Now, this is one I'd debate on whether or not I should post it here or to my other site, since it does sort of blur the lines between "talking about dystopia" and "talking about magick" but either way: here goes.

Have you ever stopped to think about the words you use?

I mean, you probably have. Maybe sat down and chosen just the right way to formulate a professional email. How to sound smart when writing a post/comment. How to put on the voice that tells your bosses that you're on top of the problem... But what about that internal monologue? Or what about the way you and your closest friends talk to one another? Or where you get your news from? Now, this isn't some Derren Brown NLP mysticism, or some "The Game" pickup artist bullshit: I'm not talking about "the power of words to control other people" - It's something with a finer point on it than all that. Something more grounded in the human psychology, and how we've evolved to consume/generate/spread/survive as a memetic culture.

It's in the language of cults.

It's in the language of religions.

And yes: It's in the language of memes.

From Wikipedia:

Loaded language is rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words or phrases with strong connotations. This type of language is very often made vague to more effectively invoke an emotional response and/or exploit stereotypes. Loaded words and phrases have significant emotional implications and involve strongly positive or negative reactions beyond their literal meaning.

It's Orwell's Newspeak. It's Heinlein's "Emotive Index" (which I could've sworn was "Semantic Index" or something like that: I can't recall). It's propaganda. It's advertising. It's news media. And, whether you like it or not, it shapes and controls your world and reality (assuming that we can consider "reality" to mean "how one filters the experiences of the universe"). All without ever needing to tell you what to do.

My main thought tonight is on one specific "loaded language" technique, because it's all over the internet these days. Have you ever heard of a "thought-terminating cliché"? If not, I'm sure you've heard one:

• "It is what it is"
• "It's all in God's plan"
• "Do your own research"
• "C'est la vie"
• "YOLO"

The important part is what it does: the point of a thought-terminating cliché is that it can be used as a mental stop sign, used to quell cognitive dissonance and silence divergent thinking. Has life got you down? "YOLO!" Are you feeling lost and betrayed? "It's all in God's plan!" Are you crushed under the weight of living through late stage capitalism, where you either slave your life away making rich men richer? "It is what it is..." Have you found yourself struggling to combine the reality you observe, one where compassion and empathy are good and natural things, with the dictates of of your chosen King? "Do your own research!"

It's screaming "I can't be fucked to figure it out, so I let someone tell me!" It's silencing that pesky part of your brain that just won't shut up about "maybe we shouldn't do a genocide" when the cult leader tells you "they're all awful people and deserve death!" Are you so broken and alone and afraid to admit that fact to yourself? Then just "do your own research" and find out that there's literally dozens of people like you, all willing to believe that the world isn't actually how "they" tell you it is. But shhhhh, don't think about how you're just following what another group of "them" are telling you. There's that pesky cognitive dissonance again... But it's alright, because you "did your own research" so you can be one of the informed ones. One of the enlightened ones.

But that's where we veer back into the whole "cyberpunk dystopia" of the thing. Where I get to say (again) that social media was a mistake. We were not meant to be so interconnected yet. Our tiny human brains are too squishy to hold, all at once, so many conflicting viewpoints. Our senses of self are too worn away to be able to distinguish pure inspirational internal thoughts out from under the waves of dissonant screams of the digital masses. Our echo chambers are larger, and their messages reverberate as a cacophony of bits and bytes into infinity: their thoughts, these memetic viruses of faulty logic, stand preserved and safe from the rising tides of bit rot by mirrors upon mirrors and archives of archives of sites from long past. Our digital footprints are here to stay, blazing confused trails through the digital era. From the first ARPANET message to the most recent TikTok comment: functionally immortal so long as the net exists.

And it's there: within these gated communities, that we can abandon independent thought. We can huddle with like minded genius visionaries of our chosen delusion (freely chosen, if only to remove that decision paralysis when faced with an ocean of choices) and pat ourselves on the back because we've done it: We've found the "secret knowledge" that they don't want us to hear. We know who they are. We're coming for them... and soon they will come for us.

So just think about it... and I mean really think about it. Where do your thoughts come from, if they're not authentically your own? Who's 2003 conspiracy theory are you letting run your life here in the "far distant future" of 2025? Do you believe what they say? And I mean trul?y believe, without a shadow of dissonance within yourself? That conflict of knowing that something isn't the way that you know it is? Just think about it... embrace that part of you that can think, that can feel and form its own conclusions. And if it's uncomfy: keep going. Question why is it uncomfortable, who has made this uncomfortable... Don't kill the cringe, kill the part of you that cringes. Find out who you are, and hold on dearly to that.

They will try to beat you back down. They will try and reel you back in. But don't let them. Never let them tell you who you are. As long as you fight back against their attempts to put you in a box, you can do anything.

Anyway, like I said, a little bit of a weirder one tonight. I don't even really know what I was trying to say, other than to hope that I made some sort of sense here. Just don't ever give up who you are just because it'll be "easier"