Fear & Greed
And a Happy New Year Indeed
ཐི(𓁹 𓁹)ཋྀ༉‧₊˚..˳·˖✶𓆩𓁺𓆪✶˖·˳..𖥔 ݁ ˖.⋆/̸͆̅̿̎͞ ̎̅̿ ̄̿ ͆ ̚ ̎.ᐟ.ᐟ𒅒𒈔
PAINHUB is a piece of the Internet dedicated to emotion and how it propels our world. Although we live in a patriarchal systems that claim to prioritize logic over feeling to perform their misogyny1, all powerful entities know that emotion is the most potent driver of action, results, and lasting change. Facebook knew this is 2012 when they experimented over half a million users without their knowing, finding that emotional contagion is evident on the site, because emotional contagion is somewhat inherent to human social life. While this may be old news, I speculate that same data was or could be used as an excuse for Meta to push itself further and farther up our asses, attempting to puppet us toward product and atomization using our emotions. We’re seeing how far a persistent idea can go as ragebait floods our feeds and leaves us depleted from simply scrolling.
We also theorize that there femmehood in itself that is some sort of engine. Without any notion of biology, We do see an association between femmehood and production, and we see this as the motivator behind exploitation and abuse of femmes of all genders. What is modern culture without Femininity in all of its forms? What is a GDP without an educated female population?
Scarcity as God: our architecture. If you have something to give, those who take must do their best to take it, and Masculinity, at it’s worst, takes and gives nothing back. Takes and leaves for dead.
When we say this is place for pain, We are not romanticizing sadness, but the excavation of that internal thing that moves us along. Sure, there’s plenty we’re forced to do, but we would argue that we’re living at the gunpoint of an old white man’s grief, the one who decided we all come from no where. We are nothing if not living the emotional projections of our world leaders. They have dreams too, and they’re gray, beside the blood.
𒅒𒈔𒅒𒇫𒄆𒅒𒈔𒅒𒇫𒄆𒅒𒈔𒅒
Fear and Greed— An Editor’s Note
Two clouds they perch their Cloud 6’s on.
The first time I had heard anything about Jeffery Epstein it was March of 2018. A survivor came to my CUNY school during Women’s History Month-- it was the one talk out of many I planned on seeing, but my depression would let me leave my grandmother’s house for this one. She detailed her story, starting before she was sold into sex trafficking. She is from Eastern Europe, and her mother sold her into sex slavery to ease her own life, I’m sure. She was taken around the world, and eventually ended up in America. She noted the various powerful people she shared rooms with. What she wanted to make sure the room students took home was an understanding of why these powerful people did the depraved things they did. She calls it the “Triangle of Pain” as she draws a triangle with tiers on the whiteboard, like a fucked up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. She explains how the rich and powerful offset their trauma onto their children, partners, and people who work for them, and this abuse leaks into the relationships of each subset of people, until finally you have the final layer; complete dehumanization and no where for pain to be expressed. I have trouble imagining how that feels for any meaningful length of time. I don’t tend to do this, but using your privilege to offset frustration onto someone else does, unfortunately, provide some relief. This speaks less to human nature and more to a defunct system; it does not have to be this way, remember. I don’t know if there is language to express how it feels to use privilege to ease your life experience.
The time is dire for coping. There aren’t maps for the terrain the 2020s have brought us, we’re going it as rough as you can. Sometimes I think this is how the first humans felt.
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This month, we are going to dig into Depravity & Scarcity, the twins born of Fear & Greed. We are going to carve out some questions, as an editor like ours is want to do. It’s necessary of the human condition to keep some running checks in the system. So we’ll take up take duty along with others like Shadowbanned Magazine and other indie culture-questioning media
How does a math teacher get a thirst for blackmail?
How does a baby become a genocidal maniac?
Humans can’t help but react. It’s in our code. Right now, that code is being manipulated, and as long as we withdraw awareness, it will continue to be incredibly lucrative with people who seek to be of harm. Sweetie, I know. It doesn’t feel good to hear, but you must. And, we’d add, to hear is not enough. What will it look like when we give some structure to all this headiness? Application is the hardest part, but it’s the only thing that makes anything real, hard. Tactile and concrete, just how we like out justice.
See ya next time
-PH
༼;´༎ຶ ༎ຶ༽
we believe all attempts at control are forms of performance