Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

So let me tell you a little story.

Way back in the early 1990's, I was subscribed to Sears's Prodigy service, which was a lot like America Online, which was a lot like pay-by-the-month Facebook. *smirk*

And I was on a bulletin board for They Might Be Giants fans. And one day out of the clear blue sky, somebody posted a long breathless rant about how they'd "proven" the song "Spider" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmQYICF7ExU ) was about WW2.

Their theory was absolutely airtight: "Spider" was the Nazis. The second voice was the Japanese saying they"d "get rid of" their enemies. The voice saying "must stop" was the victims of the Holocaust.

And the TMBG board went WILD. It dominated discussion for days. People were shocked they'd never thought of it before. They filled in the rest of the story to show where Italy and Russia figured in. They found further clues in other songs. One guy, who had innocently picked the handle "SCHPIDER!" apologized all over himself for his insensitivity towards the victims of genocide.

Except, of course that this whole theory was all complete bullshit. I have NEVER seen anyone seriously espouse this theory outside of Prodigy, and the composers are on record as saying: "Spider is the product of an idle afternoon messing with the sampler." It's just a spy-jazz riff with a bit of pulp comics action.

All I'm saying is... false pattern-matching is a real thing that happens. It doesn't mean that every dog whistle or easter egg you find is unreal nor unintended. But you should be real, real careful what patterns you trust, and you should always consider the possibility that the five-pointed star you see is nothing more than five dots. (See page 00053 [84/121 on pdf]: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/downloads/Principia%20Discordia.pdf)

Or that the 666 you see is nothing more than 13 stars. ( https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trademark-of-the-devil/ )

This is a real big deal for me guys. I'm not trying to pick fights with anyone, but I will not shrink from using the word "triggering" here. This kind of apophenia is exactly the tactic that the vile folks at the Trinity Broadcast Network used to convince me of Biblical inerrancy and the Fundamental Evilness Of The Queers And Commies when I was a teenager.

I was real, real lucky to get out, and when I see any signs of similar thinking on my own current side, my first impulse is always to run away screaming in self-defense. It genuinely scares me. And maybe my threshold for it is too low, but... that's what happened to me, that's what I am, and dammit, I am never looking for Numbers Of The Beast nor faces in tortilla shells ever again.

No details, because I'm in enough trouble. But seriously, fuck our side sometimes. Being the "good guys" doesn't equate to "being the people who can never, ever hatch a completely batshit or dangerous idea, because we are the good guys."

And my Fellow Travelers who genuinely seem to it does... well, they scare the ever-living daylights out of me, because in my experience that's how Bad Guys get made.

And I'm taking a damn nap. @ the tigress and die.

_ΣD◂)

@Austin_Dern @troodon The humans MUST appreciate them! They're giving them free career skills training! =(^)_(^)=

@Phorm It was worth a try! ;)

@Phorm

> I mused to myself that the internet was essentially boiling down to a war of /context/ over content. Because context shapes content and its interpretation.

Shit, that's VERY quotable, foxlady. That's a really good insight. I might have to crib that one, with your permission.

We need a newer, better, gayer McLuhan is what we need.

I tried to be that for you all. So help me, Great Sekhmet, I tried.

@zx3 EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT

EVEN IF THAT ADVICE CAME FROM A MISOGYNISTIC ASSHOLE

DO IT ANYWAY BECAUSE EVEN AN ASSHOLE CAN FIGURE OUT A THING DAMMIT

@chimerror Yyyyyyyup. That's EXACTLY what led me to break out the Reynolds Wrap this morning. :>

I mean, I'm an ex-fundie. I used to have full-fledged OCD around the Number Of The Beast. I know ALL ABOUT the dark magic of manipulating numbers until you get what you want out of them.

(And believe me, a tiger head requires, like, a whole roll of the stuff....)

What if the (4,8)channers are deliberately trying to persuade the left that AS MANY THINGS AS POSSIBLE are right-wing dogwhistles, from the OK sign to all ten digits, as a willful attempt to culture-jam us into total paralysis?

Mind you, the following sentence is the weakest possible evidence and should never be taken as proof of ANYTHING, but... "I wouldn't put it past them." (I mean, seriously, that's precisely what the OK sign thing is—they've openly TOLD us as much. And yet we still keep walking right into it.)

And if that's not what they're doing... should we maybe be trying to do it to ​them? 😈(Honestly, I fear they might actually be too far ahead of us on the Meme Warfare tech tree. We gotta up our game.)

Ok, I'm back. For now. I think I gotta get outta town REAL QUICK.

They're on to me. 🐯∨​​

(Thanks to @troodon for the link and the WONDERFUL surprise at the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN_yfRMnJiY )

@Phorm *facepalm*

And FIVE SECONDS LATER, Frank Zappa's "Artificial Rhonda" (a song about an inflatable doll, from the EXTREMELY problematic Thingfish album) comes up.

COME NOT IN THAT FORM, LADY KAŬĈUKA! COME NOT IN THAT FORM! 🙀​🙀🙀

#DidErisPutYouUpToThis

@Phorm So what you're saying is we need to do a round of bubbleheaded geniefox filk...

I'll fire up the random playlist and see if the Martian Latex Gods* speak to me. :>

*what, you think we WOULDN'T have those?!?!

@Phorm Hahaha, it's ok hun, I PROMISE none of y'all did anything wrong—just distancing myself because the last thing i need today is a frolic in a semiotic labyrinth. Mostly I just wanna stay away from the folks in that Twitter thread, right or wrong—and if they're right, I REALLY wanna keep my distance from Hog Patient Zero. Y'all are cool. 😽😽😽​

ok running away for real now, love y'all 😽​

if you find me in a week scrawling kitty-emoji gematria on the wall of a nola alleyway and lecturing a pack of stray kittens about the 144-digit true name of Bast it ain't my fault 🙀​

@LexYeen@snouts.online It's not unlike snorting the blue flowers from A Scanner Darkly, or huffing the soul of St. Janos Hypercleats out of a thermos.

Tigers have a lot of body mass and damn near impenetrable brains. =^___^=

@LexYeen@snouts.online The secret is you start off by finding a web kook and just eating their fingers one at a time until you build up an immunity. You have to work your way up gradually to, like, Flat Earther hearts and anti-vaxxer livers, or the toxins can be deadly. =^_____^=

If you want to imagine the future, picture the human race somehow getting its brain caught in one of those novelty finger traps and not being able to get it out, forever.

I just ate Simpsons-Viking-Debate-grade brain poison by accident, through no fault of my friends, and I think I'm gonna bail on the Internet for a bit. There's a whole fucking city out here that presents no more deadly memetic labyrinths than, "Huh, I wonder what that pretty crow is thinking?" Gonna go talk to her instead. 😽​

@001zlnv I'm tempted right now, hun, I'm real tempted. :> Apparently that meme may-or-may-not lead back to a milkshake duck.

I honestly can no longer tell if it's Well-Meaning Leftist Pareidolia, or if someone is genuinely playing us in 5th-Dimensional Axis And Allies as Germany.

I'm... I'm gonna go drink a lot of cheap Uranian ethyl alcohol, eat a lot of good wholesome Martian fish, listening to some nice brain-emptying Saturnian radio, and pretend Terra just ain't a real thing. *sigh*

I rarely say it—in part because I have some genuine clinical-grade compulsive issues, that make me fear if I say it out loud some force will come along and ruin it— but yeah, I'm in a good mood tonight and things are going OK.

Still plenty of things to fret about: future, friends, stepbrother, health, expenses... But this is kinda working. I've reconnected with a couple of friends I was concerned had lost interest in me, and confirmed that we were all just kinda busy and preoccupied. Work is still great and I'm busy but feeling valued. And I'm living somewhere that's going to be hospitable year-round (give or take the occasional drowning attempt).

There's still that pervading, Stoical sense of DOOM COULD YET COME TO US AT ANY TIME. But I kinda feel like as long as I keep the cruise control on and nothing falls into the road from above... this is a pretty decent road. I'm at least reassured that I took the right path—or more like, the right crazy dragonlady picked me up and flew me 10' above it—and if we don't crash, something good could still be at the end of it.

Shh. Don't tell anyone. 😽​

@hystericempress Damn right you are. <3