I was looking at one of those Youtube videos complaining about consumerism, you know, the ones that are obviously directed at people who have poor spending habits and watch them as a form of projection. It was about how every hobby has been overtaken by consumerism - how people are being manipulated by advertisers into gatekeeping by the number of items they own. I tried to comment that, yeah, your hobbies will probably manipulate you under late stage capitalism unless they scare advertisers, here are some hobbies that scare advertisers.

You can’t comment the hobbies that scare advertisers.

I couldn’t tell the 3D printing enthusiasts about stuff like FOSSCAD, diy fursuit making, etc. I could barely talk to the cinephiles/audiophiles/bibliophiles about torrenting, I had to use the obscure term ‘private tracker’ to mention it at all. They probably won’t know what the hell I’m talking about. They’ll probably go to the next video about the topic, then the next, then the next, learning absolutely nothing because the Youtubers will never tell them anything that matters. Viewers admitted that they have ADHD and probably wouldn’t mind the social rejection from engaging in controversial hobbies (they’ve dealt with it before), but I’ll never be able to tell them.

I thought to myself how essentially every video on Youtube, every post on Reddit, everything is like this. Most of what’s implicitly hidden isn’t even controversial. There are so many posts on Reddit about people trying to figure out what’s wrong with them, and while the answers are decent, they’re overly general and never quite good enough. People only give those answers because moderators comb through your post history, you can’t give your own advice or mods will prevent you from posting to other subs. Another example: the music recommended by Youtube is cool, obscure, underground, and oh so nostalgic to make you sad and increase engagement. You won’t be shown anything newer, keeping you from ever going to a real rave/party/whatever with that newer stuff (where you could make real friends). People mostly hate on the slop content shoveled out by algorithms, but everything is designed, incredibly subtly, to keep you miserable and to keep you from getting better information that’s relevant. You would never notice it unless you engaged with it directly and it fucked you up somehow.

Do you know where the platforms will suggest you go in order to say ‘unique’ or ‘controversial’ things? They show you screenshots, memes, etc from 4chan, that’s where you’re essentially told to go. Sites like 4chan are made entirely to keep you engaged in a different way, by presenting you with delusional fantasies and further reinforcing the paranoia that you have the thoughts of an insane person. If you reach this point, good luck ever leaving the escapist bubble you’ve been trapped in, good luck ever admitting to yourself who you are as seemingly everyone hates you. How great is it to have all the information in the world while never being able to act on it, repressing everything about yourself and engaging harder and harder into escapist fantasies? Now you can accept all this hateful rhetoric, you never needed to tell other people useful things because they’re all out to get you.

Everything is a mirage.