Which is, I suppose, why the phrase "to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize" resonated with so many disgruntled slightly spergy types. (Though attributing it to Voltaire was a clever bit of reputational laundering.)
Yes, but it is very fluid. A few decades ago the most obvious group to not criticize was jews, but now that the left does it too, and lefty criticism of Israel now frequenty overflows into lefty criticism of jews, so it is not such a taboo anymore. It is hard to find one group who is consistently above criticism. Not even women, when you see black feminists talk about white women's tears...
I would recommend the mind is flat + how to make friends and influence people to spergs over the Elephant in the Brain. People do have a tendency to make more flattering, underdetermined, and positive explanations for their behaviour, but they're not committing self-deception because they do not have any way of knowing what their "real motives" are.
Hot take: most people have bad or mediocre social abilities, and use conformity + psychological projections (which are more accurate if you are closer to the average person) as a crutch. Autistic people do have worse social skills, but part of it comes from not being willing or able to rely on the same crutches.
Brilliant work here, Walt. You've done a great service for spergy teens and young adults trying to navigate a bewildering social world. It took me a few painful decades to sort this all out, and you've articulated it here magnificently.
Though I submit there is a third way between bleeding out and developing the h-bomb. And that is to just not participate in these absurd status games. Find a spergy vocation, spend your free time engaging in enjoyable spergy hobbies, hopefully get yourself a spergy wife, and accept that society is and always will be entirely corrupted by the precognitive biological instincts and post hoc rationalizations you ably describe here.
Bleeding out (that is, competing in status games and losing horribly over and over again) obviously isn't a viable path. The real choice is between the path of the sperg warrior versus that of the sperg hermit. Or the sperg Nietzschean (but I repeat myself) versus the sperg Schopenhauerian (and again), or perhaps a more moderate sperg Epicureanism. The correct choice is a matter of individual temperament and circumstances.
As an autist, I had to learn that sperging out and being too direct is often a fucked up thing to do.
At the same time, you are wrongfully depicting normies as some sort of super geniuses of "social skills", which they a not.
A lot of times, their retarded stumbling around the topic, is not super-mega-genius reading the room, but actually retarded stumbling around the topic.
The rest of the article is fantastic tho, keep this up.
“demanding clean accounting” from a girl is what i meant by failing the original shit test on your last poast. women (the world) will tell you you’re wrong, the guys that survive master asking how honestly in response, and look for inspiration not answers in return.
I think we already got the Sperg Manual For Life from @Robin Hanson - The Elephant In The Brain, or recommending Ken Johnstone's Impro. That status is not a fixed place in a hierarchy, but a set of transactions performed, and when someone says "Metallica is the best band in the world" they do not mean a statement of objective fact, but more like "you should consider me cool because I like Metallica".
Once one gets this lesson down, life becomes clear. For example when years ago I googled "Albert Einstein plagiarism", first I found a total dismissal "anti-semitic conspiracy theory" which means "anti-semites are so low-status, their theory does not even deserve serious criticism", then the second result was feminists accusing Einstein to have plagiarised his wife, which, because feminists are high-status, was taken seriously enough to be criticised in Bloomberg. It is really about who says it. This was a few years ago, and now I get more results, simply because status fades with time, it was very hard to to criticize The Official Genius in 2005, but now more possible. Now he is fading into Just Another White Dude territory (yeah Jewish means white in this context). One does not stay a celebrity forever.
So, long story short, yup, life is a high school lunchroom. Again we already got it from Hanson like 15 years ago, so you don't have to reinvent it.
The truly painful lesson is that Spergs need to either present as non-Spergs or asexual. Remember the scientist dude with the hawaii shirt, with scantily clad women on it? The reason he was attacked is that that is 1980's fashion, it was a bit cringe even then. A man being so much out of touch with fashion, and also through that clothing choice expressing being sexually active, or very much would like to, sets off so many alarms. If you are a sperg, wear a suit, talk unemotional professional lingo, and reserve any hint of being a sexual being for Hinge. Which BTW if you max out all the payment options and also paid for a pro stylist and pro photographer is not that bad.
I mean, love you and your work, but this article is durable gold. Thanks for all you do. So much painful truth in so much elegant sarcasm, conveying so much insight that I had to read every word. ;). -Cheers ;)
I wish I'd had this when I was younger, though it might have made me even more scared.
"No one likes a loser and everyone loves a winner, and even a loser’s rightness smells bad which means the only tenable path out of losing is to win something."
Or, as the Romans said so long ago: vae victis.
Beautifully done. Perhaps this will help some teenager or young adult in my place.
The important context that you're not saying, leaving your own opening to one day leave us and enter into the "greater realm," is that most people are just afraid. They read for these signals but it's thirty different shades of fear. It's important to understand that these people are essentially leechers and trying to get anything from them fundamentally opposes their programming. They are looking for you to provide to them. Anyone who breaks the rules of system but cannot at the very least provide for themselves is clearly a bigger threat than they understand. "Truth" is oftentimes disguised nihilism or hatred. "Your" (fictional person, not necessarily Walt) peers are scared people, yes, but they're also scared of you because you so classlessly rape the system of its grace and mercy by flaunting rebellion when everyone knows, in any society but this one, you would've gotten your head chopped off by now. Just like women secretly know, and express in many disguised fashions, that in any society but this one, they would be enslaved and lose all their "rights" (hilarious!!!) before sundown.
The two things any man should focus on is making money and learning how to fight. Money so they can cooperate with others. Fight so they can defend their status. If you can't make money and you can't fight, blame yourself when no one will follow you. You're a pie in the sky dreamer and you deserve the bashing until you finally see that everyone is permissive of you and there's no right to your existence. What good is being right if being right means you get stoned to death? You're clearly just a moron.
Do you ever write about religion? You could argue Christianity is an attempt to either harness and stabilize, or normalize when permissible in the contexts of union or family, everything you've described. And a lot of the latent anxiety is the inability to fill the void of that institution with anything even approaching its effectiveness. It creates a scarcity feeling in people and they start behaving even worse.
Which is, I suppose, why the phrase "to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize" resonated with so many disgruntled slightly spergy types. (Though attributing it to Voltaire was a clever bit of reputational laundering.)
Yes, but it is very fluid. A few decades ago the most obvious group to not criticize was jews, but now that the left does it too, and lefty criticism of Israel now frequenty overflows into lefty criticism of jews, so it is not such a taboo anymore. It is hard to find one group who is consistently above criticism. Not even women, when you see black feminists talk about white women's tears...
I would recommend the mind is flat + how to make friends and influence people to spergs over the Elephant in the Brain. People do have a tendency to make more flattering, underdetermined, and positive explanations for their behaviour, but they're not committing self-deception because they do not have any way of knowing what their "real motives" are.
Hot take: most people have bad or mediocre social abilities, and use conformity + psychological projections (which are more accurate if you are closer to the average person) as a crutch. Autistic people do have worse social skills, but part of it comes from not being willing or able to rely on the same crutches.
Damn this really hit home.
Brilliant work here, Walt. You've done a great service for spergy teens and young adults trying to navigate a bewildering social world. It took me a few painful decades to sort this all out, and you've articulated it here magnificently.
Though I submit there is a third way between bleeding out and developing the h-bomb. And that is to just not participate in these absurd status games. Find a spergy vocation, spend your free time engaging in enjoyable spergy hobbies, hopefully get yourself a spergy wife, and accept that society is and always will be entirely corrupted by the precognitive biological instincts and post hoc rationalizations you ably describe here.
Bleeding out (that is, competing in status games and losing horribly over and over again) obviously isn't a viable path. The real choice is between the path of the sperg warrior versus that of the sperg hermit. Or the sperg Nietzschean (but I repeat myself) versus the sperg Schopenhauerian (and again), or perhaps a more moderate sperg Epicureanism. The correct choice is a matter of individual temperament and circumstances.
Well said. There's a reason the FIRE movement is so popular.
The spergettes tend to go pretty quick, though.
I think you overcomplicated it a lot.
As an autist, I had to learn that sperging out and being too direct is often a fucked up thing to do.
At the same time, you are wrongfully depicting normies as some sort of super geniuses of "social skills", which they a not.
A lot of times, their retarded stumbling around the topic, is not super-mega-genius reading the room, but actually retarded stumbling around the topic.
The rest of the article is fantastic tho, keep this up.
Exactly. They're just slaves to invisible norms and impulses, which doesn't seem so enviable. Meanwhile those at the top know them by heart.
wish I had this post to read ~10 years ago, nice one Walt
“demanding clean accounting” from a girl is what i meant by failing the original shit test on your last poast. women (the world) will tell you you’re wrong, the guys that survive master asking how honestly in response, and look for inspiration not answers in return.
This is very helpful for me. Thank you.
Correct diagnosis bad treatment
I think we already got the Sperg Manual For Life from @Robin Hanson - The Elephant In The Brain, or recommending Ken Johnstone's Impro. That status is not a fixed place in a hierarchy, but a set of transactions performed, and when someone says "Metallica is the best band in the world" they do not mean a statement of objective fact, but more like "you should consider me cool because I like Metallica".
Once one gets this lesson down, life becomes clear. For example when years ago I googled "Albert Einstein plagiarism", first I found a total dismissal "anti-semitic conspiracy theory" which means "anti-semites are so low-status, their theory does not even deserve serious criticism", then the second result was feminists accusing Einstein to have plagiarised his wife, which, because feminists are high-status, was taken seriously enough to be criticised in Bloomberg. It is really about who says it. This was a few years ago, and now I get more results, simply because status fades with time, it was very hard to to criticize The Official Genius in 2005, but now more possible. Now he is fading into Just Another White Dude territory (yeah Jewish means white in this context). One does not stay a celebrity forever.
So, long story short, yup, life is a high school lunchroom. Again we already got it from Hanson like 15 years ago, so you don't have to reinvent it.
The truly painful lesson is that Spergs need to either present as non-Spergs or asexual. Remember the scientist dude with the hawaii shirt, with scantily clad women on it? The reason he was attacked is that that is 1980's fashion, it was a bit cringe even then. A man being so much out of touch with fashion, and also through that clothing choice expressing being sexually active, or very much would like to, sets off so many alarms. If you are a sperg, wear a suit, talk unemotional professional lingo, and reserve any hint of being a sexual being for Hinge. Which BTW if you max out all the payment options and also paid for a pro stylist and pro photographer is not that bad.
Gem after gem after gem after gem.
Great stuff.
Walt:
I mean, love you and your work, but this article is durable gold. Thanks for all you do. So much painful truth in so much elegant sarcasm, conveying so much insight that I had to read every word. ;). -Cheers ;)
I wish I'd had this when I was younger, though it might have made me even more scared.
"No one likes a loser and everyone loves a winner, and even a loser’s rightness smells bad which means the only tenable path out of losing is to win something."
Or, as the Romans said so long ago: vae victis.
Beautifully done. Perhaps this will help some teenager or young adult in my place.
One of your best!
The important context that you're not saying, leaving your own opening to one day leave us and enter into the "greater realm," is that most people are just afraid. They read for these signals but it's thirty different shades of fear. It's important to understand that these people are essentially leechers and trying to get anything from them fundamentally opposes their programming. They are looking for you to provide to them. Anyone who breaks the rules of system but cannot at the very least provide for themselves is clearly a bigger threat than they understand. "Truth" is oftentimes disguised nihilism or hatred. "Your" (fictional person, not necessarily Walt) peers are scared people, yes, but they're also scared of you because you so classlessly rape the system of its grace and mercy by flaunting rebellion when everyone knows, in any society but this one, you would've gotten your head chopped off by now. Just like women secretly know, and express in many disguised fashions, that in any society but this one, they would be enslaved and lose all their "rights" (hilarious!!!) before sundown.
The two things any man should focus on is making money and learning how to fight. Money so they can cooperate with others. Fight so they can defend their status. If you can't make money and you can't fight, blame yourself when no one will follow you. You're a pie in the sky dreamer and you deserve the bashing until you finally see that everyone is permissive of you and there's no right to your existence. What good is being right if being right means you get stoned to death? You're clearly just a moron.
Do you ever write about religion? You could argue Christianity is an attempt to either harness and stabilize, or normalize when permissible in the contexts of union or family, everything you've described. And a lot of the latent anxiety is the inability to fill the void of that institution with anything even approaching its effectiveness. It creates a scarcity feeling in people and they start behaving even worse.
Good stuff. All true.