I wrote an essay recently on this…but i realized there’s more to say.

Anyway…i try to go deeper in connecting this idea of desire machines, status quo propaganda, and forms of radicalization.

And Twitter happens to be a great case study.

Stay curious.

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I listened to his Turning Point speech…and I have some thoughts.

So…talking about Tucker Carlson and President Trump. I think Tucker is going to be the follow up guy to Trump. To put it simply.

Also…Tucker is better at playing politics…

Anway…in this one I talk about how they both weaponize aesthetics and catharsis in order to replace real potential political solutions (I’m speaking into the void on this one). They don’t want to solve systemic problems…their politics run on spectacle, not substance.

All i’m saying…think about what really gets the “elites” scared? It’s always someone who represents real change. Who often represents real change? Someone that is backed by the average voter AND has proposed solutions for systemic change.

Stay curious.

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I’ve been doing a long term project that has Peter Thiel in my view. I saw that he did an interview. He said…

Douthat: It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism…for transcendence of our mortal flesh…and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine.

Do you think that’s all irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about?

Thiel: Um, yeah.

Douthat: I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?

Thiel: Uhhhhh…(followed by an uncomfortable silence).

Douthat: You’re hesitating.

Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would—I would…

Douthat: This is a long hesitation!

Thiel: There’s so many questions implicit in this.

Douthat: Should the human race survive?

Thiel: Yes.

Douthat: OK.

Thiel: But I also would like us to radically solve these problems.

Which problems Peter boy? Huamnity itself? Do you see humanity itself as a problem?

Anyway here are some snippets from this episode…

And here’s what I want you to sit with in this episode: how often, in our current moment…in the way our institutions behave, the way Silicon Valley corporations talk, the way billionaires posture and position themselves, there’s this underlying assumption that their vision of the future is not just likely, but right. It's inevitable. It's correct. That it’s supposed to happen. That the world is naturally bending toward their plans, their desires, their aesthetic, their software.

It's all naturalllllllllll. (We are told)

But look closer…that “inevitability” they preach—it’s not a prediction. It’s a claim. A flex. A power move disguised as foresight. They speak as if the future were already written, when what they’re really saying is: "we should be the ones who get to write the future. I can't have you normies realize it because you'll mess it all up. But shusssssshhhhhhh let me cosplay my insecurities in the form of me being your daddy overlord."

Thiel is the example of my new category…the bishop. The one who hides behind the scenes, mostly, not always, hence he did an interview and look everyone thinks he's a psycho, so he's not being a very good bishop. But he's a bishop. It's the guy that guides a bunch of priest to say and do all sorts of really dumb things. That’s the mindset. That’s Peter Thiel.

Watch his interviews, read his essays, and it’s there—not even hidden. This quiet but constant esoteric entitlement. He thinks he's God. As if he is participating in some divine order. As if his role is not to serve the world, or even influence it, but to shape it in his image. And I find that deeply concerning—not just ideologically, but spiritually, and…you know…societally. Also, i find it concerning for everything involved in space and time. Super low stakes.

**

Because this isn’t about innovation. This isn’t about progress. Thiel is not here to tweak the code of liberal capitalism…he is here to run the final update. His vision is theological in scale and totalitarian in ambition. He doesn’t want to improve the system. He wants to end it…to replace history with a willed narrative, and to replace us with what he thinks should come after us.

He calls it perfection. I call it a billionaire tantrum after a psychotic break that had a touch of schizophrenic paranoia.

It’s not conservatism. It’s not libertarianism. It’s not even transhumanism in the sci-fi sense. It’s the quiet, deliberate engineering of a post-political, post-human, algorithmic future.

Stay curious.

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Trump’s ICE raids and National Guard deployment in California expose the real machinery of power—distraction, narrative control, and the manufactured image...it's a spectacle.

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So this started with a Substack note that semi-blew up, and it pushed me to expand on something I’ve been thinking about for a while: rebellion, aesthetics, and how edginess functions as a kind of political currency (or all of those combined do).

I talk about Red Scare. But this isn’t just about them. It’s about the death of irony, the collapse of aesthetics into ideology, and what happens when leftist politics forget how to maintain an edge in favor of an oversimplified and marginalizing ethic.

I talk jouissance (Lacan and stuff), performative rebellion, reactionary grifting, and the slow shift of “edgy” from leftist cultural critique to right-wing nihilism. I touch on why moral posturing turned the liberal left into the new status quo—and why Dasha and Anna’s (Red Scare ladies) vibe shift might be the most revealing political litmus test for our current cultural and political moment.

This episode is about how rebellion gets hollowed out, how irony can curdle into belief, and how our politics are increasingly built not from principles, but from vibes.

Are you ruled by reason…or by desire, rage, and the need for transgression? Is that really a base for a moral framework? Anyway…i’ll have more stuff around this idea. I need to further develop how nihilism is at the heart of the rot….

Stay curious.

Article that I referenced in the episode:

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The jumping off point for this episode:

Society, at its core, thrives on a delicate balance between conformity and controlled deviation. The deviation is the accepted level of neurosis where society will not call you psychotic. It requires people to give themselves to authority at some level to function—to accept its norms, rules, and boundaries, even as…

I listened to Sam Harris’s episode “The Reckoning”….

I have som thoughts…

Here’s the key point I want to illustrate in this episode (which ties into our current political and cultural chaos):

We need to understand how the internet has become a wasteland of endless information. Finding anything resembling “real” or stable truth online is nearly impossible, and I believe most people feel this deeply. So, what do we do? We focus on paying our bills, but when we want to make sense of the world, we turn to simplified narratives—ones that tap into primal instincts like fear, anger, and loyalty to our “in-groups.” The right has positioned itself as rebellious or populist, and they’ve quickly grasped that young men, in particular, have moved on from millennial political framing. Zoomers, raised on the internet, perceive the world through an online lens.

So, when Biden talks about bringing back manufacturing jobs, it barely resonates. They want to be content creators, not factory workers. The content that sells right now is fueled by right-wing talking points. Elon Musk clearly recognized this when he reshaped Twitter. This generation doesn’t trust corporations, the media, the “American Dream,” or even their parents. Instead, they put their faith in individuals—the influencers who tell them they don’t need a 9-to-5 job, that they can succeed as content creators or finance bros.

They’ve watched their parents struggle. They’ve seen millennials hyper-aware of corporate exploitation, with little to show for it—unable to afford homes, rent, or even the basics to start a family. Zoomers’ response has been to conform collectively while rebelling individually. In this climate, you try to secure your piece of the pie—and right now, conforming to the right’s cultural framing is the way to do that as an individual.

The challenge? I want to find a way to convince people to resist that pull.

Anyway…

I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts about the current political and cultural chaos—especially how we reached the point of a second Trump term. This isn’t just another “here’s what’s wrong with everything” rant filled with low-hanging fruit talking points. Those have been exhausted. They feel performative and predictable.

The left is due for a reckoning. This reckoning won’t come from recycled takes or comforting narratives that avoid the hard truths. It will require confronting uncomfortable realities.

No, the solution isn’t a “progressive Joe Rogan.”No, Kamala Harris’s loss isn’t solely about racism, sexism, or even “wokeness.”It’s far more complex than that.

Our media ecosystem and the internet aren’t just bystanders—they’re actively driving cultural and political shifts we’ve yet to fully comprehend. When Trump shouts out figures like Adin Ross and the Nelk Boys, while Dana White gives a speech during his celebration, it’s a sign that the landscape of influence has fundamentally changed.

The left can’t dismiss these cultural signals. They need to learn from them, even if it means reshaping their framing of the world.

Sam Harris is a perfect case study here. He’s emblematic of a liberal media cohort—figures like Ethan Klein and Bari Weiss—who want to critique the system without meaningfully challenging it. They represent a centrist liberalism that’s long dominated the Democratic Party, embodied by Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Kamala Harris. This faction has often operated at the expense of the voter base it claims to represent.

Instead of empowering diverse, authentic voices that demand systemic change, liberal institutions often prefer controlled minorities—those who fit within a safe, curated narrative. In contrast, Republicans are embracing chaos. They’re opening doors to a new generation of wildcards, loyalists, and provocateurs. While this is risky and often reckless, it creates a sense of genuine expression and raw connection that resonates with many.

This is where I use Sam Harris’s critiques of “wokeness.” Yes, wokeness has an optics problem. But Harris, like many liberal pundits, hyperfixates on it as if dismantling it will solve the broader systemic issues. It won’t. Woke discourse is just one piece of a much larger, reformulating puzzle.

Kamala Harris is a microcosm of this problem. Her failure wasn’t just about “wokeness”—it was her inability to connect meaningfully with any voter base. In trying to please everyone, she pleased no one.

Meanwhile, the media continues to thrive on spectacle, feeding tribalism and controversy. Figures like Trump, Carlson, and Musk dominate this space because they play to primal, simple narratives: us vs. them.

The left’s challenge isn’t just to counter this messaging—it’s to resist becoming a watered-down imitation of the right. Instead, they must forge a new way forward, one that genuinely connects with people’s discontent and offers something more substantive than the performative politics we’ve grown used to.

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In this episode, I dive into the intersection of politics and identity, exploring how the election—and the discourse around it—has morphed into a hyper-stylized spectacle. I felt the need to talk about the election in my way….I’ve got to stay on brand, right!?

Anyway our increasingly online world has transformed political engagement into a product, something we consume for entertainment rather than something that prompts genuine reflection or change. We essentially perform our discontent instead of seeking out a genuine understanding of the origins of said discontent.

Think about it: are we really engaging with the issues, or just performing our political identities for an audience? We seek validation for the identity we formulate online! Both as consumers and creators.

To explore this, I use Jubilee as a backdrop, which has turned political debate into binge-worthy content, casting ideological labels into meme-ready roles in series like Middle Ground (insane ‘vs’ series…. “fit vs fat” is an example of their debates) and Surrounded (1 vs 25 debates).

These "debates" aren’t about meaningful exchange; they’re about creating viral moments, reinforcing stereotypes, and packaging political identity as a consumable commodity. These staged personas reflect the performative nature of modern politics. They’re not there to inform—they’re there to entertain, to affirm, and to let viewers project their own identities onto prefabricated political tropes, symbols, and trends.

But it’s not just Jubilee. Think about figures like Joe Rogan, who recently stirred the pot by endorsing Trump. Platforms and influencers with massive reach have financial incentives to feed us predictable, memeable political “analysis,” and we consume it without digging deeper. Our political discourse has been flattened into a series of catchphrases and predictable debates, designed to feed our sense of self/identity rather than challenge it.

So, what does it mean when our politics is sold back to us as entertainment? This isn’t just disillusioning—it’s profoundly isolating. As we scroll through clips, drawn into ideological caricatures and clickbait conflicts, we sense a disconnect between the theater of politics and the real issues shaping our lives. But instead of prompting action, this disconnect leaves us in a loop of passive consumption, feeding a politics of narcissism and spectacle.

So….our personal distress, our longing for validation, and even our political identities have become the products we buy and sell—leaving us, the “voters,” as spectators in a political drama that may not care whether we truly understand or engage with issues that truly effect us everyday.

The fragmented political arena is a closed loop; a loop with no escape and no imagined future, only a loop of predictable reactions.

Now, dance liberal!

How can we move the spectacle into something more impactful? How can we find a political project that actually has an idea for the future?

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Welcome to Unformulated. A subsection of my audio/visual content…where I can ramble through what I’m researching, poke at uncomfortable ideas, and maybe even say something worthwhile.

This will be my chaotic sandbox. It’s my experiment in real-time thinking, a space where I can let my mind wander without obsessing over making every idea neat and polished. We will destroy the neat package that is the easily digestible content! (Also this is still well researched content….it’s just not condensed down and will vary more in topics and style…it’s experimental.)

It’s an act of rebellion against the algorithms.

Anyway, I’ve been fixating on some cultural and societal frustrations lately, especially how the theory space feels like an intellectual time capsule—more obsessed with dissecting the past than figuring out what it means for our uncertain future. Don’t get me wrong, I love history and all that, I love theory, but sometimes it feels like we’re stuck playing curators in an intellectual museum instead of building anything new. We need more people willing to take risks with their ideas, even if it means sounding a little unhinged.

Cultural analysis should go beyond history…it should be willing to predict.

We need to be more willing to fail and be wrong.

I talk about why so much of modern culture—think figures like Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro—peddle simplified versions of complex ideas, treating history like a myth to prop up their narratives. But it’s not just them. Everyone’s craving predictability—something the algorithms love to reinforce. That desire to fit into neat categories? It’s killing our ability to imagine new futures. We end up trapped in these tidy, marketable versions of ourselves, all the while ignoring the deeper questions about how power shapes our desires and keeps us in a state of discontent and problematic status quo.

This is my space to push back against all that. I’ll throw out my clusterfucked and more ‘lateral’ thoughts here and only upload when I think there’s some value in my word-vomit. Thank you for your attention. I need your attention—seriously, it keeps me sane. But I also need you to challenge me, to love and hate what I say.

Okay, now I’m gonna attempt to break some museums or something.

I’ll have the video version on my YT channel I made for Unformulated…it should be up a few hours after your receive this in case you’d rather stare into my eyes and look at my face while consuming my words.

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I’ve been working on an essay that uses the recent Jay Shetty controversy as a lens to explore deeper themes around individuality and how capitalism shapes our sense of self. The controversy isn’t surprising in a system designed to commodify every aspect of our lives. I argue that the more individualized we become, the more society pushes us to deconstruct ourselves in pursuit of consumption. This cycle creates a fragmented sense of identity, marketed as self-exploration and empowerment, but ultimately designed to sell us more.

More, more, more….hoooooray!

Self-help has evolved into a massive industry driven by figures like Jordan Peterson, Tony Robbins, and Jay Shetty (to name a few of the endless names I could have named), capitalizing on our desire to "fix" ourselves.

But what if this endless focus on the individual is distracting us from the collective issues we face? Deleuze and Guattari's idea of capitalism as schizophrenic—constantly reshaping our desires to fit market demands—plays a key role here. As we consume to define ourselves, we become more atomized and isolated, convinced that self-consumption is the path to maintaining our identity.

I also touch on how hyper-individualization connects to media distrust in the digital age.

As we build personalized realities through fragmented information, we lose a shared sense of truth, deepening social divisions. Ultimately, I hope to explore how this obsession with self-identity not only drives consumerism but keeps us from addressing the broader systemic forces that benefit from our division.

Stay tuned for more on this topic as I made this episode because my other essay was getting off track around a related topic.

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