. no one will hold you accountable for things you haven’t pointed out. if someone else brings it up, give them a vague response. if pushed further, redirect to whoever is actually responsible for maintaining the space or equipment. the fewer problems you’re associated with, the fewer people will come to you when something inevitably breaks again. make no mistake—if you fix the printer, you will die next to that printer.
self-betrayal in women
dated 27/02/2025
there is no spectacle more exhaustively documented [yet endlessly repeated] than the cyclical return of beautiful, kind women to the soulless husks of men who neither respect nor deserve them. it’s a phenomenon at once predictable and inexplicable, an act of self-betrayal so thorough that it transcends mere personal misjudgment and enters the public domain of cultural affliction. so i’m saying something about it, & fuck everybody who judges me for it.
we’ve seen this play out in every conceivable form: the woman who justifies, who forgives, who explains away cruelty as complexity, who frames disregard as a challenge to overcome rather than a warning to be heeded. i have witnessed the rationalization of humiliation time & time again both in my personal life & outside of my own circles, and i’m tired of it. tired of hearing that it’s my place to stand by & to ‘let it happen,’ tired of the refrain that it’s not my role, not my right, not my responsibility to speak, to act. i am told by people constantly: ‘this is just how it is. this is the way of things’. but who is ‘it’? who defines ‘how it is’? what justification is there to keep perpetuating this abuse?
i refuse to accept this as ‘just how it is’. the narrative has been dictated for too long, and i am done listening to the hollow excuse that it is not my place to demand better. it is not my place to stand idly by, it is not my place to excuse injustice under the guise of understanding, and it is not my place to wait for a change that will never happen. because silence, in the face of cruelty, is complicity, and i refuse to be complicit in a lie.
this is the ideological residue of generations of social conditioning that have taught women that true love is earned through what they can withstand rather than what they deserve. the woman who stays is enacting a script older than any modern discourse on agency and autonomy, and yet there is no reward at the end of this endurance. no coronation, no triumphant reveal of a changed man, newly grateful, newly kind, newly aware of the depth of the love he has received.
and what of the men at the center of this cycle? they are not mysteries, not unknowable enigmas whose heartlessness is the result of some rare and ineffable pain. they are nothing if not the banal beneficiaries of a system that has told them, implicitly & explicitly, that they are entitled to the devotion of women regardless of what they give in return. they are neither fascinating nor complex; they are men who have never been required to be better. they are men who learn, through repetition and reward, that disrespect is not a deal-breaker, that apathy does not preclude loyalty, that they may be inconsistent, indifferent, even barbaric—and still be waited for, still be forgiven, still be welcomed back into the arms of the women they have not earned.
and so the ritual continues: she waits for change, he provides just enough illusion of it to keep her hopeful; she rationalizes, he offers no explanation; she forgives, he forgets.
post-literacy
dated 25/02/2025
the new generation is functionally illiterate.
illiteracy, in this form, is not the inability to read, but the inability to sustain thought. to be literate now is not to read, but to be seen as the kind of person who could read. books, as an object, persist; reading, as a practice, does not.
the post-literate generation consumes summaries instead of novels and analysis instead of primary text. the purpose of literacy now is not comprehension, but participation, they do not read so much as they process: scroll, highlight, bookmark, extract the quotable and repackage it for circulation. the more that they interact with text in these commodified forms—quotes, references, titles—the less they develop the faculties once associated with literacy: interpretation, critique, and the capacity for sustained argumentation.
recognition supplants comprehension, meaning that contemporary reading is no longer about understanding but about identifying familiar patterns or key phrases that signal meaning. instead of grappling with a text, people simply register its existence, align it with pre-existing knowledge, and move on. this is the difference between knowing of something and knowing it. post-literate people recognize a famous quote, a reference to a philosopher, or a book title, and that recognition alone feels like enough. comprehension takes time, effort, and intellectual discomfort. recognition, on the other hand, is instantaneous and more socially rewarding.
the internet person
dated 24/02/2025
inspired by ginevra davis’s ‘i don’t want to be an internet person’
the internet person calls itself a person, though it is not.
the internet person has no stable identity, no fixed self. it is not even a who, but a what—an amorphous, self-optimizing entity. it exists purely in relation to the internet and niche ideological markets that define its every articulation of self. it does not develop an identity but borrows one—meta-aware, reactive, infinitely modifiable, and always shifting to fit the latest memetic lexicon. the internet person does not think independently, does not experience privately, and does not exist in any meaningful way beyond their own network of reflections. it does not even feel emotions, but distributes them, distilled into the appropriate tonal package for its audience of choice, endlessly regenerated to fit the mood of the timeline.
in this manner, the internet person is incapable of experiencing anything that cannot be shared.
the internet person does not read books, it exploits its image as a means of self-definition. its perpetual backlog of literature, never to be read, is repurposed into an archive of cultural capital it will never engage with in any substantive way, but with which it continually signals as proof of its sophistication. the so-called "coquette" with a half-read lolita on its nightstand does not seek to understand nabokov—it seeks to cultivate a persona of romantic, forbidden allure. the "doomer" that selectively references parts of crime and punishment for their out-of-context profundity is not genuinely grappling with dostoevsky’s confrontation with moral absolustim; it is shaping an aesthetic of existential anguish, a nihilistic stance that presents itself as a tragic, misunderstood intellectual.
the internet person does not watch movies, it indexes opinions and regurgitates its tropes. american psycho becomes less a study of capitalist excess and moral decay, and more a source of raw material for the "sigma male’s" carefully cultivated image. the obsessive attention to bateman’s pristine appearance, his unyielding detachment, and his manicured brutality are not analyzed—they are absorbed, dissected, and then reassembled. the critique of the emptiness that underpins bateman’s life is lost to it. similarly, the "unraveled femme" does not seek to understand the psychological depths of nina sayers’ descent into madness in black swan. it is not interested in the complexities of obsession, perfection, and identity collapse. instead, it harvests the surface, seeking only the external markers, the visual signifiers that can be paraded across its network.
the internet person loves to believe it is radical, but only in a way that does not threaten its own participation in the system. politics are not about action, but an aesthetic choice, digital posture and brand. the internet person does not go on strike or organize, it argues. it constructs elaborate theoretical justifications for why real-world activism is misguided, counterproductive, or insufficiently sophisticated. its political identity is defined by trivial takes and its radicalism exists only within the confines of the internet, which ensures that its dissent is always recycled back where it can be measured, monetized, and ultimately, neutralized. it does not consume for mere hedonistic pleasure, but for positioning. it does not articulate ideas for meaning; it articulates them for placement within a discourse economy.
the internet person believes itself to be free, yet is under the dominion of the very form of control it insists has no hold over it. unlike the industrial worker, who toils under the factory bell, the internet person toils under the soft coercion of interactivity. the apparatus does not demand its labor—it makes its being indistinguishable from it. the internet person cannot simply not engage, not because it is physically prevented, but because to disengage is to suffer a form of death. if the factory worker’s exploitation was material (the extraction of surplus labor), the internet person’s exploitation is metaphysical (the extraction of identity itself).
under traditional capitalism, labor and leisure were at least formally distinct. the proletariat sold their time and kept their interiority. the internet person, however, does not even possess an interiority to withhold. its leisure is indistinguishable from its labor, its self-hood from its production, its interactions from its commodification. the internet person considers itself liberated, yet it obeys the logic of the system more fervently than any fordist assembly-line worker. where the factory boss extracted labor through coercion, the network extracts being through seduction. there is no longer a distinction between work and non-work. the internet person is always working on itself, not in the sense of self-improvement, but in the sense of cultural refinement. every status update, aesthetic pivot, and ideological tweak is an adjustment to market conditions.
it is no longer that one works to live, nor even that one lives to work, but that living is working. the internet person, caught in the infinite recursion of self-optimization, the internet person exists only insofar as it can be ranked and resurfaced. it is no accident that the internet person thrives on irony, sarcasm, and self-referentiality—as these are the only viable defenses against the existential horror of its own dissolution. the internet person floats in a state of detached knowingness, too busy posturing to ever commit to anything of substance.
neoliberal capitalism maintains its hegemony not through overt coercion or direct repression but by structuring reality in such a way that the possibility of alternatives becomes inconceivable. as mark fisher notes in capitalist realism, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism". capitalism thus extends its dominion not only over the mechanisms of production but over the horizons of our collective imagination. the idea of a system outside of capitalism is not just rejected, but is rendered utterly unimaginable. as fisher emphasizes, “the problem is not so much that the system is unstable but that it is now so pervasive, so all-encompassing, that it has become the only 'realistic' system". in this way, capitalism organizes our capacity to think about the future, to imagine what could be different, and in doing so, it stifles any substantial opposition. the internet achieves the same effect by creating a totalizing framework for existence. just as capitalist realism forecloses economic alternatives, the internet forecloses existential alternatives. to live outside the digital is not only impractical—it is increasingly unintelligible.
the internet person, despite its performative skepticism, fundamentally accepts this framework. it critiques the system, but always within the system. its “radicalism” is entirely epistemic—an endless churn of commentary, analysis, and reaction that never threatens to materialize into real-world action. it is trapped in an infinite deferral. its medium is discourse, and discourse is a closed loop. the more one engages, the less one acts. this is not accidental; this is the ideological function of engagement. the system does not need to repress dissent when it can simply circulate it—flattening resistance into another consumable object to be exhausted and discarded.
this is the defining paradox of the internet person: it understands, on some level, that it is trapped within a collapsing system, that the material conditions of its life are deteriorating, that its future is foreclosed. yet instead of translating this recognition into action, it transforms it into content. it posts about it, jokes about it, laments it with ironic detachment, turning real structural immiseration into something consumable. the internet person fetishizes the decay of social bonds, the erosion of public institutions, the ever-widening chasm of economic precarity, it perceives all of it as material for it to circulate, an affective style to be performed. the internet person might have a sophisticated understanding of power, of capital, of ideology—but this knowledge is purely inert. it does not guide it toward action, because action would require breaking from the structure that gives it its only real sense of self.
this is not just a psychological condition—it is a class position. the internet person is not the lumpenproletariat, nor the traditional working class, but something closer to the downwardly mobile digital bourgeoisie—educated, precarious, deeply alienated from productive labor, yet still fundamentally insulated from the material realities of true dispossession. its politics are accordingly hollow, it may posture as a revolutionary, but it does not organize. it may speak of systemic collapse, but it is not prepared to survive it. it is aware of its own complicity in the system it claims to despise, but this awareness only leads to deeper paralysis. it is too self-conscious to embrace ideology fully, too atomized to engage in collective struggle, too comfortable to risk anything real. it is trapped in a purgatory of knowing too much and doing too little.
the internet person’s final delusion is the belief that, somehow, the internet itself offers an escape. that if one just finds the right subculture, the right discourse, the right group, it can transcend the crushing reality of capitalist realism. but this is a fantasy. there is no underground left online—only markets. every radical community, dissident space and counter-cultural enclave is either already integrated into the system or awaiting inevitable capture. there is no secret discourse that will save it. there is no correct aesthetic of resistance. the internet person never truly desires revolution, because revolution would mean the obliteration of the conditions that sustain it. it needs the system, the engagement and the thing it claims to oppose, because without it, it is nothing.
untitled
dated 17/02/2025
the so-called “individual” is nothing more than an amalgamation of external inputs, half-digested ideologies, psychiatric labels, personality types & social trends calcified into their identities. psychiatry, therapy culture & pop psychology are all priesthoods of the New Age, glorified forms of social control galvanizing people into believing that being walking advertisements for whatever new diagnostic & its pharmaceutical successor are being pushed that year are achievements to be sought after. being handed a presumed diagnosis by so-called "professionals" gives credibility to their existence, and only then is it considered valid. what better way to pacify a population? produce identities, let the people consume them, adopt them, embody them, & in doing so reinforce the legitimacy of the system itself ad infinitum. humans crafted as much a product of societal engineering as the clothes on their backs or the food they eat.
compliance doesn't need to be forced through jackboots or thought police. it's the most efficient system ever devised because it doesn't require enforcement. it's self-replicating, like a virus. people infect each other with it repeating the same stock phrases, reinforcing the same narratives & reducing themselves to predictable units, & it's everywhere, parroting shit like "i'm an intp borderline type 4 schizoaffective eldest daughter with rejection-sensitive dysphoria" as if that isn't an elaborate way of saying, "heres a list of traits i was conditioned to recognize in myself based on the limited, prefabricated options available to me".
call it cynicism or arrogance or anything that lets people ignore the fact that theyre nothing more than human feedback loops. why does everybody choose to live this way? why does everybody hate & trap themselves in these mental prisons??? i'm always on the outside looking in, watching the herd shuffle forward convinced they're marching toward self discovery while being led to the next feeding trough
why i'm buying CDs again
dated 05/02/2025
the whole concept of streaming as “the future of music” is starting to feel like a really well-done con. the [western] world raves about how convenient it is but the price of that “convenience” is steep, and i’m not talking about the subscription fee.
when i buy a CD, it’s mine. forever. if i want to listen to it on a plane, in the car, on the couch, i can do just that. i don’t need to be connected to a server, i don’t need an app, and i certainly don’t need to worry about it suddenly being gone from my collection because of some corporate backroom deal [which i was sourly reminded of last week when searching for crown the empire’s ‘johnny ringo’ track, only to find it’s been yanked out of existence]. the music’s there, in my hands. i can put it on a shelf, leave it out to collect dust, lend it to a friend, or pass it down someday. it's a real, discrete interaction with the artifacts of culture.
the lords of silicon valley own everything, and you—serf, peasant, data-livestock—own nothing. you do not own your music, your movies, your photos, your words or even your memories. the death of physical media—and the rise of subscription models is not, as the corporate behemoths and their cheerleaders would have us believe, the dawn of a new age of progression toward a better, more efficient system. how convenient, we are told, to have instant access to an infinite world of content right at your fingertips. but how convenient is it, truly, when your access to any form of media is no longer tied to your autonomy but to the whims of faceless corporations whose interests lie in controlling not just your purchases, but your consumption patterns, your time, your attention, and yes, your thoughts? the proliferation of subscriptions, far from empowering the consumer, ensures their subjugation to an endless cycle of rental. we no longer possess the objects we claim to own; we rent access to them, as though our entire relationship with culture & memory is now contingent on an ongoing, unstable transaction.
this shift from ownership to subscription is not some benevolent gift bestowed upon us—it is a strategic move to extract more wealth from the public by disguising a financial model once known for its greed [renting] in the garb of convenience. this commodification of access has not freed us from the shackles of ownership—it has redefined ownership itself as something that exists only as long as you can afford to pay for it. physical media allowed individuals to, at least nominally, assert control over their possessions. the move toward subscription services, however, asserts control over everything—what we watch, when we watch it and how we interact with it. it’s not simply about content; it’s about the architecture of control. it narrows our access to knowledge, culture, and self-expression by consolidating it within the confines of subscription-based databases that tell us not what we need, but what we should need. & who decides what we "should" need? marketing experts and data analysts. endless, curated lists of what a service deems fit to offer—a paltry selection at best, heavily restricted by regional limitations, licensing agreements, and the politics of global conglomerates. we are consumers of data, and our consumption is mined, analyzed, and weaponized to ensure that our desires are perpetually nudged into predictable patterns.
this is why modern pop structures have become so aggressively streamlined. the first verse is short, the chorus comes in early, and the runtime barely scrapes past two minutes. anything longer risks losing the listener’s fleeting attention—or worse, getting skipped, tanking its ranking. music is no longer designed to unfold or build over time; it is engineered for maximum engagement in the shortest span possible. this system is fundamentally hostile to anything that requires patience. a sprawling concept album? a slow-burn seven-minute track? a cohesive body of work that demands start-to-finish listening? none of these things fit the model. it is no coincidence that the death of physical media has been accompanied by an ever-tightening grip of oligopolies, where the same few corporations dictate the nature of the cultural output you are allowed to consume. to consume culture is no longer a personal act of selection; it is, instead, a passive acceptance of the choices offered to you by corporate giants who determine what you can—and, just as importantly, what you cannot—access.
existence 2.0
dated 04/02/2025
once, the internet was a place you had to go to—a destination, a deliberate act, a conscious movement from one reality to another. to be “online” was to adopt a persona—you were a screen name, an avatar, a fragment of identity consciously chosen. you were either online or offline, the two states were distinct, separate, real. you did not exist there by default, and crucially, you could leave.
that internet is dead. its corpse has been picked clean, its bones ground into dust, and in its place, we have the great platforms: monolithic, soulless and inescapable—facebook, google, tiktok, instagram, amazon.the same five websites, dressed in different skins. it follows you, tracks you and anticipates your needs before you articulate them. the distinction between online and offline no longer exists because the network is omnipresent. it does not matter whether you are looking at it, it is looking at you, and like any colonial force, it does not ask permission before it takes. the internet has completed its final transformation not into a tool, not a place, but an atmosphere, ambient and all-encompassing. and if you exist within it, you are not a user. you are an input, a data point, a resource to be mined. when this shift occurred the goal was no longer to provide information or community or even entertainment, but to make every interaction legible to the machine—because once it is legible, it can be owned. and once owned, it can be controlled. google does not index the world’s knowledge; it structures it, narrows it and trims its unsanctioned edges. their search results do not yield information; they dictate the acceptable range of thought. when was the last time you read an article that was not pushed to you by a content recommendation engine, that was not prioritized for engagement, that was not shaped by the unholy trifecta of corporate profit, algorithmic manipulation, and ideological expedience? search results do not offer information; they present ideological boundaries. it is not just that the internet delivers knowledge differently—it is that it has rewritten the definition of knowledge itself. knowledge was once something you sought out. it required effort, engagement, the piecing together of fragments into something resembling truth. this act of searching has been replaced by passive consumption, a never-ending scroll that reduces curiosity to a mechanized reflex. to search is not to discover; it is to be given what has been deemed appropriate.
and that is exactly the goal. you do not need to burn books when you can ensure they never appear in the first place. you do not need to censor thought when you can preempt it. the illusion of information abundance masks the truth: that knowledge, too, has been enclosed and sold to the highest bidder. the promise of the internet was its capacity to decentralize knowledge and power. there was a belief that the tools for creation, information, and dialogue would be democratized, freely available to all who could connect. this has long since been supplanted by an architecture of extraction. extraction, of course, not just of data, but of agency, of culture and identity itself. it’s easy to blame the rise of these platforms on technological progression—the usual suspects, our most convenient scapegoats: the algorithms, the venture capital, the desire for scale. but the internet is not a passive space, an empty vessel awaiting the touch of corporate, it was and still is being actively shaped and nudged into form through intentional design. google, facebook, amazon, and other platforms weren’t inevitable, as much as they were engineered to function as massive, exploitative feedback loops. the path of least resistance has never been easier.
this is not the future we were promised. it is not even the future we were warned about. nonetheless, it’s the one we have. not because it was inevitable, but because no one stopped it.
on contemporary psychiatry...
dated 19/12/2024
modern discourse of mental illness serves only two masters: capitalism and pharmacology.
the word "disorder" itself carries an implicit judgment, suggesting deviation from a norm that’s as artificial as it is unattainable. what is the norm? is it blind compliance with a system that commodifies human labor, destroys communities, and erodes authenticity? is it an existence predicated on the relentless pursuit of productivity at the expense of human life? to feel despair in the face of such a system is not merely natural but necessary. it is the act of feeling that signals our humanity and yet, this humanity is rendered suspect and labeled dysfunctional.
the tautology at the heart of psychiatric discourse—that you’re depressed because you have depression, and you have depression because you’re depressed—exposes the hollowness of its own foundations. bravo. enlightening stuff. as if saying someone is drunk because they’ve been drinking explains anything. meanwhile, this empty-headed garbage parades itself around in the lab coat of “science". to conflate description with causation is to traffic in circular reasoning, and yet such sophistry is perpetuated through a scientific authority that operates solely on ideology, not fact. reducing depression to a "chemical imbalance" is a grotesque oversimplification, not to mention factually incorrect, and one that serves the interests of late capitalism all too well. this notion is not only propagated by the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, but also bolstered by the DSM-5—the diagnostic manual whose very existence is financially sustained by big pharma. it pathologizes “symptoms” (which is, in reality, a euphemism for “thoughts & emotions”) while leaving the disease—societal dysfunction—intact.
when we talk about mental illness, we assume that there’s a definite pathology, as there is in physical disease. you can look at the lungs of a lifelong smoker & see the inflammation of the airways, the thickening of the tissue, the scarring caused by repeated exposure to toxins. here one finds concrete evidence of cause and effect. there is no such evidence in mental illness. there are no physiological parameters to mental illness. it is, in this sense, a construct we’re applying, with no real measurement of it. suffering is scrutinized for signs of neurochemical aberration but not contextualized within the lived realities of the individual. the mind, in its inseparable relationship with existence itself, cannot be divorced from its environment. the language of psychiatry does not heal—it categorizes, catalogues, and neutralizes suffering until it’s stripped of its context and rendered another manageable statistic. by catagorizing human suffering into clinical labels—depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder—this guarantees a visit to a state-sanctioned expert and a routine stop at the pharmacy. the relief this promises is not one of healing but of subduing.
the only agenda of capitalism is the destruction of everything, even human life, so long as the economy thrives. it reduces individuals to economic units whose worth is measured by their productivity, it insists on a reality in which suffering is never understood as systemic but always personal, always the fault of the individual who is insufficiently strong, resilient, or well-adjusted, and the same reasoning is applied to suicide, supposedly another “free choice”. to seek within this society the means of repair is to fall into its trap.
in recent years, it has become almost compulsory to celebrate the proliferation of "mental health awareness," a phrase so nauseatingly self-congratulatory it should come with a trigger warning. we are assured, with no small amount of corporate-sponsored pageantry, that society has progressed and that stigma is being dismantled. what is paraded as awareness is, in fact, an orchestrated acquiescence to a narrative dictated by the industry that profits most handsomely from it. awareness implies understanding, yet what passes for understanding today is little more than the parroting of industry-approved slogans and the unquestioning acceptance of orthodoxy. the act of feeling itself has been medicalized; to experience sadness is to invite suspicion, to admit to grief is to elicit concern. happiness, once understood as fleeting and conditional, has now been commodified as the default state—an entitlement, even—and any failure to achieve it becomes evidence of personal defect. we are told not only that we are broken but that we were born broken.
such claims are more than falsehoods; they are ideological shackles.
whether through psychiatry, therapy, self-help, or the more palatable methods of “wellness,” we engage in an endless cycle of mental gymnastics, attempting to locate solutions within the confines of a system that is the root of our misery. they teach coping mechanisms, breathing exercises, reframing strategies—mental tools for surviving a world that ought not to be survived but changed. they may help you endure your nine-to-five existence, process your grief, or quiet your anxieties, but they cannot question the world itself. they cannot tell you that your despair is not yours alone but a collective, shared condition; that your sense of alienation is not an internal flaw but a logical response to a society that has eroded meaning at every turn.
what we require—what we deserve—is a new world. and it cannot be built from within the old one.
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