Origin of the "Little Dark Age" / Hyperborea meme?

TamagoSuki

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I'm curious if anyone interacted with these memes before:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfZj5V2U6ag


I believe above is the first I was suggested on Youtube a few months ago. A few weeks after I got really confused by the video, I noticed people discussing it on 4chan. I noticed a lot of it was focused to /x/ however the videos also had /pol/, /b/, and /gif/ influences. Any thoughts? Anyone seen it before these Youtube suggestions started mentioning it a few months back? Is it just a meme that escaped the HOI4 community from a Hyperborea mod?


Other examples:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JLFrym4rdM


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aumo7-v844g


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mEEggFsl4s


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK41NeEhi4w
 
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TamagoSuki

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I never seen this before but it reminds me of fashwave in the vaporwave community
Now that's an interesting subgenre I hadn't heard of before... what a weird mix of communities.
 
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the little dark age meme started on tiktok then spread to other platforms, as for hyperborea, it was a mythical place believed to be in the far north by the greeks. probably just 4chan doing 4chan shit. a ironic spiritual/mythological hyperfixation sounds like something you would come to expect from them.
 
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SaddamH2006

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The origin is with a discord server known as Third World HQ (Which may or may not be defunct) run by a youtuber, or should I say schizotuber named magmashice. There were others like rowdyshitposting who had their own servers too. Many of the highly CGI, very clean edited memes of hyperborea were made by these two. Heres some info: https://third-world-hq.fandom.com/w...on,that has been operating since July of 2020.
 
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Adrenochrome

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The origin is with a discord server known as Third World HQ (Which may or may not be defunct) run by a youtuber, or should I say schizotuber named magmashice. There were others like rowdyshitposting who had their own servers too. Many of the highly CGI, very clean edited memes of hyperborea were made by these two. Heres some info: https://third-world-hq.fandom.com/wiki/Third_World_HQ#:~:text=Third World HQ (also know by its abbreviation,that has been operating since July of 2020.
Wow, interesting. I see so many ''Hyperborea memes'' and other, let's say, neo-nazi memes being passed around on Instagram, I didn't know where they were from.

How much of a psyop to push white people towards a sense of ''identity'' to the point of turning full Hitler? I don't know, but there might be a bit of that.
 
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Deepwaterjew

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In the far, far north lands of hyperborea, where the cold makes a great fire unthinkable, apollo comes to people huddled in wooden cabins and doing pagan rites until he goes back to us again. this was the legend, but the reality is the nordicist's wet dream of an atlantis where he comes from where people can nut using their mindpower and fly or whatever, and there are ufos for some reason. it's a cool concept, not gonna lie, it's the classic good ol' times plus funny schizo montage, so it's right up my alley. It's also easily deterritorializable, meaning it would make as much sense if a right wing guy made it as a fascist guy made it as an anarcho primitivist did, it shows very little of the poster's identity except "I like this old thing, look how cool and monumental it is, wee aliens".
 
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I remember these memes coming about from the "fringe" part of Twitter in 2019 or so, when "Esoteric" was the big meme-word everyone attached themselves to. Accounts like @VEDIC_CYBERGOD & @BPD_GOD were at the center if you want to look over the archives. Not sure about these videos in particular, that little strange attractor of people is totally dispersed now, but it doesn't really matter who "made" a meme as much as where the symbols came from.
 
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SaddamH2006

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Wow, interesting. I see so many ''Hyperborea memes'' and other, let's say, neo-nazi memes being passed around on Instagram, I didn't know where they were from.

How much of a psyop to push white people towards a sense of ''identity'' to the point of turning full Hitler? I don't know, but there might be a bit of that.
they were absolutely white nationalists, but as a brown guy I found it fucking hilarious and the server was a real riot. something aobut the way they were so casual aabout their beliefs made it even funnier to ,me
 
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Unit K-17

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I remember the earliest ones being stuff like "Allah has willed your schizophrenia", and they were made by Rowdy. I never joined the server, though, in retrospect, I wish I had. I think it was just a funny shitpost that got propagated more than intended, but they may have been actual schizos.
 
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Merek

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"Vaguery is the primary tool of songwriters"
-Glenn Frey

That said, I find this song kind of fascinating in light of the current situation, so here's some reflection/theorizing on what the lyrics COULD mean, independent of the original Hyperborea meme or even MGMT's intent.

I should start by noting that the supposed intending meaning of the song is that it's about "depression." And while I wouldn't disagree, I think there's another interpretation that fits too, even if only accidentally. Here's what I see:

Breathing in the dark, lying on its side
The ruins of the dead painted with a scar
And the more I straighten out, the less it wants to try
The feelings start to rot one wink at a time

I think this is a song about our culture. About how it's rotting, and we're rotting inside it. One wink at a time. This first verse is an establishing shot, a birds-eye-view before we zoom in on the specifics. It's a shot of a wounded animal, lying on the ground, unable to rise, dying. That our culture is dying isn't something I have to explain to anyone here: the whole spirit of this forum, and Vaporwave, revolves around that central idea. Culture was once something great, and then it fell apart, and now we're watching it bleed out, breathing in the dark. So who killed it?

Oh
Forgiving who you are for what you stand to gain
Just know that if you hide, it doesn't go away
When you get out of bed, don't end up stranded
Horrified with each stone on the stage
My little dark age

This verse addresses a "ends justify the means" group and threatens them. What they have done isn't forgivable, and won't go away. Stones will be coming their way soon. Also, consider the meaning of "When you get out of bed." What happens when you get out of bed? You wake up. The dream ends. You have to face reality. That's what this song is about: what will happen to several different groups when circumstances finally force them to face reality. And for this group, the ones abusing their power, it's rocks.

Picking through the cards, knowing what's nearby
The carvings on the face say they find it hard
And the engine's failed again, all limits of disguise
The humor's not the same, coming from denial

What about the other group, the one hurling the rocks? They're alternating between trying to understand what's happened ("The cards" being tarot cards, "the hand you're delt" etc) and trying to whistle past the graveyard, desperately trying to hold their lives together somehow. But it's no good, the engine's failed again. The economic engine, the social engine, the artistic engine. It's all collapsing.

And if that last line doesn't scream Zoomer humor to you, I don't know what to say. "If I just lampshade my despair and laugh at it, maybe that will help!" But at the end of the day, laughing at your depression is still depressing.

I grieve in stereo, the stereo sounds strange
I know that if you hide, it doesn't go away
If you get out of bed and find me standing all alone
Open-eyed, burn the page
My little dark age

Note that we've shifted from "When you get out of bed" to "IF you get out of bed." This is a different context now, with similar words. The singer is admitting he too has to face the new reality, has to wake up and open his eyes to it. "Burn the page" is a more dramatic version of "turn the page." "If you join me in the new reality, let go of the past."

I grieve in stereo, the stereo sounds strange
You know that if it hides, it doesn't go away
If I get out of bed, you'll see me standing all alone
Horrified on the stage
My little dark age

We cycle through the chorus a third time, each time getting more disjointed and frantic. "Waking up" is something that has to be done, but it doesn't solve or improve anything. Admitting reality doesn't fix the problem. Reality is horrifying.

Giddy with delight, seeing what's to come
The image of the dead, dead ends in my mind

The reality is that the end is night. Manic laughter comes unbidden as the speaker breaks like the protagonist in some Lovecraftian horror. The dying beast is about to breath its last, and what will come after?

Policemen swear to God, love's seeping from the guns
I know my friends and I would probably turn and run
If you get out of bed, come find us heading for the bridge
Bring a stone, all the rage
My little dark age

The stones will come out. Dystopia, chaos and conflict. And why might they be taking stones to that bridge?

Just a bit of fun of course, and not to be take too seriously. But something I've been pondering, so I thought I'd share.
 
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IlluminatiPirate

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Circling back to this, would Hyperborea and Schizowave be the same thing?
 
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IlluminatiPirate

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The neonazis are associated with fashwave, not this. But it seems that they have similar aesthetics
I don't want to be in a world in which gothic aesthetics are related to fascism, but funnily enough, goth girls usually are left-wing and goth boys are usually more like the centrist kind of people.
 
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MorphedSnowman

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This memes ruined the song for me, because it was so fucking overused, like holy shit, use the same format but change songs, unimaginative assholes.
Yeah, the song is fire, but now the only thing when I hear it that comes to my mind is terrible tiktoks and lazy memes. I remember seeing a image of soyjack titled "when an other little dark age remix video comes on" or something like that, and that one is stuck too. It's a bit of trauma by this point tbh.
 
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A lot of the themes or motifs in these memes date back to so-called "Nazi Occultism", Esoteric Hitlerism, Ariosophy, and general "racial" Neopaganism. You'll find the themes of Hyperborea, Agartha, Hollow Earth, etc. over and over in the works of Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, and to some extent Julius Evola. You could chalk it all up to too much influence from Madame Blavatsky/Theosophy but some of it precedes her work. Regardless it has a very deep influence on some elements within the modern far-right.
 
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A lot of the themes or motifs in these memes date back to so-called "Nazi Occultism", Esoteric Hitlerism, Ariosophy, and general "racial" Neopaganism. You'll find the themes of Hyperborea, Agartha, Hollow Earth, etc. over and over in the works of Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, and to some extent Julius Evola. You could chalk it all up to too much influence from Madame Blavatsky/Theosophy but some of it precedes her work. Regardless it has a very deep influence on some elements within the modern far-right.
I honestly enjoy reading a lot of the weird lore these people make up about Hyperbora and such, if it wasn't tied to such a racist past maybe there would be good fiction books about hollow earth and such :lainDissatisfied:
 
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Yeah, the song is fire, but now the only thing when I hear it that comes to my mind is terrible tiktoks and lazy memes. I remember seeing a image of soyjack titled "when an other little dark age remix video comes on" or something like that, and that one is stuck too. It's a bit of trauma by this point tbh.
The meme is so repetitive at this point "Old good, new bad, i'm a depressive asshole, so i cope with larping stuff of the past" it's almost normie tier kind of humor.
 
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