For the general inspiration behind this manifesto, please read the following articles:
Notes Toward a New Romanticism
‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes
SECTION I: GENERAL PROLOGUE
1. The new subcultures and socio-cultural movements of the 21st century must operate primarily beyond the sphere of the internet and social media.
2. There can be no original or creative thought on social media. Any movement or subculture — pre-existing or novel — is immediately neutered by the limits of the medium.
3. Since these platforms are owned and operated by large, multinational private corporations answerable to no governments or regulatory bodies, they have carte blanche to restrict what is and is not allowed within their confines.
4. Social media inherently encourages backbiting and dopamine-chasing, and rewards not originality and thoughtfulness but repetitiveness and conformity. This has destroyed long-standing subcultures and niche communities while creating the simulacrum of community where in fact none exists.
5. One could more effectively promote an event, a community, a meeting, or a movement through fliers on telephone poles and posters on walls than via Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
SECTION II: GENERATIONS
6. The situation now developing between Millennials and Generation Z is a contemporary mirroring of Baby Boomers and Generation X: the former generation is hopped up on moral self-righteousness and an exaggerated sense of self, while the latter is close enough to the older generation to not always be easily distinguishable from them but still deeply resentful of their influence, thus appearing "edgy" in comparison. The principal cause of this is having to deal with novel, supposedly "revolutionary" ideas curdling into bourgeois narcissism and having their own generational identity erased by those above them.
7. Millennials came to the internet, while Generation Z was born into it. Generation Z cannot imagine a world where the internet does not exist. They do not hold the lingering reverent attitude towards it that Millennials do, while still also being fervent users thereof (increasingly against their will, however).
8. Generation Z has suffered from being raised within the internet, and has acknowledged as such. They have experienced all of the negatives of the web and social media with none of the supposed upsides; they feel pressured into having a mandatory social media presence yet lack the corporate and societal clout (or maturity) to use it for anything besides a digital high school cafeteria.
SECTION III: THE CHALLENGES TODAY
9. “Irony poisoning” is not funny nor cute nor a badge of honor. It is a variety of deep spiritual sickness; it withers the soul and rids the brain of any ability to empathize with others or come to anything with fresh eyes.
10. More than anything, today’s internet is a social blight. It has contributed very little to the well-being of contemporary society and left vast quantities of human wreckage in its wake. It does not kill like opioids, but it destroys the soul — which is nearly as bad. I have seen people — including personal friends, former and current — struggle mightily with escaping the internet brain fog. I have seen them become emotionally dysregulated, laughing while others cry and crying while others laugh. I have seen people engulfed by unpleasant radical ideologies and never return. Meanwhile, the physical world atrophies and a generation loses its best and most original voices to this great online maw.
11. At the same time, a cultural renaissance is growing. The pain we see now is merely the harsh change of one era to another, the old order dead and the new one not yet born. In film, the great decadent franchise pictures of the past decade are on their way out, and Generation Z is besotted with cinema in a way not seen since the upstart “movie brats” of the sixties and seventies. Music feels xanned-out and lethargic right now, but that, too, I feel shall soon be reborn. Eras when the consensus of profitability fails — Hollywood studios in the late sixties and early nineties, or the music industry in the mid-to-late seventies and late eighties — usually create a sea of new, brilliant, and genuinely innovative art.
12. It is harder to write about love than politics.
13. William Blake was correct: the desiccated machine-brain (as represented by Isaac Newton) is one of the most soul-destroying minds one may have. There is a direct line from this Newtonian machine-brain to Dachau and Auschwitz (and indeed Silicon Valley). Thus, robots and artificial intelligence must be avoided at all costs and preferably destroyed.
14. The replacement of genuine eroticism and romantic feeling with internet-created simulacra thereof is one of the most calamitous societal developments of the past ten-to-fifteen years. The current crisis of loneliness and simultaneous fear of both commitment and free love has been disastrous for an entire generation.
PART IV: SOLUTIONS
15. Romanticism must return if the arts and culture are to survive the 21st century. Ironically, the great poets, composers, and artists of two centuries past understood the threat of the “dark satanic mills” better than we do today.
16. Romanticism can be found anywhere. It is just as present on a grubby city street or bland suburban cul-de-sac as in the sublime wilds of nature. By entwining Romanticism into our everyday lives, we uplift ourselves and others
17. Without Romanticism, the Modernism of the 20th century would not be possible. The fracturing of human consciousness in the wake of war and technological upheaval required Modernism. Fear of abstract and nonrepresentational art is a sign of limited imagination and the provenance of tyrants. Thus, reviving Modernism is also central to our project.
18. Robots and artificial intelligence must be avoided at all costs and preferably destroyed. The destruction of that vile little spybot by Philadelphians was completely justified. As Ned Ludd did not actually exist, we must recreate them from whole cloth.
19. Smartphone applications and digital sexual simulacra must be expunged from the romantic and erotic realms, and laws restricting abortion and artificial contraception must be overturned.
20. The deadening idiocy of middle-class life must be avoided at all costs. The lowest and highest classes have much to teach us; the grasping middling sorts nothing at all.
21. A return to physical media is paramount if any past culture is to survive and anything new is to be created.
22. Big, Romantic plans for societal organization are more appealing than boring technocracy. Thus, plans like nationalization, re-industrialization, and the providing of employment and healthcare for all are paramount to our project.
23. Generation Z will revolutionize the 21st century for the better (at least in the cultural realm). The lamest of Generation Z are far lamer than the lamest millennials, but the coolest among them are cooler than the coolest Millennials (the terror and benefits of growing up in a polarized epoch).
24. The correct response to the majority of “bad” people is not hate but pity. Pity that they cannot appreciate the full spectrum of human emotion, and pity that they have chosen to turn away from the best of the world.
25. If any of the above points contradict one another, that is no accident. As Walt Whitman famously wrote, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”