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Zwartengoud ☦️'s avatar

Somewhere in the bowels of the Yookay's regime, the bright spark who decided to make the "bad racist" a cutie goth gf is undergoing sensitivity training inside of an iron maiden.

John Carter's avatar

She's probably contemplating suicide.

Tychon's avatar

The missing contezt foreigners may not understand is that this was not made by the central government, but the local authority of Hull in the north east. Amelia is a Yorkshire girl from Bridlington. Hull has been a left wing port city for a century, but is on track to go heavily Reform in the next UK election due to the large number of Somalis dumped there. The local authority that funded this game with taxpayers' money will be run by right wingers in a few years' time. Amelia is the accidental last gasp of a dying regime.

John Carter's avatar

I'd seen some mention of the local council this originated from, but indeed have only a fairly low resolution understanding of British politics at that level. Thanks for the additional information.

Contarini's avatar

I prefer to think it was an infiltrator who knowingly sabotaged the program.

Diamond Boy's avatar

I’m with Contarini: infiltrator! That’s hilarious.

Will Hudson's avatar

He might have been an infiltrator. If so, he’s certainly been exposed.

Will Hudson's avatar

Making the right sexy and cool might be the most important thing we can do right now.

John Carter's avatar

Precisely so.

Dumb Pollock's avatar

Make White Right And Hot Again!

__browsing's avatar

Okay, but what do you do with the aesthetics of the antihero long term, when the conscious rebels have to assume the responsibilities of leadership (which presumably will have to include based/trad things like marrying and having kids, and possibly going to church or visiting an IVF clinic?) The Lord of Misrule cannot Rule.

I'm also not super comfortable with using the demon chained in the basement to crank out art slop, FWIW. Trying to combine tech acceleration with social conservatism and economic protectionism is one of the more incoherent aspects of the MAGA policy platform.

John Carter's avatar

Long term, return aesthetics towards something like a 19th century or even medieval color palette and design philosophy. Visually striking can also be clean and polished.

People are going to use new tools. There's no stopping that. As they play with them they figure out effective and ineffective, helpful and dangerous uses. The culture learns over time. Choosing *not* to use the new tools is how you get eaten by the future.

glenn's avatar

Good point about AI tools and getting run over. It’s certainly a nexus point for illustration art. I was around for the last transition in the early 90s, disrupted by tools like photoshop. Many old-time illustrators, that could conjure a design and airbrush a rendering in a few hours, couldn’t transition to computer generated art. Many left the business, or shifted to fine art. To be fair, photoshop in those days was an absolute bitch to learn, and required a new way of thinking about designing an illustration. There were no YouTube tutorials, just manuals and expensive seminars. The emerging illustrators at the time were a blend of artists and computer programmers.

New AI tools are wanting, but I suspect when good artists relent and teach AIs what makes an image work, they’ll get better. For now, they’re already amazing at stuff like meme generation. More importantly, they make artistic rendering of ideas available to everyone.

Aside: for all those that do desire to learn how to fine art paint old school, find one of those older illustrators or cartoonists to mentor you. They make the best teachers. They spent careers making art on demand and are experts in using many mediums, and what makes a painting work. They are shockingly fast, and can whip out demos easily. Don’t waste time in formal art school circle jerks, where they take too much time figuring out why Monet’s paintings had an out of focus quality (Impressionism!) Maybe he was simply nearsighted and painted what he saw. Just saying. Anyway, once you get the basics down, it will be easier to guide AI tools to generate really good images. Food for thought.

Dave's avatar

The tech's not going away, so the only choice is to grab that sword... And use it to pick up the crown lying in the gutter.

Diamond Boy's avatar

It’s always been thus, as your invocation of Napoleon demonstrates.

Will Hudson's avatar

First, the easy one. Using AI to make art slop is funny, so it’s cool. As for the rest, the counterculture (and conservatism is the counterculture) always loses its edge once it goes mainstream. This happened when the leftist counterculture of the 60s replaced the conservative mainstream, peaking sometime within the last decade. The pendulum swing both ways. What matters is what you do when you’re in charge. I want to see America embrace nuclear energy and space exploration again, refocus the arts on beauty instead of subversion, and reintroduce the Western Canon to education. The combination of social conservatism, economic protectionism, and tech accelerationism is perfectly coherent. I’m working on a piece about that, now that you mention it.

John Carter's avatar

This is the future we're going to build. Total Anglo Solar Imperium.

NeonPatriarch's avatar

That sounds lovely. May it be so.

Jeanne's avatar

More please……

“Amelia Sans Merci

O what can ail thee, keyboard knight,

Alone and palely doomscrolling?

The feeds are withered from discourse,

And no foids sing.

O what can ail thee, keyboard knight,

So haggard and so overrun?

The granary of memes is full,

And the harvest’s done.

I see a filter on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew…….”

John Carter's avatar

Glad you enjoyed that little ballad!

Karen Arnold's avatar

Best thing I’ve read on Substack in quite a while

Bryce E. 'Esquire' Rasmussen's avatar

It's a dang fine ballad it is and maybe a bit memeish too...

Celia Hayes's avatar

I love all this - especially the poetry! Now it doesn't feel like getting a degree in classic English (you know - pre-20th century) was a total waste,

JT's avatar
7hEdited

The “right” - i.e. those based in reality around race, nation and the good, true and beautiful- is inherently sexy and cool when standing opposite the alternative that is antithetical to reality.

This is why we can metaphorically rape them with their own content.

What is important now is to keep up the momentum.

Will Hudson's avatar

The battle is ours to lose. Leftist aesthetic can’t uplift or transcend, it can only subvert and debase. A philosophy built on tearing things down runs out of things to break, and whatever can’t go on forever, won’t. It’s inevitable.

Edwin Robinson's avatar

Based hipster art chicks do exist, gents. I married one eight years ago! With our third kid coming in a few weeks.

John Carter's avatar

You lucky lucky man.

Dumb Pollock's avatar

Lucky stiff! Still looking for one.

Brigitte's avatar

Congratulations ❤️

Bones's avatar
21hEdited

I agree with your thesis, the right should absorb the cool, smoking, art chicks into their zeitgeist. We’re the counterculture, so let’s party.

John Carter's avatar

Fuck yeah.

Halftrolling's avatar

Lets party, but with a “Brits Only” sign on the door.

Navyo Ericsen's avatar

Truly, looking at all the smoking made me want to start again. I might just.... have to.......

Sage Alfields's avatar

The best thing to happen so far in 2026 (besides all the chaos and violence) is that both sexes have revealed a preference for an archetype the other sex enjoys being.

Chicks are big into the paramilitary thing due to the libidinal reflex to ICE: did I small test by cosplaying Mosley at work on Friday and got nothing but compliments. Dudes have no problem with that style.

Meanwhile, dudes are giving girls permission to do the SJW safe sexy thing as long as the use the fun swears.

Everyone wins on this one.

John Carter's avatar

That's exactly it. Sexual depolarization is giving way to sexual repolarization as theit repressed shadow desires come to the fore, which will have the happy consequence of depolarizing sexual politics.

Sage Alfields's avatar

There's also the serendipitousness of women viewing the government as a possible threat to their safety: suddenly having the feds as husband substitute isn't so appealing. They're going to want real men to insulate them from new political realities those men are instantiating.

Possibly a virtuous cycle.

Contarini's avatar

Excellent insight

Hopefully that shift in thinking will continue

PapayaSF's avatar

Much of the counter-revolution is just the re-adoption of common sense after the woke years. Many people tried to ignore the woke nonsense or be polite about it, but the trans types went too far by trying to “destroy the gender binary.” We’re back to men and women being different and not interchangeable.

John Carter's avatar

Anti-woke is just a kind of deprogramming. We still need to take our countries back, reverse the damage done over decades of gay race communism, and rebuild.

Celia Hayes's avatar

And write books that regular people want to read, and create art that regular people want to look at every day hanging on their walls. Create houses/dwelling spaces that people want to live in and enjoy, cars/vehicles that ordinary people really like to drive, and music/TV/movies that people really want to listen to and watch. Not the absolutely unappealing stuff that the overlords wish to force us all into.

Dumb Pollock's avatar

Aphrodite and her Ares cannot be denied for long. And she love Hermes for his outlaw cheek.

YourGalapagosGullfriend's avatar

For your next experiment, you should test out ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man theory and show up in Hugo Boss. :D

m j w's avatar

I've just started to see shorts of a trio rocking Peaky Blinders in public spaces - looks very much like every girl's crazy for a Sharp Dressed Man.

Matthew Hopkins's avatar

Mosley? Good God man, you are obviously stylistically and sartorially blessed.

Mister Contrast's avatar

My running hypothesis is that some unknown legend of golden-age 4chan pulled a Matt Walsh and did himself up like a genderfreak, infiltrated Prevent HQ and successfully bamboozled the entire operation to let him troll the crap out of them on their own dime.

John Carter's avatar

This is bullshit but I believe it.

Boulis's avatar

😂 Now we are really appropriating the Leftist modus operandi- I think the phrase “it’s bullshit but I believe it” could grace every Leftist headstone since 1789.

Another possible theory: the human soul is ineffable, sublime, and supremely complex. Maybe a spark of divinity exists even within the soul of that otherwise formless, featureless, plastic and troglodytic government functionary who created this wondrous and transcendent Goddess of Discord and that spark exploded outward into the ether out of that poor slob’s tortured subconscious mind?

PapayaSF's avatar

That’s a good elevator pitch for a comedy film.

John Carter's avatar

Would be genuinely hilarious.

Tantalus of Rivia's avatar

In my mind it was true!

Steven Work's avatar

Don't forget that Scottish girt with the hatchet and knife that displayed them when protecting her little sister or friend from older middle-eastern man sexually harassing her-them!

John Carter's avatar

She was great.

Steven Work's avatar

A lot of good Memes of her - some purple-hair beauty-mark version of those Memes would be cool too.

Richard's avatar
20hEdited

Whatever happened to her. Juvenile detention? And the Word of Power girl from Minnesota.

John Carter's avatar

Scottish girl was totally vindicated. The gypsy and his evil gf were arrested.

Shiloh in Minnesota made several hundred thousand dollars and bought a house.

Tantalus of Rivia's avatar

I love the Amelia meme because there's nothing quite so glorious as seeing the Left hoisted on their own petard.

Also, someone more gifted than I in meme magery needs to do a mashup of Amelia 2026 and the French movie Amelie from 2001. The French version has black hair, instead of purple, but otherwise it's the same hairdo.

John Carter's avatar

Someone already did that 😂

SCA's avatar

Oh John! This is *exactly* what I wanted for my birthday!

John Carter's avatar

Happy birthday!

SCA's avatar

Your Stack ain't my natural habitat at all but it's just so much fun to hang around. You're such an enjoyable writer.

John Carter's avatar

Thank you, SCA!

Brigitte's avatar

Thank you so much for compiling so many Amelia memes

John Carter's avatar

It was a labor of love, because I'm in love.

Shoveltusker's avatar

Me too. Just discovered her yesterday. This extraordinarily well-written article deliciously explains the phenomenon.

John Carter's avatar

Very happy that you enjoyed it!

吉米's avatar

Amazing article, but about fashion, we're not just alternative and we're also not stuffy. As someone who marched in Charlottesville, I'll try and explain, but my wife knows better. We wear bespoke suits. Designer ties and bags. TipsyElves ski suits and homemade Halloween costumes. Handmade jewelery, John Dyer stones or silver and turquoise from the Tohono O'Odham. Whatever cycling glasses I see watching the Tour. My daughter wears silk Tang Dynasty style dresses and I'll match her. Why not? It's way beyond punk.

John Carter's avatar

I'm deeply impressed by your fashion sense. Genuinely so.

The Charlottesville uniforms were disastrous, however. Dressing up like the frat boy villains from every 80s college movie played right into the left's hands.

But I think everyone learned their lesson from that.

Celia Hayes's avatar

When I do an event as an author - I dress in late Victorian walking costume or Edwardian suit/shirtwaist&skirt combo - complete with hat, reticule and other period accessories. It's my attention-getting outfit, as I mostly write historicals - but it is absolutely awesome how gallantly the men become ... I mean, this is Texas, where most men are classically polite anyway - but when approaching a 19th-century lady, those men do go the extra-gallant mile for me.

Dress and act like a lady, be treated as a lady still applies around here...

John Carter's avatar

Fashion choices exert a psychological influence on everyone who sees them. That affects how they treat you. The solipsism of moderns leads people to think this is shouldn't happen, that people should treat them the same no matter how they dress. Which is how you end up with everyone dressing like slobs wondering why everyone is such a jerk.

PapayaSF's avatar

Excellent summary with some choice memes. You have documented a bit of 2026 socio-political history that future historians will appreciate. If we had edgy comedy on TV like the old days, SNL and late night would be all over this. Now their writers are just part of the same propaganda apparatus as Shout Out UK and Prevent. They’ll see it as an embarrassing fail by the Good Anti-Racists, and a win for the Evil Racists.

I don’t think this is “AI slop,” though. I know that’s the term of the day for any AI image, but these are good to great. I hope the term can be restricted to bad AI.

John Carter's avatar

I probably should have commented on the artistic aspect of this. Individually the images are cheap and disposable, but collectively they become a genuine, collaborative art work. And a captivating one at that. We're building our own culture and there's nothing they can do to stop us.

PapayaSF's avatar

True, AI makes images “cheap” in the sense of easier than having artists draw. Still, prompting is a minor art, and I think it’s fair to judge any art by the result, not by what did or didn’t go into it. A meme is equivalent to a sketch or a short bit by a comedian, and it’s fine if it just fits into a larger collaboration.

The culture shift has been amazing. For decades edgy humor was anti-establishment and (overall) left-wing: Lenny Bruce, underground comics, the National Lampoon (though NatLamp regularly mocked the left). Now the left is the establishment and the pearl-clutching bluenose schoolmarms aghast at bad words and inappropriate laughter. This vibe shift feels like part of the Fourth Turning and not reversing anytime soon.

John Carter's avatar

We are just getting started.

ScuzzaMan's avatar

Sooner or later they'll come back to the notion that they can make art ... better.

And I do not hold to that.

So no more running: I aim to misbehave.

ImperialistCanuck's avatar

Great Serenity quote 👏

Iserlohn's avatar

Best wishes regarding death in the family, always rough. Surprised no mention was made of the particular Resonance the purple strikes for the Commonwealth/Anglophone Right, as the color of the British Monarchy, and the days of Empire when Britain ruled the waves. Goes part in parcel with symbol reclamation, purple isnt just showy to rebel against norms, its the royal purple of the blessed Art Queens.

John Carter's avatar

Damn, yeah I missed that. Came up on Twitter too. Amelia is our queen now (I was the first to tweet that lol)

Boflys's avatar

The Overton Window continues to shift.

ScuzzaMan's avatar

Behind the Window is a Pendulum.

James M.'s avatar

Activists and alienated progressive women are creating their own neurotic hyperreality online. Why can't nationalists and traditionalists do the same? Interesting.

As long as people don't mistake content generation with meaningful social change. That is the fundamental weakness on the left: there are so many people that have lost any real connection to physical reality and so they're impervious to feedback or caution. But the internet is a wonderful tool for spreading information. I hope that it becomes a useful means of BUILDING culture soon, but that requires that the symbols and ideas and values that are disseminated online find their way into people's real lives. I would like to read more about how this might occur. I suspect it might be the most important meta-issue on our plate.

https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-euphemism-treadmill

John Carter's avatar

The left pushes their memes from the top down, using captured institutions. The right, of necessity, is participatory and bottom up. Meaning that our meme creation creates and affects culture as an organic element of their creation.

Iridescent Iguana's avatar

Love the upwelling of unselfconscious chaos magic in the service of right wing politics!

Just as Neptune is about to move into Aries… perfect…

I’ll light a pink candle on my altar to Artemis, just to add to the fire.

John Carter's avatar

Damn. Yeah good point regarding the astrological alignments.

Some have been interpreting them as meaning a return to a hard edged, brittle form of Christianity but I am not so sure this is what the gods intend.

Iridescent Iguana's avatar

I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. I mean, it is probably going to be part of the story, but definitely not the whole story.

I realize that astrology may not be a popular topic among people who lean on logic and rational discourse, but I take my cues from the ancients: they were serious about it. Not in the bastardized, naval gazing, solipsistic, New Age chick way, but as a kind of holographic representation of important political affairs on earth. I have reasons to believe there’s something to it. Anyway, there’s a mundane astrologer by the name of Andre Barbault, died in 2019, who suggested that the Neptune/Saturn conjunction at 0° Aries would actually be the nadir of the 21st Century, that the time from 2020 through 2026 would be the worst part of the 21st century, and that from February 2026 onward things would start to improve. We’re about to see if he was right.

That conjunction is significant on its own terms, regarded as the beginning of a new 5000 year era. But none of us commenting here will be alive to see its full fruition.