The great fear as the internet spread across American society was that things in this virtual world would somehow cross over into the real world. Usually this meant that the machines would get super intelligent and take over society. This is the underlying theme of movies like The Terminator. Alternatively, a being from inside the internet would make the jump into the meat space. This is the plot for the film Virtuosity. A virtual serial killer gets loose in the real world and does his worst.
Nothing like that has come to pass, but something worse may be happening and that is reality is being sucked into the virtual world. More accurately, people are spending so much time online that the virtual world is supplanting reality for them. We are seeing this with the Harris campaign, which is probably the most intensely online political program we have every experienced. Everything about it is based on winning the internet that day, which means it operates by the rules of the internet.
The most obvious example is how the Kamala Harris character has been reimagined by her developers into something disconnected from reality. From the presentation, one would never know she has been Vice President for the last four years or that she has spent those years arguing for the administration’s positions. Like a discarded scene from a video game, all of that is gone now. In its place is the new character whose only connection to the prior character is the name.
The disconnectedness extends to her campaign and its supporters. Trump has been stumping on the idea of exempting tips from income taxes. Whatever the merits of the idea, it is a clever way to appeal to young people. The other day, the Harris character announced its plan to not tax tips, as if it were something totally new that had never been mentioned by anyone. Miraculously, the people playing the Harris character online responded as if it was a total novel idea.
Of course, this being the age of mendacity, the new Harris gameplay comes with manufactured crowds online that cheer for it. There are fake polls that claim this character is now the most popular character in the game. It is destroying all of the orange baddies in this expansion pack. We know this because every day the lie machine we call mass media fills the game space with stories about how Trump is raging in his bunker about the greatness of the Harris character.
This upgraded version of Kamala Harris is now equipment with a lacky to do the things lackies do for the hero. Like the new Kamala Harris, the character called Tim Walz bears little resemblance to the old version. Instead of being a bloviating windbag who bores people with his imaginary tales of heroism in the military, this version is a folksy good old boy who just happens to hold all of the same opinions as the developers who created his character for the game.
What we are experiencing right now is a political campaign that exists only in the virtual world of the highly online. If you are not playing in this part of the game or you live in reality, you may not know about any of this. Maybe one of your favorite “influencers” has gone into panic mode for some reason and that got your attention. Otherwise, if you are not in this part of the game, none of this is real to you. The main reason for that is that nothing about this campaign is real thus far.
This is why the people most affected by this new release are the self-styled influencers who live entirely online. These people spend all day, every day, looking for something they can front-run in order to maintain the illusion that they are not just playing the game, but they are controlling it. The reason they are called influencers is not that they influence anyone, but that they are the most easily influenced. The right-wing influencer crowd cannot stop playing the new Harris character.
The highly online, of course, will argue that this is reality, and it is now changing the meat space, but how would they know? One of the weird aspects of virtual reality is that it is self-affirming to the people who have been sucked into it. For many of them, Twitter is reality and people outside of it do not exist. This is why influencers banned from Twitter were so desperate to get back on the platform. Having your account suspended is what passes for Hell in the virtual world.
That still leaves the question as to whether this is working. More people get their news from online sources than from legacy sources, so if you win the internet then it suggests you can influence people. On the other hand, the internet is a big place and people gravitate to that which confirms the opinions. One reason the undecided voter is a thing of the past is everyone now has an online tribe. Alternatively, they have a cable chat show they watch every night for their opinions.
The highly online like saying that arguing with a boomer is arguing with the television because all of their opinions come from television. Ironically, arguing with the highly online is arguing with the internet. The people playing the Nick Fuentes character right now have no ideas of their own. They have the ideas of the other players in the Nick Fuentes game space. It turns out that right-wing zoomers are just like the right-wing boomers they criticize. They just have a different god.
That is what will be the interesting thing about the Harris game. Eventually, the Harris character will have to step outside the curated world of gameplay and talk to flesh and blood humans, as well as debate Trump. As much as the developers would like to believe the reality they have created has supplanted the old reality, the test of this will be their character leaving the game space for the meat space. The same holds for the lackey with his Elmer Fudd costume and reimagined backstory.
What it will ultimately come down to is whether the voters will prefer the game space reality to the meat space reality. Will they believe the upgraded Harris character is preferable to the meat space Harris and continue to play the game character as a form of escapism or will they experience the meat space version and get turned off by the game itself? That is the central question of this election. This is the first election where people are asked to choose reality versus escapism.
If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!
Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.
Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.
Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.
Here’s the thing Z, she doesn’t. The media is her voice now, even moreso than it was for Biden in 2020. We have a candidate that doesn’t have to do anything or say anything. If she says nothing, there is nothing to criticize. Say what you will about Nick Fuentes, he is responding to things that Trump has actually said on the campaign trail.
If by now Fuentes does not understand that trump says a lot of things and they should all be taken with a grain of salt, then he is not connected to physical reality. He is no different from the typical Hannity viewer in this regard.
Fuentes is trying a “Groyper War 2” while not understanding that why “Groyper War 1” was so powerful is because it took internet discourse to the real world, and utterly humiliated their targets in a real venue. Their targets could not escape physical space. You won’t get the same effect in a purely online space, too easy to ignore and tune them out.
It is important to note that Fuentes played a peripheral role in that real world activism. His role was to comment upon it online. It was pat Casey organizing the the things in the meat space.
Exactly.
Betrayal can add a few minutes to the allotted15. If Richard Spencer had a gay Hispanic son, he would look a lot like Nick Fuentes.
As a parent of three Zoomers, they don’t call it, “highly online”, they call it, “chronically online”. As in: “What happened to Jaylyn Kaylyn Braylyn?” “They lost their minds from being chronically online.” So, there is, I suspect, some sense of self awareness in a subset of Zoomers.
What we need right about now is a nice big EMP , now where did I store those horseshoes…
Harris-Fudd 2024!
You saw it here first.
Be vewwwy vewwwy qwiet, I’m stuffing bawwots, heh- heh-heh-heh-heh. 🤫
Ooooh, that wascawwy Twump! 😠
“More people get their news from online sources than from legacy sources, so if you win the internet then it suggests you can influence people.” Depends on which part of the internet you’re trying to win. Harris is not going to win the alt right internet area. She might win on Facebook and her ads on YouTube are on virtually every video I watch — but whether that will have much impact is something I doubt. At some oint one would think people would ask — or should ask — what is this conwoman offering, what’s her agenda, what’s her… Read more »
It’s still about the low-info voter, which has replaced the undecided voter. Getting that “viral” clip or catchphrase into the MSM is what draws the low-info voter towards the thing like a bug toward a light.
As the demographics get more vibrant, I expect we get more 60-year old politicians hooting like banshees and bumping and grinding for the low-info voter.
> . They have the ideas of the other players in the Nick Fuentes game space. It turns out that right-wing zoomers are just like the right-wing boomers they criticize. They just have a different god. About four days ago Trump made a swipe at Joe Rogan, which all the online right-wing space freaked out about and thought it would derail his campaign. It took up most discourse for the afternoon. Today, not a single post. Everyone has moved on. At least your boomer grandpa had the attention span to stay enraged at what the TV told him for longer… Read more »
Remember when Trump almost had his head blown off on live television? Granted that was, what, sometime in the late ’90’s/ early 2000’s?
Oh yeah, I forgot about that
Digital information already has shortened Americans’ notoriously short attention spans. It is amazing to watch.
I’ll stick up for online culture for a moment. I prefer this method to drooling in front of a TV…with TV and radio, everything is passive consumption. With online-virtual, there’s some interaction. Sure it can very fake, but with all the hours of Richard Spencer I mean Nick Fuentes on video compared to, say, Tom Brokaw or even Jay Leno, what we see is probably what we get. Nick is ridiculous, but he’s probably verifiably ridiculous. What I don’t trust is yesterday people like Kamala, who were bred for TV-radio but wound up in the internet age to sell their… Read more »
“The reason they are called influencers is not that they influence anyone, but that they are the most easily influenced.”
Bears repeating
While their power evaporated, the Blues and the Greens spent their time fighting each other in the Eastern Roman Empire.
Russia, India and China are national entities with physical assets and independent interests. Pretty sure their interest in American chariot racing is superficial, at best.
In the old days there was always a liberal Sam Donaldson that would even confront someone like Harris with questions about her inflation strategy or how do you respond to Trump’s charges of failure on illegal border crossings. Now they just don’t ask at all and actually just act as attack dogs for anything right of their masters. They are all in on this one just like the last. The holy card illustration for the Time cover (it still exists?) was not unexpected. The cool and sassy wine aunt from now until the election. My only hope it doesn’t even… Read more »
“Eventually, the Harris character will have to step outside the curated world of gameplay and talk to flesh and blood humans” -Not necessarily. Biden didn’t really campaign in 2020 and he “won.” Remember those astroturfed “town hall” meetings for Hillary in which nobody showed up? She won the popular vote in 2016. Fake reality precedes the Internet. Whatever the networks choose to cover, or choose to ignore, or to crop out of the picture matters. Every Harris appearance will be carefully curated and focus-grouped and performed before an adoring crowd of left-wing feminists and trannies on a college campus. What… Read more »
Biden did many interviews in 2020. The “campaign from the basement” meme was just that, a meme. Sure, he avoided tough questioners, but he existed in the meat space. Thus far, the Harris character exists only online.
It will be interesting to see how far this can be taken. If Harris still comes up short, the absence from meat space will be adjusted downward to a minimum that works. This is the future, even if the hand is overplayed this time, and it is such an extreme example of totalitarianism it would make North Koreans blush.
If her handlers can keep her from cackling, Kamala might win. The Cackle Factor is very important in this race. Actually, they may be scrubbing that cackle as we sit here. I wonder if they’re using Cackle-be-gone™?
With the caveat none of this matters at this point: just as a Ukrainian victory could not be memed into existence, it is doubtful a Harris presidency can be, either. Still, let’s say it happens absent massive cheating, imprisonment or assassination. Wouldn’t governance itself at that point transition into virtual reality? The protags in the game would be strong women of color, the antagonists evil straight white men, the governed NPC’s, and political decisions would be made by the programmers, all of which are somewhat the case now with high tech managerialism. Not that it wouldn’t have done the same… Read more »
I’m impressed with Kamala’s campaign platform so far. It’s nothing. It’s not even pushing the “I’m the anti-Trump” line that Dementia Joe pushed in 2020 (which he failed at but won due to election fraud). Her campaign seems to literally be: “My handlers stole the 2020 election and we’re going to narrative fuck your mind and steal 2024 based on no platform at all, just an entirely media created bubble and spin, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ll do no interviews because my personality is extremely grating and hide except to the extent I’m provided media cover.… Read more »
Yeah, much of the “Ukraine funding” undoubtedly goes into a slush fund for leftwing/totalitarian causes.
This is one of those times I agree completely with Andrew Anglin that everything about this “election” is fake, gay, and meaningless. Taking the 2024 Election Seriously Makes You Look Stupid and Delusional, by Andrew Anglin – The Unz Review Because, even putting aside questions of vote manipulation, I do not think it makes any difference whatsoever which one “wins.” Even if Trump meant everything he says, which I don’t believe he does, it has been a long time since there was a president who was actually in charge of anything. Which won’t change absent armed conflict. And he doesn’t… Read more »
The level of disconnect from reality observed in younger, and perhaps also older, “normal” people meets the old criteria for mild to moderate psychosis. That is one of the reasons they changed the criteria in the psychiatry manual about twenty years ago
I am not sure most people will watch the entire Trump/Kamala debate? When it’s over the clip editing with 10,15, or 30 second sound bites begin, these gotcha clips will be the Internet fodder for the permanently on line and the geezers watching the 10 o’clock news.
Our attention spans may not tolerate an hour long debate in the modern age.
I would rather listen to the neighborhood cats fighting outside than watch an entire ‘presidential’ “debate”
What it will ultimately come down to is whether the voters even get to know what happened in meat space. I can see a debate that – even though live – is doctored to make Trump seem like a weird looser. Technology is at the point where you can insert a digital fly into a livestream and it will just sit on Trumps head or circle around it. Next day people will only remember “Flies love Trump like they love turds”. Nobody will remember that Kamala couldn’t say a straight sentence.
They’re winding up the crowd so hard, I’m thinking she is the colorful shiny toy to be snatched away. Imagine their wroth. She was not only their toy, she was their Salvation. Oh no. Not just a female Obama absolving us of the sin of racism. Our psychological torturers are more sophisticated than that. The suppressed terror, anxiety, and guilt over their blind support for the Covid era crimes; parents dying alone, masked children hugged through plastic sheets, the Russian roulette of time bombs in their blood and their complicity in poisoning their own! The abject failure of their false… Read more »