It is like when you are walking in a city & you stumble into a "car place"-- somewhere you are not supposed to walk-- something designed solely for interface with machines. It's like the endless corridors of server farms-- humming, blinking, under flourescent lights.

Living in Dallas, I feel this sort of sublime awe & terror when I drive it's immense monstrous highway system past an endless procession of office parks & strip malls. I never know where I am-- unless the GPS-- an inhuman intelligence-- can tell me. It all looks the same.

Even online this is the case-- every website looks the same now. I experience great nostalgia for the mawkish & gawky html coded geocities sites with personalized cursors, fonts, hideous low-res gifs, clip art icons... They were like individualized roadside diners. Old McDonalds.

Everything looks like this now: "Square Spaces"

Part of 4chan's appeal was it's extremely anachronistic 2000s era web design. Rateyourmusic is my favorite website of all time. These still feel like they are "somewhere."

"Meme culture" is this perpetual race to recreate this "hideousness" that was so offputting to people-- who did not go "online" until 2008 with the iPhone. The problem is that this gets absorbed & reproduced endlessly. The "aura" of its uniqueness diminishes with each repost.

The authenticity of amateur consumer production- as in memphis rap tapes, punk zines, dungeon synth, bedroom pop cassettes-- this was the origin of "meme culture"-- & yet its symbolic vocabulary was entirely exhausted by the end of the 2010s.

All of these things were curated in the 2010s as fodder for "aesthetic branding"-- A$AP Yams made his entire career curating underground 90s rap aesthetics on Tumblr-- he fashioned Rocky after that, absorbed what he could from SpaceGhostPurrp, etc.

It was once cutting edge to Chop & Screw music & set it to a repeating gif of 80s era anime. Now this is "homework music" compilations on youtube. Adult Swim did a lot to translate this stuff into mainstream salability. That's why they tried to ape MDE.

In the mid to late 2010s-- one of the last aesthetics-- once thought to be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to incorporate into this reproduction-- was that of "Esoteric Fascism"-- "Anarcho-Primitivism"-- "Traditional Religious Iconography"-- etc. But now in 2020-- all of these are brands!

It all can fit snugly in these little "Square Spaces" in the nowhere of the online total marketplace. You can change your avatar-- but it will always be the same size on the screen. Your expression is limited by the form. The Medium is the Message. "Content" is always incidental.

I was going to write this essay-- but this thread is probably more efficient. & I'm not a human being to you anyway. I'm just content. I am an object. You can turn me into anything you want. I was foolish to believe I was ever communicating with other human beings. It's all fake.

& yet-- there is no escape. I am already carved eternally into the internet as a "meme"-- there is no way for me to erase it all. I have only painted a permanent target on my back. I have exploited the last shreds of enchantment I had & turned them into content. I make @jack $$$

It's sad & boring. There is no "enchantment" left to mine. I have probably already expressed all the thoughts I will ever have. I merely repeat myself. Don't do this to yourself-- I advise. What you'll find in the end is this-- that you have become an object in square space.

At least buy my fucking books. I'm gonna go work on the poetry collection now. It's not going to "change the world." It's not going to "change your life." Perhaps, it might entertain you for a little while. The vestiges of my former enchantments. For sale.