On Simulated Revolution

Internet Misanthropy and the Performance of Violence

For the 10+ years that mass social media has existed, there has been something bubbling underneath it. It was obvious to anyone with a brain, but the byproduct of massive connections is the ability to form insular subcultures, identities, et cetera, which in and of itself is not much of a negative, but what those communities form themselves around has been very much a negative. The internet has allowed what would otherwise be cast-off chaff of human society to congregate; these tares are those who laud themselves over their misanthropy, to take from the Biden and Trump regimes’ ideological classifications, the Nihilistic violent extremist.

These new misanthropes are at first not the easiest to identify, especially early on in radicalization, most of the time they will take up the mantle of a well meaning ideological mask, be it communism, social democracy, or anything left of center, there is the inverse of course with the rightist but they seem to jump right in to defending the pedophiles of Waco, the white supremacists of Ruby Ridge, the Greensboro Massacre, et cetera. The development of this position on the left has been a long time coming, where the first imitations of the more misanthropic or traditionally edgy parts of the internet by the left did start with /leftypol/ on 8chan, there has always been this misanthropic undercurrent that comes from channer culture.

The issue is forum rot and the need for ‘revolutionary’ action, where most of these new misanthropes on the left are, in my eyes, best described as hedonistic Marxists, whose long-term goals don’t even reach the totalizing good of consequentialism but instead focus on the consequences of pleasure. This nihilistic pessimism is reminiscent of Uwe Boll’s 2009 movie Rampage, specifically the character Evan Drince, the friend of the main character and spree killer/mass shooter Bill Williamson. Evan spends his days posting online about how awful the society he is in is, going on diatribes talking about how “We need someone who will stand for something” and that the status quo only uses “lame Band-Aid techniques up for re-elections over and over”, the same empty sentiment spread by the so-called revolutionaries. Empty sloganeering to justify their misanthropy.

They are the first to call someone a moralist for commenting on their behavior, complaining about people who care about optics, et cetera, but if you look closely, their whole reasoning is based on a moralistic view of the world; their actions are allowed because their enemies are evil. But their viewing their enemies as evil is not moral, because it just isn’t! It doesn’t help that their so-called enemies aren’t even people of true influence; oftentimes, it’s just an escalation of settling old Twitter scores, but again: This is “True” and “Revolutionary”! Just like Strubov from the Chekist! Doxxing is their Nagant pistol, never mind that the results are just a lackluster online harassment campaign at best. In their attempts to recreate some semblance of revolutionary violence, all they manage to do is recreate lolcow culture, something that about a decade ago they would’ve been on the receiving end of.

This is the endpoint of online calls for violence; whenever it does breach from cyberspace to the real space, it seems to only be of the rightist variety, be it Order of Nine Angles-esque organizations grooming some kid into doing a school shooting or some burnt-out 29-year-old who thinks his life is over, committing some random act of violence. The left, in its impotence, tends not to produce these shooters because its misanthropic sections lie to themselves about their own misanthropy. It’s both comedic and a boon, where the average left-wing misanthrope doesn’t seem to have the stomach for martyrdom, which is why they prefer the comforts of the internet.

The misanthropes we see now, regardless of political ideology, are all byproducts of the same behavioral sink, left without any meaningful role or purpose in society; all that remains is to lash out. As Calhoun described them in his experiments, “Yet even they exhibited occasional signs of pathology, going berserk, attacking females, juveniles, and the less active males,” where their online lethargy reaches a point, expelling the built-up energy in some great thrashing about, be it in simulated online violence or the real terrorism seen from misanthropes. The deformed hikkimori is left without any purpose; the line between them and the actually violent extremist is the ability to embrace their own finitude and then their own limited agency.