entering weirdcore 陌生风欢迎你进来

attempting to understand weirdcore

I don’t know how I end up in these places. I guess that’s how it’s supposed to go. You begin one place and emerge in the next, fully transformed. Even your core is made something else. When the solid inner core of a middleweight planet liquifies, the planet dies.

The planet is dying, and you are listening to music on youtube.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ✌ʕ●ᴥ●ʔ (☞°ヮ°)☞ ＼(ಠ‿ಠ)/( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ✌ʕ●ᴥ●ʔ (☞°ヮ°)☞ ＼(ಠ‿ಠ)/

I don’t know where the weirdcore genre emerged from; I have my guesses. It represents nostalgia for the recent past, to the early-mid 2000’s, when history was dead and the neoliberal democracy was set to reign eternal.

AOL CDs littered the sidewalks. Computer mice were beige and you had to replace the little hardboiled egg yolk on the bottom or it’d stop working. Or smell bad. I didn’t play outside. I didn’t run around or ride my bike. By the age of 13, I had outgrown childish things. I was ready to fight for my place in this world. I was ready to win it.

☆ ～('▽^人) o( ❛ᴗ❛ )o (o˘◡˘o) (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b☆ ～('▽^人) o( ❛ᴗ❛ )o (o˘◡˘o)

“Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed an intelligent, system for exploiting freedom. Everything that belongs to practices and expressive forms of liberty – emotion, play and communication – comes to be exploited. It is inefficient to exploit people against their will. Allo-exploitation yields scant returns. Only when freedom is exploited are returns maximized.” (11)

Byung-Chul Han’s Psychopolitics dissects the formaldehyde heart of neoliberalism: undying, constant, still, lifeless, devoid of joy or beauty or whatever older generations could have hoped for. I was made by this system in its image, and for some reason, I seem to be unable to escape it. I mean, I think I probably know how to. But I can’t stay off my phone, stay off the internet. I get locked into the scroll. I’m living in compulsion.

I guess I know how I got here after all.

(≧◡≦) ♡ (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ (♡˙︶˙♡) ♡( ◡‿◡ )(≧◡≦) ♡ (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

You can’t be nostalgic for a past that prepared you for work which is an endless hell that keeps on going without an end in sight. You will work until you die because Social Security has been gutted to fund wars that you hear about on TV. You deploy. Your brother dies of an overdose. You deploy again. You will go to college, get a degree, get a job, make something of yourself. It will all be worth it. You keep going. If you fail, it’s your fault.

♡(｡- ω -) (─‿‿─)♡ (￣ε￣＠) (*♡∀♡)♡(｡- ω -) (─‿‿─)♡ (￣ε￣＠)

Do you remember your first computing system? The first one with a GUI, I mean. The beige Compaq or HP that sat proudly in the family room, heavy and hot and noisy. You had endless fun on MS paint and other strange software applications that allowed you to create wild collages with odd sound effects. You could look at pictures and videos on the internet. It was amazing. Especially the parodies, crude by today’s standards, which seemed impossibly slick to someone too tiny to understand how image processing and video production software works. The world was wide and big and suddenly present.

♡(´∀｀)人(´∀｀)♡ ( ⁎ᵕᴗᵕ⁎ )❤︎ (♡˙³˙)♡(´∀｀)人(´∀｀)♡ ( ⁎ᵕᴗᵕ⁎ )❤︎

I would stay up until strange hours playing Furcadia. I made penpals and emailed them, and we would trade stories about our lives. I had my own email address. All mine, for all my secrets.

I never used my real name. I never said where exactly I was. But I still remember one of my early pen pals, Jonas Stolberg. I don’t know if that was his real name. I just know that he was Scandinavian and went on one of those really intense military LARPing summer camps, while I went to learn how to better please the LORD. I wonder what happened to you, Jonas. Who did you grow up to become?

( ･ิω･ิ人･ิω･ิ) ( ⚆ᴥ⚆)人(★‿★ ) ٩(•u• ٩)( ･ิω･ิ人･ิω･ิ) ( ⚆ᴥ⚆)人(★‿★ )

When my sister was in middle school, she began to put videos on youtube. I remember helping with her first great success: grapes in the microwave. We split a grape, peeled it apart gently, and nuked it. The small filament of cellulose got superheated and became bright, sparking, brilliant plasma, all in our vintage late 70’s/early 80’s microwave. My parents have never gotten a new microwave. They have had the same one since they were married. In the days before automated copyright enforcement,it didn’t matter what kind of music you used. My sister chose something by ACDC. So there, grapes in the microwave. Set to some sweet rock music.

When she hit 250 views, she got the opportunity to potentially be monetized. She began participating in early video challenges, including posting a walkthrough of our house—laundry piles, clutter, infestation and all. I remember the rush to take it down. We don’t show other people what happens inside his house.

but you can make money doing it

(☞≖ ͜ʖ≖) ☞ ᕕ(ᓀ ꀾ ᓂ)ᕗ ٩(⚙ᴗ⚙)۶(☞≖ ͜ʖ≖) ☞ ᕕ(ᓀ ꀾ ᓂ)ᕗ ٩(⚙ᴗ⚙)۶

In late-stage capitalism, everyone is a product. Everyone is a brand. I remember in high school, in the library, one kid named G****** was obsessed with getting on the personal brand train. Dude you’re 15. Yeah, but when I’m 20… Those kids ended up working in hedge funds, spiraling out and seizing after a relentless workweek.

Now we know those kids worked too hard. They could have become an influencer of some kind, made videos digging shrimp out of sand or letting warring colonies of ants run rampant, or putting on fancy makeup, or giving out life advice tips even though they hadn’t lived much life yet. All they do, all they are, every frame of their life is another image, another potential, another construct. Fuck, you can monetize restocking your fridge.

Do you remember when people started to post pictures of their lattes on social media? How quaint and easy and beautiful that was. Now everything is public.

ヾʕ •̀Д•́ʔゞ ( Ψ◉Д◉Ψ) └[ಠ∧ಠ]┐ ٩(`^´)۶ヾʕ •̀Д•́ʔゞ ( Ψ◉Д◉Ψ) └[ಠ∧ಠ]┐

All is public. Nothing private. Nothing but the secrets that we hold in our hearts because they cannot be known. We do not show other people what happens in this house. These things which cannot be known because they invoke the carceral systems which lurk, just out of our visual field, things that cannot and will not happen to us.

Now, you can write about these things in your memoir. On your blog. Post them on twitter. Get the sympathy likes and hearts. Feel like someone is closer to your own. But you are alone in an empty apartment. All the people on the dating apps want to get something out of you. You finish yourself and go to sleep, because at 7:00AM, the next shift begins.

“Secrets, foreignness and otherness represent impediments to unbounded communication. In the name of transparency, they are to be eliminated. Communication goes faster when it is smoothed out – that is, when thresholds, walls and gaps are removed. This also means stripping people of interiority, which blocks and slows down communication.”(16)

Weirdcore, if it can be characterized by anything, derives from a memetic intertextuality that only the memtically literate can decode. It combines surrealistic images with sloppily edited, slowed tracks. It is dreamlike. It is strange.

In weirdcore, meaning is deliberately obfuscated. Weirdcore makes no sense. Weirdcore images are inherently poor, inherently wretched. Weirdcore expresses what cannot be expressed or told. Weirdcore is surrealist; weirdcore is real; weirdcore is present; and as late-stage capitalism proceeds into the death of this world, now is the time of monsters.

Weirdcore is a monster born from the fear of monsters. Weirdcore is a failed achievement subject’s shout into the void. Weirdcore is for the quitters and the deeply damaged.

٩(╬ʘ益ʘ╬)۶ ((╬◣﹏◢)) (｀皿´＃)٩(╬ʘ益ʘ╬)۶ ((╬◣﹏◢)) (｀皿´＃)

I have been making a weirdcore mix. I am very tired. But now I will go to sleep, and in the morning, I will wake up and work on it. And I will tell you about it, reader.