chapotraphouse

yeah, but you get used to it

Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad.

I feel this. As much as liberals love stories of people escaping from cults, they really don't like the suggestion that they may be living in one too.

Yeah, it's like looking at Chthulhu. You won't be able to really explain to others what you've seen, and it's too big to really get at all at once anyway.

This is a good videogame premise ngl, you’d just have to make the enemies fascist in order to make things palitable

Ya'll ever feel like learning theory does to your brain what Lovecraftian eldritch horror is meant to do?

Naw, reality does that part, theory just allows you to see it

I don't know if I'm just disassociating or becoming more socially reclusive as I get older, but I get more disappointed in people the more theory I read. I pick up more and more on imperialist stuff they say, or latent bigotries, or how they can't seem to say anything sympathetic about the homeless. It's nearly everyone I meet unless they're a self-identified leftist but even leftists sometimes still do it.

I probably do it too and I don't even notice, which is probably the most horrifying aspect of all. I can't even trust myself to be free of the ideological poison that permeates everything, but I certainly see it in others and I hate it. I hate seeing it when people turn glass eyed and spout off some propaganda embedded within them or something homophobic or transphobic and it's just depressing. People often have such an energy and a life, they have their own pursuits and what they want to live for, but their brains are actively being choked by capitalism and living in the first world that they can't help themselves. They offload their brains to the superstructure, because that's all they know.

The most insidious aspect is the lack of trust I often feel. Like you have to know an exceptionally generous person or have an established history for them to help you do stuff like run errands or maybe drive you somewhere or whatever else. Chronic or long term favors are to be established, not just the default. It's even worse with coworkers because I have a good relationship with a lot of mine. A lot of them are good people and I've done tons of favors for them and they've done so for me as well. I have no idea how our relationship would change once money gets involved. Would they try to compete with me for a promotion? Would this sour everything between us? I have no idea. Would they treat me differently if I were their subordinate? Again, no idea and it's horrifying to consider. I'm here imagining situations in which people I know have their humanity stripped from them in service of some irrational, abstract thing that has tendrils in all of us.

Yeah it's pretty eldritch

Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.

—Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx's Capital

I wish I could remember this movie I came across years ago.

I thought it was going to be something like "Supersize Me" but about brands in general. But it turned out to be a lovecraftian/capitalism light horror film. It was weird as fuck and I liked it.

(just looked it up, its called " Branded "

In future Moscow, where corporate brands have created a disillusioned population, one man's effort to unlock the truth behind the conspiracy will lead to an epic battle with hidden forces that control the world.

HAH.. its Russian...

Lovecraft was basically translating his alienation with capitalism into short stories. Unfortunately, being a reactionary for most his life, he punched down instead of up, and his fears were pointed at minorities and women and air conditioners instead of the pervasive system itself.

After finally getting into theory it fucked me up badly when I finally came around to the conclusion that there is violence all around us, unending, unyielding, all in service of making some number, on a server in the middle of nowhere, go up. At the behest of capital, the state is taking away our homes, our health, and our life all for an imaginary number

Yeah I used to jokingly call it forbidden knowledge awhile ago.

It's the knowledge the people SHOULD have though, so I changed my perspective on it a bit even jokingly

I personally love that feeling of clarity and dread that comes with reading a good dose of theory. When everything clicks into place and you can see the monstrosity of capitalism animating everything from behind the veil of normalcy. Makes me feel better knowing I'm living in a horror novel.

Yeah...

Tell your average lib about dependency theory and Eurocentrism and they'll think you've gone mad, or be like "yes that's true and it's good actually".

I've been reading a lot of Frantz Fanon and Samir Amin lately.

Sometimes, although I still retain a mix of criticism. According to one of my :LIB: history professors, who I still respect the word of greatly, Marx got plenty of things right but not all of them. For example, I don't like Marx's wish to abolish religion. Religion helps tie people together and we have various subs for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim comrades. However, I think I might be misunderstanding Marx as I know he mentioned citing "Christian asceticism" for some of his inspiration.

That, and both Fidel Castro, MLK, and John Brown cited :jesus-cleanse: for some of their inspiration.

This is how I feel trying to explain capitalism to people

Gonna start telling gamers that capitalism is the Amygdala perched on top of Yharnam Cathedral

That's how I see it. Like being deprogrammed to see how evil the US government is like finding out that not only does the mythos exists, but that we are only a hairs away from an elder god waking up and consuming the sun