The Underground is a Lie

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This impressive hate-fueled rant was written originally in 1992 by Jim Goad for the Answer Me! magazine. But it could pretty much be written today.

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-THE UNDERGROUND IS A LIE-


You don't shock me. 1 shudder with boredom at everything you do, from tattooing your dick to chewing on your own poop. Not only have I seen all of your weak gestures before, I've seen them done better.

You remind me of someone I knew in college. His name was Mark. Pale, unshaven, and wearing his dishwater-colored hair in a Mohawk, Mark was an anarchist. He railed against the corporate elite and cheered for the collective. Projecting himself as his own mascot, he defaced hundreds of buildings with a goofy cartoon drawing of a Mohawk-wearing anarchist. The back of his leather jacket had an anarchy 'A' crudely daubed in white paint. Mark could be seen around town clustered with similarly disaffected youth, drinking out of paper bags, committing petty acts of vandalism, and plotting America's overthrow.

Unfortunately, Mark's parents were publishing magnates who had tucked away forty thousand dollars in stock for their baby anarchist. I once watched Mark transform into a sobbing bitch when he lost a bootleg cassette of his favorite hardcore band. Despite his lowlife appearance, he was a rich boy with the time and money to act poor. So were all of his friends. So are all of the people who consider themselves "alternative." Mark-you remind me of him.

Like Mark, your underground is strictly an upper-class phenom. You're a body-pierced, hair-dyeing, chain-smoking, whip-carrying FAKE, a little bitchy snitch who hasn't been hit enough. Your black eyeliner, rubber pants, and asymmetrical hairdo are a post-pubescent way of playing costume. You can't handle the guilt of your comfortable background, so you commit the heinous crime of slumming. No one worships trash in the slums, where they have to eat and breathe it daily. In poor neighborhoods, weirdness invites violence. Yet a blue-blooded nabob like you acts triflingly eccentric and considers it radical.

The "creative community" doesn't consist of the most creative people; you're the ones with the most spare time to create, those whose parents tolerate-and often finance-your flighty pursuits. What usually passes for art is just the idle noodling of the leisure class.

Your gizzard ululates with, "You sellout!" Well, the wealthy are the only ones who can afford NOT to sell out. Yes, there are a holy few who have refused cash when it's been dangled in front of them-they're called 'masochists.' If you're still reading this, you're a masochist, too. By the time I'm done with you, you'll reconsider your opposition to law enforcement.

In your typically egocentric way, you pretend you're the vanguard, freeing the oppressed from the shackles of ignorance. You conduct a sorry crusade to recast the world in your image. You're dumb enough to think you'll make a difference. You feel that if everyone was like you, society would be wonderful. Yet you walk away scratching your head when the truly oppressed don't want anything to do with you. You've never fought for anything but the right to be infantile.

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, political rhetoric is a cubbyhole for dullards. The political is merely the personal in a cheap, quivering act of sublimation. You oppose power, which is like protesting the sun-scream all you want, but it'll still scorch you. As you cry about global warming, global corporations, and global revolution, I stare into the vacant globes of your eyes. The only anarchy going on is the mutinous misfiring of your brain cells. The 'A' stands for "asshole."

You whine about your "sexuality," how your body is a political combat zone. You're a simple rodent with boring bodily functions which you seek to ennoble. With your flagrant vanity and dishonesty in personal interactions, you reveal yourself to be equally as rotten as the leaders you despise. You invariably wind up imitating the oppressor. Unfortunately, you weren't oppressed to begin with.

For not only are you a liar, you're a hypocrite. You're fascinated by violence until you're confronted with it. You romanticize trauma but have never been traumatized. You demand grant money from a government you seek to destroy. You idolize primitive cultures but would slash your wrists if your CD player broke. You condemn religion but consider yourself enlightened. You're as self-righteous as the moralists upon which you spit. You hate hatred, won't tolerate intolerance, and conspire with others against conformity.

All your cohorts are hypocrites, too. Feminists don't degrade, objectify, and stereotype men? Socialists aren't elitists? Environmentalists don't drive cars? A pox upon all your houses. I'd wish for a rat to bite your ass and give you the Black Plague, but you'd probably consider it a fashion statement.

While you slurp the dick of political correctness, your amber asshole is being torn asunder by aesthetic correctness. You flush your self-respect down the toilet while scrambling to obey the edicts of boho taste. You're frightened senseless that others will think you're uncool. You'd rather swallow whale sperm than admit you like disco, Chicken McNuggets, or Love Connection. You're frozen with fear that someone will realize what little you have to say. You squirm in the face of your own dullness. You are a prisoner of the underground, a hostage of your own creative retardation. Ideas emerge from your head stillborn.

Your rebelliousness is laid out for you like the portions of a TV dinner. You ape the powers that be with every clove-scented breath you take. You are nothing more than socioeconomic ectoplasm, a target market, a file folder at Central Casting. You exist as a parasite, because without an Establishment for you to oppose, you'd shrivel into cellular waste. Try as you may to avoid being absorbed by the mainstream, you remain trapped under its microscope, an amoeba with a nose ring.

This isn't an apologia for the mainstream, not by any stretch. Those who seek to defend it might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, too. The mainstream's models of reality are chunky and obsolete, just like yours. To attack it is too easy, like stealing crutches from a cripple. I'll leave those tactics to cowards such as you.

True psychos stand alone. The only pioneers are those who give voice to the ugliest corridors of their unconscious without fear of censure from any quarter. The acts that ordinary people commit behind closed doors are beyond the ken of any performance artist. Humans' innate weirdness is far more threatening and entertaining than anything the professional shock mavens could conjure.

I boggle your conception of a world split between cognoscenti and squares. I subvert the subversives and bury the underground under six feet of its own hypocritical manure. I perform unsolicited tattooing, body-piercing, and ritual scarification upon you.

Give vent to your sickest fantasies, but don't call it art. Cornhole Barbara Bush, but only if you want to. Sketch your astrological chart with your own feces, but only if it feels good. If you want to do something truly radical, kill yourself. We'll have one less reader, but the world will be a better place.
 
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Jade

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>True psychos stand alone. The only pioneers are those who give voice to the ugliest corridors of their unconscious without fear of censure from any quarter. The acts that ordinary people commit behind closed doors are beyond the ken of any performance artist. Humans' innate weirdness is far more threatening and entertaining than anything the professional shock mavens could conjure.

This paragraph is my favorite. The (for now) still-anonymous internet is proof of this, the weirdest and most shocking things come from its most chaotic areas
 
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consonant

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my brain was doing flips the entire time while reading this, i can't believe this was made in 1992 lol.
this put all of my thoughts about woke shit into nice ass words

especially shit like this:
You feel that if everyone was like you, society would be wonderful. Yet you walk away scratching your head when the truly oppressed don't want anything to do with you. You've never fought for anything but the right to be infantile.

and this
You whine about your "sexuality," how your body is a political combat zone. You're a simple rodent with boring bodily functions which you seek to ennoble. With your flagrant vanity and dishonesty in personal interactions, you reveal yourself to be equally as rotten as the leaders you despise. You invariably wind up imitating the oppressor. Unfortunately, you weren't oppressed to begin with.
this one especially really. i don't hate trans people but while that shit was gaining popularity one thought that always came back to me was "is this something white people are gonna use to seem oppressed, do people just do this to seem different?"

like this by itself just explains all of the loud ass people on twitter in such a good way
nothings really ever happened since 1992 man lmao

the thing is though, a lot of people don't view our modern anarchists as edgy teenagers, they view them as young people who have seen the errors of past generations and will change the world for better.
 
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harriet2020

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i don't hate trans people but while that shit was gaining popularity one thought that always came back to me was "is this something white people are gonna use to seem oppressed, do people just do this to seem different?"
I think that some definitely do become "trans" for attention, but the ones who do are the types who claim to be "non-binary" and other such BS. I don't think the classic male to female or vice versa transexual does it for attention, in fact many keep it quiet which seems like the best option for them.
 
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Outer Heaven

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I think that some definitely do become "trans" for attention, but the ones who do are the types who claim to be "non-binary" and other such BS. I don't think the classic male to female or vice versa transexual does it for attention, in fact many keep it quiet which seems like the best option for them.
They do it for different reasons. Assuming they weren't molested, MTFs do it because of a fetish, autogynophilia, FTMs do it out of insecurity and propaganda telling them its a good thing when they're vulnerable teen girls, think cutting or crazy dieting trends.
 
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a little bitchy snitch who hasn't been hit enough.
This guy should say that to an abuse victim.

That line aside, I think that guy kinda described a normal process of being young. We all kinda have our "underground", "different" or "special" phase. We all need to gain some sort of psychological independence. The more worrisome is when a young person still hasn't grown out of what his parents had imprinted on him or is more of a "goody-two-shoes", because later on his need for being his own person will come out, and since it won't be age-appropriate by then in most cases... it may get hard, very hard, explosive even.

Call me a snowflake but the aggressiveness in his tone just rubs me the wrong way. Those people aren't hurting anyone for the most, they're just acting their age, I don't see why there is a need to be so hard on them. That Mark guy probably grew out of this behaviour too since then too. If anything this guy's way of thinking and saying things reminds me of myself at 16 trying to "be better" than the "snowflakes". Basically the counter-edgelord.
 
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brentw

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I actually recently read a really interesting Jim Goad article from last week.

Disclaimer:
Apparently it was on a white nationalist website, which I didn't realize until later. (someone linked it somewhere in a discussion about Patton Oswalt)
And while I can't say I support the site and not sure I should link it, I actually found the article quite interesting.

Basically it's just Jim Goad breaking down his 20+ year friendship with Patton Oswalt from the early 90's through 2015.
And musing about how people in America used to be able be decent to each other despite political differences, and how much things have changed in the last decade.
 
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Novem_IX

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I actually recently read a really interesting Jim Goad article last week.

Disclaimer:
Apparently it was on a white nationalist website, which I didn't realize until later. (someone linked it somewhere in a discussion about Patton Oswalt)
And while I can't say I support the site and not sure I should link it, I actually found the article quite interesting.

Basically it's just Jim Goad breaking down his 20+ year friendship with Patton Oswalt from the early 90's through 2015.
And musing about how people in America used to be able be decent to each other despite political differences, and how much things have changed in the last decade.
Thanks for the tip. It's actually a really good article so I'm going to link it.

"You could be the most woke-ass Communist in the world, but as long as you aren't an aggressive or passive-aggressive asshole to me about it, I can be friendly with you. Where I come from, an asshole was someone who ate your French fries when you went to the bathroom, not someone over whom you disagreed about whether trannies are actually who they say they are.
Patton is smart enough to realize that no matter how much he bends and bows and self-flagellates, there will always be some loser somewhere who wants to make a name for himself by claiming Patton's scalp for not being nearly as pure and extreme and righteous as he is. He has capitulated to a never-ending process where there will always be someone woker than he is and who wants to destroy him over it."
 
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Unfortunately everything he says about the "underground" has long since also applied to his critique of it. 1992 was 30 years ago. I remember people were beginning to feel that irony was running out it's clock as long ago as 2005, but nobody was prepared for the things troll culture would eventually evolve into. As long as the machines are humming along somewhere, rebellion and counter-rebellion eventually look the same in the end, and we've been through too many cycles to count.

Modern "wokeness" is itself just a fork of the counter - underground sentiment Goad was expressing, it's politics just flipped into the ultraliberalism it previously claimed to find cringe 10 years back so it could maintain and gain power. Goad and others like him today simply neglected to make that directional change, eventually choosing the default option of selling out to the opposing faction of the elite.

Transgressiveness as a cause is dead today because there has to be a certain background level of comfort to be shocked out of and nobody's comfortable anymore. As we move deeper into economic ruin, tastes in entertainment are moving towards things that are safe and bland, sort of like how movies were around the time of the Great Depression and a couple decades after. Of course, the entertainment from that time at least had some sincerity to round out it's cornballitude and that's, conspicuously, still quite dead.
 
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slimemold

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Clint Eastwood-talking-to-an-empty-chair-type screed. Pretty pathetic. Let it go, 1992 Jim; you haven't been in college for almost a decade.

Environmentalists don't drive cars?
we-should-improve-society-somewhat-yet-you-participate-in-society-63204147.png

Literally.
 
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mydadiscar

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I think that some definitely do become "trans" for attention, but the ones who do are the types who claim to be "non-binary" and other such BS. I don't think the classic male to female or vice versa transexual does it for attention, in fact many keep it quiet which seems like the best option for them.
Nah, I think a lot of the MtF trannies are doing it for attention too. If they have a Twitter profile with she/her pronouns and a picrew profile picture they are almost certainly just doing it for attention. Bonus points if they are communist or anarcho-communist.
 
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This impressive hate-fueled rant was written originally in 1992 by Jim Goad for the Answer Me! magazine. But it could pretty much be written today.

View attachment 13238

-THE UNDERGROUND IS A LIE-


You don't shock me. 1 shudder with boredom at everything you do, from tattooing your dick to chewing on your own poop. Not only have I seen all of your weak gestures before, I've seen them done better.

You remind me of someone I knew in college. His name was Mark. Pale, unshaven, and wearing his dishwater-colored hair in a Mohawk, Mark was an anarchist. He railed against the corporate elite and cheered for the collective. Projecting himself as his own mascot, he defaced hundreds of buildings with a goofy cartoon drawing of a Mohawk-wearing anarchist. The back of his leather jacket had an anarchy 'A' crudely daubed in white paint. Mark could be seen around town clustered with similarly disaffected youth, drinking out of paper bags, committing petty acts of vandalism, and plotting America's overthrow.

Unfortunately, Mark's parents were publishing magnates who had tucked away forty thousand dollars in stock for their baby anarchist. I once watched Mark transform into a sobbing bitch when he lost a bootleg cassette of his favorite hardcore band. Despite his lowlife appearance, he was a rich boy with the time and money to act poor. So were all of his friends. So are all of the people who consider themselves "alternative." Mark-you remind me of him.

Like Mark, your underground is strictly an upper-class phenom. You're a body-pierced, hair-dyeing, chain-smoking, whip-carrying FAKE, a little bitchy snitch who hasn't been hit enough. Your black eyeliner, rubber pants, and asymmetrical hairdo are a post-pubescent way of playing costume. You can't handle the guilt of your comfortable background, so you commit the heinous crime of slumming. No one worships trash in the slums, where they have to eat and breathe it daily. In poor neighborhoods, weirdness invites violence. Yet a blue-blooded nabob like you acts triflingly eccentric and considers it radical.

The "creative community" doesn't consist of the most creative people; you're the ones with the most spare time to create, those whose parents tolerate-and often finance-your flighty pursuits. What usually passes for art is just the idle noodling of the leisure class.

Your gizzard ululates with, "You sellout!" Well, the wealthy are the only ones who can afford NOT to sell out. Yes, there are a holy few who have refused cash when it's been dangled in front of them-they're called 'masochists.' If you're still reading this, you're a masochist, too. By the time I'm done with you, you'll reconsider your opposition to law enforcement.

In your typically egocentric way, you pretend you're the vanguard, freeing the oppressed from the shackles of ignorance. You conduct a sorry crusade to recast the world in your image. You're dumb enough to think you'll make a difference. You feel that if everyone was like you, society would be wonderful. Yet you walk away scratching your head when the truly oppressed don't want anything to do with you. You've never fought for anything but the right to be infantile.

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, political rhetoric is a cubbyhole for dullards. The political is merely the personal in a cheap, quivering act of sublimation. You oppose power, which is like protesting the sun-scream all you want, but it'll still scorch you. As you cry about global warming, global corporations, and global revolution, I stare into the vacant globes of your eyes. The only anarchy going on is the mutinous misfiring of your brain cells. The 'A' stands for "asshole."

You whine about your "sexuality," how your body is a political combat zone. You're a simple rodent with boring bodily functions which you seek to ennoble. With your flagrant vanity and dishonesty in personal interactions, you reveal yourself to be equally as rotten as the leaders you despise. You invariably wind up imitating the oppressor. Unfortunately, you weren't oppressed to begin with.

For not only are you a liar, you're a hypocrite. You're fascinated by violence until you're confronted with it. You romanticize trauma but have never been traumatized. You demand grant money from a government you seek to destroy. You idolize primitive cultures but would slash your wrists if your CD player broke. You condemn religion but consider yourself enlightened. You're as self-righteous as the moralists upon which you spit. You hate hatred, won't tolerate intolerance, and conspire with others against conformity.

All your cohorts are hypocrites, too. Feminists don't degrade, objectify, and stereotype men? Socialists aren't elitists? Environmentalists don't drive cars? A pox upon all your houses. I'd wish for a rat to bite your ass and give you the Black Plague, but you'd probably consider it a fashion statement.

While you slurp the dick of political correctness, your amber asshole is being torn asunder by aesthetic correctness. You flush your self-respect down the toilet while scrambling to obey the edicts of boho taste. You're frightened senseless that others will think you're uncool. You'd rather swallow whale sperm than admit you like disco, Chicken McNuggets, or Love Connection. You're frozen with fear that someone will realize what little you have to say. You squirm in the face of your own dullness. You are a prisoner of the underground, a hostage of your own creative retardation. Ideas emerge from your head stillborn.

Your rebelliousness is laid out for you like the portions of a TV dinner. You ape the powers that be with every clove-scented breath you take. You are nothing more than socioeconomic ectoplasm, a target market, a file folder at Central Casting. You exist as a parasite, because without an Establishment for you to oppose, you'd shrivel into cellular waste. Try as you may to avoid being absorbed by the mainstream, you remain trapped under its microscope, an amoeba with a nose ring.

This isn't an apologia for the mainstream, not by any stretch. Those who seek to defend it might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, too. The mainstream's models of reality are chunky and obsolete, just like yours. To attack it is too easy, like stealing crutches from a cripple. I'll leave those tactics to cowards such as you.

True psychos stand alone. The only pioneers are those who give voice to the ugliest corridors of their unconscious without fear of censure from any quarter. The acts that ordinary people commit behind closed doors are beyond the ken of any performance artist. Humans' innate weirdness is far more threatening and entertaining than anything the professional shock mavens could conjure.

I boggle your conception of a world split between cognoscenti and squares. I subvert the subversives and bury the underground under six feet of its own hypocritical manure. I perform unsolicited tattooing, body-piercing, and ritual scarification upon you.

Give vent to your sickest fantasies, but don't call it art. Cornhole Barbara Bush, but only if you want to. Sketch your astrological chart with your own feces, but only if it feels good. If you want to do something truly radical, kill yourself. We'll have one less reader, but the world will be a better place.
im anxious now, but damn did i have to read that. Put my ass into place.
 
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gwen

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I read Mr. Goad's magazine in high school. Imo he's yelling at himself.
 
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