• Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    2 months ago

    Remember when the Bazingas of the 90s were talking about complete bodily autonomy and the shattering of human gender, sex, and species? Pepperidge farm remembers.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      2 months ago

      I was there for the “Extropian” movement of the 90s. While there was a superficial promise of “become nanobot swarms that can do and become anything!” Feverish power fantasies involved, I think over time (much like Reddit New Atheism in general) they started skidding their heels on extrapolations on ideas that were too unfamiliar to themselves and started getting more reactive, crusty, and entrenched in how the fantastical “singularity™” future was supposed to look like.

      Ultimately it became “pre-nukes Fallout, but with immortality and more superpowers.” grillman

      • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Yeah, me too, at least the tail end. I remember them kicking the openly fash out (The Prometheans, I think) and immediately falling back into fascist thinking.

        One of the things that made me step away was how incredibly shocked and averse they were to anything that implied that a non-western culture could wield these technologies.

        I especially remember how Michael Anisimov went from “everyone is a Jupiter Brain” to “Socially Conservative uploading” to “I’m an open nazi”

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          ·
          2 months ago

          For me, the end of my interest and association with “futurology” was when the conferences themselves got overtly bought out by tech companies and starting having blatant military presence as well.

          There was this occult blood ritual of sorts involving a new kind of “chipping” during the last one I attended, with a lot of ceremony and crowd enthusiasm. Between that and all the boots waiting around to recruit new credulous bazingas, I was done.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          2 months ago

          I especially remember how Michael Anisimov went from “everyone is a Jupiter Brain” to “Socially Conservative uploading” to “I’m an open nazi”

          I’m still disgusted that so many less-scratched liberals made so many excuses for Nick Land’s drug-powered cyber-nazi fever dreams, too.

          • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            14
            ·
            2 months ago

            After a century of “Dumb Nietzsche” philosophers they fall for the dumbest of them, a guy so stupid that if he wasn’t obfuscating it by name dropping Baudrillard would make Ayn Rand look like an intellectual titan

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              13
              ·
              2 months ago

              They already decided that they were the Very Smartists, I mean “Rationalists,” that are “Less Wrong” than the rest of us mortal rabble, so of course whatever their “grey tribe” leaders decide is the “greyest” non-ideological ideology is the one that’s the most Very Smart, Rational, and the Least Wrong.

              That just so happens to be the guy into drug-powered cyber-nazi fever dreams. no-mouth-must-scream hitler-detector

              • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                11
                ·
                2 months ago

                Oh man, I just saw a post by Big Yud and he literally states that people who heavily disagree with him are either stupid or insane and frankly that’s the sort of thing that gets you a bolt of lightning from the gods for hubris

                • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  2 months ago

                  For some bewildering reason, Ross Scott of Accursed Farms and Freeman’s Mind actually gave Big Yud a platform to talk about his Dark Enlightenment power fantasies and he had the patience of a saint considering how much Big Yud was jerking himself off the entire time.