An interesting challenge for anyone who wants to make art that is about the world as it currently exists is that algorithmic censorship isn’t really capable of detecting irony. - despite irony being pretty much a prerequisite for engaging with such a world.
Take, for example, the example of Frederick Brennan. Brennan has serious disabilities - brittle bones, is a wheelchair user - but is a brilliant coder. As a teenager he was a leading user of various incel imageboards, notably ‘wizardchan’ which he bought with proceeds from freelance coding tasks in March of 2013 aged 19. A wizard, in that world was a man who, by remaining a virgin past the age of 30, had attained a higher level of consciousness as a result of their suffering - and the board was entirely and rigidly populated by men who considered themselves journeymen on this road of trials. When Brennan lost his virginity 6 months later he resigned with a public confession of his straying from the path.
In need of a new project, Brennan founded a new site, 8chan, later that year.
The following September the so-called ‘gamergate’ controversy erupted over some arcane bullshit between Bostonian game developers and journalists (I do know the details, but you’ll be fine without them) and became an enormous social phenomenon - the most visible aspect of which were the social media harrassment of a few low (subsequently high) profile women working in games and games criticism and the production of a great many YouTube videos by people with skulls on their shelves explaining everything to each other.
Moot, the founder of 4chan who was no longer the teenager he had been when he created the site and was now somewhat embarrassed by his homunculus, banned discussion of gamergate on his website. Brennan offered gamergate a sanctuary on 8chan and this catapulted his site to prominence.
Then, in 2017, when an anonymous 4chan user started posting cryptic LARP posts about Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton getting imminently arrested in a secret anti-deep-state operation speerheaded by Donald Trump and (it turned out not dead after all) JFK Jr., originating the QAnon conspiracy theory, the natural home for the conpiracy theorists who flocked to decode the messages was Brennan’s site, widely understood to be the place where one goes when you want to go further than even 4chan will allow. 8chan was the ledge beyond the edge.
Brennan was already in the process of disengaging from the site. He had sold it to the extremely shady internet character Jim Watkins in 2015 and resigned as 8chan’s admin a year later. By 2019 he had renounced 8chan entirely in the wake of the Christchurch shooting, the perpetrator having posted his chan culture inspired manifesto and livestream of the murders on the site. But the site thrived under the stewardship of the Watkins family and became the central hub for the QAnon movement which spread around the world, culminating in the events of January 6th at the US Capitol in 2021.
QAnon matters.
Polling something like this is complicated and hard, but In February 2021, an American Enterprise Institute poll found that 29% of Republicans believe the central claim of QAnon, that "Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites." The AEI is a right wing think-tank, so take that however you want, but 29% is enough that even if it’s being doubled for political gain that is still huge. It’s enough to account for election outcomes. It is enough to mean that you have fewer degrees of separation from someone who believes in QAnon than you might hope.
The rise of twenty-first century populism and its conspiracy theorist underpinning is a major event in the history of the world. It will be studied and dissected for many generations, many centuries. And Fredreick Brennan - who once went by the online handle ‘Hotwheels’ in a self-deprecating ableist reference to his disability during blackpilled discussions about involuntary celibacy - is a major world historical figure. To take the line from Hamilton - History has its eyes on him.
You can’t respond to this artistically without using irony. It’s impossible.
The problem you run into is that positive discussion of QAnon is now banned on respectable web 2.0 platforms and, to a censorbot, ironic artistic responses to QAnon read very similarly to unironic propagation of it.
There is a song called Hotwheels on the new album which is explicitly about Brennan - that one should be OK - but the one I’ve included above existed on YouTube in demo form for a few months a year or two ago before it was abruptly deleted for ‘glorifying political violence and promoting harmful conspiracy theories’.
This decision was taken by a robot, but when YouTube does this, they give you an option to appeal which, supposedly, means that a second opinion is offered by a human overseer. I appealed: my song, after all, does the exact opposite of what it was accused of. But nope, the human confirmed that it did indeed glorify political violence and promote harmful conspiracy theories and that was that.
I can imagine this human - presumably an extremely overqualified graduate sat in some subcontinent cubicle making decision after decision every 30 seconds on videos, likely presented as generated transcripts for efficiency, in what is likely his second language. These are not great conditions for the careful appreciation of irony.
The platforms we’ve built, and the authorities we’ve demanded they become privilege a very particular kind of conversation. We all know what that conversation sounds like. But art has to be nuanced and complex and ironic if it is to even approach the challenge of a world this dumb, simplistic and straightforward. I hope this piece stays up despite its keywords.
(This new video is even worse, let’s be honest:
I have set to unlisted in the hope that it survives long enough to do its job introducing the album concept to people. We’ll see.)
Anyway, something to think about.
The other thing you should think about is BUYING MY NEW ALBUM.
You can hear my song about Frederick Brennan, Hotwheels, along with all the other tracks + a bonus one right now if you make any pre-order purchase. The whole thing will be on Spotify etc in due course but for now we are keeping everything independent, DIY and special.
read all about everything you can buy here:
https://avenueqanon.indelicates.xyz/
Share this post