(2023-11-30) Monahan Live Players

Sean Monahan (8ball) on Live Players. The generation of new tactics, strategies, coordination mechanisms, and so on entails the production of new, useful knowledge. Thus, a live player must have a living tradition of knowledge. For the tradition of knowledge to be living, it must have at least one theorist, among other things. An individual live player may fulfill multiple roles in themselves, including being one’s own theorist.

Part 1 Excerpts

Last year, my sister forwarded me an Andy Warhol quote. She wasn’t the only one. His understanding of culture bore a striking resemblance to my own vibe shift hypothesis

We’re at that tipping point again--filtering out signals from the last decade, going all in on the ones we believe will win the day. But there’s a catch: this will be the first transition in living memory that happens without the guidance of a coherent elite.

Last spring, there was a poll from The Wall Street Journal and NORC, the University of Chicago’s Nation Opinion Research Center. They have been asking Americans which values are ‘very important’ to them since 1998. Patriotism, family, and religion have all been in decline since the survey began. Community engagement, which I read as a proxy for progressive politics, was on the rise--until 2023, when it collapsed from first to last place among the pack. Only money continues its steady rise, going from last to first over a quarter of a century’s time. Why? Money is agency--or at least our era’s most legible form of it.

Human beings are highly attuned to shifts in power. Like wolves, we can smell weakness. We need a firm sense of who is the leader of the pack. And when there isn’t one, conflict and intrigue ensue. (status)

When the social stack is in flux, everyone is a live player.

There is a triad of capital--financial, social, and cultural--and only those who hold all three forms can be considered true elites

Social capital is the Holy Ghost of the Trinity, the most ephemeral of the three. It consists of trust, networks, relationships, norms, values, and purpose. Here is where our presumptive elites are stumbling. The legitimacy crisis is real.

Cultural capital is the underdog of the pack. Probably because it relies entirely on knowingness

Culture defines and directs our aspirations. Who are our leaders? And why?

People worry about culture because they know it sets the agenda for the future. And who wouldn’t want to be in charge of that?

Wall Street and the City held the crown through economic dominance, regulatory capture, and cultural philanthropy. They faltered in 2008 and never regained their pre-crisis legitimacy. The presumptive heir to the throne, the tech industry has failed to launch time and again.... Treating proxies for social and cultural capital (likes, follows, impressions) as the thing in itself opened up culture to scams, grifts, hacks, and psyops.

exaggeration to say that there are multiple realities co-present in the United States and we have no clear path to negotiate mutual intelligibility between the them.

In 2023, the throne is empty.

Culture industry roles were once much more coherent, the lines of power much more concrete. Figures like Anna Wintour and Rick Rubin gesture at this recent past. They were middle men connecting financial capital (businesses) with cultural capital (artists) to create social capital (cultural institutions).

all shared a similar role: mediating between the avant-garde and the mass market.

They had the agency to move culture.

The flight to social media fattened the distinction between legacy brand--Vogue, Random House, MTV, Hot 97, MoMA, even The New York Times--and internet personality. While this raised the individual agency or certain artists/writers/designers/whatever, it diminished the power of cultural institutions.

The problem with non-hierarchical models is human beings are not non-hierarchical creatures. Like all anarchist ideals, the dream of infinite digital liberty turned out to be more corporate talking point than reality. We took the agenda-setting function away from individual power brokers and gave it to trillion dollar tech companies (BigTech), whose faceless content moderators and blackbox algorithms now decide what people can and can’t see.

We used to believe we would find agency online. Today, we know agency comes from other people. In an era of change, small groups do big things

I wonder if the disenchantment of the last few years has something to do with optimizing culture for the iPhone. The New Aesthetic that dominated the 2010s was fat, simplified, monochrome.

It was legible, but affectless. Flat. No vibe.

By contrast, the globalization aesthetic of the new millennium was perspectival

It was transluscent iMacs, not glass brick iPhones. It was fight paths, urban crowds, container ships. Globalization was a horizon line. And we were going there.

Did the use of perspective and depth cultivate a culture that could handle ambiguity and nuance?

The techno-optimist era was brief though, lasting roughly from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the election of Donald Trump. A flash in the pan: possibility there, then gone

The Internet

Like all consumer technology, it transited from being a radical vector for human creativity to an optimized for everyone product.

Marc Andreessen’s The Techno-Optimist Manifesto encapsulates elite--or maybe, counter-elite opinion. It’s broadly correct. We do live in a technological civilization. It is responsible for our unprecedented health and prosperity. Solutions to society’s problems will more likely be found via innovation, not regulation…

But one error sticks out. The line: “We had a problem of isolation, so we invented the Internet.” Did the Internet solve this problem?

Americans, in particular, report being lonelier than ever. The Internet did not solve isolation so much as operationalize it

In a business context, digitization was just a hostile takeover. Digital substitution goods were cheaper, more convenient, and more scalable than their pre-Internet competitors.

We’re experiencing a vibe shift akin to the collapse of communist faith in the late Soviet years. (Andreessen’s Hail Mary piece is, after all, a manifesto.) Fellow travelers of the past had to account for Actually Existing Socialism then. Venture capitalists must deal with the Actually Existing Internet now. We can no longer speak aspirationally about what the Internet may become, only about what it is: a Potemkin reality.

We thought the Internet was a decisive break with last century’s passive broadcast culture. Online culture was supposed to be active and participatory--but the image of the teenager has changed less in the last thirty years than we would like to think.

People complain of memory loss and brain fog. Is it long COVID? Is it clinical depression? Possibly. Or maybe it the inevitable consequence of outsourcing so much of our cognition to our phones. First, we let go of memory, and gave that to the cloud. Then, we let go of identity. We gave that to social media. Next, we gave up choice. That went to the algorithms. Finally, we conceded emotions. Memes now coordinate which current thing we should be upset about. Today, some are trying to outsource thought to ChatGPT--or at least the lower forms of it.

Earlier fictional accounts of the Nolifer presume he will have to be captured. A robot army or a rogue AI will need to lock him in the metaverse. But the truth is most people would choose the Matrix

The Nolifer is in decline. He’s no longer part of a subculture. His transgressive activities (bed rotting) have been subsumed into self care. His lifestyle isn’t futuristic, it’s a corporate default (WFH). Once upon a time, his activities were defining a new human paradigm, but now he’s just Mark Zuckerberg’s bitch (metaverse). He can no longer sneer at normies, because unbeknownst to him, he became one during the COVID era push to digitize all of daily life.

Thus the Nolifer faces a choice: he can either follow the path of the normies and become an NPC (non-player character) or seek his fortune elsewhere--beyond the apps.

There are two big complaints about culture. One, that it’s moving too fast. And two, that it’s not moving at all, or as Internet writer Paul Skallas, the Lindy Man, likes to say culture is stuck. Counterintuitively, both takes are correct

For live players who think it’s time to build, the Internet does not provide stable ground. Only the past can do that.

Part 2 Excerpts

The generation of new tactics, strategies, coordination mechanisms, and so on entails the production of new, useful knowledge. Thus, a live player must have a living tradition of knowledge. For the tradition of knowledge to be living, it must have at least one theorist, among other things. An individual live player may fulfill multiple roles in themselves, including being one’s own theorist.

New hyper-agentic forces--at present, mostly human

but increasingly post-human (memes, algorithms, LLMs, AI, drones, UFOs)--are overturning the status quo

Not everyone knows what to make of change. Grill-pilled boomers aren’t interested in the future. They can barely grok the present. Movie- brained millennials just want a happy ending to…whatever

In this report, we address the aesthetic trajectory of our current moment. Which trends are stuck in a doom loop of nostalgia? Which offer a path forward?

What will the twenties look like? Now, you may be saying--“But, it’s almost 2024! We already know!” But like Andy Warhol said, it takes a few years for the aesthetic of a new decade to cook

If there are two trends which fight this description today--the early twenty-twenties mostly looking like the late twenty-tens--it’s hype dads and bourgeois normcore moms. Both aesthetics are at such a late stage of commodification, many would grimace at even describing them as such.

And yet Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill both paired grey hair with tie-dye fits on streaming shows this year

Last year, I got a number of interview requests concerning the “return of normcore.” But I’m not sold on the idea that it’s back. Are the trend’s early adopters looping back? Or never moving forward? Millennials are unironically adulting now. It's not a revival, just more of the same.

It captivated the press because of who was wearing it: art kids, fashion kids, socialites, and the like. Dressing like an ur-suburbanite is edgy if you’re a 23-year-old club kid in New York. But wearing dad shoes as a dad? The irony has folded in on itself.

On the exterior of newly renovated suburban homes, a for-everyone-aesthetic is imposed by real estate flippers

Minimalism is an architectural expression of economic precarity.

Not much has changed as far as clothing goes for hype dads. The big brands here are obvious: Online Ceramics, Nike, and Supreme. The references are obvious too: teenagers, streetwear, nostalgia

Like Bryan Johnson, the anti-aging influencer, hype dads want to stay young forever

For those more concerned with being ageless than being youthful, the ambiguity of high-end basics holds a special appeal

Unlike its thrifty predecessor, bourgeois normcore desperately wants people to notice its subtle status signaling.

For millennials, the most economically anxious demographic of the moment, the implosion of formal status codes presents a problem. Putting on a suit is no longer perfunctory. If anything it’s transgressive.

Unlike most aesthetic trends--which become less popular with Early Adopters as they reach newer and larger audiences-- Zombie Trends maintain a broad appeal. Like the NoLifer from the first part of the report, Zombie Trends exist in the eternal present created by the internet.

Youth and beauty are more important indicators than clothes could ever be. The rich have plastic surgery, trainers, GLP-1 agonists, and more. We have commodified the previously uncommodifiable.

This is the contradiction of our era: we want an ever-changing dynamic culture, but we want to remain the same

We’re addicted to 19th century myths. We presume the present is more alive than the past.

we find our fully digitized culture producing either stasis or churn, not progress. Change still comes but it feels more like a hack, a remix, a mash-up

aesthetic trends tend to become less popular with the demo that originally promoted them as they reach newer and larger audiences.

The first fall-off--let’s call it the hipster ditch-- happens when a trend transitions from early adopters to early mass market. (adoption life cycle)

let’s begin by looking at some trends that are successfully making the leap: the Y2K aesthetic and white trash chic.

Like the hype dad and the normcore mom, they’re retrospective in orientation. But unlike zombie trends forever stuck in the past, these trends are mining the past for inspiration and ideas.

The combinatronic, synthetic style of the millennium was revitalized by the endless options of Shein

Being inspired by the past, has been a hallmark of Western civilization since the Renaissance.

Nostalgia was first noted as a pernicious trend in the seventies. Why then? As the first generation raised with modern media and mass consumerism, boomers were the first demo able to revisit and reinterpret the iconography of their own past. There were reruns on TV and flea markets finds

The contemporary condition seems to be endless fascination with the world just before we were conscious.

confusing the provenance of specific cultural objects. (The concept of ‘the classic’ emerges from this.) The Schott Perfecto leather jacket has been a symbol of badboy transgression since the fifties.

Generations are the demographic encapsulation of a historical moment.

They share traumas, triumphs, martyrs, icons, festivals, and genres

Whether or not they liked--or even consumed the fashion, films, or art of their time--they were aware of them. They shared the same delusions and confronted the same realities

In short, they experienced the same vibes

Ideological futurism is the reactionary response to this scenario. It’s a term I use to characterize people who think novelty is the most important aspect of aesthetics. Novelty at the expense of skill, taste, and vitality (aliveness).

Ideological futurism is the fetishization of change without regard for the consequences, which is probably why the future got a bad reputation in the first place

If anything this perspective seems nostalgic for the heroic (authoritarian) high modernism of mid- century America.

the great gift of technology is that it creates abundance... Only positional goods like the house Carey Grant lived in or the last Da Vinci on the market retain outsize value

Facebook was once a positional good. You could only access it if you went to an elite university. To grow, it had to expand its audience to billions. (The same thing is happening with Tesla today as Musk pushes down the price.) For a digital product to reach its full potential, it must ditch any pretensions that it is an elite status marker.

The internet is for poor people

The easiest way to understand this is by thinking about modern advances in food. Until recently, ultra-processed snacks, canned vegetables, and frozen meals were not low- status-coded. They weren’t ‘junk food’--they were the future of food. Nutrition was scientific and synthetic--just like everything else.

Similar to the way in which industrial farming flooded the world with calories, the internet has flooded the world with media. Both spurred on a mass amateurization of previously rarefied fields.

In the twentieth century, people worried about workers becoming alienated from their labor. In the twenty-first century, we should worry about users becoming disenchanted with their consumption.

As writing becomes posting and fashion becomes drop-shipping and art becomes GenAI, the aura and power they previously held dissipates. It’s all far too easy. The old philistine quip--“My kid could do that!”--becomes true. Because today, their child literally can do that.

At some point, the novelty of having ChatGPT create yet another personalized season of Game of Thrones will wear off... when people will realize: it’s no fun being an audience of one

Newness itself will become boring

So how will we move forward from this moment? On the one hand, innovation will remain paramount in addressing the logistical problems of humanity

On the other hand, the problems that dominate public discourse are political, social, and cultural in character--i.e. they are fundamentally human.

We have to accept that this is as much our fault as the fault of technology. Our self-knowledge as a species is much foggier and less objective than, say, our current understanding of aerodynamics. This uncomfortable fact brings to mind a popular quote from Canadian science fiction author, Donald Kingsbury: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems.”

Tradition is nostalgia without guilt

neo yuppie. The male version looks like American Psycho cosplay... silk suspenders, cuff links, Winchester collars contrasted with cornflower blue shirts

The neo yuppie is not to be confused with rock revival. Both wear wear ties and jackets, but the references are entirely different. One wears eighties power suits (or their baggier early nineties cousins). The other goes for the skinnier black varietal Hedi Slimane has been championing for ages.

In the twenties, neo-ness with suffuse more than just clothes. Neo deco is seeping into home-wares and hospitality

Building new and beautiful structures is mostly illegal in major Western cities. The only option then is to insert new and beautiful things into old ones.

This reality is mirrored by the restomodding movement for automobiles. As emissions and safety regulations conform every new vehicle to more or less the same design, the only way to have a beautiful, modern car is to retrofit an old one.

What neoness alludes to is a new interest in participating in living tradition--reweaving a thread to the past through the present and into the future. Unlike newness, which can only ever exist in the present

There is still pressure to participate in newness. Though the upside diminishes by the day. The internet is turning us into a post-geographic peasantry. Instead of villages, each with their own idiosyncratic idioms, festivals, and lore-- we have fandoms and other online subcultures speaking in mutually unintelligible digital dialects.

If newness demands we respond to our moment, neoness insists we consider our place in history.

When we consider the archetypes from the first part of this report--the Nolifer and the Live Player--it’s clear the former correlates to newness and the latter correlates to neoness.

The NoLifer is stuck in the past. In the near term, he will use the infinite personalization of GenAI to endlessly iterate on novelties from his prime.

The Live Player is planning for the future. Like our greatest living science fiction writer, William Gibson, he will not see a contradiction between an interest in the past and an interest in the future. In the same way that love is not the opposite of hate (indifference is)--the future is not the opposite of the past.

ZOMBIE TRENDS Going out of style: ■ Hype Dad ■ Bourgeois Normcore

HIPSTER DITCH Going mainstream: ■ White Trash Chic ■ Y2K Aesthetic

SELF-SELECTED AVANT-GARDE Just getting going: ■ Neo Yuppie ■ Neo Deco ■ Neo Space Age