Fire Rent-lowering Gunshots
The McDonalds Big Mac is available in almost every major city worldwide, packaged in the same box and very similar ingredients. It’s a carb-bomb of fat, salt and sugar perfectly homogenised into a taste you will never forget.
Seriously, my mouth is watering for this overpriced, nightmarish facsimile of a hamburger. Just a lump constructed by an underpaid person more alienated from its creation than the beef patty is from the cow it came from. I’ll never eat one again, but I know what it tastes like.
This ultra palatability is rife in our media landscape. From Mr. Beast to the smallest creatives, frequently you will find folks over-professionalising. Who is it for?
The cynic in me says it’s for the algorithm, but perhaps not. Yes the algorithm synthesises all sorts of cultural and linguistic folly, this we know. What I feel people don’t understand is that content creation is frequently a form of self-surveillance, preventing any show of weakness or difference. To be vulnerable is to bear your soul; something frequently dissuaded. Pair that with the monetary incentives and people create shells of themselves for the almighty adsense dollar.
This makes it all the better that some folks prefer to fire “rent-lowering gunshots”. To those new to this term, I’d describe it as reckless displays of individuality. Refusing to sand down the rough edges of one’s appearance, personality, interests or creations is beautiful.
The choice to be yourself has always been radical. Fashion movements such as the Zazous directly confronted the Nazi regime in World War 2, and the Stonewall riots were led by the newly self-aware trans community frequenting the establishment.
In the modern age, legislation, culture wars, and company policies frequently lead to a chilling effect. People, fearing a negative outcome, self-censor and reduce their creative output. As such, I believe choosing to fire rent-lowering gunshots despite the consequences is utterly vital in a pushback against a deeply oligarchic online regime. In the age of LLMs and their endless output of milquetoast content, deny the appeal of viral success and instead fire your weirdness into the sky with reckless abandon! Forsake the culture of consumption and evolve spikes and poisons to ward off predators.
If you only ate big macs, you destroy your gut health. If you only consume content within the norms, you destroy your soul. It is time to take up arms against tech giants seeking to colonise the final hinterland- our brains. Be militant in your production. Raw, unfiltered, chaotic. Youtube videos sans title or marketable thumbnail. Microblog beyond common comprehension. Bless those who continue to show love not only to what they enjoy but to who they are, to yell a resounding piss off to those seeking to challenge that joy.
To my fellow bloggers, write your next post only for yourself. Fear not spelling errors if they do not upset you, speak from the true ignorance of your heart. Be the mushroom, release your spores, and turn the harsh internet landscape into the independent web of mycelium that it should be.
It’s time to have fun, guys!
Haley