holy shit, it’s Ready Player One for race scientists
He was giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero, Haplogroup Rlb. She was giving damsel in distress, pill-popper pixie dream girl, Haplogroup K. He was in his fall of Rome era. She was serving sixth and final mass extinction event realness. His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu. They scrolled into each other. If they could have, they would have blushed, pink pixels on a screen. Monkey covering eyes emoji. Anime nosebleed GIF. Henlo frend. hiii.
Here’s The Cut puff piece on Levy which just mentions in passing her podcast with Curtis Yarvin.
anyway, nice to know they’re still trying to make Dimes Square a thing
I have now read a number of her short works, among others a daring piece titled Cancel Me and I can report that it’s, shockingly, vapid baby shit.
See also from The Cut
She tells me that she reads lots of mass-shooting manifestos and jokes that incel should be included in the LGBTQ+ acronym.
Wow no way that’s so wacky
now you might think she’s trying for manic nazi dream girl and only appears to be tiresome and vapidly horrible
The ceilings are so high, pre-war or something like that, and in the lobby there’s a mirror that makes me feel like we’re at Versailles.
“His voice is warm and husky, like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel … or something.”
Ceilings being high comes up in several stories. It’s called a literary voice.
What is a voice of a generation?” Honor Levy asks me at Corner Bar on Canal Street. “Is it the most controversial voice? The first person to write in the way that everybody writes? The person that most people hate or love?” She’s not quite sure she qualifies as a VOG, as she calls it (rhymes with dog), though, as a 26-year-old writer with a lot of hype around her first book, titled My First Book, which she has been tweeting about since she was at Bennington College, she knows that is part of the reason people might read (and write about) her.
cringing so hard my soul leaks out of my ears
some great expectations managing there lol. “a voice of a generation”.
In this collection’s finest work, Levy’s sentences are cold poetry of a sort. She deals individual cards rather than handles an entire deck. Her stories are vignettes, and the observations whoosh past your ears: “We wouldn’t be collectivizing the Adderall sector”; on drugs, “I could dig a hole to China and save the Uyghurs”; “Ronan Farrow is the only person who could truly relate to him”; “No one wants a Holocaust comparison, but isn’t this what we learned on those field trips we all had to take to museums of tolerance?”; “I wonder where the girls with mustache finger tattoos are now”; “Last night, Ivan and I were texting about all the hot art-world-adjacent millennial girls he knows who have been diagnosed with autism.” There are jokes about taking Greta Thunberg’s and Barron Trump’s virginity.
The lesser work in “My First Book” sinks to high school graduation speech level. “We are the future of the planet” and “I wonder if we will ever get to where we are going” and “Time has never moved faster than it is moving right now” and so on.
I’m sorry, “lol girls with mustache fingers” is high literature but “we are the future of the planet” is stupid? Did the author flip a coin on each of those to decide where it’d go?
Also what the fuck is this about Adderall, I don’t even understand what it would mean to collectivise “the Adderall sector”, but wasn’t there a shortage of ADD medication not so long ago where people who needed it couldn’t get it? Wouldn’t we want to collectivise this??
Levy is rarely boring.
[]She talks incredibly fast and doesn’t finish most of her thoughts but is a fabulous conversationalist anyway because sometimes she says something that might not make any sense if you stop to think about it, but she does it with so much manic bluster you can’t help but nod along. Like “TikTok is a psychological-warfare weapon invented by China” or “If I was a guy, I’d probably be an incel or an evil gay.”
Oh my god this is mortifying. Imagine being such a tryhard yet such a fucking bore. Congratulations you sound like a thousand fucking tweets.
I kind of wish that she and I could meet. I’d stare deep into her eyes, take her hand in mine, drop my voice into the register that Grandpa Stacey used in his decades of hosting radio, and intone, “Your brain is where insight goes to die.”
also, remember that the TikTok national security scaremongering is cos a Thiel consortium wants to buy it. Levy’s dogwhistle drops are carefully selected.
Strange how the 26-year-old VoiCE of A gENerAtion sounds exactly like a politician who rails against the evil of TikTok while owning stock in Facebook.
To be honest I’m mortified that there exists a person who interacts with that and calls her a “fabulous conversationalist”. Ah yes, gish gallop personified, exactly what I want in the person I talk to. What the fuck is the purpose for which you engage with a conversation if this is the “fabulous” outcome??
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What pushes Levy’s stories beyond being merely on the level of smart magazine essays is the empathy you can sense below the starkness of her sentences. A typical observation: “When I’m at a party and I look across the room I can see everyone holding their red Solo cups and hurting.”
“When I am at a party, I feel like nobody understands me,” said the voice of a generation.
One character is nearly canceled when, on a college radio station, she says, “Trigger warnings trigger me.”
2014 sent a Vine; they want their joke back.
Generations no longer understand one another because we haven’t been injected with the same memes.
“Marvy. Fab. Far out,” deadpanned Calvin’s father.
I’m imagining a Dorothy Parker review of Honor Levy. “It took gumption to call this My First Book, in the face of the inevitable riposte, ‘And it should be your last.’”
Monday. Cold pizza and a vape around 2 pm. The Adderall at the Urbit meetup last night was too revolting, but what can you do? You can’t stay up til 5 posting nrx thirst traps on just nothing. They had those divine dubstep remixers in the green coats, and Mike Crumplar was perfectly scathing, angling for a hate-fuck, and it couldn’t have been funnier. Absolute VOG unit!
— from “Diary of a Dimes Square Lady (during Days of Panic, Frenzy and World Change)”
Tuesday. Found a cigarette butt in my Solo cup. Couldn’t have been more overwhelmed with the existentialness of it all. Perfect generation moment, absolutely hilarisad. Uwu! Got two tickets to Cancel Me Harder, You Motherfucking removed. Playing at the best basement in the whole D-Square, can you believe it? Called up some completely wonderful numbers, but couldn’t find anybody to go with except Roger. Wouldn’t be seen dead with him after that business with Mike, but what can you do?
Wednesday. Cancel Me Harder, You Motherfucking removed was the definitive worst. Laugh riot from end to end! Couldn’t have had a better time, even if Roger does still post to X when he should know that Nostr is the future.
Thursday. Found another cigarette butt in last night’s Solo cup. Truth bomb time: what gives, yo? Rode the subway, thought hard about how everyone’s face is just a mask for their true self. Thinking I need to upgrade my avi. It’s completely the season for pixel art! Gotta ask Kevin about the best prompts, so I don’t get something absolutely dreadful.
Friday. Oopsies! Turns out I’ve been leaving the cig butts in my own Solo cups! I couldn’t be more embarrassed, but ChatGPT says that the benzos can’t cause memory loss.
Saturday. Rode the subway to CVS. Bought myself an absolutely dismal new eyeliner, took a selfie with The Bell Curve. Hashtag totes not sponsored, hashtag unfiltered!
Sunday. Oopsies! Those cig butts? Turns out I’ve been leaving them in my own Solo cups! I couldn’t be more completely mortified. I really came in a fluffer that time, but what can you do?
Book carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen it’s true face.
btw, this needs to be posted to AO3 with tags “Dimes Square” “Honor Levy” “Peter Thiel” “Urbit”
I am intrigued by your ripostes and wish to offer you a book deal.
@blakestacey “divine dubstep remixers” LOL.
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this reads like someone googled a list of gen z slang and then threw it in a blender with a bunch of weird race-science memes. who is this for
I think the only acceptable response to whoever is responsible for it is a highly aggressive “touch grass”
This is just shit.
i bet you don’t even use urbit, shitlib
True, it’s too advanced for my brain due to being poisoned by Perl at a young age.
I’ll see your Perl and raise you QBASIC
No, This is shit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cE4lpSFNFUE
(Actually it is quite good. The linked tune that is. Not the book.)
“He’d burn a church for her.” He thinks, “I’m Ryan Gosling in Drive. I’m American Psycho. I’m Joker. I’m Taxi Driver.”
I love how clearly this communicates which of these she’s seen.
@flizzo @dgerard I’m Ryan Gosling in Drive and Blue Valentine, but I’m not Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson or La La Land. I’m American Psycho, but I’m not The Rules of Attraction. I’m Taxi Driver, but I’m not Raging Bull.
Discard what’s false and regard what’s truest
Then render me thy answer to this:
What roles must I play when I’m Daniel Day-Lewis?Weirdly (or maybe not, because Bret Easton Ellis) Patrick Bateman has a cameo in The Rules of Attraction
Blade Runner 2: Run Blader
Blade Ruiner
(copyright concerns)
I assume “organ-meat eater” is a euphemism for “sucks his own dick”
Nah. A man who sucks his own dick? That takes effort and deserves respect.
Is a strong independent man he who sucks his own dick
“organ meat” is a whole weird Tiktok dietary pseudoscience influencer marketing thing.
I think it started from this guy but it’s a whole genre now.
Nazis, of course, love pseudoscience diet shit.
Oh yeah I’ve heard of the testicle munchers, I just wanted to crack wise.
I think it was a thing before that, but just underground in the nazi/manosphere/alt right/red pill circles (As they are always looking for the next ‘this is what society (parenthesis optional) took from you!’ thing), it is just horrible they now have influencers. The mainstreaming of bad fringe ideas is worrying.
What is, and I mean this with all sincerity of my heart, any of this fucking bullshit?
searches Dimes Square, wikipedia
Dimes Square is a so-called “microneighborhood” of New York City, located between the Chinatown and Lower East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan.
Okay, sure
The term Dimes Square has become a metonym for a number of associated reactionary aesthetic movements centered in the area, particularly several events and podcasts funded by Peter Thiel.
Why do we continue on this Earth even though it’s clearly a doomed endeavour?
Media associated with the area include the podcast Red Scare
click
The show has been associated with the dirtbag left and the new right,
“New right” redirects to “Right-wing populism” and I would like anyone to explain to me how is the same old reactionary nonsense “new” in any way. In any case, how the fuck is it possible to be associated with anti-fascists and fascists at the same time?
as well as the subculture surrounding Dimes Square. It has been described in The Cut as “a critique of feminism, and capitalism, from deep inside the culture they’ve spawned.”
“Hey, how about we pick two bad things to focus on?”
“Capitalism…”
“That’s a great choice, plenty of terrible stuff there…”
“… and feminism.”
“… You were doing so well.”
What even is this ideology? Reactionaries but with bubble tea?
Decoding the Gurus did an episode on this stuff. Imagine anti-vax hipsters with extreme vocal fry and self-diagnosis of autism.
listened to this, they do a great job of breaking down the berniecrat -> orangeman pipeline, characterizing it as mainly driven by vibes and unserious thought.
This shit is intended to be ideologically confused. Its purpose is to seduce dissatisfied progressives towards fascism. See also, Grayzone, Caleb Maupin, the history of holocaust denial on the ultra left, there’s plenty of flavours.
“Antisemitism is the socialism of fools” etc. On this subject I’ve always been a fan of this Moishe Postone article: Anti-Semitism and National Socialism
The turn to biology and the desire for a return to “natural origins,” combined with an affirmation of technology, which appear in many forms in the early twentieth century, should be understood as expressions of the antinomic fetish that gives rise to the notion that the concrete is “natural,” and which increasingly presents the socially “natural” in such a way that it is perceived in biological terms. The hypostatization of the concrete and the identification of capital with the manifest abstract underlie a form of “anticapitalism” that seeks to overcome the existing social order from a standpoint which actually remains immanent to that order. Inasmuch as that standpoint is the concrete dimension, this ideology tends to point toward a more concrete and organized form of overt capitalist social synthesis. This form of “anticapitalism,” then, only appears to be looking backward with yearning. As an expression of the capital fetish its real thrust is forward. It emerges in the transition from liberal to bureaucratic capitalism and becomes virulent in a situation of structural crisis.
This form of “anticapitalism,” then, is based on a one-sided attack on the abstract. The abstract and concrete are not seen as constituting an antinomy where the real overcoming of the abstract—of the value dimension—involves the historical overcoming of the antinomy itself as well as each of its terms. Instead there is the one-sided attack on abstract reason, abstract law, or, at another level, money and finance capital. In this sense it is antinomically complementary to liberal thought, where the domination of the abstract remains unquestioned and the distinction between positive and critical reason is not made.
Their brains are so saturated with information that they naturally need to explore extreme viewpoints to feel stimulated.
I’m not judging, my SneerClub attendance can be described as “exploring extreme cause I’m bored” but… Feminism is not an extreme viewpoint?
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need to explore extreme viewpoints to feel stimulated.
maybe they should do less of whatever generated this and instead spend their time trying to solve the Lament Configuration.
this is a remarkably concise assessment (of one of the obsessions?) of that group, goddamn
I’ve been mulling over how I wanted to reply to voldek’s post and you just … steamrolled that
“New right” redirects to “Right-wing populism” and I would like anyone to explain to me how is the same old reactionary nonsense “new” in any way. In any case, how the fuck is it possible to be associated with anti-fascists and fascists at the same time?
I’d have gone with Neue Americanische Freundschaft but it’s both too subtle and already taken
Every time I read the words “Dimes Square” a red mist descends
Wait that is an actual quote, argghh. RPO for HBD was no lie.
argghhhhhhhhhh
oh lol, remember Mike Crumplar’s 2022 piece on the Dimes Square bozos? Honor’s in the piece that came before it.
and, of course, she has an urbit
Crumplar is STILL writing about this loser crowd. Why? What led him to this?
From what I can tell, like everybody else involved, it’s ego and ennui? Sad but I suppose at least it’s mildly entertaining to read about gormless rich kids failing very hard to be cool.
I have to add also, as someone who had a terrible time being 18 in 2004, I am truly amazed that these people took the vapid and complacent culture of the noughties, the mcinnes-era vice magazines, the cobrasnakes, the cory kennedies, the whole tshirtness of it, and made it even worse somehow.
The main inovation is that the racism went from ironic to scientific!
hapsburg irony poisoning
Maybe the gormless rich kids give him cocaine.
This man’s blog is intense, but I am not sure he comes off well! I clicked around and it seems like “wants to be at all the fascist parties, courts acts of violence to complain about on his blog” is, at least in 2024, a really accurate summary of his behavior.
Or, in his words:
I tell them that I’m actually pretty hated and feared by most of these people, and I can only stay around because I criticize particular influential figures in this counterculture so well that they want to fuck me, and so they keep me around to flatter them, to reflect their true hideousness back at them by elevating it to the status of myth, and then they lash out at me like the maenads devouring Orpheus.
I criticize particular influential figures in this counterculture so well that they want to fuck me
weird flex but OK
… maybe not OK, at that
I get the impression that like them he’s bored, doesn’t have much to say, and is addicted to antagonism, so they’re a natural crowd for him to be around. but for whatever reasons - lacking the prerequisite passionate racial animus, getting off on playing the role of puncturing outsider, idk - this is how he socializes with them
I read his blog a while and I agree with you.
Overall the Dimes Square guys seem very similar to each other. To me they’re interesting in aggregate, described once, but there’s nothing to look at beyond the surface. If you read any two blog posts on Mike’s site, you know everything about them.
Of course they have day-to-day lives – every so often one of them releases a book or something, but this has no real purpose – none of them ever change. It’s not like a man with six funny hats becomes more interesting when he acquires a seventh funny hat.
The social pattern Mike is describing seems pretty fast-paced and destructive. They do a lot of signings and court a lot of press attention, and as long as you’re still shocked, they’re interested in you. Past that, you kind of have to behave exactly like them to get invited, but it doesn’t seem like they actually like their own – I would be really, really surprised if they read each other’s books. They just kind of brood next to each other and engage in disaffected, ironic narcissism.
I can see why he’d be valuable to them, though. Mike has his own pattern – he’s clearly learned how to be entertainingly shocked, but only intermittently – on other occasions he denies them supply, and sometimes he burns them by being a surprisingly coherent critic. He’s hard to reach but ultimately attends often enough that they remember him.
If you substitute “affection” with supply in the form of outrage, and leave everything else the same, he’s basically a pickup artist.
I suspect that the actions that make up Mike’s pattern are deliberate, but when it comes to explaining them, he has zero self-awareness. He’s doing it too well for it to be accidental though, as much as there’s a lot of denial there, and when he makes comments like the one I’ve selected, I think that’s the mask slipping.
These people all sound like they want to be Ernst Jünger but instead of being wounded in WW1 they all just got very high at liberal arts colleges.
you know
I saw the profile/person photo used by the NYT piece, read the pull-quote that amoeba shared, and just mouseover’ed the urbit mention (and thus saw the username)
and from that I made a guess that “wow this sure does sound like someone in the TPOT sphere (and who did that thing visa keeps telling people to do)” (which is to incessantly talk about your shit)
but surely I can’t just make such guesses, basis unfounded
ah. right.
I’m not familiar with any of these and it makes me immensely happy.
Definitely not the worst outcome
(there is some following/follower asymmetry in TPOT, but yeah… checking either is plenty indicative)
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His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu. They scrolled into each other.
Illustrations by the dck pck AI
