I guess they read the silmarillion, but understood not the words they read.
They all do this. San francisco used to be the old hyperliterate drug fueled counterculture mecca. So they still identify with that, and there’s still like vestigial aesthetic shreds of the old city’s corpse hanging off their beloved Moloch (howl-written in San Francisco). So they see literary allusions and implying they’ve read books as cool. Especially the ones who came up in the 80s and 90s when the old literate hippies could still afford to live there.
But none of them have read more than one book, because one is enough to reference, right? and they didn’t understand it. So mike zuckerberg read ‘snow crash’ and is just doing all the evil shit from ‘snow crash’. Thiel read LOTR. Whoever keeps giving money to ‘ai children’s toy’ read ‘diamond age’.
Because they see is=aught and can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality on an emotional level, being shit heads who fundamentally disrespect the very concept of humanities and have no interiority.
i think one thing people miss is that counter culture movements sometimes win people over in the worst ways and they get really extreme ideas, or really extreme people get spun up in them and become little evil vorticies of power and influence. The sixties spawned the civil rights movement, peace movement. It also created the Manson family. There’s a sort of yin and yang to these things IMO, creation and destruction. It’s like a period of high energy and change and that can get used in many creative and destructive ways.
Some people see today as terrible and think socialism will fix it. Others, fascism. Two people agree that current leaders are failing, but for different reasons. And when everyone is demanding change, you can get some dangerous people to pop out of the wood work.
People like Musk and Thiel grow up in free thinking environments and in counter culture meccas and are a direct result of that energy. They dont run counter to it. They are a product of it.
There are complexities. Sure. Pushing new ideas is always complicated, and shitty people can do shitty things with them.
The Manson family was hoover’s baby. Not that they’re innocent, but they had help sucking that much.
None of that is this. The counter culture hasn’t been there for decades; what’s left is aesthetic remnants.
Thiel grew up in a Nazi cult. I think in south Africa? There were swastikas on the flags in his school. Musk is from south africa-during apartheid. They’re not from fucking San Francisco. You’re trying to make a point about how too much freedom is bad sometimes. I’ve got complex feelings, but your point is totally unsupported by facts on display here.
The point of what I said is that they’re not genuinely from/of there, its just the cultural milleiu they knew in their 20s. They pulled the fucking aesthetics and nothing else, and they’re getting stupid(er) because even the fucking aesthetics were too much for them.
How did “the 60s” create the Manson family?
We’ve had literally countless (often more) grisly and bizarre murders since Manson. No reason it should be any more notable.
But I guess giving it some kind of mystical import helps you make an argument
The idea that the entire country was on the razors edge of a “race ware” in which the “coloreds” were going to topple American society was very much a product of the media in the 1960s designed specifically to terrify the white folks into opposing the civil rights movement and was the founding principal of Manson’s entire plan.
The idea that the entire country was on the razors edge of a “race ware” in which the “coloreds” were going to topple American society was very much a product of the media in the 1960s
That was a product of their LSD-addled brains.
I mean. Sure, they were addled because the CIA was dumping LSD all over the country and it just totally coincidentally served the narrative that kept money going into the military industrial complex.
That aside it was a narrative that was pushed by the media into every home in the United States.
the CIA was dumping LSD all over the country
No they weren’t.
They were doing weird ass experiments, sure, but they weren’t just dumping it everywhere, they were trying to do targeted experiments (didn’t work lol)
It was people first in the medical community sharing it with friends, then, people like Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters who brought it to the general public.
Then from that you had the Grateful Dead, and a few people who followed them (including one guy responsible for like 80% of the LSD on the planet at the time before his arrest).
Timothy Leary wasn’t distributing it, to my knowledge, but he certainly popularized it.
The CIA may have thought, initially, that they’d want to dump it all over the country, but they realized very quickly that was a very bad idea and they pivoted to trying to prevent that.
Yep. Musk read a Culture book, probably Excession. Definitely not Surface Detail. He would have been offended.
Musk once went to a gala where someone told musk about a cool book series with funny ai ships. He then skimmed the wiki page and assumes he understands the book better than anyone else.
They must think LOTR is an instruction manual in how to become an evil overlord or something
Nah, they just tell themselves everyone who’s against them is an orc.
You know that Thiel explicitly sides with Sauron, as he himself has said in interviews? How would orcs be against him?
???
That’s… honestly less surprising than I would have expected.
There’s a weird obsession among the far right lunatics with LOTR and just completely missing the message. Vance is in that crew too
I’ve noticed the same in recent years with Star Trek and the far right as well.
I don’t know how they can possibly miss that the Federation is functionally a post-scarcity socialist utopia.
On the other hand… the Ferengi are essentially a direct replica of the modern US, including the far right’s clear motive to try and force women back to subservience. I’m sure they’d love to be able to force them to be naked all the time while they’re at it.
It’s obvious many of the species in the ST universe were extreme caricatures of specific regions/countries from real life, and the Ferengi were based on the US… But I don’t think they expected the caricature to so directly become the reality.
I don’t know how they can possibly miss that the Federation is functionally a post-scarcity socialist utopia.
Because there’s been a decades long effort to make American education really bad. There’s very little ability for critical thinking in that group of people.
“NeW tReK iS wOkE”
My guy, have you just been not paying attention for the last 60+ years? Star Trek has always been progressive.
you can add warhammer 40k to it too.
personally i would say its a sense of a belonging and purpose in a group for a unambigious cause that most people crave. but its just that most time the cause is skewed pretty bad by the people of power.
Bruh, being a conservative is all about missing the fucking point.
To be fair, can anyone understand The Silmarillion? The way it is written is hard even when you are literate.
You go in expecting a book, but instead it’s just the Wikipedia page for Middle Earth
This is a very apt description of it. I remember the creation of Arda, but beyond that, it’s all a bit fuzzy, like I read the Wikipedia page half asleep and dreamed the rest.
You sure you didn’t read the creation of Arda and then fall asleep fully? I did, It’s the worst chapters of the Silmarillion that filters 90% of the readers, the reason I reccomend all readers start with the coming of the Elves.
when reading The Silmarillion, it’s important to remember that Finrod, the brother of Galadriel, is different from Fingon. Fingon is Finrod’s cousin, and also the brother of Turgon. Fingon and Turgon’s father is Fingolfin, who is the brother of Finarfin, who is Finrod’s father. you’ll have a hard time following the story if you don’t keep all those straight
In case anyone needs a reminder about Men:
They probably saw The Oath as just badass, and the First Kinslaying as a “gotta break a few eggs to make an omlette” inspiration
Doesn’t the Tolkien estate tell them to stop?
Anduril keeps trying to recruit me. I don’t know how to send them a strong enough message that conveys just how hard they need to fuck off.
Send word to the elves! the time has come. The sword of your forefathers must be reforged! You have my bow. Err the break of dawn, we ride!
Consult US Army TM 31-210
All my years of giving 89% are paying off. The only companies trying to recruit me are named unimaginative double entendres
You mean like bobs burgers next door neighbor?
Oh they hit me up a couple of weeks ago. So far no follow-ups, but we’ll see…
They sent me two a week for a month six months ago, and they’ll probably keep trying for another couple weeks this time around as well.
Shit, they did the same thing six months before that, too. It was only a few pings every year before then.
What the fuck. That’s some serious persistence.
Yeah, looks like they’ve been trying to contact me for over four years now. I probably should instruct them to go fuck themselves at this point, I guess.
A lot of techbros like to have “alternative interpretations” on said works. They don’t see them as technology/power bad stories, but as issues of bad alignment.
“Yes the torment nexus didn’t work out in the classic scifi novel “Don’t build the torment nexus” but that was just because the people who built it where incompetent. Look, i am different, see I have billions of dollars I am definitely competent enough to make the torment nexus work.”
The other usually is “The Foundation in the classic sci-fi novel «Don’t Build The Torment Nexus» did not see the importance of a «humanity first» approach, and cut corners for profit”, then they immediately cut corners for profit.
Next thing you know San Francisco will be renamed Orthanc and DC, Mordor.
We will avenge you Mr. Tolkien.
Wait till they name one of their evil companies/products second breakfast.
Time to start some kind of resistance group called “Bombadil”.
who’s Adil?
Start it brother (or sister), that’s the best name for a resistance in this climate.
Thinking Thunberg is the antichrist while overlooking the spray-tanned obvious.
Jokes on them, heaven has royalties. Some mfers abt to get their blessings repod
Tolkien supported the fascists in the Spanish civil war. He was also a member of the Catholic church so he probably supported the Catholic missions of the Spanish empire, which were basically concentration camps.
He had his own crazy beliefs. We can’t know how he would react to this.
FFS we need to stop idolizing media personalities anyone like this.
Catholic missions of the Spanish empire, which were basically concentration camps.
If you compare the population of Latin America and North America, doesn’t Latin America look like the natives were less exterminated?
Really depends on what area. There are parts of Mexico where the native population was completely decimated, like the more northern parts, like Nuevo León. Many of the depopulations of native Indians in the southern parts of the modern area of USA also happened when they were part of the Spanish Empire, like the Guale, Timucua and Apalachee of Florida, or the people of New Mexico, and the various people of California.
Looked up Lembas. Oh god.
I’d respect these tech assholes more if they named their company “Matrix”, “Panem”, or “Big Brother”. At least then they’re not insulting anyone’s intelligence.
Honestly surprised there’s no “Evil Corp” yet.
“Skeletor LLC”
“Mordor Holdings Inc”
“Triffid Intl”
You’re right, too honest. We all get to suffer so these rich pricks can pretend to live out some hero fantasy.
Real.
Where’s my Cobra Industries?
What about my Brotherhood of Nod?
Shoot, give me Neo-Contra, dammit.
At this rate, I may as well use these names me self and make them the good guys.
I don’t think it’s insulting. It’s a misdirection. They’d probably claim those “obvious names” are dumb.
IPs
Nope. Just IP.
Not intellectual properties? Odd take.
