One thing that shouldn't be understated in histories of digital media is how much the concept of "Grand Theft Auto stars" has shaped our auto-elimination fantasies.
It’s like they view suicide as a “statement” rather than opting out of the labour of having to negotiate the world. A statement they’re unable (or unwilling) to make otherwise. Like, dog, you can just say things. It’s passive but they think it’s assertive. Another confusing logic to add to the pile, just as they seem to think they’re nobodies while simultaneously believing their absence is a statement with profound consequences.
4chan won the Internet. Nothing really matters; just amuse yourself, because life is nothing but pain. Nothing is true and everything is permitted. Endless hikkikomori decadence.
I think there's an interesting meta phenomenon here that has yet to be analysed, in part because everyone seems to be inside it, where politics is increasingly mediated through a "forces of life" vs. "death cult" Manichean ontology. I first started to notice it during the pandemic, where policy countermeasures (especially lockdowns) were simply not soberly debatable, but declared to be a question of allegiance to life vs. perverse allegiance to a "death cult" (which took in the whole sweep from genuinely crazy right-wing conspiracy nuts to the minority of fairly mainstream and boring epidemiologists who went against the policy consensus). And it seems to be everywhere now: the Israelis and Palestinians both accuse one another of belonging to a "death cult". It seems to be a recurrent structural feature of US politics: for instance, the trans question has fully jumped the shark in the discourse of the right and is no longer sensibly tethered to everyday questions about how to deal with gender variance as a society but as an online "death cult" coming for everyone's kids (hence "Nihilistic Violent Extremist" etc.) I don't have an analysis really, beyond to say that it seems to be a self-escalating feedback cycle of accusation, and one whose impact is derationalise all political questions into ones of all-or-nothing spiritual allegiance in a cosmic war.
Probably just too old for a lot of the twenty something's who really eat this shit up. I think Joker was the modern equivalent and that got pretty fully embraced.
There’s a whole cinematic universe of cultural touchstones on the right I never knew existed (apparently!). This is fascinating… and terrifying, but also explains A LOT.
Sometimes I feel like Killdozer Guy being subsumed so easily into national politics is a symptom of a broader ecosystem collapse in Kinds of Nutjob. Can I expand upon or defend this take? No, absolutely not.
You’re on to something. I feel like, when I was young, there was a massive variety of right wing nutjobs you could encounter. I think the rapid flow of nutjob-thought these days means that they’ve all sort of congealed into a more homogenous type.
Never forget: Hitler killed himself in a bunker beneath Berlin as his beloved fatherland burned. No responsibility. No empathy. No justice. Just hatred and cowardice and suicide.
And he wanted Berlin/Germany to burn with him. He said they deserved it.
I'm just so glad that our own increasingly unstable and cornered would be tyrant has access to an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons. This is the source of my gladness.
"Its promise is that all the pain and frustration you feel can be visited on the people you believe authored it": That's what unites the Claremont Review bozos and the "Channers, groypers, aging Gamergaters, anime avatars, X.com blue checks, etc.". They're enraged that the world hasn't given them the wealth, power, and, in a word, status to which they imagine they're entitled. Frequently, they imagine they're entitled mainly because they're white and/or male (as I am), and they lash out at non-white, non-male people they believe should be but aren't any longer forced by law or custom to be subservient to them. Apparently, the possibility of being happy in and therefore the desirability of working to create a society where nobody has or needs unearned dominance is unintelligible to them.
It's almost comical in the case of the Channers etc. No doubt many of them really do have lousy lives. But why is that? For example, why the "bad working conditions and low pay at Sea-Tac"? Evidently, it never occurs to them that the blame lies overwhelmingly with white males like Donald Trump: rich assholes who have bent American society toward their own further enrichment at everyone else's expense.
"when A.T.C. told Russell he could probably get a job at Alaska Air if he landed the plane, Russell responded 'Yeah right! Nah, I’m a white guy.'": That's nicely indicative of the degree of delusional victimhood and sheer stupidity among these pity-partiers. The vast majority of American airline pilots are white guys; see, for example:
You know, increasingly I'm disinclined to blame lousy material conditions for any of this. The biggest loser of all is frigging Elon Musk and his fellow broligarchs. They have more wealth than some actual nations. They could have any kind of life hey wanted. They choose-this.
Ultimately it's narcissism, which IS about missed needs, but those aren't material, or they certainly don't have to be.
I mean ffs: "Daddy's home." How much more Freudian can you get?
Sure. Few of these fools genuinely have much to complain about. Even those whose lives are lousy would have better lives if they stopped fixating on and sulking about social status. And malcontent oligarchs like Musk are patently insane.
I'm not just hurling insults. In the increasingly unlikely event civilization survives long enough, I expect people like Musk will eventually be recognized as mentally ill; their narcissism is a form of psychosis. If they can't be cured, they'll at least be prevented from having power over other people.
I mean I agree, but ffs...could these people just Get On With It Already? Skip to the end, righties, maybe convince your representatives to join their constituents!
It's still insane to me that federal agencies are tweeting this shit out, and mainstream outlets... just seem to ignore it as far as I can tell? You'd think reporting on what someone tweeted would be the one thing they're good at. We're days away from Trump giving a press conference like "would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?"
I have often wondered if in fact at the end of the day a LOT of this is just--these people don't have enough excitement in their lives. I'm bored. Let's blow the world up. Let's hurt something.
Stimming harms no one, relieves the autistic/Asperger mind of low- level anxiety, and only bothers people who take to much interest in it.
They can't think critically, I can agree with that! And the envious frustration that fails to understand that just existing doesn't mean you get to have the things you want just awarded to you.
Your characterization of Suicide Rightism as "mewling, wounded, and self-pitying" is spot on, and at the risk of psychologizing it too much, it feels tightly linked with the same general brokenness of men that spawned much of the manosphere.
If you'll indulge a weird segue, today I saw a clip of former MLB pitcher Rick Ankiel talking about his struggles with 'the yips.' He was strikingly vulnerable in the clip, and the deluge of comments from men showed such an obvious hunger for this kind of model of honesty and vulnerability. You see this anytime a 'manly man' has the courage to go against type in public view.
Anyway, I sometimes wonder how much human suffering might have been prevented by, like, therapy.
It's been pretty evident for a while now that MAGA is a death cult, but I had no idea about the prevalence of the suicide memes. Thanks for braving the right-wing ecosystem to bring us back this insight - hope you enjoyed a nice a long shower after!
They see Democrats as not being any better than the 9/11 hijackers. To them, even the possibility of Hillary winning was considered directly equivalent to a terrorist attack. I don't know how "rational" that premise is, nor do I know why some people outside of the right accept that premise.
The premise that HRC represented existential catastrophe wasn't rational per se, but given that premise (either just for the sake of argument or for people who did accept it), Anton's essay did/does represent a rational response—rational meaning arguable, not necessarily meaning 'prudent.'
It was a) projection b) she reminded them too much of Bad Mommy. honestly that's what the bulk of it boils down to.
I mean, literally. These dudes are happily chanting "Daddy's home" to Trump with zero embarrassment or apparent self awareness. What do you even do with this?
if i was on that plane it woulnd't have gone down like it did
RIP Flight 93 but I'm different
Which plane? Multiple planes mentioned.
all of 'em I bet, just leaping from one to the next with SMG in hand
Sarah Michelle Geller!?
Bet you could take a bear barehanded, too.
It would have gone straight down.
One thing that shouldn't be understated in histories of digital media is how much the concept of "Grand Theft Auto stars" has shaped our auto-elimination fantasies.
"Wasted"
And the Kamikaze.
It’s like they view suicide as a “statement” rather than opting out of the labour of having to negotiate the world. A statement they’re unable (or unwilling) to make otherwise. Like, dog, you can just say things. It’s passive but they think it’s assertive. Another confusing logic to add to the pile, just as they seem to think they’re nobodies while simultaneously believing their absence is a statement with profound consequences.
4chan won the Internet. Nothing really matters; just amuse yourself, because life is nothing but pain. Nothing is true and everything is permitted. Endless hikkikomori decadence.
totally
I think there's an interesting meta phenomenon here that has yet to be analysed, in part because everyone seems to be inside it, where politics is increasingly mediated through a "forces of life" vs. "death cult" Manichean ontology. I first started to notice it during the pandemic, where policy countermeasures (especially lockdowns) were simply not soberly debatable, but declared to be a question of allegiance to life vs. perverse allegiance to a "death cult" (which took in the whole sweep from genuinely crazy right-wing conspiracy nuts to the minority of fairly mainstream and boring epidemiologists who went against the policy consensus). And it seems to be everywhere now: the Israelis and Palestinians both accuse one another of belonging to a "death cult". It seems to be a recurrent structural feature of US politics: for instance, the trans question has fully jumped the shark in the discourse of the right and is no longer sensibly tethered to everyday questions about how to deal with gender variance as a society but as an online "death cult" coming for everyone's kids (hence "Nihilistic Violent Extremist" etc.) I don't have an analysis really, beyond to say that it seems to be a self-escalating feedback cycle of accusation, and one whose impact is derationalise all political questions into ones of all-or-nothing spiritual allegiance in a cosmic war.
Surprised they haven’t rediscovered “Falling Down,” which fits this concept to a T.
I have to assume it's because D-FENS kills that Nazi.
Probably just too old for a lot of the twenty something's who really eat this shit up. I think Joker was the modern equivalent and that got pretty fully embraced.
There’s a whole cinematic universe of cultural touchstones on the right I never knew existed (apparently!). This is fascinating… and terrifying, but also explains A LOT.
Because you had better things to do with your time, like live.
Sometimes I feel like Killdozer Guy being subsumed so easily into national politics is a symptom of a broader ecosystem collapse in Kinds of Nutjob. Can I expand upon or defend this take? No, absolutely not.
You’re on to something. I feel like, when I was young, there was a massive variety of right wing nutjobs you could encounter. I think the rapid flow of nutjob-thought these days means that they’ve all sort of congealed into a more homogenous type.
Never forget: Hitler killed himself in a bunker beneath Berlin as his beloved fatherland burned. No responsibility. No empathy. No justice. Just hatred and cowardice and suicide.
And he wanted Berlin/Germany to burn with him. He said they deserved it.
I'm just so glad that our own increasingly unstable and cornered would be tyrant has access to an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons. This is the source of my gladness.
"Its promise is that all the pain and frustration you feel can be visited on the people you believe authored it": That's what unites the Claremont Review bozos and the "Channers, groypers, aging Gamergaters, anime avatars, X.com blue checks, etc.". They're enraged that the world hasn't given them the wealth, power, and, in a word, status to which they imagine they're entitled. Frequently, they imagine they're entitled mainly because they're white and/or male (as I am), and they lash out at non-white, non-male people they believe should be but aren't any longer forced by law or custom to be subservient to them. Apparently, the possibility of being happy in and therefore the desirability of working to create a society where nobody has or needs unearned dominance is unintelligible to them.
It's almost comical in the case of the Channers etc. No doubt many of them really do have lousy lives. But why is that? For example, why the "bad working conditions and low pay at Sea-Tac"? Evidently, it never occurs to them that the blame lies overwhelmingly with white males like Donald Trump: rich assholes who have bent American society toward their own further enrichment at everyone else's expense.
"when A.T.C. told Russell he could probably get a job at Alaska Air if he landed the plane, Russell responded 'Yeah right! Nah, I’m a white guy.'": That's nicely indicative of the degree of delusional victimhood and sheer stupidity among these pity-partiers. The vast majority of American airline pilots are white guys; see, for example:
https://www.zippia.com/airline-pilot-jobs/demographics/
"What else were they supposed to do besides take their own lives in eye-popping fashion?": I appreciate the deadpan humor here at Read Max.
"Suicide rightism" sounds a lot like Klein and Taylor's "end times fascism", albeit with more emphasis on the suicide part:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
You know, increasingly I'm disinclined to blame lousy material conditions for any of this. The biggest loser of all is frigging Elon Musk and his fellow broligarchs. They have more wealth than some actual nations. They could have any kind of life hey wanted. They choose-this.
Ultimately it's narcissism, which IS about missed needs, but those aren't material, or they certainly don't have to be.
I mean ffs: "Daddy's home." How much more Freudian can you get?
Sure. Few of these fools genuinely have much to complain about. Even those whose lives are lousy would have better lives if they stopped fixating on and sulking about social status. And malcontent oligarchs like Musk are patently insane.
I'm not just hurling insults. In the increasingly unlikely event civilization survives long enough, I expect people like Musk will eventually be recognized as mentally ill; their narcissism is a form of psychosis. If they can't be cured, they'll at least be prevented from having power over other people.
I mean I agree, but ffs...could these people just Get On With It Already? Skip to the end, righties, maybe convince your representatives to join their constituents!
It's still insane to me that federal agencies are tweeting this shit out, and mainstream outlets... just seem to ignore it as far as I can tell? You'd think reporting on what someone tweeted would be the one thing they're good at. We're days away from Trump giving a press conference like "would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?"
they cannot think in any way that means anything. its all stimming. just stimming for the sake of stimming. there's no "goal", no logic.
I have often wondered if in fact at the end of the day a LOT of this is just--these people don't have enough excitement in their lives. I'm bored. Let's blow the world up. Let's hurt something.
Mmmm. I can't agree with all of that.
Stimming harms no one, relieves the autistic/Asperger mind of low- level anxiety, and only bothers people who take to much interest in it.
They can't think critically, I can agree with that! And the envious frustration that fails to understand that just existing doesn't mean you get to have the things you want just awarded to you.
Your characterization of Suicide Rightism as "mewling, wounded, and self-pitying" is spot on, and at the risk of psychologizing it too much, it feels tightly linked with the same general brokenness of men that spawned much of the manosphere.
If you'll indulge a weird segue, today I saw a clip of former MLB pitcher Rick Ankiel talking about his struggles with 'the yips.' He was strikingly vulnerable in the clip, and the deluge of comments from men showed such an obvious hunger for this kind of model of honesty and vulnerability. You see this anytime a 'manly man' has the courage to go against type in public view.
Anyway, I sometimes wonder how much human suffering might have been prevented by, like, therapy.
It's been pretty evident for a while now that MAGA is a death cult, but I had no idea about the prevalence of the suicide memes. Thanks for braving the right-wing ecosystem to bring us back this insight - hope you enjoyed a nice a long shower after!
They see Democrats as not being any better than the 9/11 hijackers. To them, even the possibility of Hillary winning was considered directly equivalent to a terrorist attack. I don't know how "rational" that premise is, nor do I know why some people outside of the right accept that premise.
The premise that HRC represented existential catastrophe wasn't rational per se, but given that premise (either just for the sake of argument or for people who did accept it), Anton's essay did/does represent a rational response—rational meaning arguable, not necessarily meaning 'prudent.'
It was a) projection b) she reminded them too much of Bad Mommy. honestly that's what the bulk of it boils down to.
I mean, literally. These dudes are happily chanting "Daddy's home" to Trump with zero embarrassment or apparent self awareness. What do you even do with this?
so depressing.