ari_ormstunga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-01-01 05:37 am
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-01-01 05:37 am
Revenge of The Nerds
Let's face it, the techno-fascist era being born around us is, in essence, a neurotic nerd's wet dream. Some eager PMC flunky raided the behaviorist research files at the local university and figured out how to manipulate the masses with addictive phones and apps and advertising, and off we went to totalitarian town as soon as they concocted a good enough excuse. The fact that they got away with it over something so ridiculously mild (e.g. the virus panic) is perplexing to me, but then I have been around the block enough to know that politicians and corporations lie all the time, and a lot of the time those lies cause people's deaths. It seems like a of people had an awareness of this at one point or another, but it went out the window as soon as they got spooked enough by the propaganda machines.
The elites and their pet Nerds terrorized people, then offered up simple solutions to make the fear go away. Take a shot, get a vaccine passport, wear a mask in public. These solutions work, they claimed... except now they are more or less admitting they don't work while still somehow doubling down on enforcing them. Maybe the mixed messaging is intentional; I haven't delved deeply enough into how to manipulate the masses to know just yet. I still vacillate on how much of the elite response is incompetence and how much of it is intentionally evil. Either way, it's profoundly transparent and stupid to anyone who hasn't been driven into a state of cowering fear or caught up in grandstanding and toxic virtue signalling.
At the risk of repeating myself, it's the ones who think they are the smart ones who are being taken for a ride; us dummies are doing just fine.
Oddly enough, I think one of the reasons this is so transparent to me is that I am of a tribe related to but still distinct from the Nerds. I am one of of the Dorks. Some people use these terms interchangeably; I always did, but I have been assured that there is a difference. Nerds are the technical, very intelligent engineer and programmer types, while Dorks are the misfits who are deeply into various fringe cultures. There is a lot of overlap between the two; a lot of Nerds are also Dorks, but a Dork can't really be a Nerd because we aren't smart enough, or smart enough in the right ways. I can create a D&D campaign from the ground up in an afternoon, but I can't code to save my life.
This taxonomy was suggested to me by a friend a few years ago, probably while we were smoking a boatload of cannabis, so it may not be universal, but it works well enough for me. The fact that the things I was ostracized for enjoying as a youth have come to dominate pop culture never fails to amaze me, but during my formative years a love of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and role playing games was a sure fire recipe for getting your butt handed to you by the cool kids and their hangers-on.
Not-smart-enough-to-be-a-Nerd and not smart are two different things, though. I am just barely bright enough to see through the manipulations, just barely educated enough to see the statistics games the bureaucrats are playing in trying to sell their tyrannical vision of the future. Frankly, I think that, given enough time, most people will see through this crap as well... but it will be too late to stop the power grabs and the societal reshaping the elites are jamming through. They know the window is closing on their panic.
I am comforted by a few things, things that I suspect the Nerds know but have overlooked. First, the behavioral research they are using to manipulate us was all conducted on captive lab animals. Now, isolating everyone and making sure they were in grim, under-stimulating environments for a few years was a brilliant stroke in this regard. The dehumanizing effect of constant mask-wearing, crippling our ability to engage in non-verbal communication in public, was also pretty good, and forcing it on the next generation, which is what this is probably all about, was diabolical but makes sense in a dystopian and transparently evil way.
Nonetheless, aside from the highly engineered urban enclaves, the conditioning isn't taking. A few easily spooked people in my own community notwithstanding, for example, the neurotic behaviors and inculcated anxiety disorders the elite are aggressively marketing are failing, despite the huge budget and endless propaganda streams. This is probably because most of us have given up on being respectable people in the eyes of the ruling class. There are too many of us who don't give a crap what the government and media have to say, because we know they are lying and there are no real benefits to playing along with their bullshit anymore. They took away the carrot, and the stick doesn't look that frightening anymore. When getting yelled at by a senile old man, getting hassled by Karens, and threats of getting the flu are your ideas of intimidation, you probably ought to get out more.
When we were all little kids on the playground, there were always kids who took it upon themselves to regulate and direct the games. Their greatest joy seemed to be controlling the other kids. Sometimes that could lead to fun games; a little structure can go a long way in games, after all. But eventually, the worst of the little control freak Nerds ended up all by themselves with no one to control, because everyone else went on to do other things with people who were more fun and less, well, tyrannical.
If they were really unlucky, the Nerds got a bloody nose and a good thumping first.
The elites and their pet Nerds terrorized people, then offered up simple solutions to make the fear go away. Take a shot, get a vaccine passport, wear a mask in public. These solutions work, they claimed... except now they are more or less admitting they don't work while still somehow doubling down on enforcing them. Maybe the mixed messaging is intentional; I haven't delved deeply enough into how to manipulate the masses to know just yet. I still vacillate on how much of the elite response is incompetence and how much of it is intentionally evil. Either way, it's profoundly transparent and stupid to anyone who hasn't been driven into a state of cowering fear or caught up in grandstanding and toxic virtue signalling.
At the risk of repeating myself, it's the ones who think they are the smart ones who are being taken for a ride; us dummies are doing just fine.
Oddly enough, I think one of the reasons this is so transparent to me is that I am of a tribe related to but still distinct from the Nerds. I am one of of the Dorks. Some people use these terms interchangeably; I always did, but I have been assured that there is a difference. Nerds are the technical, very intelligent engineer and programmer types, while Dorks are the misfits who are deeply into various fringe cultures. There is a lot of overlap between the two; a lot of Nerds are also Dorks, but a Dork can't really be a Nerd because we aren't smart enough, or smart enough in the right ways. I can create a D&D campaign from the ground up in an afternoon, but I can't code to save my life.
This taxonomy was suggested to me by a friend a few years ago, probably while we were smoking a boatload of cannabis, so it may not be universal, but it works well enough for me. The fact that the things I was ostracized for enjoying as a youth have come to dominate pop culture never fails to amaze me, but during my formative years a love of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and role playing games was a sure fire recipe for getting your butt handed to you by the cool kids and their hangers-on.
Not-smart-enough-to-be-a-Nerd and not smart are two different things, though. I am just barely bright enough to see through the manipulations, just barely educated enough to see the statistics games the bureaucrats are playing in trying to sell their tyrannical vision of the future. Frankly, I think that, given enough time, most people will see through this crap as well... but it will be too late to stop the power grabs and the societal reshaping the elites are jamming through. They know the window is closing on their panic.
I am comforted by a few things, things that I suspect the Nerds know but have overlooked. First, the behavioral research they are using to manipulate us was all conducted on captive lab animals. Now, isolating everyone and making sure they were in grim, under-stimulating environments for a few years was a brilliant stroke in this regard. The dehumanizing effect of constant mask-wearing, crippling our ability to engage in non-verbal communication in public, was also pretty good, and forcing it on the next generation, which is what this is probably all about, was diabolical but makes sense in a dystopian and transparently evil way.
Nonetheless, aside from the highly engineered urban enclaves, the conditioning isn't taking. A few easily spooked people in my own community notwithstanding, for example, the neurotic behaviors and inculcated anxiety disorders the elite are aggressively marketing are failing, despite the huge budget and endless propaganda streams. This is probably because most of us have given up on being respectable people in the eyes of the ruling class. There are too many of us who don't give a crap what the government and media have to say, because we know they are lying and there are no real benefits to playing along with their bullshit anymore. They took away the carrot, and the stick doesn't look that frightening anymore. When getting yelled at by a senile old man, getting hassled by Karens, and threats of getting the flu are your ideas of intimidation, you probably ought to get out more.
When we were all little kids on the playground, there were always kids who took it upon themselves to regulate and direct the games. Their greatest joy seemed to be controlling the other kids. Sometimes that could lead to fun games; a little structure can go a long way in games, after all. But eventually, the worst of the little control freak Nerds ended up all by themselves with no one to control, because everyone else went on to do other things with people who were more fun and less, well, tyrannical.
If they were really unlucky, the Nerds got a bloody nose and a good thumping first.