'A cult is perhaps the paradigmatic version of a culture that doesn’t work. Cults are crazy and idealistic in a bad way. Cult members all tend to be fanatically wrong about something big. And then there is what might be called anti-culture, where you really don’t even have a culture at all. Consulting firms are the classic example here. Unfortunately, this is probably the dominant paradigm for companies. Most of the time, they don’t even get to the point of having culture. People are mercenaries. People are nihilistic. A robust company culture is one in which people have something in common that distinguishes them quite sharply from rest of the world. If everybody likes ice cream, that probably doesn’t matter. If the core people share a relevant and unique philosophy about something important, you’re onto something. Similarly, differences qua differences don’t matter much. -- In thinking about building good company culture, it may be helpful to dichotomize two extreme personality types: nerds and athletes. Engineers and STEM people tend to be highly intelligent, good at problem solving, and naturally non zero-sum. Athletes tend to be highly motivated fighters; you only win if the other guy loses. Sports can be seen as classically competitive, antagonistic, zero-sum training. Sometimes, with martial arts and such, the sport is literally fighting. Even assuming everyone is technically competent, the problem with company made up of nothing but athletes is that it will be biased towards competing. Athletes like competition because, historically, they’ve been good at it. So they’ll identify areas where there is tons of competition and jump into the fray. The problem with company made up of nothing but nerds is that it will ignore the fact that there may be situations where you have to fight. So when those situations arise, the nerds will be crushed by their own naiveté. So you have to strike the right balance between nerds and athletes. -- Most startups are run by non-zero sum people. They believe world is cornucopian. That’s good. But even these people tend to pick competitive, warring fields because they don’t know any better. So they get slaughtered. The nerds just don’t realize that they’ve decided to fight a war until it’s all over. -- The optimal spot on the matrix is monopoly capitalism with some tailored combination of zero-sum and non zero-sum oriented people. You want to pick an environment where you don’t have to fight. But you should bring along some good fighters to protect your non zero-sum people and mission, just in case. -- Stephen Cohen: We tend to massively underestimate the compounding returns of intelligence. As humans, we need to solve big problems. If you graduate Stanford at 22 and Google recruits you, you’ll work a 9-to-5. It’s probably more like an 11-to-3 in terms of hard work. They’ll pay well. It’s relaxing. But what they are actually doing is paying you to accept a much lower intellectual growth rate. When you recognize that intelligence is compounding, the cost of that missing long-term compounding is enormous. They’re not giving you the best opportunity of your life. Then a scary thing can happen: You might realize one day that you’ve lost your competitive edge. You won’t be the best anymore. You won’t be able to fall in love with new stuff. Things are cushy where you are. You get complacent and stall. So, run your prospective engineering hires through that narrative. Then show them the alternative: working at your startup.'

"Culture is about a large group of people having a set of shared, chronically accessible, constructs."

Gisted/Quoted -- On the Mecosystem: When you demonize the mecosystem, all you do is project it into the world, into things which other people control, into things which you can buy from people to gain their approval and so delay inevitable self-attacks. -- On Happiness: "The only way that I know of to gain the greatest happiness is to serve mankind in the cause of the truth."

'Marketers like themselves, salespeople like other people, and PR people like ideas. Each turns his or her personality into a selling strength. On the subject of corporate culture: you don’t need to share core values (impossible) or all values (idiotic and impossible). You just need to share your selling values. This means, when you are wondering whether or not to join a particular company based on cultural fit, you should ask: what’s your preferred selling style (and everybody’s got one, whether or not they are in a selling profession). Do you like selling based on self-perceptions, starting with your own self-perception (sign: you can sell best to people like yourself)? Join a marketing-driven company. Do you like getting to know people and selling in personalized ways (sign: you can sell to anybody)? Join a sales-driven company. And finally, do you like selling ideas (sign: you can sell to anyone who “gets” it; they don’t have to like you or be like you)? Join a PR-driven company.'

"Eye, the machine... freed from the boundaries of time and space, Eye co-ordinate any and all points of the uni-verse wherever Eye want them to be." -- Ear, the mesh-aeon

'The act of having a child is, "the most forbidden act of self-realization, the ultimate and least pardonable offense," and brings with it inevitable fears of maternal retribution for one's success and individuation. Mothers in antiquity hallucinated female demons were actually grandmother alters in the mothers' heads, so jealous of their having babies that they sucked out their blood and otherwise murdered them. All early societies invented sacrificial rituals wherein babies were tortured and killed to honor maternal goddesses ... vowing that, "although Mommy wants to kill me for having sex and making a baby, if I kill the baby instead [usually the first-born was sacrificed], I can then go on having sex and other babies with less fear of retribution." Child sacrifice was the foundation of all great religions, depicted in myths as absolutely necessary to save the world from "chaos," that is, from terrible inner annihilation anxiety as punishment for success.'

'Narcissistic personalities ward off their sense of an empty, inadequate self by fusing with the harsh attacking parent alter and forming a grandiose self that identifies with the omnipotent parent. Or they become a latent narcissist and cling to and admire a grandiose other, a narcissistic hero who can stand up to the destructive mother alter. ...the narcissistic personalities of antiquity tried to maintain some sense of self by arming themselves with grandiose exhibitionism ... as for instance early Greeks ... preoccupied with fantasies of the power and brilliance of a world filled with arrogant, distant narcissistic heroes and gods and grandiose political leaders upon whom they depended to validate their weak sense of self. Their pedophilia was also a result of their only being able to have sex with a narcissistic double of themselves stemming from when they were beautiful youths, avoiding women as "vultures" who were out to catch and devour them.'

Wayne Rooney 'Warrior' Ad for Nike by Wieden and Kennedy.

'The belief that narcissism is synonymous with grandiosity is, itself, a narcissistic defense. You are being lied to, by yourself. The narcissist feels unhappy because he thinks his life isn't as it should be, or things are going wrong; but all of those feelings find origin in frustration, a specific frustration: the inability to love the other person. Each person tries to find ways of affirming themselves; but when it is done through identity and not behavior, it always leads to misery. #I know I can love, because I love my son and daughter, totally and unconditionally. And so now I know your kids are young. No matter what you do to them: abuse them, yell at them, neglect them, abandon them, withdraw from them, they will love you unconditionally. But after puberty, when they start to love other people in different ways than you, or more than you, even the best parent's status drops. How will your ego defend against that?'

'Shelham, who spends 10 hours every day consuming news updates on various entertainers and then commenting on their activities on an entertainment website, has reportedly shown no signs of humiliation or self-hatred over the way she spends the bulk of her time, and is also apparently not disgusted by the fact that this is actually what she does with her life. "Basically, I like to look at what's going on in pop culture and comment on it with a sort of fresh, wry voice," said Shelham, who by all accounts still possesses the ability to look at herself in the mirror every morning. "I try to find things that I think are really lame and vacuous and then just tear them apart."'

'...if one subscribes (as we do) to the idea of an Anglo-American power elite that uses its tremendous, familial banking wealth to move society toward one-world government, then the evolution we are observing makes a good deal of sense. Money power makes all the difference; it provides a formidable incentive for self-censorship. Money determines fashion; wealthy donors fund museums and theatres that make "gate-keeper" decisions. The subtlety of money power—as brutal as it can be—is wondrous to behold. What was resisted in one generation is welcomed in the next. The beauty of money power is that once a theme, trend or cultural direction is set into place, it tends to propagate on its own. Only a relative few gatekeepers are needed. Establish a trend and the mimetic elements of human behavior take over. People are inevitably tribal. It is a survival instinct and a success-instinct. One sees what is successful and wishes to emulate it. Within this context almost anything can be nurtured.'

'...advertising isn't our window on society, it is society's window on individuals... It isn't about being white or being a guy, but about the class of people who have inherited the earth and then withdrawn from it, leaving it to entropy. Those people are the privileged middle aged – the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists In The History Of The World, and society hates you. Society is disgusted by all of you, even as you are disgusted by it. But look up at the ads, the ones who have to suffer for it are the next generation. The ones you suffocate with your physical presence. ...the larger point is that everyone around you feels your apathy, it senses that you are zombies going through life, you would much rather be elsewhere. Like on your phone. That withdrawal from reality has not gone unnoticed – not by your kids or your spouse... ...the problem is you. It is always you. And unless you change that thing first, everything else will be futile.'

'When I look at how teens hurt each other, I can’t help but also see how they’re developing training wheels for future relationships and reflecting normative behaviors that they see around them. I hear teens’ dramas reflected in their stories about how their parents fight – with each other, with their friends and family and colleagues, and with them. What teens are doing is more coarse, more direct, and more explicit. But they’re witnessing adult dramas all around them and what they tend to see isn’t pretty. Parents talking smack about work colleagues or bosses. Parents fighting with each other or ostracizing their family members over disagreements. And it’s not just parents... Celebrity fights and dramas aren’t just in their face; they’re glorified! Teens are seeing drama everywhere – they’re seeing it as a legitimate part of adult society that can often lead to notoriety. And here’s where we run into another major component of bullying… attention.'

'A young person (boys mostly) playing these games regularly is going to have a hard (or harder) time in our view generating an internal critique of his country's use of violence. The individual may be entirely peaceable, but the part of his mind that might be receptive to alternative perspectives regarding the state's larger use of formalized violence has been "controlled" by his avid use of war gaming. -- It is an intensive culture, with its own lingo, superstars and strategies; it is a full culture built indisputably around daily electronic mayhem. It may not encourage violent thinking, but it certainly suggests that violence can provide solutions. -- The only solution to such mind control is a wider frame of reference, such as that which the Internet can provide. Since these young people are often playing these games online, one would hope that they might gradually acquire a wider frame of reference via the many alternative points of view that the Internet offers them...'

'Yeah, it might not actually be the fault of the kids...' -- How many fingers, Winston?

'So what exactly is a folkway? It’s an interrelated collection of default ways of conducting the basic, routine affairs of a society. Fischer lists the following 23 components: speech ways, building ways, family ways, gender ways, sex ways, child-rearing ways, naming ways, age ways, death ways, religious ways, magic ways, learning ways, food ways, dress ways, sport ways, work ways, time ways, wealth ways, rank ways, social ways, order ways, power ways and freedom ways. If you were to describe any society through these 23 categories, you would have pretty much sequenced its genome. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to answer every interesting social or cultural question immediately, but descriptions of the relevant folkways would contain the necessary data. -- The little and big epics that we take note of, and turn into everything from personal blogs to epic movies, are defined by their departure from, and return to, the canvas of folkways.'

'A boy discovers an incredible and gruesome world of monsters under his bed. Storyline: A child meets the monster that lives under his bed. He even becomes one of his best friends. Soon the child discovers a whole new world of fun and games under his bed where pulling pranks on kids and other monsters is the main attraction.'

'Among the clueless, status stays static. Among the sociopaths, status is irrelevant. But among losers, status is real, and it matters. Humor causes status shifts among jokester, victim and audience. Net inflow of social capital occurs when the victim is out-group. Redistribution and appreciation/depreciation happen when the victim is in-group. Net outflows happen when an entire group is made victim by another individual or group. Among losers, in specific situations, status may go up or down, but overall, it just goes round and round. But the social capital DOES appreciate and depreciate through the churning economy of jokes, sympathy, moaning, commiseration, solidarity, anger/derision directed against out-groupers, etc. That whole chaotic chemistry that we dignify with the word “culture"... Who owns the social capital? That’s the beauty of the thing. Due to status illegibility, there can be no “fair and equitable” distribution. So the group can only deploy the capital collectively.'

'...the show begins with the audience calling out to wake up Mr. Punch, a carefree, grotesque “trickster” character. Punch calls to, and attempts to play with his neighbor’s dog Toby, but the dog will have none of him and bites his nose. Punch’s neighbor Mr. Scaramouche arrives, and accuses Punch of mistreating Toby. Punch uses his slapstick to knock Scaramouche’s head clean off his shoulders. Next, Punch’s wife Judy is introduced. She is a bossy harridan who orders Punch around. She instructs him to mind the Baby while she goes off to the kitchen to make sausages. Punch begins to play with the Baby, teaching him to walk, but the action turns rough and the Baby starts crying loudly. Punch frantically flings the Baby about trying to silence it, eventually tossing it out the window. Judy finds out and a fight breaks out between her and Punch. Judy is beaten to death by Punch’s slapstick. Judy comes back as a Ghost to frighten Punch, who is terrified and cowers in fear, unable to speak.'

'This is not really a dominant social theme from our point of view so much as an observation about the difficulty that the Anglo-American power-elite is having in cobbling together a believable societal narrative in the 21st century. ...the elite seems intent on continuing its recent heavy-handed efforts as regards modern Western (American) entertainment, especially pop music. There is little attempt made at disguising the powerful hand pulling the strings of a Lady Gaga or the musical impresario Jay-Z who regularly uses Illuminati signs and symbolism in interviews and on stage. Gaga is meant quite obviously to be a metaphor for a larger societal shift toward a more authoritarian and global sociopolitical environment. The Hollywood of the 21st century is a mess from a messaging standpoint in our opinion. ...the power elite is evidently and obviously engaged in an effort to create the rudiments of an effective world government. '

Wherever the girls lead, the boys must surely follow... -- '...Disney, the ultimate recruiter of young talent who turn into sex objects around the age of 16, and the associations with Monarch mind control and sex kitten programming are all too real in Cheetah Girls. What do I mean by “recruiter of young talent who turn into sex objects”? Here’s a handy visual that describes the typical path those young Disney girls go through to stay successful. Belinda’s career bears all of the telling clues of what I call an “Illuminati artist”, entertainers who often follow these steps: recruited at a young age by media corporation, marketed with a “clean” and innocent image, attracts young fans, goes through sexualization metamorphosis, releases new album with racy imagery, then exposes fans to Illuminati and mind-control themes.' -- Pied Pipers are piping

'This commercial intended for German television has it all: checkerboard patterns everywhere, transhumanism, deshumanization, mind control, alter-personalities, Marilyn Monroe (the original Monarch sex kitten), the colors white, black and red, etc.' -- Pied Piper is piping

'Kanye stands at the border between Masonic knowledge and the decadence of the mundane life... he has been “chosen” to take part in an initiation process... Kanye needs to kill his old self and be ritualistically reborn. Once this is done, true power is within his grasp. ...this short-film, intended to be viewed by the general public (especially young people), describes the concept of power with overt Masonic symbolism and occult references. This causes the uninformed viewers to unconsciously associate those symbols with the concept of Power, while “those in the know” get the “insider’s wink” sent by this video. Power ultimately becomes another piece in the on-going process called the “Revelation of the Method,” where the true source of power gradually and subliminally reveals itself to the world and occult rituals take place right in front of the public’s eyes. How long before the complete revelation?' -- Pied Piper is piping

Gisted -- All of the evil, corruption and predation in the world follows from the moment when this invisible apple is offered that you are told you must believe in or die (or be condemned at the very least). If you get a sense of the agony the world is in at the right now then you get a sense of the horror of this moment of ultimate betrayal and soul murder that inevitably pushes people into becoming either sadistic, amoral, exploitative abusers; or masochistic, compliant, passive-aggressive victims. Either way, abuse or victimhood is made into an absolute so that you can avoid the pain of knowing that people chose to hurt you when they could have chosen otherwise and to repress the pain of acknowledging that your sole means of survival, your capacity to understand things rationality, was under direct attack by those who claimed to love you. But that pain still exists in the world and whatever we don't permit ourselves to feel we end up causing other people to feel ten times over.

Gisted -- "Culture is the exact opposite of what is real and what is true." Because of its desire for virtue, the true-self is corrupted into obedience by the miming of the eating of the invisible apple, and the reward that's given to this shattered true-self is a substitute false-self which is what we call culture. Culture is always a lie. And the big lie is always believed more than the little lie. Once you can get somebody to place their identity in a collective falsehood, you've got them for life. There's no way back to your true-self once your self-aggrandizing false-self is the substitute source of your self-esteem. There's a famous line from Hanns Johst's play Schlageter: ‘When I hear "culture,” I release the safety catch on my gun!’ That line resonates because it's true. When you can get people to believe false things and to obey bullies, then they are ready to participate in the brutality of the collective and to be a soldier of evil in the world.

'This caught our collective eye because it is so quintessentially a New York Times article. The New York Times has always specialized in "insider" big-town articles, which provide new ways of looking at the way people live in Metropolis. An elaboration on the dominant social theme might be, "We live in a hermetical bubble and have not yet caught up with the rest of the world, and we don't want to." After a full century of refining their art, the editorial trend-setters are actually behind the curve. The vocabulary and preoccupations of the New York media crowd are increasingly dated. New York no longer speaks for the West in our opinion. Hollywood no longer speaks for movies. TV's demographic is aging and American magazines and newspapers generally, are losing their audience. The entire mechanism, based on avoiding the reality of power-elite social, political, monetary and military structures, is breaking down. Soon the mainstream US media leadership may be "formerly."'

'Kyle, Cartman and Kenny make Stan a Facebook profile against his will and he becomes embroiled and frustrated with everyone asking him for friend requests. Cartman introduces Kyle to Chatroulette as a way to make new friends, but all Kyle finds are men masturbating on webcam. Meanwhile Stan now has almost a million friends on his account and has decided to commit "online suicide" by deleting his account only to find Facebook refuses to allow him to. Instead of deleting his account, he is forcibly transported by the software into the virtual world of Facebook, where he meets "profiles" of everyone he knows, who talk to him in Facebook language, and is forced to engage in Facebook activities such as Yahtzee.'

'“The biggest problem if you’re trying to figure out ‘What is this stuff? What are they trying to do?’ is that I think even they don’t completely have a grip on it,” Scott says. “This thing — the Internet, online culture — allows you to engage with interesting people who you otherwise might not be aware of or interesting people who are, themselves, unaware that they’re interesting.” ...BuzzFeed is organized by its readers’ shorthand response to what they view — sections include LOL and OMG. “The way people interact with media is more about someone’s reaction, an emotional or even intellectual reaction,” Peretti says. “That is a kind of cultural shift. It’s not ‘I love to read the Style section,’ it’s ‘I love all the LOL stuff.’ ” “You see the news break,” Peretti says, and “the next day or 12 hours later, people are hungry for the parody of it or the comic relief.” '

Past-negative, Past-positive; Present-hedonistic, Present-fatalistic; Future, Transcendental -- Thesis: All addictions are addictions of Present-hedonism. Example: Boys addiction to gaming/feedback/control that prevents them from planning their mid-/long-term futures -- http://www.thetimeparadox.com

'...the video tells a story of spiritual rejection and metamorphosis taking place in the context of an oppressive police state. Gaga’s performance at American Idol truly exploited the Luciferian theme of the song. The performance takes place in a setting reminiscent to the Garden of Eden, where the “Fallen Angel”–Lucifer, the one who was banished from Heaven and tempted Adam and Eve with divine knowledge–presides over the ceremony. Fire comes out of the angel’s wings (after all, he is the “Light Bringer”) each time Gaga says “Alejandro.” At the end of the performance, Gaga is lifted up under the Fallen Angel as a blood-red liquid oozes out from the fountain underneath him. Another ritual sacrifice has taken place on prime-time television.'

'Chomsky and state violence.' -- "There's just no way that you can give the government the power to create social programs by using force against its own citizens without simultaneously giving it the power to wage wars overseas - it's one and the same. You can't give someone a gun and tell them to only use it for good. This superhero mythology that you can have great power of violence and not be corrupted by it should be relegated to comic books and [shouldn't feature as part of] intelligent people's analysis of current events. ...this corruption is caused by this lie called culture which puts this weird, foggy, exclusive yet universal 'morality' at its center which blinds people to the coercive nature of the State in dealing with its own citizens because people can't see the coercive nature of their own culture as it dealt with themselves when they were growing up."

'Reason versus mysticism - it is depressing, though accurate, to see who won...'

'There's a simple reason why the stripping pics are "worse" than the lingerie pics: she was told to pose in lingerie; she chose to strip on her own. ...as long as sex/iness comes with a price tag, we're ok with it. Controlled, manufactured, artificial -- safe. But if she's caught stripping for fun, then... what does that say about me? The feminist argument is it sets a standard for women that they are forced to at least wonder about. "How can I compete?" But it's worse for men. Playboy is fine. Girls Gone Wild drives us bananas. "They do it... for nothing? They're willing to get naked on camera for nothing... yet every time I try to be nice and buy one of them a drink, they won't even look at me... I don't get it, I don't get it..." Wanton displays of sexuality leave no room for rationalizations. America tends to be deferential to prostitutes and porn stars, because it understands them. It's powerless against sluts. Which is why we call them sluts in the first place.'

'Making yourself happy is not best achieved by having true beliefs, primarily because the contribution of true beliefs to material comfort is a public good that you can free ride on, but the signaling benefits and happiness benefits of convenient falsehoods pay back locally, i.e. you personally benefit from your adoption of convenient falsehoods. The consequence is that many people hold beliefs about important subjects in order to feel a certain way or be accepted by a certain group. Widespread irrationality is ultimately an incentive problem. The bottom line is that many people's "map" is not really like an ordinary map, in that its design criterion is not simply to reflect the territory; it is designed to make them fit into a group (religion, politics), feel good about themselves (belief in immortal soul and life after death), fit into a particular cultural niche or signal personality (e.g. belief in Chakras/Auras).' -- Culture vs Philosophy

'The narcissist says: if it can't happen to me, it can't really happen. 2500 Americans can't just die in one day. But 9/11 was different. It didn't respect the rules. It violated the most important aspect of postmodern narcissism: story. Not only was the attack a surprise – no warning, no buildup, no exposition, no rising action – but even the characters were a surprise. We were revealed to be powerless. No heroes. No one knew kung fu. -- You might say that the Great Recession we're in now should end postmodern narcissism. Nope. Amazingly, all I hear and read are calls for punishing those who got us into this mess (Wall Street), "fixing the system," "solving the housing crisis." People are waiting for things to "get back to normal." People: this is normal. The past twenty years-- easy credit, college for everyone that leads to a job at Starbucks, unemployment under 6% – that was abnormal. -- So: two huge historical realities have had no impact on our cultural narcissism.'

'...technologically abetted narcissism: the reprocessing of culture into self-aggrandizing tidbits to be disseminated online ... Carles asks: "Do people care more about cute memes than tons of words?" The implied answer is that they "care more" about neither, because they care only about themselves and instrumentalizing memes to improve their own cachet. Carles suggests that "viral meme blogs" have become "more lucrative than trying to become an authentic writer" -- which of course evokes the question of what sort of authenticity as writer is possible after the alleged "death of the author" and the nullification of the "author function" have been widely proclaimed. The author function itself has become the virus, the content implied by any viral meme. The meme, regardless of its surface content, primarily signifies its transmitter and that transmitter's status as one who has been infected.'

'Chris Atkins' hilarious but shocking True Stories documentary about the celebrity-obsessed media romps through the real reasons behind our addiction to fame, and pulls the rug out from the media corporations and moguls that deal it out. Atkins sells fake celebrity stories to the tabloids, which they publish without any checks, and secretly films red-top journalists discussing the purchase of celebrities' cosmetic surgery medical records. The film reveals the harmful effect a celebrity-saturated media is having on children, and how media corporations are responsible for a global epidemic of narcissism. Atkins uses stunts, animation, expert testimony and undercover reportage to create a darkly humorous and terrifying exposé of one of the most important issues of our time.'

'...the key concept here is pervasiveness. A growing trend in digital design at the moment is gamification—the addition of ludic elements to just about every form of communication. These days, if a charity or NGO really wants to engage people with its cause, it commissions a game. Two weeks ago, for example, the World Bank launched a multiplayer challenge entitled Evoke in which gamers compete to solve key world crises such as disease, conflict and climate change. Think about how tourist attractions could encourage multiple visits by granting a 'Mayorship' to their most frequent repeat visitor - with the Mayor getting benefits and discounts, etc. These services could potentially harness people's competitive nature to powerful effect." This is why videogames can no longer be ostracized from the cultural agenda – because in a lot of ways there are an intrinsic part of that agenda.' -- Tax breaks? Cultural agenda? (When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.) New tag: ludocommunism

'The evolution of anti-parasite defence systems: Mounting an immune response consumes considerable metabolic resources, which may result in temporary fatigue even exhaustion while the parasitic infection is being fought. It has thus been suggested that animals evolved an additional system of defence: perceptual cues (appearance, odour, etc.) ...the detection of such cues may trigger aversive emotional and cognitive responses that motivate behavioural avoidance. This behavioural mechanism offers a first line of defence against disease-causing parasites and hence has been called the ‘behavioural immune system’. ...there is evidence suggesting that the emotion of disgust evolved to serve as an affective signal of parasite infection. ...collectivistic value systems are especially likely to emerge and persist in regions characterised by a high prevalence of parasites, whereas individualistic value systems are most likely to take hold in regions with a relatively low level of parasites.'

'Telephone acts as a sequel to Paparazzi, where Gaga still plays the role of a mind-controlled drone who kills people. This concept is never openly discussed by the artists when they are asked to explain their videos because it is not meant to be understood for the masses. The hidden meaning of the video actually depicts the elite’s contempt for the general population, hence the scene of ritual murder of average Americans in a diner by mind-controlled slaves. -- I am not saying that Gaga is controlling your mind. I’m saying her video is ABOUT mind control. This disturbing theme keeps reoccurring in pop music. Her works, like the works of many other pop stars, are part of a greater agenda. It used to focus on exposing the youth to materialism and sexual promiscuity, but it has now expanded to occult symbolism, mind control and transhumanism. Am I reaching you or is your telephone busy?'

'Of course you feel nothing. Why would you?—it's not your loss. What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You forget that she has a life that doesn't have you in it. What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient. You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it. She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy. But no one taught you this. So you fall back on the character "man helping grieving widow." Action!'

'Journalist Chris Hedges discusses his recent book Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. In it, he charts the dramatic rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy, and illusion. Hedges argues we now live in two societies: one, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world and can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth; the other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic where serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins.' -- "Things become so grim that there's a retreat into self delusion." -- Excellent summary of progress already made along the road to serfdom, also an urgent warning of the rise of utopian christian fascism. It's a shame he calls for an equally utopian "militant" socialism to fight against it. Violence is violence is violence. Neither the left fist nor right fist can justify it.

'Today’s pop music is filled with symbols and messages aimed to shape and mold today’s youth. Apart from the occult symbolism discussed in other articles, other parts of the elite’s agenda are communicated through music videos. Two of those parts are transhumanism and the introduction of a police state. f the news scares people into accepting measures diminishing their personal freedoms and ushering in a “new era”, the music business accomplishes the same job by making it seem sexy, cool and trendy. This angle is mainly aimed at the younger crowd, which is much more susceptible to “take in” the industry’s message. We’ll look at the way those agendas are part of the acts of Rihanna, Beyonce, Daddy Yankee and the Black Eyed Peas.'

'...the premise [is] that Americans are genetically/culturally more prone to risk taking, impulsivity, novelty-seeking, and therefore addiction... -- The brain has been fooled into ‘thinking’ that achieving [any] high is equivalent to survival... -- If the rush is tied to something that society rewards we call it ambition, if it's attached to something a little scary, then we label the individual a ‘risktaker’ and if its tied to something illegal – then they are an ‘addict’ or substance abuser. So it seems culture has voted on which drugs are 'good' to pursue. -- In order to overcome addictions, it is usually not enough to argue about which year the drug supply is going to begin its decline. It's a better path to understand the addiction, admit it before one hits rock bottom, and either begin the cold turkey process or become addicted to something else. -- ...when an addict (broadly defined) is exposed to higher prices, conventional economic theory will not hold.'

'We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made. The economy isn't going right; there's global warming. In times like that, people imagine science and technology will be able to get it right. Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are. -- I think when you have a generation that doesn't see simulation as second best, doesn't know what's behind simulation and the programming that goes into simulation, but just takes simulation at interface value, you really have a set up for a very problematic political, among other things, set of issues. ...things are built out of simple programs to more complex programs, and these programs are cultural creations, cultural constructions... Education has dropped that out of the curriculum. -- We're becoming quite intolerant of letting each other think complicated things.'

'The symbolism surrounding Lady Gaga is so blatant that one might wonder if it’s all a sick joke. Illuminati symbolism is becoming so clear that analyses like this one becomes a simple exercise of pointing out the obvious. Her whole persona (whether its an act or not) is a tribute to mind control, where being vacuous, incoherent and absent minded becomes a fashionable thing. While masses of young people imitate Gaga’s gestures, her act is part of a bigger system that incorporates many other stars with the same symbolism. She is creative and a gifted song writer. But at the end of the day, the “Lady Gaga” persona is a Fame Monster, doing everything required to be an international superstar, including incorporating in her act the symbolism of the elite, making her an Illuminati puppet.'

'Hello Kitty exhibition celebrating it's 35 years of it's mainstream kitten programming directed at kids. Note the pink streaks in her hair (sex kitten suggestive), the Hello Kitty suggestively positioned (showing what the whole Hello Kitty Lolita conditioning is about) -- Embedded the banned kitten suggestive nude video she did for Calvin Klein, this whole conspiracy is largely about man's (the people at the top of the pyramid for the most part) "obsession" with control/power/manipulation, in particular over the female sex (rape/abuse is 100% about power and control, the people at the top are sociopaths thanks to generations of keeping the bloodline pure/inbreeding which in part is why this mind control is going on...)'

'“Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases, and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn,” Mr. Lanier observes. “There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the Web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.” -- “pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise.” -- “online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media.” -- Online culture “is a culture of reaction without action” and rationalizations that “we were entering a transitional lull before a creative storm” are just that — rationalizations. “The sad truth,” he concludes, “is that we were not passing through a momentary lull before a storm. We had instead entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will only escape it when we kill the hive.”'

'Compilation video of an assortment of images from occult Hollywood. Hollywood itself is based upon the wood of a Holly tree used for magical/ritualistic purposes and is said to have the ability to hypnotize, mezmorize an entrance viewers. This is an expose on the "stars" that are really from highly abusive backgrounds and multigenerational incestuous families later sold into slavery. Project Monarch is that slavery that binds the minds of actors/actresses/musicians and other public personages in order to instill ideas within the populace. Observe these videos.' -- Alice-ing/OZ-ing/Kitten-ing: Ruby slippers, Toto dogs, Animal prints, Pink hair/Lolly pops, Checkerboards, Locks and keys, Half-faces/covered eye, Butterflies (Transform-ers), Shhh...

'... every single one of us is as dependent on science and technology - and, by extension, on the geeks who make it work - as a patient in intensive care. Yet we much prefer to think otherwise. -- Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.'

'In 1970 Wattenberg [a democratic party neoconservative strategist] published an analysis of American voting patterns called The Real Majority. It argued that the country was now divided between a liberal elite preoccupied with cultural issues like race, sexual politics and abortion, and a vast forgotten hinterland who were "unyoung, unpoor and unblack". Wattenberg's heroine was the 47 year-old housewife from Dayton who feared and despised the liberal elite. Harness that power, he said, and you can change the world. But then the Neoconservatives got screwed yet again. Richard Nixon, the Republican President, read Wattenberg's analysis and stole all his ideas. And it worked. Nixon won re-election with one of the biggest majorities ever in American history. At the same time a new conservative force was being unleashed across the Islamic world. And, like in America, it was the mass of the new urban lower middle classes who despised the liberal elites.'

"When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun."

Forward march into Idiocracy.

'...cuteness is physically addicting. -- As the essayist Daniel Harris argued our enjoyment of adorable stuff has a hidden dark side. “Adorable things are often most adorable in the middle of a pratfall or a blunder.” He mentions Winnie-the-Pooh’s getting his head stuck in a beehive as an example and goes on to argue that children themselves are not really so cute; cuteness, instead, is something we do to them. “There is something dark about using children for the pleasure of our maternal needs,” Harris says. “We enjoy being caretakers so much that we will create situations in which they need our care.” -- Roland Kelts: "...if you are desperate to be known, you need a strategy for being known, and a very good strategy is the old evolutionary one of being so cute that you need to be cared for. That was, in a sense, Japan’s position for the last 60 years: ‘We will make your products really, really well, and we’re going to be the best little boy you can imagine.’”

'Red Bull was doing earned media before it was a buzzword. They invest in unique, compelling experiences, and in the creation of content from those experiences. They get a significant amount of very deep and powerful brand interaction at the actual experiences themselves, both from participants and spectators. And then through a combination of PR, word of mouth, and pull media channels they get an absolute ton of exposure of their content. And through platforms like their popular Facebook page, content-rich website, Red Bulletin, and a legion of popular microsites and brand communities like FMXWorld, Red Bull can legitimately claim to be a media brand in its own right at a time when most brands are still talking about the idea.'

'Japan is drifting helplessly towards a dramatic fiscal crisis.' -- Comment: Arni Highfield: '...slavish obedience to authority has led them into trouble in the past, and it is doing it again, as they ignore the utter failings of their government. No dear friends, don't bank on Japan. Meanwhile, across a narrow stretch of sea sits the nation of South Korea. It has a longer and often richer history than Japan, although with far more than its share of sad episodes. However, its people don't simply revere the past, they invent new and exciting modern culture. Modern art, drama and dance co-exists with ancient temples. People of all backgrounds join an active discussion in the press, on TV and in universities, schools and coffee shops about what is wrong and right with Korea, and where it should be going. They don't put up with crap and protest readily. ...they are moving forward at a staggering pace, and correcting as they go, unlike Japan where almost nobody questions the status quo.'

"Machine of perpetual larceny."

'When we deal with this condition of outformation, we concern ourselves with rates, flow, vector, flux, and its messaging types [unicast, multicast, broadcast, or anycast]. We deal with paths, closeness, link, connectivity, signaling, entropy, self-similarity, throughput, and latency. It doesn't matter what the content is. Rather, the critical standpoint deals with its entropy, its signaling, its rate, flux density and messaging type. -- The requirement for citizen-actors on reality television reflects not nearly the need for such vocations of entertainment, rather, it is the construct of computer networks and software algorithm attempting and stuggling to learn to mimic the bizarre banality of a society dwelling in the afterburn of failed capitalism. It is not staged idiocy, it is pre-school for the machine screens comprehensively looping the simulation of the western debt class.'

'"From the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings to the stirring symphonies of Mozart to today's hot-dog eating competitions and action films with comical gerbils, culture has descended into a festering pool of mass ignorance," said Yale sociologist Paul Riordan, who has spent his career analyzing western civilization's fall into the depths of depravity. "If our calculations are correct, this complete erosion of all that is enlightened and unique will reach absolute rock bottom on the afternoon of Sept. 25, 2009."'

'Attitudes to risk: Each worldview directs attention to certain risks, which present particular threats to their way of organizing society. #Individualists fear risks that would limit the market and constrain their ability to trade freely. For example, war. #Egalitarians use the threat of catastrophic risks to generate solidarity. For example, global warming. #Hierarchists fear risks that would upset the ranking of people. For example, crime and social deviance #Fatalists don't see the point in fearing any risks - it's not like they can do anything about them. -- Cultural Theory may help us understand a risk controversy, but it does not give clear guidance on how to resolve it. The most we can say is that all four worldviews should have input, because each of them sees a piece of the puzzle.' -- (See 2x2 matrix)

'Johnson: "When we watch these [reality] shows, the part of our brain that monitors the emotional lives of the people around us—the part that tracks subtle shifts in intonation and gesture and facial expression—scrutinizes the action on the screen, looking for clues. The phrase "Monday-morning quarterbacking" was coined to describe the engaged feeling spectators have in relation to games as opposed to stories. We absorb stories, but we second-guess games. Reality programming has brought that second-guessing to prime time, only the game in question revolves around social dexterity rather than the physical kind.' [Plus the game of decoding the producer's presentation of the action] -- On the "delayed gratification' of gaming: '"Playing a video game is, in fact, an exercise in “constructing the proper hierarchy of tasks and moving through the tasks in the correct sequence,” he writes. “It’s about finding order and meaning in the world, and making decisions that help create that order.”''

'When do people herd? They herd when they are uncertain. In contexts of uncertainty, the herding impulse drives social behavior. The herding impulse is based in the amygdala, a part of the brain’s limbic system. It is non-rational, unconscious, endogenously-regulated and impulsive. By “non-rational” we mean that the herding impulse is not based on reason, but is not necessarily “irrational.” ccording to socionomic theory, not all synchronized group action is herding behavior. We only recognize herding when the behavior is non-rational and performed in the context of uncertainty.'

'Online, the action is the tracing of trends and our own statistically determined significance. Twittering, and then seeing what sort of response it provokes, etc. We are never at a loss for an opportunity to try to garner attention, and these efforts are archived, deepening our potential self, even if it is all noise. The internet has given us means to sell ourselves the way products have long been sold to us, and we’ve embraced them, adopting advertising measuring tools as markers of moral value. ...we manage our public meaning like a brand manager, and perfect the art of culture monitoring—meta consumption of media. We begin to consume the buzz about buzz, or pure buzz, with no concern with what it’s about, only whether we can exploit it for self-promotion. ...nanostories, not suprisingly, preserve the status quo, reinforcing our own vanity and self-centeredness along with the market as timeless, unquestionable norm.'

'At a time when summer movies seem uniquely capable of consolidating the cultural discourse, our Evolution of the Modern Blockbuster series looks back to the summers, and summer movies, of 1984 and 1989, when MTV editing, post-Boomer cynicism and other cultural sea changes converged to shape the summer blockbuster we all know and can't avoid.' -- In 5 parts

'"An hour or two of television per day simply does not provide enough information to effectively mock mediocre sitcoms, vapid celebrities, music videos, and talk-show hosts—an essential skill in modern society," said Dr. Madeleine Ben-Ami, a professor of cognitive science and chief author of the study. Ben-Ami said she and her colleagues fear that, if it is not corrected, television illiteracy could result in an American sub-group unable to function in the modern world. "Because the ridicule of pop culture comprises the bulk of today's social discourse, a non-viewer is at a distinct disadvantage in the workplace, on campus, and in the dating scene."'

Not so much a business model, more an attention model where people enjoy the shared chaos of production and collaborative 'tidy up' towards a finished product. Mess is lore, as some folk say. -- '#Chapter 4: Building it Together: Heap has more than 735,000 followers on Twitter, each of whom feels invested in the making of Ellipse and is eagerly awaiting its release. They’ve been there every step of the way, offered their opinions and insights when asked for advice about songs, helped create Heap’s bio and album art, and were the friends who were always willing to lend an ear… and a hand. #Chapter 6: Heap TweetUps' -- And then the afterparty. -- '#Chapter 7: Cafe Heap' -- And then the product in its solid state is too opaque and so people start looking for the next 'production' to get involved in. #Chapter Z: The awkward second album where any remaining fans demand repeats of attentional gimmicks of which the artist has run out and can only plead, "But it was always about 'the music'."

'Like all great religions, the franchises have mysterious histories, preserved in decaying books and obscure pamphlets. The thread that unites all of them is an overarching tale of social outcasts who find holy books that show them the light, and lead them to secret congregations where mystical debates and opinions are exchanged. Converted by these ancient books, the earliest fans began to build the franchises that would transform their visions of other worlds into the pillars of new belief systems. In the end, religious fervor is good for the pocketbook of the culture industry. The more we worship, the more we are willing to pay for action figures, for DVD box sets, for expensive reissues and signed first editions. These things are trinkets for our shrines, outward signs of our devotion. And like all religious objects they are dosed with a symbolic meaning that goes way beyond their unbroken plastic seals. They ward off what hurts us in the world. They promise better things to come.'

'"History, unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction [...]. Still, it is a fiction that we must inhabit. [...] All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world's insistent texts or else replace them with a stronger language of our own." --- ... Moore understands that in order to change history one must become a part of history, and thus engage in a kind of human sacrifice, as much as he would like to imagine some other way. -- "There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future." Idea Space is the medium through which human consciousness draws connections across space and time, finds meaningfulness in the immediate through its mediation within larger contexts. -- Fiction is how reality is made...'

'Technology is that which is produced by a mind — any mind: animal, machine or alien. When we created the technology of writing, we gladly extended our memory onto paper, making ourselves smarter. But in turn the alphabets we invented changed how our minds worked. Because our inventions can reach back into our brains, and essentially transform our minds into another one of our inventions, our inventions are more powerful than our minds. In this way technology can circle back into its origins, becoming its own child. Whatever progress there is in the world, is passed down generationally via the mechanism of our culture. Whatever changes that literacies ignite in the human brain must be carried forward not in our genes, but in the continuum of technium. This gives the technium incredible power. We don't quite appreciate it yet, but our child, technology, is more powerful than we its parents are.'

'Once an idea is "in the air" its many manifestation are inevitable. You just need a sufficient number of smart, prolific people to start catching them. Gladwell observes, "The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight." -- "Inventions are culturally determined. Such a statement must not be given a mystical connotation." warns Kroeber. It means only that when all the required conditions generated by previous technologies are in place, the next technology can precipitate. "Discoveries become virtually inevitable when prerequisite kinds of knowledge and tools accumulate," says sociologist Robert Merton, who studied simultaneous inventions in history. The ever thickening mix of existing technologies in a society create a supersaturated matrix, charged with restless potential. When the right idea is seeded within, the inevitable invention practically explodes into existence...'

'...why does cheating matter? A big part of games culture is evidencing, to the friends ... that you had new games, could play knew games, and could hold your own in the knowledge economy of cheating. In the period since the advent of the internet, it has become very clear that games culture is significantly shaped by the cultural capital ‘knowing about games’ generates between individuals and groups. An incredible global infrastructure of websites, forums, blogs and other formats have proliferated in the chatter of newly connected gamer cultures. The cheat code anticipated this desire for conversation... Through cheats, players vied for an opportunity to penetrate through the surface of the gameworld, to claim leadership and advantage, and wrestle control of the game from the orthodoxies of standard play. Cheating is hacking for the masses. It is one of many opportunities to ‘soft programme’ our technologies and culture without heavy reliance on advanced knowledge.'

'The problem with the Web, as I see it, is that it imposes, with its imperialistic iron fist, the "ecstatic surfing" behavior on everything and to the exclusion of other modes of experience (not just for how we listen to music, but for how we interact with all media once they've been digitized). Today, we're quick to dismiss ... ancient days of "scarcity" and to celebrate our current "abundance," but scarcity had something going for it: it encouraged a deep engagement in listening to a particular piece of music, across the expanse of an album, and it also encouraged, in the artist, an interest in rewarding that engagement. It's the deep, attentive engagement that the Web is draining away, as we fill our iTunes library with tens of thousands of "tracks" at little or no cost. What the Web tells us, over and over again, is that breadth destroys depth. Whether it's news stories or pop songs, we're skimmers now. It's a one-hit-wonder world.' -- Nah. Rhizomic depth. See last.fm

'My two favorite quotes from the article: "The Attention Economy is (mostly) a sorry excuse for a (predictable, rational) economy." I have been waiting for so long for someone to agree with me on this one. While I get the theory and used to subscribe to the attention ideology, at this point I don't understand how it's any different. Quote number two is under the heading "the model is what matters" and says, "Our meta-analyses of culture (tipping points, long tails, crossing the chasms, ideaviruses) have come to seem more relevant and vital than the content of culture itself." That one made my head spin a little. It's so true. As a culture we've become more obsessed with understanding how things spread than the things themselves. The model itself is the content. (Or, as McLuhan would say, the medium is the message.)'

'Think it is supposed to be ’self-aware commentary’ that only blacks can make, because only black ppl can critique their own culture. It really made me think. Kinda made me feel guilty about ‘getting my grind on’ post-ironically when I hear a ‘nasty-ass’ top 40 rap hit. Seems like rap is simple–they just sing about where they used to live (the streets), what they enjoy (stuff that rich ppl spend money on), and what feels good (pussie, fucking, dranking, smoking, etc.) Seems simple, but maybe African-Americans are trying to ‘rebrand’ now that Obama is in office. -- Sorta just wish I could watch vintage ‘racist memes’ and grin without thinking 2 much abt what they ‘mean.’ Just want to ‘go viral’ with my MexiBro. -- Barackisha, Obamaniqua, Unidastazovamerikaliqua.' -- LOLZ

'How can anything sneak past us in this content-driven society? The cult classic is dying off faster and faster. The most recent title that could realistically be called a cult classic would be Donnie Darko. -- ...since video has already killed the radio star, the new killer in town is the internet. The internet’s original purpose was to make the world’s largest resource of content available to anyone. We humans have a gluttonous streak though, we couldn’t just have a simple resource. We turned it into a giant machine that can create and kill popular culture faster than we can text, tweet or shout it over to our friends. The internet has taken a cue from us and has turned into a parasite, no longer just hosting the content…but abusing it until we have no use for it anymore. It used to be that when you could only buy a record or a VHS, that would be the only avenue for accessing the content. Now we have taken digital content to the next level – the level of exhaustion.'

Clear some space on your disk.

'CollegeHumor's first Broadway musical since (LOL)Cats.' -- GHEY

'...salience matters. Salience isn’t about having heard of something at some point — it’s about how likely you are to think of it right now. ...it’s not that people buying Michael Jackson tunes in the past 24 hours had never heard his music before. And it’s not that they are somehow looking for a way to vicariously participate in the cultural event that his death immediately became. But because of this cultural event, Michael Jackson and his music are dramatically more salient today than they were a week ago.' -- And also because the bulk of his fans are older and only have his music on vinyl, tapes and CDs. It's the rush to fight his impending 'attentional death' and keep him a vital part of living/digital culture by re-buying him in digital formats. Also the collective guilt for letting him slide into obscurity in the first place. All that and the fact he's still the greatest. http://bit.ly/D3Kk6 ;^)