This post originally appeared on Midwest Socialist. It has been edited for a wider audience.

Your life is being stolen from you, second by second and day by day.

The old forces of Capital and the new giants of Tech have entered into an alliance set upon the squandering of human experience in a manner and at a scale unfamiliar to history. So far, they're winning.

Not content with merely the dictatorial control of our working lives and the controlling of our behavior via incentives, they now endeavor to subordinate our every thought to their whims and our very understanding of the world to processes they alone shape. They seek to be the facilitators of all discussion, the arbiters of all ideas, the sole authority in the shaping of the mind.

Their weapon of choice is “algorithmic media”— platforms in which content is delivered not by user curation but instead by fiendishly effective curation models, these platforms having largely replaced and/ or arisen from traditional “social media”.

While inscrutable and complex, these models are shaped and optimized for the interests of the platform owners, formed by directives to increase engagement time and engagement intensity. Bluntly, the ruling class has devised an evolving machine with which it can squander human life and control the human mind. As this machine perfects itself it squeezes away more and more of our lives. Over the last decades it has utterly consumed us.

Our lived experience is zero-sum. Every moment spent on these platforms is a moment not spent with family, creating art, improving oneself, or, indeed, fighting for a better future.

When there is a ubiquitous source of instant, endless, “dopamine”, the opportunity cost of doing literally anything else becomes higher relatively. This means every meeting or gathering, no matter what kind, must go on with the background of each participant fighting the urge to pull out their phone and be mindlessly entertained. As social creatures, this means the interactions we require to live full lives are constantly, incessantly, cheapened and muted by algorithmic media.

Today, every task we seek to complete must compete directly for time and attention with precisely targeted rage-bait, goon-bait, bad faith, and advertising, a deluge of maximally stimulating information that our brains are wholly unequipped to handle.

Being constantly buffeted by such content has a strange dual effect familiar to all of us, a sort of pacified rage, a despair without definite cause or real depth, the result of being thrown back and forth between the extremes of emotion every few seconds.

The ultimate goal of increasing engagement time and intensity of emotional response in mind, even attempts towards good-faith discussion are shown to the two groups most likely to respond strongly: those who already agree and those who will be enraged. That is, your ideas, when posted online, are shown to the groups where they will have the least impact!

It is tempting then, to believe that algorithmic media can be useful “in your bubble”, among like-minded people. This conclusion underestimates the distortions inherent to the medium. As a rule, curation algorithms punish heavily any content that causes the user to leave the app. Longer posts do this, the pause necessary to engage giving the brain a chance to return to reality and opt out of further scrolling. Posts that link outside of the app, be it a call to action, an event signup, or simply to source information (as is necessary in informed debate) are suppressed most of all.

The force of the algorithm thus pushes essays towards paragraphs, paragraphs towards blurbs, and blurbs to mere slogans. These slogans in some respects may reflect correct ideas, but are only understood as such by those familiar with the underlying reasoning, the forces at play, and the conditions in which the idea is formed. Outside of this context these slogans readily strawman themselves and can be wielded as a cudgel by the right to alienate potential allies. At worst, these slogans take on a life of their own, leading astray decision-making and eroding all nuance. Instead of making your ideas accessible to a wider audience you risk debasing interesting ideas to vagaries.

Democracy unavoidably requires an informed, passionate, and intellectual society. Without it, our politics will necessarily veer into authoritarianism. If we want a better world we must build this society, day by day and brick by brick creating the seeds of a new coalition.

We face this task in an environment in which vast rivers of money are flowing in the opposite direction, sweeping the public away from democracy and towards ignorance and isolation.

We each have a duty to enthusiastically learn and understand the world around us, advancing causes that we believe can make positive change. This is essentially impossible without the ability to read and digest long texts. We must raise our understanding of society beyond thought-terminating cliches and dogmatic subordination to a party line. As Hegel write in the preface to Phenomenology of Spirit,

“For the real issue is not exhausted by stating it as an aim, but by carrying it out, nor is the result the actual whole, but rather the result together with the process through which it came out…

The true shape in which Truth exists can only be the scientific system of truth… only the systematic exposition of philosophy itself provides [Truth].

Knowledge is only True when it is systematized, when taken together with the process that brought about that knowledge. How can we truly understand anything if we can only think in short phrases? How can we make informed decisions when inundated with emotionally charged screeds every second of the day? Bluntly, we cannot. That’s what they’re counting on.

All this is worsened by the inherent flaws of a written medium-- lack of conversational context and body language clues, alienation from the other participants, the difficulty of conveying ideas in text in he first place.

The discourse on algorithmic media platforms thus necessarily devolves into people parroting slogans that are understood by neither the author or the reader, the most shrill and irritating examples being lifted up and circulated while any conversation of value is suppressed. This is not a failure of anyone’s ideas or any particular movement. It is not a reflection of “who we are” or even who our ideological opponents are. It is a circus in which we are all both the clowns and the audience.

Of course infighting and fragmentation happen on these platforms, they are literally designed to divide and enrage! They draw us into endless, pointless, sideshows. They exhaust our spirit and attack our unity. They undermine our solidarity and convince us of lies. They deprive us of the most essential element of organizing, human to human connection, where ideas can be discussed without interference.

Walking away can be daunting, but you can take the first step today.

Short form video is the most powerful stimulant and the hardest to kick. Set screen time limits and have a friend or partner set the unlock code. You can gradually reduce the time or go cold turkey. Try getting in the habit of turning your phone completely off and setting it physically away from you. For the genuinely social uses of platforms like Instagram (posts about upcoming events, keeping tabs on distant friends), restrict your use to a laptop or desktop computer. You do not need it accessible on your phone at all times.

If nothing else, stop arguing online. You are wasting your capacity and your energy, allowing the framing of debate to be undermined in ways that lead to incorrect conclusions. Take those discussions to community events, to your your friends and family, to political organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America. The issues of our day are too important to be confined to a screen and too complex to fit in a character limit.

Wean yourself off the digital ketamine of algorithmic media and tasks that once sounded impossible will become invigorating. Every part of your life can be richer, your brain quieter, your focus deeper, your time spent on the pursuits that matter to you. Today can be the day you take the first step towards that goal.

Let us throw off the yoke of so-called “social media” and burn it in the fires of intellectualism! Do not let yourself be controlled by our enemies, do not undermine your own thinking by subordinating yourself to the tools of the billionaire class! A better world lies ahead, let us forge the path together.

Jane Remover has often felt like a larger than life presence. Throughout her discography she seems to hover off the ground, dropping one liners and abstract verses down to an industry and public that’s still trying to figure out what the hell she’s doing up there.

The crescendo of this persona, both in swagger and volume, was this April’s Revengeseekerz, the production of which can best be described as “everything all at once”. At times the tracks seemed to be playing at 1.5x speed, the listeners brain struggling to keep up with the sheer density of sound. Lyrically, Jane was at her most bombastic, dropping bars like “Jesus never had it with a freak bitch” and “Dear god, place a curse on those who wronged me”. She may not be divine, but listening to Revengeseekerz it’s not hard to picture her walking on water.

But with the release of December’s ♡ (Heart, as I’ll call it from here out), Jane has descended back to Earth to mingle with us commoners. From the jump, on Magic I Want U, Jane shows us her sensitive side, telling us of a boy who knows just what to say and just how to touch her. She can’t stop thinking about him. She’s not asking him to bow, she’s blushing and offering to be his groupie. It’s incredibly charming.

The production retains its digicore stylings, but takes a step back on the intensity. Doing so allows Jane’s vocal performance shines through, demonstrating real growth even in the few intervening months since Revengeseekerz.

Jane continues the lovesick lyricism on So What?, giving us more details about the target of her affection (he’s apparently a musician). It’s fun, it’s flirty, and dare I say a it’s bit poppy. If Revengeseekerz is an album you listen to at home on good headphones, Heart is an album you blow out the bass in your car with while you’re driving with friends.

Music Baby doubles down the good vibes, with a satisfyingly layered drop and the distorted vocals as we’ve come to expect from Jane. It expands on some of the ideas and lines from So What?, working some of the same lines and vocal ideas into a track fit for the club.

But, as we soon discover on Flash in the Pan, this isn’t a new relationship and the boy stuck in her head isn’t hers. He thought it was a fling but Jane can’t get him off of her mind. (“Pretty boy said I was a flash in the pan, I can take her flow if I can’t take her man”). This re-contextualizes the former tracks, revealing that this isn’t an album strictly about love, things are quite a bit more complicated. Jane opened herself up and got hurt, and for once we are a voyeur to her most personal feelings.

Jane, like us, seems surprised at how hurt she is. On How To Teleport Jane explores this unexpected pain, singing “I didn’t know I could break like other dolls”. She feels used for her body, but still wants more. (“You can close my eyes, take me back home, you can move my body around”). She craves being desired by the “pretty boy” and is devastated that he won’t even give her his phone number.

Dream Sequence ends the EP on a bitter note, as Jane sings “When the wind whistles you’ll wake up unlucky again, with none of your things, your band mates, your lovers or your friends.” Goddamn.

Heart packs so much into its 25 minute runtime, an emotional arc the likes of which are rarely seen in such a concise EP format. Jane has condensed the bombastic and overwhelming Revengeseekerz into something more refined, more sensitive, all while retaining her killer edge and impeccable production. Chicago has in its midst a truly exciting talent, I cannot wait to see where she takes us next.

You said “kill the cop in your head”
So inside myself I sought the ways that I fell short
No room for second chances, despite the circumstances
That desperation for connection
And I found a child to try to kill by any means necessary
Remember, I see your struggle, friend
I see that bullshit that you carry

Pigeon Pit, “crazy arms”

It is not morally wrong to make and share art that’s not very good.

The vast majority of art ever made has been kind of bad. Art that fits the general parameters of quality for its medium is the minority. Art that does something genuinely novel in its medium is rarer still. Making art that isn’t up to your standards is one of the most human things you can do. It is utterly unavoidable if you wish to make something you are happy with.

To be clear: If you refuse to make things you don’t like, you will never, ever, be good at anything.

Besides, the rules in your head that you’re applying to your work aren’t your rules in the first place.

For most of human history, finding good art was a challenge. That’s why institutions were created to (theoretically) curate and select the quality and novel from the chaff. These institutions grow more powerful as time went on, and inevitably faced backlash from artists too subversive to be platformed. The canonical example is the Impressionists, who created their own gallery shows in response to the strict rules of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and their Salon de Paris. The end result was a sea-change in what was considered “good” art.

But even when the Académie was at its most powerful, its reach was limited. A motivated kid in a small village in the south of France would have had little conception of the specifics of these “rules”. They would have painted in ways that pleased them, finding the specifics of the style de jure only when they made first contact with the institutions of High Art and its adherents.

We are not so lucky. Yes, the sources of our own rules are more diffuse. There is no Academy deciding what can and cannot be showcased. But the rules are inescapable nontheless. The same bright kid in the south of France these days would be brought in line much more quickly. Instead of painting what pleases them, they would likely follow guides and examples found online. A friendly face or voice would teach them a process for making art in a particular style. They would try draw some idealized, abstracted form of “anime” or “cartoons” or (god forbid) “realism”. Either way, rules, parameters, guidelines, and processes are thrust upon them long before they’re needed.

Unfortunately, the kid will “fail” to follow the process. No artstyle is so easly reproducable that attempting to follow a rigid process will get you from zero to where you want to be. If they try to draw “anime style”, they’ll end up with something like this:

The kid might or might not like what they’ve drawn. But if they have the audacity to post this online they will find out very quickly. They will be mocked, get endless “suggestions” on how to “improve” and have all the rules they need to follow snarkily linked to them.

But hang on, what’s wrong with that image? Who says the eyes have to be a certain size, or the hair should fall differently, or that you can’t draw a mouth like that? The girls in Fruits Basket have eyes that big, many a Shojo boy has a sharp chin, and hair can look lots of different ways. The artist that drew this doesn’t need rules to follow or a rigorous process, they just need to keep drawing. If they drew this exact image a hundred times they would end up with something that looks and feels good.

But likely they won’t. They’ll think “well, drawing just isn’t for me,” as though its a gift that god places inside you one day. Those helpful suggestions and condescending remarks just cut off a potential artist from improving. If this artist continued drawing in the same style and kept posting online, despite the warnings, there would be hell to pay. Their work would be mocked and reposted indefinitely, each new post bringing a new wave of comments. As I repost this picture now, it’s been almost a decade since it was originally posted.

If you grow up on the internet you learn quickly that there’s rules to follow. And if you grew up like me, then you also had to learn the rules slowly and painfully. Don’t stare like that, don’t talk about certain subjects, don’t share certain things about yourself. It doesn’t matter how excited you are about your new interest, nobody wants to hear you ramble about it at length.

Most of these rules went down easy. When you’re an ugly kid you’ll do anything to make yourself more palatable to those around you. Like most kids without a lot of friends, I made art. I sang, I drew and doodled, I made little websites in HTML and cosplays out of stuff lying around the house. I learned Ukulele and a little guitar and wrote song lyrics that never got a tune. Eventually I started recording and making videos. I made some vlogs, a lot of tutorials and eventually even a short film.

I was never very good at any of it, but for a long time I was happy to not be very good at things. I was a kid and just happy to share them with a few friends at a time.

Then came the cringe sites. Reddit is my native home, for better and worse, and it has fundamentally shaped me into who I am today. It nurtered a love of technology that led to my career and formed my understanding of politics through various liberal subreddits (I know, I’ve gotten better).

At some point I stumbled upon r/justneckbeardthings, a subreddit dedicated to mocking loathsome people being obnoxious. It let me, for once, be the one laughing. I knew the rules and they didn’t, and for that reason I could feel better about being fat and awkward.

But that subreddit wasn’t very big, and eventually I found myself on r/CringeAnarchy, helpfully linked in the sidebar. CringeAnarchy was a little different culturally. The neckbeards were being mocked, but so were the Tumblr users. The Steven Universe fans, the SuperWhoLockers. It wasn’t their slovenly and misogynistic ways that made them targets, it was simply their attitude, their aesthetics, their enthusiasm. They didn’t live up to the standards placed on them by reddit and thus “failed” as people.

But I liked Steven Universe. I had learned Ukulele because of it, my first girlfriend and I bonded over it, it resonated with me deeply. I had done lots of drawings in its style, mercifully never sharing them somewhere they could be mined for cringe content.

On that sub, and across the internet, those who dared to turn their passion into something concrete also put you at the mercy of the mob.

For the first time, I realized that failure, by anyone’s standards made you a target. If you made something that didn’t fit the rules your audience had internalized, you put yourself at risk of harassment. But on the internet you have no control over your audience. If anyone who happened to see your work felt it failed they could repost it somewhere like r/CringeAnarchy, where literally hundreds of people would assume things about you, then post “clever” takedowns of the person they imagine you to be.

Since it’s almost impossible to make something that pleases every potential viewer, I realized the very creation of art degraded my social standing and made me a legitimate target for criticism. I may not have been able to communicate that, but I certainly internalized it.

I stopped drawing entirely. I brought the ukulele out less and less, quitting before college. I stopped talking about the videos I made, quitting that too after burning myself out making a short film I knew people would hate.

It’s hard to estimate how much of my pubescent changes were directly the result of this, but I sanded off all the edges from my personality and finally fit in. I took on a series of roles, first a theater kid and tenor. Then a frat boy. Then a tech worker. Finally, I became an adult, and realized that there was nothing left inside of me. I was hollow, wearing a caricature in more ways then one. I made nothing, I only consumed. Then I transitioned.

Becoming a truer version of yourself is addicting. Once you’ve broken down the rules of gender, you start looking at the other structures around you that keep you down. I had convinced myself that I couldn’t create anything worth sharing, and thus had nothing to gain from creating anything. I had constructed a cop in my head that chastized me for making basically anything.

Thankfully my spouse helped me. They create incessantly, ignore most criticism, and have thus become a very talented artist. In my view, creating work that is genuinely novel and often quite moving. One day, when I was criticising something I made, calling it “pointless” since I hadn’t achieved my original goal. They looked me in the eyes and said

“It doesn’t need a point.

It served its purpose by being made”.

That was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.

Since then I have found the joy of making things for the sake of making them, I’ve written for the sake of writing and drawn for the sake of putting marker to paper. And I feel like a real person again. There’s a fire in there that was nearly put out and it burns brighter with every ugly drawing of my cat.

In a world of endless inhuman slop, em dashes, and six fingered monstrosities, valuing the act of creation itself is what we need. The only response to capitalism devaluing art is creating it even more purposefully. In a world of machines we must remain steadfastly human. AI is trained on the “good” stuff, mostly. Its images are tuned to appeal to the median, its text misses the beauty of a novel turn of phrase, an obscure reference, or an intentional sentence fragment.

To make flawed art is to make human art. Breaking rules and eschewing processes and making people mad is not an inefficiency to be optimized away, its the entire fucking point.

The technofascists don’t want you to try something new or draw your own lobsided cartoons or doodle on the margins. They want you to take the easy way out, to generate a warm-toned good-enough semi-realistic picture that’s only sorta what you were looking for. Are you gonna let them win, or are you gonna make something of your own?

Corrrection: A previous version of this post refers to blackwinterwells as Fraxioms ex. While “dancing on your grave” is directed at BWW, they do not appear to know Fraxiom personally.

Since the pandemic-era high of hyperpop wore out, the genre has struggled with something of a hangover. It became fodder for the trend cycle, crushed by an algorithm desperate to squeeze the last bits of attention from every innovation. Its most interesting artists have branched out, or in the case of its patron saint SOPHIE, tragically passed on.

But even without its visionary de-facto leader, the musical stylings and genuine artistic talent remain. The movement behind it lives on, with Chicago-based producers Gupi and Fraxiom charting a new path forward.

The proudly trans duo was around for that heyday and saw some commercial and critical success with their 2020 self-titled record “food house”. It released at just the right moment to capitalize on and accelerate the trend and was thusly rewarded. Four years later though, things have changed, and the pair knows it. On “jumpin in the cacc”, Frax challenges the absurdity of that cycle, singing

“They say that hyperpop is out of style (whoa)
They want me to grow up and go acoustic (no)
I said, "Do you even like music?",

and lamenting her own role in this cycle:

Contribute a monster beyond imagination
Spotify is stupid, Spotify is satan.

But two house is not primarily concerned with navel-gazing about the state of a genre the duo barely identify with. (“Can you really call this hyperpop if the beat is more like cyber-grunge mixed up with digicore?”) The first order of business is not the rapidfire jokes and references for which the group is known, but instead an extended musical “fuck you” to a list of enemies; one or more exes, a previous abuser, and the hyperpop artist known online as blackwinterwells or BWW, with whom Fraxiom has previously had beef.

The disses are weaved in through opening tracks “hot problems”, “nono”, “special”, and ‘td bank’ before the topic is (mostly) put to bed on “dancing on your grave”.

Even absent any and all context of the relationships being referenced, it’s hard not to cheer for Fraxiom. Especially with lines like “I just think it’s odd that we were kids, and you were not, and we were smoking all that pot with you”. The disses are specific, layered, and utterly brutal, but to fully understand them, and the album at large, one needs to be part of a fairly specific group.

To be blunt, this album is for trans girls, furries, and the terminally online. The closer you are to any of those circles the more you will enjoy the album. Frax and Gupi are well aware of this fact. It’s a feature, not a bug. They are making music that’s fun for them, that incorporates their humor and references. Instead of looking outwards, changing the music to please or anger critics, this album looks in at their community, making a piece of art that is unashamedly for their circle.

Other reviews have misidentified this album as a piece of intentional cringe, as if the duo is watching over their shoulder and crafting an album specifically to make people mad. While there is some amount of trolling going on, this isn’t self parody or anything of the sort.

With that goal in mind, food house succeeds wildly. This album is funny. Really, really funny. Even after the dozenth listen I’m still picking up on new jokes, often getting them lodged firmly in my head for the hours and days after. Some are simple reference humor, but many aren’t. I’ve caught myself singing “We’re rollin’ bigger doobies and growin’ bigger boobies…” more times than I care to admit. It’s just fun music, plain and simple.

There is, however, one section of this album that’s speaks to a broader audience. It’s shared with shocking clarity, given the rest of the content of the album. In short, Fraxiom is not fucking scared of you.

More than that, she literally makes the case for hate-criming her. I have never seen anything like this before. In its entirety, she sings

“I talk like somebody who's never been punched before 'cause I've never been punched before…

… no bodyguard
And I can't lift for my life
Plus I'm always fucking high
And keep hundreds at a timе
Don't think a gun is personally right for me 'cause I would kill mysеlf
Pepper spray taken away by TSA, didn't replace it
Let's face it
You could fuck me up real easy and I'd have to take it!

So why can't I stop my victory lap?
Why can't I stop makin' fun of your ass?…

… Come knock this grin off my face.”

Since the early days of Hip Hop and the wild success of tracks like “Hit ‘Em Up”, it’s been a common trope to let your opps know that if they come for you, they won’t survive the encounter. Fraxiom turns this completely on its head. For trans people, trans women in particular, the “opps” can be basically anyone; a stranger who doesn’t like the way you present, a romantic partner who doesn’t immediately clock you, or even a cop selectively profiling you. This manifests in fear, with trans people often grappling with the dangers of having a gun and the practicalities and shortcomings of other means of self-defense.

In a trans culture that can lean towards fear and paranoia, Fraxiom stands up, shares her (literal) vulnerability, then immediately laughs it off. On another album this would be less notable, but Fraxiom knows two house will make people mad and she knows it could attract an internet firestorm. Its not theorectical, she’s been doxxed before.

Despite the danger, Fraxiom unashamedly explores trans, queer, and furry sexuality. kunta hora has lines that would make all but the the most online of us blush:

I can tell if the tummy soft 'fore I even touch it
Perk my ears up, bunny hop, then proceed to fuck it
'Magine what we do in private if this how I talk in public
'Cause he looks like how Bayboy draws Sam the dog
With the beard I can sink my lips into like mwah
We can take these gummies and then run around the con
With the beer, I can drink my sips in two secs flat
Wanna frot? Have that nasty kinda dude sex, yeah
Body hair I can sink my lips into like mwah
Body soft, I can press my tits into like mwah.

To be clear, this is the kind of thing that makes fascists violent. Those who think we’re disgusting cannot stand to hear this kind of talk. It may sound ridiculous to call borderline-ERP “brave”, but all it would take for this to become a genuine threat to Frax’s safety is a clip posted on Libs of Tiktok or a similar hate account.

But that’s not to say it fails musically, or only has value in its “bravery”, quite the contrary. Producer Gupi flexes their development all over this album. The tracks are more layered, lusher, and richer than previous efforts, while retaining the same punch and deep bass. The vocal processing finds a nice balance between the aggressive autotune of earlier hyperpop-adjacent works and a more “acoustic” sound. The synths vary from squishy to booming to harsh, often within the same musical phrase. The sound of this album never sits still, evolving and shifting throughout the runtime. It borrows from greats like SOPHIE and 100 gecs while still retaining a sound all its own. Gupi also showcases their vocals for the first time, to great effect.

In a world where no piece of art stays in its target audience, where trans people are facing an erosion of our rights and former allies are turning their backs on us, two house refuses to pull punches. It is trans music, it is furry music, and it doesn’t give a shit if you like it or not.

In releasing this work, Fraxiom and Gupi chart a new course for hyperpop in the post-panedmic era. More than metallic screeches and autotune, it is increasingly a transgender countercultural movement— needed now more than ever.

Ultimately it’s impossible to give this album a rating out of ten. Whether you like it depends more on who you are than what the album is. However it is a masterpiece. It redefines a genre that badly needed direction and in doing so will help inspire a new generation of trans producers, djs and vocalists.