Invisible Front is the one podcast that understands you.

For this episode we are joined by firebrand writer and classical illustrator Megha Lillywhite to discuss children’s literature, art, beauty, and the disruption of sacred cows.

Summary of Episode 3:

• Megha shares her thoughts on Plato’s Republic

• What happens to male communities when impressing mediocre women becomes the highest aim?

• Rachel wonders why Megha triggered so many people simply for criticizing the illustrations in The Hungry Caterpillar

• Peter defends The Hungry Caterpillar and challenges Megha’s critique

• Can nostalgia ever be removed from culture?

• Megha makes the case for preserving aesthetic judgment

• Teaching children about the real world through illustration

• The natural beauty of the butterfly

• Rachel thinks Megha is casting pearls before swine

• Raven believes that Dadaism has reached its cultural extreme

• How dare you insult our gods?

• Peter argues that our reactions to art are political in a biological sense

• Rachel pushes back against reducing art to a political binary

• Raven declares beauty to be an extension of man in Western culture

• Megha thinks conservatives are more open-minded than liberals in the art world

• Peter explains why the punk rock archetype will continue to reappear throughout history

• Megha and Peter debate fine art, beauty, proportion, and nature

• Raven explores distortion and moving beyond reality through technology

• Megha discusses reading the books she has illustrated to her children

• Finding our humanity and viscerality in an increasingly artificial world

• The Paris Café

  ---

  Leave a comment

  Share

  Share The Cultural Futurist

Invisible Front is the one podcast that understands you.

For this episode we are joined by the one and only Liza Libes to discuss all things literature and publishing.

Summary of Episode 2:

• Were men competing with Liza when they mobbed her for articulating similar ideas?

• Peter drops the bomb: the literary world is mostly populated by leftist women

• Liza discusses classical education and why it resonates more with older readers

• Rachel mentions how rightwing literary men are sensitive about terms like “fedora”

• Liza notes that her critics don’t understand her ideas and view her as a threat because they resent her

• Liza thinks there should be more collaboration than competition in publishing

• Peter and Rachel compare their literary scenes in California and New York

• Raven discusses philosophy scenes and city identities

• Are the status games in the art world the same as the literary world?

• Liza on breaking into mainstream publishing through Substack

• Liza has had agents tell her to just write genre fiction but doesn’t care to appeal to literary gatekeepers

• The lack of originality in the publishing industry is a problem

• Peter notes that most people aren’t even buying books anymore

• Liza explains that most published fiction is ideologically driven

• Raven knows that romance novels are basically just pornography

• Rachel thinks anti-woke literature will become popular and utterly terrible

• Liza discusses ChatGPT writing, students raised on AI-generated language, and the collapse of human intelligence

• Peter wonders whether entirely new forms of media are replacing literature

• Can we have sincerity and wholesomeness in these absurd times?

  ---

  Leave a comment

  Share

  Share The Cultural Futurist

I was late to see The Last Days of Downtown and called it fashionable.

It was the third and final installment of the downtown trilogy by Matthew Gasda, the playwright behind Dimes Square. He wrote the original play the scene took its name from and forgot to credit along the way. As a Cultural Anthropologist, my work extends to subcultures. My relationship to Dimes Square was that of a subculture ethnographer. Before hitting submit on my final scene report, I realized I’d skipped the one move you do not skip: tracing the origin point. You do not write about a subculture without getting to its roots.

Now, some of you reading this may think Dimes Square is:

• Some evil Peter Thiel psyop

• Mid-tier entertainment for insecure upstarts

• A cluster of “dissident art hoes” orbiting the Red Scare cinematic universe

• Literally just me and my friends hanging out

• An overpriced neighborhood for trust fund kids playing bohemian

• Nothing at all. Why am I reading about this NYC art world minutia? Unsubscribe, bitch!

• Controlled Jewish opposition for the Right

• Already dead

All of these interpretations are simultaneously right and wrong, except for the Jewish one, because Dimes Square became leftist the minute it got funded. (you’ll understand more about this in my final scene report) Yet its roots are undeniably theatrical, which perhaps gives the Jewish interpretation its own legitimacy. The origins of this particular scene trace back to theater, and Gasda is an independent playwright whose own Substack is worth checking out. I decided I wanted people to understand the roots of Dimes Square before I let my personal record go to the press, so I attended a viewing of The Last Days of Downtown and interviewed Matthew Gasda to do my diligence.

I needed people to know that the Gasda play was how all this Dimes Square insanity started. The record is always rewritten by people who show up to the afterparty and start taking credit for the origin story, rather than admitting that they’re subculture ethnographers two days before they drop their own obituaries. Dimes Square was the first in the trilogy, Gasda told me. The second was Afters. The third one, and the final one, was The Last Days of Downtown. I had an interview lined up with him after the play was over, but first I had to survive watching it. Could I manage?

Not exactly. The guy I was supposed to go with cancelled last minute due to some weird drug episode, peak Dimes Square subculture behavior, so I ended up going alone and got lost on a route I had already taken. The Center For Theatre Research in Williamsburg was hidden inside an apartment building, with almost no indication of where the entrance actually was. I wandered through hallways and stairwells convinced I had accidentally walked backstage. At one point, I thought I may have wandered onto the set. By the time I finally found my way in, it was at the end of Act One.

I wanted the late entrance to look like a part of my act, yet there were people’s grandparents in the audience, so I had to compose myself and take off my persona. This was not going to be petty. It wasn’t even going to be downtown. (it was Williamsburg) The staff were kind enough to guide me in despite my dramatic arrival, and an audience member silently pointed toward a seat he had pulled out for me as I slipped into the theater space. The gesture felt strangely ceremonial.

As I began getting cozy, the first thing that hit me was Sartre's No Exit. This was No Exit for hipsters. The set was a downtown apartment living room, the actors looping through conversations that were banal and profound at the same time. What if a handful of exaggerated archetypes were trapped in Hell together? There were references to generational stagnation, social media posturing, unintentional performance art, and the surveillance gaze of your own social group. Hell is other people, and all of them are online. Hell is being seen. Hell is the audience you’ve built.

As Act One closed, about five minutes after I sat down, the couple behind me began chattering at full conversational volume about how one of their friends had just turned up on the Epstein list. It was casual cocktail-hour discussion. I realized it was perfect, because it matched the decadence Gasda had been mapping this entire time. The play extended past the stage and the audience was inside of it. The Epstein-list reveal was an atmospheric humble brag.

Closing Night for the Scene

I wandered through intermission and talked to random people. I was relieved that nobody recognized me. I was just at a play conducting an interview, right? Not exactly. I felt “inside the play” during the intermission too and I think that was the point. We were the last days of downtown. This intermission was part of something that hadn’t been mentioned, and I loved its perverse orchestration. The crowd was unfamiliar in a clarifying way, actual theater people, there for the work and not for the selfie. One guy managed a portfolio of cancelled and controversial personalities. He carried himself with real gravitas, so I naturally spoke with him first. Yet Gasda didn’t seem controversial at all.

Act Two is where it cracked open. Gasda had built a trilogy out of the banality of his own social scene, and beneath the superficial cruelty and the constant self-referencing, the people on stage were insecure and human and alive. Even at their most cartoonish, (the jaded millennial hipster being my favorite archetype for obvious reasons) they were profoundly flawed people. Just people. People talking about their social lives, fears, and emotions onstage. People making internet era inside jokes onstage. People name-dropping downtown venues onstage. People doing lines of cocaine onstage. I don’t think it was real cocaine?

The dominant theme, Gasda confirmed with me later, was peer surveillance as the operating condition of modern artist life. How do you live when the whole world is watching, when your whole world is the same forty people?

Aesthetic Hierarchy

The acting was convincing, though some of these characters may have been playing themselves, so I’m not sure how much of a stretch occurred. I was there, mourning the death of the scene alongside people whose lives were not quite like my own, many whom I believe to be funded at least partially by their parents. Yet I was still along for the ride. I laughed out loud when an actor said “aesthetic hierarchy” because that’s exactly how we talk to each other now. Gasda was the guy who had thought to put it onstage.

That moment was when it all came into focus for me. He had been sidelined by the clout-chasers, which is exactly what I had suspected from the beginning. He was a genuine person writing genuine work about his own social scene from a critical lens, putting it all onstage in its naked and uncomfortable form. He was never named in the Dimes Square hit pieces, even though the micro-verse spun out of this theatrical critique of his own circle.

My Interview with Matthew Gasda

Rachel Haywire:

My first question for you is about the characters. Are they based on real friends of yours or general archetypes drawn from the Dimes Square scene?

Matthew Gasda:

Drawn from is better than based on. Nobody’s specifically modeled after one real person, but there’s definitely material pulled from the general population of Dimes Square. The characters are inventions. They’re vehicles for the actors. I don’t want anyone coming to the play thinking, that’s exactly me. Someone might recognize certain energies or behaviors, but it’s not documentary theater at all.

RH:

I never saw the original Dimes Square play, but am I right in assuming this is the final play with these characters?

MG:

Yeah. This is the third play. The second was called Afters, and this is The Last Days of Downtown. It’s definitely the end. These characters won’t appear on stage again.

RH:

So the title is literal?

MG:

Yes, this is the last time I’m going to do this story.

RH:

Were there any playwrights that inspired you for all of this, or was it exclusively inspired by your social surroundings?

MG:

For this play, it’s mostly self-referential. I was responding to the first two plays in the sequence. In a lot of ways, it’s a derivation of the original Dimes Square play. It keeps the same structure of rotating characters, fragmented narratives, no single protagonist, and a kind of second-act novelist energy. I wanted it to stay formally connected to the original.

RH:

Here’s my big question. There are obvious references to the current era, but it also feels timeless, like this story could’ve happened in almost any incarnation of New York. The scenes of the city keep repeating the same social patterns in different forms. Do you think this is just another cycle, or is there something uniquely different about this era?

MG:

I think ultimately it’s the same dynamics. What’s unique is the surveillance. It’s the anxiety about being watched. Artists have to live under constant surveillance by their peers.

RH:

Like the Factory era but with digital paranoia?

MG:

Exactly. Andy Warhol famously documented everyone around him, but it wasn’t threatening in the same way. Now the surveillance feels more ominous. It stands out as a unique trait.

RH:

So that’s the defining trait of this era?

MG:

That’s the thing that makes this period distinct.

RH:

Is it possible to be an active person in this type of scene without burning out when toxic people attach themselves to you?

MG:

No. Definitely, no. You want to quit.

RH:

Have you ever considered moving into mainstream theater, or do you think your inside references are too alienating for that type of audience?

MG:

Mainstream theater hates me. They would never let me do this kind of work. They don’t like me, and they don’t like my content. They don’t like the fact that I built something outside of their institutions, because it shines light on how dull those institutions have become.

RH:

Do you think it’s a lack of connections, or is it something more ideological?

MG:

They genuinely dislike me and what I represent. I really can’t stress enough how much mainstream theater dislikes me.

RH:

Is there hope for a new independent theater scene in New York City now? Will it happen?

MG:

You’re looking at it.

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

If you like what I’m doing here at The Cultural Futurist, don’t forget to buy me a coffee.

Goth has been all over the news and the feed recently, but people who work at these legacy publications don’t seem to know anyone in the goth subculture. As someone who was involved in my earlier years, I kept in touch with people in goth scene and booked a few of their musical artists for my gallery opening last year.

What many people don’t know, especially when they work in tech and/or politics and are therefore removed from anything truly alternative, is that musicians in the goth scene are now fighting cancel culture and producing albums about it. There’s a group called Goths Against Cancel Culture on FB that has been rapidly growing, now with almost 50K members.

Goths are done being told what they can and cannot say by liberal hall monitors. They’re sick of pretending to be woke, and carrying the torch of the real counterculture by fighting against the petty cliques in their scene who want to restrict their freedom of speech, association, and expression. I had a talk with Danielle Astraea, the force behind the musical project Crucifera and creator of Goths Against Cancel Culture to find out what was happening.

This interview serves to bring readers of The Cultural Futurist into their world.

Track is Black Tongues by Crucifera. It’s a battle cry against cancel culture and call for truth and restoration in the scene.

Rachel Haywire:

Hey Danielle. It’s a pleasure to catch up with you. There’s been a lot of media noise about goth recently, yet very few people seem to understand what goth is about. They think it’s just fetish girls in graveyards listening to The Cure. As someone who has real skin in the game with your gothic musical project Crucifera, how would you describe goth to the uninitiated? What are some important bands for people to get into? What’s the vibe like at a goth club? Tell us about the fashion.

Danielle Astraea:

It’s great to speak with you too, Rachel! To anyone curious about what goth is, I’d say it’s fundamentally about the music. If you want to get into trad-goth, start with old Christian Death. You should also listen to Bauhaus, Clan of Xymox, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Sisters of Mercy. Into the 90s, I have to mention Switchblade Symphony. There’s a lot of history regarding who actually coined “gothic.” When I was younger I thought it was Siouxsie, but I did a deep dive and learned that critics used it for The Doors in ‘67 and Sabbath in ‘75. This was long before the post-punk era. Despite the over-complication of subgenres, all these acts share the same gothic DNA at their core.

The vibe at a goth club should be a place of radical inclusion, but newcomers have abused the scene by succumbing to divisive identity politics. We were all awkward kids once, and the older generation didn’t judge us for our first attempts at darkness. They handed us a mixtape and let us dance. There’s no need to dictate who is or isn’t “goth” by ideological criteria. I was adopted by my Gen X friends early on and society ostracized us, but we chose to be part of the scene anyway.

Fashion is actually the least important part of goth. Still, I maintain my penchant for it. My preferences have evolved toward designers like AllSaints, Alexander McQueen, and Versace. Style is an exoskeleton. While it’s a form of creativity and expression, it’s also the armor we build to protect and express the weird things inside us in a world that demands conformity. Now, I feel more rebellious if I wear jeans or natural hair to a festival because everyone goes for the alternative look. Sometimes I look at my tattooed body and realize I accidentally adopted what became the modern uniform.

RH:

Let’s talk Crucifera. What was the origin of the name for your musical project, and what were your influences and inspirations? What are the themes that encompass it?

DA:

The name Crucifera refers to the spider Neoscona Crucifera, specifically the orb-weaver. When my husband and I moved into our home in 2021, I befriended a beautiful orb weaver who lived on our porch. She would catch all the mosquitoes for me. I’ve always loved bugs. As a kid I collected them, and as an adult I could never bring myself to kill one. I remember trying that trick where kids squish lightning bugs to leave bioluminescent streaks on the sidewalk, and it made me feel awful. I’ve had three pet tarantulas, the first of which I DIY-taxidermied after she passed.

To me, spiders are like mini land octopuses. They operate purely on instinct, feeling the earth’s vibrations, just wanting to exist and be left alone. A spider doesn’t see the world the way most humans do. It feels it via vibrations from the web it creates and through the ground. That’s how I experience reality. I’m a chronic existentialist, and my music is about navigating the heavy chaos of past traumas, grief, and abuse, weaving those violent frequencies into a silver-lined web.

Musically, everything starts organically. I’ve heard symphonies in my head and dreams since I was a baby. Every track begins on my piano or nylon acoustic guitar using paper and pencil. Once I capture that raw emotion, I move into Cakewalk. My music is the internal symphony in my brain.

RH:

Recently you’ve become notorious for starting Goths Against Cancel Culture, a group of artists, musicians, DJs, and cultural architects that is almost at 50K members. There was a recent appearance on Tim Pool’s show where Brian Graupner of The Gothsicles and now Gasoline Invertebrate spoke with anti-cancel culture goth YouTube personality Jake Munro. It was hilarious to see Milo Yiannoplous involved. Why did you start Goths Against Cancel Culture and how did all of this come to be?

DA:

GACC is essentially a Rorschach test for the modern mind. In a world marinated with relentless propaganda, people project onto it exactly what they’re primed to fear or demonize. I founded it as a nonpartisan movement and open-dialogue environment for people of all walks of life to support unfairly targeted artists in our genre who have been “canceled” over benign nuance and rumors that had gone out of control via games of telephone, originating every time from the same repeat Cancel Vulture offenders. These people are no more than irrelevant bullies who wish to destroy others for the sake of their own visibility.

Real cancellation means you’ve faced real-life consequences like defamation, blacklisting, and losing your ability to earn a living or share your art with the world because a psychotic mob took to the internet to destroy you. I watched self-appointed gatekeepers drive out the very talented rebels who defined goth and industrial. I got tired of the hypocrisy, so I built a platform to fight it with fact-checks, fan support, and zero tolerance for bullshit. The fact that it exploded proves how starving the silent goth/industrial community members have been for a space free from performative outrage.

Many of our most outspoken critics have criminal, sexual, and drug records on file. They have histories of substance abuse, and are generally just a bunch of club kids who got old, bored, and decided they wanted to pretend to be DJs when Spotify came out. Meanwhile, our supporters are talented musicians, legends, icons, promoters, and veterans who have been humble in shaping and growing the scene as we know it today. You can try to cancel a fringe group, but you can’t cancel the entire scene.

RH:

You’ve gotten a lot of pushback from starting GACC from people on both the left and the right, but you’ve also brought a bunch of people together from the scene who were previously afraid to speak about their views. It’s almost like everyone was pretending to be woke because they were afraid of being cancelled by the mob. Now musicians and fans in the scene are uniting under the banner of freedom of speech and expression. This feels like a cultural milestone to me. Do you consider it worth it?

DA:

It has been exhausting, and the death threats have been scary, but it’s absolutely worth it because I can sleep at night. In the past, I have lived both inside and outside society. Freedom from urban chains for a few years taught me to reject all forms of authoritarianism, and that we are all being tricked into a prison we’re encouraged to create for ourselves. The “woke” mindset isn’t exclusive to any one side. It’s a cult-like purity test, and it’s time to leave the Mean Girls lunch table behind. Veteran goths fought to escape cancel culture, and we can’t let ourselves get pushed back.

RH:

It feels like people celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk was, quite literally, a turning point for a lot of people in the scene. How much of a role do you think this played in popularizing Goths Against Cancel Culture? Why do you think so many leftist goths took pleasure in a complete stranger being assassinated? I still find the celebration of this horrifying, far more than any goth bands album imagery or music videos. How did this disgusting kind of behavior ever became acceptable in the goth scene?

DA:

At its core, this was an issue regarding the degradation of humanity. It had little to do with politics when you look at it from a philosophical angle. While unrelated to GACC, it could be indirectly related.

One example is the particular cancellation of my dear friends Lisa Hellen and Chris X of Xentrifuge. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of his wife and children, Lisa, being an empathetic soul in addition to being a mother, called out all the hatred she was seeing on the internet. For asking for basic human decency in not celebrating the death of another human being she received death threats and harassment. Lisa was also called an “anti-vaxxer COVID conspiracy theorist,” which is deeply deranged considering she and Chris lost both of his parents to COVID-19 within 12 days of each other. Her husband Chris suffered a permanent COVID vaccine injury in the same timeframe. “Anti-vaxxers” don’t typically get vaccine injuries because they do not receive them to begin with.

This behavior became acceptable because people traded actual rebellion for a witch-hunt mindset driven by weaponized propaganda. It functions like religious zealotry. They use moral grandstanding to gain status and cheap thrills. Dopamine hits within their echo chambers, and suddenly, celebrating a murder becomes a twisted way to signal your “virtue” to the mob. When you strip away a person’s humanity to score internet points, you are no longer the resistance; you are the oppressor. It’s about jealousy and self-loathing. It’s about control. What it’s not about is morality. That is what they use as the excuse.

RH:

Now that goth is getting more media attention from mainstream publications, industrial might be next. These subcultures are close cousins. When I did my time as an industrial musician, I went to a lot of goth clubs where my favorite DJs were spinning industrial. I also worked with goth musicians and remixed their tracks or did vocals for them, and they did the same thing for me. So many cool new collaborations happened this way.

Do you collaborate with industrial musicians? How would you personally describe the difference between goth and industrial? Is it ultimately one big tent, a hybridization, or two separate scenes?

DA:

If goth is the esoteric, emotional frequency, industrial is the machinery that amplifies it. The industrial scene’s origins were a raw, unapologetic middle finger to conformity. It was a dangerous but safe arena for the rough-around-the-edges misfits to thrive.

I strongly tie industrial to goth. I started loving gothic music in the late 90s, but by early adulthood industrial had taken over my tastes. I consider myself more of a rivethead than a goth. Bands like Wumpscut, Nine Inch Nails, PIG, Marilyn Manson, Snake River Conspiracy, Skinny Puppy, and Battery shaped me. My love for industrial likely stems from my childhood passion for doom and black metal, as well as Pantera - particularly The Great Southern Trendkill, which is incredibly dark and atmospheric, and which Trent Reznor had a hand in the production of.

I love collaborating. The music scene should be a community, not a place for cult-of-personality frontmen to strut their bullshit on social media. We need more and more of that supportive mentality. While my composition is solo, my journey in learning the technical side of executing Exostential was heavily fueled by the mentorship of industrial pioneers. Sebastian Komor (Icon of Coil, Komor Kommando, Kommunion, Zombie Girl) did the mastering for my debut album, and Steven Seibold (Hate Dept., Pigface) perfected my own mix of my first single Martyr Box while continually mentoring and encouraging me to get my music out there.

Beyond that, and in spite of what is supposedly “cancel culture” that true artists who can calcify a spine do not actually care about whatsoever, I have been in discussions with quite a few musicians I’ll be collaborating with, and I actually just wrote a piano piece for a popular Metropolis act who has been around quite a long time, and released a new album last month - the track is done, but that will be announced later!

I will also be doing several upcoming remixes. My first was for my friend Brian Graupner’s project Serpadeuce, where I remixed the track Soros. Remixes are coming soon for Komor Kommando, Experiment Haywire (that means you), Wynardtage, and more.

RH:

Speaking of my own musical project, I remember having had some political drama with a few bands from way back when. Their fans were protesting neofolk acts like Death in June while hazing me for being a woman who was new to the scene as a musical artist. I got painted as some leftist crusader for taking a stand and pointing out the hypocrisy of it all and. Later on, the main music producer I had drama with ended up being cool and remixing one of my tracks. The drama was now long gone.

Yet years later in my career, some of those same bands turned out to be part of the social justice mob. They came after me for appearing on Richard Spencer’s show to discuss corruption in Silicon Valley, even though I clearly didn’t endorse his views. They thought me authoring The New Art Right made me an evil Nazi when I was writing to represent individuality. Do you think a mob is always just a mob, whether it’s left or right? Is it the plague of groupthink? The alternative scene is supposed to be about individuality. This all seems so backwards. What happened to individuality?

DA:

A mob is absolutely always a mob. It’s the ultimate plague of groupthink. Individuality vanished because people became terrified of being ostracized, so they allowed self-appointed gatekeepers to dictate whom they could talk to and what nuanced thoughts they could express. These very same people, in the 90s and early 2000s, had a different name: “bullies.” Now, beneath the guise of “politics,” they weaponize a reason to not only destroy you but get celebrated for it.

The alternative scene is supposed to be about protecting the weirdos. Instead, certain veterans have built empires on the aesthetics of rebellion, while simultaneously wielding their platforms to caricature any actual resistance as bigotry. If you speak to the “wrong” person to have a nuanced discussion, you get labeled a Nazi by people who lack the mental bandwidth to understand gray areas. Everyone deserves to be left the fuck alone. If you are imposing your will or judgment upon others, you are the fascist.

RH:

I’ve noticed some cool new developments that have come out of Goths Against Cancel Culture. For example, Ligerhawk Records with Gasoline Invertebrate and my old electro-industrial favorite Xentrifuge are carrying on the torch for freedom of expression and real alternative culture. Bitman produced an entire album to fight against social media witch hunts. The production is fantastic and the lyrics are deeply raw and honest. It’s great to be witnessing this moment and getting back to the music, which is what this was always truly about. How do you see the future of the scene?

DA:

I believe the future of the scene relies exclusively and foundationally on undoing the stranglehold of cancel culture. The declining demand for live events isn’t because fans don’t like the music anymore; it’s because the environment has become too judgmental, hypocritical, narcissistic, and annoying. It’s also because talented musicians are being chased away from expressing themselves, and because they never signed up for walking on eggshells when it came to writing lyrics or creating art.

So many Gen X and Millennial scene veterans just stopped showing up because they didn’t want to deal with the performative drama. Promoters and venue owners become scared at the decline and complied with the few who tried to dictate the narrative, yet they don’t realize these trolls were the reason for said decline to begin with. Younger kids are not into this gatekeeping, judgmental culture. In fact, most of them refuse to even use social media. They are chasing them away as well, all because a few bitter middle-aged people aren’t getting enough attention on the internet anymore.

Regarding Ligerhawk, what Brian did is a very nice thing that completely defies the norms of all music labels. It’s really a coalition of artists who support one another. We all release our music independently, but we support one another because we want to, not because we have to or because we stand to gain anything. There is a lot of camaraderie, and it serves as a support network. I got involved and helped Brian with the rebranding/logo design, album art, and even a little bit of merch design for Ligerhawk and Gasoline Invertebrate. A couple of artists have even been dropping labels like Metropolis and Cleopatra to join, us just to wave a middle finger at the current state of affairs. It’s pretty amazing.

That is also why we are looking into launching Problematik events alongside GACC. We’re creating mature, peaceful platforms where art is judged on merit, not on whether an artist passed an ideological purity test. The silent supporters and veterans of our beautiful music scene are returning. We’re seeing real streaming boosts for supported artists, and loyal fans are eager to come out again to events. We have promoters who refuse to cower to random trolls and stand up for the artists we love. The future is bringing the crowd back peacefully, profitably, and purely for the love of the music.

RH:

Finally, I listened to a preview track of your upcoming album Exostential which is set to be released on April 3rd. It was dark, enchanting, harsh, and beautiful all at once. I’m excited that this type of music is making a comeback. Where can people check out your music and how can they purchase your new album?

DA:

Thank you so much, Rachel. That truly means the world to me, especially since I consider you a talented ‘girldustrial’ artist as well. Creating this album was my way of reaching past the illusions of this world and peeling back down to the true resonance behind everything. I was not exactly aiming for anything in particular. It just came out the way it did, and I love genre-bending! It’s an awesome soundtrack to deprogram ourselves from the manufactured societal divide, let go of the performative outrage, and get back to the music.

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

If you like what I’m doing here at The Cultural Futurist, don’t forget to buy me a coffee.

Invisible Front is the one podcast that understands you.

Summary of Episode 1:

• Is podcasting dead, or is it the last popular medium left?

• Has AI made people stupider and more illiterate, or were they always this way?

• Rearranging pieces of time

• Why obscure music is harder to find now

• Raven on immersive experience design and hyper-sexuality control systems

• Rachel on living inside separate social realities

• Peter in the park watching a man grill

• Marquis de Sade as decadent reactionary

• Why conservatives misunderstand art

• Finding the others and hidden signaling

• Art, divinity, beauty, and religion

• Death of the persona

  ---

  Leave a comment

  Share

  Share The Cultural Futurist

When you’ve been in the discourse long enough you start noticing patterns. It’s not only that you notice patterns in the culture but that you notice patterns in yourself. There will be a point in time when you’ll reach a certain moment, and in this moment that you’ll realize that the very thing you’re railing against is the same thing you dreamed up ten years ago.

Welcome to The Ouroboros of Influence

Lately I’ve been having this creeping sensation that I’m standing in a hall of mirrors, except that every reflection is just me from a different era, and that they’re all pointing at each other accusingly. I spent years advocating for a certain kind of aesthetic extremity. The merging of high fashion and transgression. The idea that beauty and danger should coexist in the same frame. I wrote manifestos. I threw parties. I cultivated entire scenes.

Now I see it everywhere. It’s diluted, debased, and castrated. My first instinct is always disgust. Well, here’s the joke the universe played on me: I helped cause it.

Not directly, maybe. I’m not sitting in a boardroom at some advertising company deciding to appropriate underground aesthetics for mass consumption. Yet influence doesn’t always work that way. Influence is a virus. You release it into the ecosystem and it mutates, spreads, and evolves into forms you never intended. You’re patient zero for a plague that you later catch yourself.

This is especially true for anyone who was involved in what I’ll generously call the “alternative internet” of the 2000s and early 2010s. We thought we were building something different. A new kind of discourse. A new mode of expression. A new way of being transgressive in a culture that desperately needed transgression.

So what happened? That energy got absorbed. Processed. Regurgitated as “disruptive” startup culture, “edgy” marketing campaigns, and the general vibe of irony-poisoned nihilism that now permeates everything.

So yes, the language I helped popularize shows up in places I never expected. The ideas I championed became weapons wielded by people who didn’t understand them. Or worse yet, these people understood them perfectly well and used them for purposes I find repellent. The joke is that some of these purposes were my own, filtered through time and iteration until I no longer recognized myself as the source.

There’s a certain kind of intellectual who never has to face this. They work in academia or some other sealed off environment where their ideas stay theoretical. They critique without consequence because their critique never touches the machinery of culture. They stay outside of the system they’re observing.

Yet the rest of us who actually build things, throw events, publish journals, create communities, and host salons don’t get this type of distance from the behemoth. We have to confront the Frankenstein problem. The monster we’ve created is wandering the countryside, and the villagers are right to be upset, but we also kind of forgot that we created it.

This isn’t a confession and this isn’t an apology. It’s a field report from someone who has been doing this long enough to see the wheel turn.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

Read more

Everyone is talking about Diner Goth on Twitter, the platform I’m not supposed to be on. They won’t stop sending me this article, so I’m in a difficult position. See, I’m reinventing myself and dropping the scene persona. I’m a serious fascism instructor who is building a new institution. I’m writing one …

Read more

The most important commitment you can make is to stay true and pure. At first this sounds simple, but it’s not.

When you navigate the insidious maze of social dynamics, you’ll come to realize that purity is one of the hardest things to maintain. When people latch onto trends and discard the original versions, staying true and pure requires a brute and intentional mindset. It must be genuine and it can’t be learned through anything but personal experience.

You’ll need to take a step back and let go of the urge to perform. Forget about all of that noise. It doesn’t concern you anymore. It’s over. It’s out the door. Release the desire to validate yourself through others. Staying true and pure requires a very strict type of discipline. It’s a spiritual practice that anchors you inward. People will come and go. They’ll exit as quickly as they enter. That’s just the way it works and you can’t let it phase you.

When these gatekeepers in Silicon Valley deemed me too unconventional and unfiltered for their tastes I was furious. They accused me of being “alt right” because they saw my approach as too rough around the edges. I delivered unusually high output, but my affect disrupted their precious image. Now let’s get real. This had nothing to do with politics, yet I was cancelled for being a “nazi” and I write this during Chanukah.

This loss of status and social mobility tormented me for longer than I’d like to admit. I was thrown me into the pit of an angry mob that hated me. (waves) The people who threw me into this pit were the same people who borrowed my work and stripped it of its soul, only to deem me unworthy of the circles they’d built on diluted echoes of my creations.

So how did I stay true and pure? Something in me changed after all of this went down and I took some time to reflect. I understood that I had to make a choice. I could either allow the bitterness to consume me or use my experience as fuel to deepen my commitment to truth.

Here’s how I moved forward…

Read more

You Say You Want a New Institution

It’s me, Rachel. I wanted to thank all of you who attended the launch for the Fiume Gallery on May 10th. It was an extraordinary beginning, and we’re now raising funds to secure our permanent gallery space as we call for visionary patrons, strategic backers, and aligned investors ready to fuel this new culture. Whether you were in attendance or not, here is how it all began.

It began in a state of beautiful disorder. Alliances were forged in whispers. Rivalries took shape before the paint even dried. Nothing was fixed and everything was up for grabs. We were building something raw, dangerous, and alive. I wanted more time to talk to people during the launch party. I remember thinking: One day, I want to be in the audience and watch it all unfold. No one will know it was me. That will be the real victory.

Yet nothing comes easy in the art world. A rehearsal clip completely unrelated to the show had gone viral and triggered a wave of speculation. The algorithm picked up on it, and with virality came vultures. Enter Sam Venis, a journalist I’d never met. He showed up uninvited and penned a hit piece that read like some deranged fan fiction. His take was as confusing as his presence. We had more detractors than I was prepared for, but I relish a fresh set of antagonists!

I still don’t know who most of these detractors are, and I’d be more impressed if I did, but what I do know is that every day I receive messages from people asking to stop by Chelsea to visit our gallery. Even as a pop-up we’ve drawn serious attention, and now everyone wants to come by and check out the scene. We launched a major cultural event with no institutional support, budget, or safety net. We handled permits, curation, hospitality, security, press, and programming with a tiny crew.

We decided to go mainstream.

Works from our in-house artists are selling faster than I imagined, and collectors of distinguished names are now pursuing representation at Fiume. What began as a provocative experiment evolved into something far more serious. Now, we are merging the worlds of avant-garde performance and established fine art as we transition into a fully operational gallery and cultural hub in the heart of Chelsea.

Fiume’s launch party was an immersive theater experiment.

The Fiume launch party was a twisted collision of art, politics, and historical theater. So many people showed up: artists, musicians, dark intellectuals, poets, freaks, reactionaries, bohemians, goth girls, tech guys, and obscure philosophers. It was an oddball convergence of factions like the original Fiume in Italy. Last weekend, I was at a nightclub and the bouncer recognized me from the event. There were so many people who attended that I wish I could have talked to. For all I know, some of them are fated to become central to my life, and our real conversations have yet to begin.

The event was an absurdist gathering that was a tribute to French surrealist Antonin Artaud, hence the Theater of Cruelty name. It was a liminal space in which history was reimagined in the setting of an art gallery. Fiume is alive, inhabited by performers, provocateurs, and exhibitions.

It was foundational. It was primal. I regret nothing.

I didn’t think we were actually going to have protestors, but they immediately showed up outside with pamphlets and made themselves a part of the show. Did they know they were participating in the spectacle? I’d have thought they had a background in surrealism. I’m told one of them had to be physically removed by security, yet I’m also told one ended up being a nice guy who ended up buying a ticket so who knows?

They claimed was that we weren’t real Futurists. No, we were the Futurist version of posers who listened to Green Day and Sum 41 in the punk scene. Not the real punks who died of heroin overdoses in their warehouses while listening to GG Allin. D’Aunnunzio would have traveled forward in time to kill us, or so I’m told. Gabrielle, if you’re out there, come meet me in the fields.

Now speaking of D’Aunnunzio, there was a moment when I could have sworn he had possessed me. It was the day of the event and I was feeling burnt out from the endless work, blasting Laibach in the Uber on the way to the venue with one of the other organizers. Everything had happened so fast. Months of prep, 6 AM work sessions, sleepless nights, people dropping out, people hopping in to help at the last minute, and everything else you could imagine. The chaos had accelerated into a fever pitch, everything collapsing into a single ride. Was it D’Annunzio moving through me, or was I staging my own psychotic opera?

So, this Sam Venis guy told our security that Fiume was “a fascist art exhibit for the New Right” and claimed in print that Nazis had attended the launch. He seemed upset that this wasn’t some ironic Red Scare type event. We were perceived to be competing with this incestual clique and viewed as serious people which he really didn’t like.

“For all my wandering through Far Right spaces, I’d never encountered true, straight-to-the-vein fascists first-hand. I was used to the performative fascists: the Dimes Square edgelords with five-bedroom apartments on the Upper West Side. The ones that said ‘retard’ and called it avante-garde. I suppose I should’ve known something was different here.” -Sam Venis seeking attention in his Marinetti in Manhattan hitpiece

Given that in this era Fascism has devolved into the intrusive-thought of the chronically deranged, the farce of this virtue signaling pantomime isn’t worth the dignity of a response. But yeah, something was different. I’m a Jewish artist who isn’t some Dimes Square edgelord. Congrats, Sam. You’ve noticed. (but apparently not that I’m Jewish)

Art is a Rorschach test. It’s meant to provoke, inspire, delight, and infuriate. Anyone can look at your art and tie their own agenda to it. They project. They fantasize. They accuse. You see them through your own lens and this is part of the experience. Everyone sees something different because everyone brings their own private mythology to the viewing. When your gallery is its own work of art people go a little mad with interpretation. This is why Andy Warhol was a brilliant concept artist, the Factory being his true masterpiece—the epicenter of interpretation, of experience.

The Grand Spectacle

The night started with my friends DJ Octopussy and DJ Hervor spinning industrial, goth, synthwave, and electro at the Chelsea loft we’d rented for the launch. People trickled in slowly, like they’d stepped through the wrong door at the right time. Some of the Sovereign House people looked confused. I’m not sure how many of them had been to an art opening or musical event before. Nevertheless, they found their friends in the crowd. It was fun to see them interact with the more artistic people who were now interacting with the more theoretical and pinned down types.

Categories had now stopped making sense. People who would’ve hated each other were deep in conversation. The gallery circuit, veterans of opening nights and art world networking, were also thrown into the mix. I’d met them at other art openings in Chelsea and invited them to mine. I was a crazed socialite birthing my own scene from the trenches. Everyone was there.

Adam Lehrer took the stage and began reciting a violent manifesto as he smashed hideous plastic art someone had purchased from Target. It felt like we were at an early noise show. Queen Thugshaker screamed during her Funeral for Irony as she threw the plastic art into the crowd. People moved to get out of her way in bemusement and fear. When Orcbrand took the stage he began channeling the spirit of Artaud with his absurdist music and giant sword, delivering a hilarious performance that took cringe to the next level. We weren’t trying to be “based.” We were having fun and being ourselves.

Next was a poetry performance from Bexiexz, a poet I met at Deep Tech Week. I think it was around this point Sam Venis asked her why she was black and on the bill for a “white nationalist event” while she was reciting her work. She ignored him because the whole thing was too absurd to address. She just kept on reading. Next, my friend Mark went on and continued the scene with some visceral intensity as he delivered his own set of poetry like a wound laid bare.

The Dictator Pageant - It’s Called Dark Cabaret

It was The Dictator Pageant that drew the most fevered attention, yet what’s historical theater without a little controversy? Goth girls strutted down the runway in beautiful outfits for the Strut of the Valkyries, reading dictator speeches on the catwalk in competition with one another. Who would be queened dictator of the night?

People from the audience yelled comments at the models, some less than charitable, and I personally could have done without that. Yet the girls stood their own and returned the fire. They bit back, one in a literal sense. Martial neofolk thundered as the score. I’d had this kind of thing in mind for a while now, so why not do it for the launch?

Dark Cabaret had once defined my youth, but every age demands its resurrection. The pageant was the highlight of the event, and people won’t stop talking to me about how much fun they had. A few people are still infuriated while others remain perplexed.

The Art of Fiume

As the doors to the art room opened people began trickling in. The Skinless Frank prints sold immediately. People flew all over the country to check out his digital art, along with the fine art paintings of Giovanni Pennacchietti and Alexander Adams, Fiume’s original artists we had showcased at our pre-party. We also showed the digital works of Lordess Foudre, an artist with a cult following who mixes cyberpunk with digital nostalgia. She named her collection the Museum of Deleted Emotions.

The art of Fiume wasn’t necessarily Futurist, despite artists like Giovanni Pennacchietti and Alexander Adams taking inspiration from them. We mixed it all up: the digital art of Skinless Frank and Lordess Foudre with the fine art of Giovanni and Alexander Adams and the realist paintings of Madeleine Carson who is creating masterpieces at the young age of 18.

Continued Affairs

The prestigious Tara Isabella Burton decided to share a few words on us:

“I am not particularly interested in whether Ye wants to say “Heil Hitler” onstage or not, or whether or not some art gallery in Chelsea wants to perform a new version of Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” with some guy named Skinless Frank or DJ Octopussy. It may well be that we are so ideologically kaleidoscopic these days, that true culture striding “transgression” itself is now a nonsense term.” -Tara Isabella Burton on Fiume here

Tara and I had met last year at a literary event where she’d told me that she wasn't into the downtown scene. I’d told her that I wanted to recruit the more interesting people for something new because everyone was sick of the very online sphere and needed something more IRL and visceral. I respect Tara for her journey and not for her prestige, but it seems like her point was to bemoan the death of religion with Fiume as a sidepiece.

Crossing the Wires

Our sponsors were fantastic. Imperium Press sent us books from Alexander Adams himself, Nick Land, and critical volumes on Jonathan Bowden. We even stocked Georges Sorel. People loved the literature. They browsed, flipped pages, and talked. Heterodox Labs, a startup bringing wonder and imagination back to science, sent in their own swag of hoodies and t-shirts, offering a bold counterpoint to Silicon Valley’s bland uniformity. Jokes Review sent in their fun literary magazines.

Our Movement is on the Rise - Uplift with your Support!

A couple months after our launch, Curtis Yarvin posed with his friend Vlad with a caption about D’Annunzio and Marinetti for a stunt at the Venice Biennale. The influence of Fiume is making waves in DC and Italy.

I want real artists, real talent, and real sincerity. I’m not into the “dissident art hoe” branding. I reject it. I disavow these uncultured swine! I stand opposed to the way so much of the Right is against theater. I support theater, love it, and embrace it. Fiume is theater and it will always be theater.

As we shift into a more mainstream and structured gallery we are looking forward to collaborating with new people and raising to:

• Secure our permanent Chelsea gallery space

• Fund more exhibitions and performances

• Book exceptional musical talent

• Establish a cutting-edge artist residency program

• Expand new staff and scale our operations

Email us at info@fiume.nyc to become part of this cultural movement. Get in contact and say hello. We can’t do this without you. Let’s make history together.

Thank you again to the inside crew, artists, patrons, supporters, and everyone who showed up for the party. As for those of you who couldn’t make the launch, I hope you now have a better idea about our gallery and that you’ll come to our next event in November.

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

We’re creating tastemakers for the new regime.

We’ve got a new Culture and Couture Brief today. Our last brief was with notorious writer and editor Matt Forney, and you can check it out here if you missed the explosion. Twice a month, I’ll feature someone who is leading the culture in an unexpected way. We’re influencing the influencers, and this time I’ve brought over pagan sweetheart Georgina Rose to reawaken your soul.

What are Georgina Rose’s fashion inspirations?

Georgina Rose: This outfit remains one of my favorites, even if it is a bit older. The dress is inspired by the ballet Giselle which is a romantic story about a woman who is betrayed by her lover. When I was a bit younger, I was the stage manager for a few ballet performances, so even though I am not a dancer myself, I have a lot of nostalgic ties to ballet. It’s a very romantic art form, showing a complex story through simple movement and sound.

I am quite romantic, emotional, and drawn towards darker tones. I find that the rich saturated tone of a deep jewel tone sticks out in my brain. When contrasted with feminine soft details like lace and bows it brings me a lot of joy. In my personal style, I wear a lot of what people call “Romantic Goth” and this is pretty much that distilled down to its essence.

This outfit is also interesting to me, because once again, I adore rich dark tones. Yet instead of sticking just to black, this darkly inclined look pulls in some white. I love white as a color within gothic fashion. It creates such vivid contrast and makes things a bit more interesting. The tablier this girl is wearing is also iconic. It’s from Moi Meme Moitie, a Japanese EGL brand, that remains my favorite fashion label. The design on it is incredibly intricate with custom lace, a stark departure from the low-effort fast fashion pieces we often see.

It’s a shame how craft seems lost in fashion, and that we care more about quantity more than quality, sacrificing on little details. At the end of the day, the details are what bring an outfit to life. This beautiful church and gate pattern on the lace instantly evoke a mental image of strolling through a churchyard. I also like the use of accessories and detest minimalism. I adhere to the opposite of that Coco Chanel rule about taking one item off before leaving the house. I often add an extra item. This really brings things together, and there’s no shame in being the town eccentric. Someone has to do it, and in my town it has to be me.

What’s Georgina’s media pick of the moment?

Georgina: This a polarizing choice, but I do love The Love Witch, even if I might take a slightly different message from it than the filmmaker intended. The story follows a Wiccan woman named Elaine who is trying to find a man to truly love her and make her feel whole. She has recently left her husband who she murdered, due to him being inadequate for her. She then goes around her new town, in the idyllic pacific northwest, and uses her magic to seduce new men. Then when they inevitably do not meet her standards, or fix her inner pains, she kills them.

This film is filled with some heavy-handed ramblings about feminism, which sort of miss the mark because Elaine’s real problem is not the men but the way she views love. She does not love herself, and thus, she cannot love. The men being too soft, or too inadequate for is not the issue, the issue is within. I find the film to be a cautionary tale about what it is like to love improperly.

In our current times, people do not know how to love. They either want someone to make them feel better, do things for them, or fix them. A partner does none of these things. A partner is a human, not some transactional checklist, or an object. They are a being. They cannot make you love yourself, and they cannot be treated like anything less than someone who is just as complicated as you are. I think, in a sense, many people who engage in dating discourses are Elaines. They just haven’t gotten to the murdering bit.

Also, I love the visuals. The 1970s psychedelic aesthetic is beautiful. Every costume is so intricate. Every set has references to art, music, and other films. It’s a rich visual landscape. On the esoteric front, I do think it gets paganism right. A lot of the rituals and practices depicted in the film are quite close to real occult processions.

What has Georgina been reading lately?

1. The Four Feminine Archetypes by Daniella Pentsak - ”Daniella outlines four major forms of feminine expression, then overlays it onto the well-known memetic image of the political compass. Though, instead of ideology, it is how you express your feminine nature.”

2. The Emerging Problem Of “AI Psychosis by Marlynn Wei - “As artificial intelligence develops, people are starting to swap human relationships for machine relationships.”

3. Five Obscure Pagan Festivals From Around The World by Bonnie Nicol - “What were the holidays of my ancestors? Are there any small celebrations that I may not have heard of that could connect me to my Gods?”

4. New Study Suggests Ancient Pagan Worship Persisted In 5th Century Britain by Manny Moreno - “Some archaeological finds within Britain show that there was active Pagan worship after the country was allegedly converted to Christianity.”

5. Why Ancestor Worship Is Important by Claudio Merill - “Our ancestors love us and can guide us down a path of glory, love, and divinity. This article explores how ancestor work looked in the past, which can inspire us today, and reminds us of its critical value in our lives.”

That’s a roar. It’s the sixth installment of Culture and Couture. I plan to run more of these because they’re lots of fun. Also, let’s get real. Most people have horrible tastes and it’s time to show them something better.

If you’d like to become a tastemaker for the new regime, email me at theculturalfuturist@gmail.com. Whether it’s fashion, art, music, architecture, or a period in time that has inspired you, (maybe even all of these things) I’d love to hear from you about some of your favorite things.

Georgina Rose, Da’at Darling, is a perennialist, polytheist, and thelemite who blogs about esotericism. She’s on YouTube, Twitter/X, Instagram, Substack, and TikTok. She also hosts the podcast Pagan Perspectives by Georgina Rose on YouTube and most podcasting platforms.

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

If you like what I’m doing here at The Cultural Futurist, don’t forget to buy me a coffee.

Dear young influencer,

I understand you call yourself a writer.

You see life as a journey and you’ve cast yourself as the protagonist nobody noticed.

A character so immersed in your own narrative you forgot to translate it into something others could feel.

And now you’ve found the indie lit scene.

So you’ve built a persona.

I’m sorry.

I almost got killed by mine once.

Let me be the first to tell you:

Your videos won’t save you.

A million followers equals very little money.

A million people watching doesn’t mean even one understands you.

A million views won’t save you at 4 AM when your own voice echoes too loudly in the silence.

You have so much to say yet so little to say about anything that truly matters.

You think it’s a hustle but it’s attention without substance and praise without loyalty.

You’re dancing in the mirror of some false invocation.

You’re feeding the algorithm your fantasies like sexual therapy.

Your captions are confessions that nobody will grasp no matter how many likes they give.

You think you’re building a castle of self-expression when you’re creating the biggest trap in the village.

Now you’re stuck inside the gates you designed and don’t know how to escape.

Every post that you make is a calling to be seen to be noticed to be loved to be acknowledged to be placed at the top of the feed.

You call it writing and you call it a performance and you call it yearning and you may even call it a career.

But where is your soul?

Where is your sense of self?

Where are your values?

What are your values?

Have you defined them?

How can you live without defining your values?

I’ll tell you something I wish someone told me:

The self, once branded, rarely comes back whole.

So young influencer,

I ask this of you before the month is over.

Pick up a book that calls to your inner spirit and start reading it tonight.

Don’t pose with a picture of it and share it online or it will be best left unseen by your eyes.

Stop posting about your escapades, if they are even true at all, and let your knowledge do the work.

Ignore the indie lit scene gossip, the obnoxious clout games, the fabricated drama, and the juvenile posturing.

Become someone who carries a legacy instead of someone who gets drowned out the day you turn 30.

Because you know what happens to young influencers after they age?

Absolutely nothing.

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

If you like what I’m doing here at The Cultural Futurist, don’t forget to buy me a coffee.

Who is Johnson Riggs? For the uninitiated, he’s a philosopher-king in exile disguised as a novelist. If you’re been around these parts, you’ve probably heard about his dystopian fantasy book Pandemonia. It’s a fantastical satire of COVID and it’s utterly insane. With physical copies set to explode on July 4th, I took the time to sit down with Johnson and figure out what in the hell was going on for The Cultural Futurist.

How, exactly, could a novel about the COVID regime be a comedy?

Rachel Haywire:

You’ve written a book where knights fart, kings wrestle, and demons possess the bureaucracy. Let’s begin at the edge of the map. What exactly is Pandemonia? A satire? A kingdom? A diagnosis?

Johnson Riggs:

Pandemonia is at its heart, a self-indulgent exorcism. But way less self-indulgent than Stephen King, and the writing is twice as good.

Setting-wise, I mashed up Venice and DC to create Quagmerica, an empire sinking into the mire. I also take the reader on a cartoon tour of vistas inspired by the Middle East, Colombia and Amber Waves of Grain. As for the characters, I had a bit of fun. Let’s just say that:

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A video trailer about this whole psychotic thing:

RH:

Knight Captain Pickle isn’t exactly the archetypal hero. Why did you choose such a ridiculous idiot to lead your tale?

JR:

Pickle is a rockhead, but he’s not an idiot. I’ll grant that with a nickname like Pickle, it’s easy to underestimate him. But pickles are well-preserved, probiotic, and phallic. Furthermore, the pickle is a great metaphor for patriarchal values and low, monastic time-preference (winter is coming). He’s competent in all the wrong ways and therefore presents a sphinx-like character growth curve.

So why this protagonist? Well, modern conspiracy theories lack any protagonist – therefore, they deny human agency. Therefore, insert hero. This is an anti-propaganda, pro-conspiracy heroic legend.

RH:

You’ve created a world that’s both grotesquely funny and eerily prophetic. Did you set out to write “high fantasy for a collapsing empire” or did the empire simply catch up to you?

JR:

Well, the real world is grotesquely funny, and prophets are eerie. I’m not sure I predicted anything, I just read some old books and intuited an alternate universe. The wheel of time turns, or something. I did get high off my own fantasy, but I think readers will enjoy a whiff of my genuinely musty brand. The muse caught me off guard and she wrote half of this thing, then the old whore tricked me into doing the rest of the work. I guess we’re splitting the proceeds and custody of Sir Pickle.

RH:

Let’s talk metaphysics. Is Pandemonia a dreamscape or is it more like the real world in drag?

JR:

Metaphysics? They’re feeble. I exist in liminal spaces, so I’m confident that fiction is more real than the news. The book is a dreamscape in that all the female characters are either hookers or wives. This book is straight as hell, but its world is lurid.

There’s actually a DMT trip written into the book, which again, calls these feeble metaphysics into question.

RH:

What books, films, or fever dreams shaped Pandemonia? What’s in your stew?

JR:

My sources of inspiration include Army of Darkness, Final Fantasy 4-7, and 80s-90s spoof movies.

Again, without being a fart sniffer, I couldn’t have done this without Dante, Gilgamesh, and South Park.

RH:

There’s a strange sincerity to your book underneath the nihilist humor. Do you believe in redemption?

JR:

I’m laughing, and making humor, but I am also serious. Deadly serious.

If you’re a nihilist or atheist or something, you’re just being an edgy child. Now grow up, redeem yourself, and read my farty little book.

RH:

You’ve been called everything from a postmodern Tolkien to a bathhouse Lovecraft. How would you describe your literary lineage?

JR:

Who the Hell said that? I will fight them! Anyway, the first serious work of literature I read was Encyclopedia Brown. Then I read the Narnia books, Redwall, Dragonlance, Wheel of Time, and the Dark Tower series. I started the Song of Fire and Ice books, but quit when George R. R. Martin started writing about the Iron Bank and the Rothchilds replaced him with a fatter clone.

In college, the punchline of my philosophy major was Wittgenstein, who, during my senior year, mocked me for studying philosophy. It was annoying to get to the end of my course of studies and be told that it was a waste of time, that God was dead, and that the cannibals were coming to get me.

I’ve been doing penance for my illiteracy of late. Part of what sparked this journey is CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy, especially That Hideous Strength, which struck me as proto-Q-Anon. HP Lovecraft is superb and I regret not reading him earlier.

RH:

What’s next for Pandemonia? Is this a one-off exorcism or the first in a series of mythic transmissions?

JR:

MGM has optioned this for a $20M, so I’m set. I don’t even care that they recast my able-bodied, taciturn protagonist as a sassy black trans cripple.

Anyway, Mission accomplished: I wrote a book! But the real money is in merchandising. We’ll see how that goes before I write anything else.

RH:

If you had to deliver one prophecy for the future of culture, right this second, what would it be?

JR:

The Amish had it all figured out 2 centuries ago. The rest of us are cooked. Sorry if you missed the buggy.

RH:

Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. With your recent appearance on the Team Futurism podcast you’ve become a household name. It’s been great getting to know you before you inevitably become more famous than I am. Just don’t forget me on the way up.

You can get yourself a copy of Pandemonia on Amazon here.

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

If you like what I’m doing here at The Cultural Futurist, don’t forget to buy me a coffee.

On May 10th I threw a launch party for my new art gallery Fiume in Chelsea and people are still talking about it. You may have heard about it through my interview with our in-house artist Giovanni Pennacchietti of Gio’s Content Corner. Perhaps you attended our pre-launch party that doubled as a Manifesto Salon, or even attended the Grand Opening of Fiume itself.

I’ll be doing a proper writeup with pictures from the event soon, so as to tell the story of the notorious Fiume launch in action, but for now I wanted to introduce you to the one and only Skinless Frank. It’s time for readers of The Cultural Futurist get to know the man behind the legend.

My friend Nic Dolinger of The Maryland Free Press reached out to Skinless Frank to ask him some questions.

Nic Dolinger:

Hello, Skinless Frank. I’m excited to be interviewing you today, as your art has a signature style that has developed a major following in our sphere. I’ve gotta ask you: what was the inspiration behind the “Skinless Frank" name?

Skinless Frank:

Thanks for having me, Nic. The name stems from the character of Uncle Frank in the 1980s horror film Hellraiser. I’m a big fan of the film and the 80s aesthetic in general, so I chose a pseudonym that reflects this. I find his character in the film is interesting because he’s constantly searching for more and looking for an escape from the mundane. It’s a a good analogy for how and why I became an artist.

ND:

Do you have any aesthetic or intellectual influences that have contributed to your creative process?

SF:

For the longest time I’ve had an obsession with using digital technology in new artistic ways. A big influence for me was Francisco Goya's Black Paintings series and the way he combines war imagery with fantastical elements. He creates disturbing work that reflects both the inner and outer horror of reality. I wanted to do the same for the digital realm.

ND:

Your work evokes images of martial and spiritual glory. I feel the force of will animating great men of action, vigor and excellence. Yet I also recognize the fury, damnation, ruin and despair. Would you say you’re reconciling opposing elements or that it’s all part of the same thing?

SF:

I like to play around with opposing imagery in my work while leaving things open to interpretation. My goal is to capture the viewers imagination rather than deliver a specific message. Power lives in capturing the imagination in new forms. Messaging is not what I’m about because it undermines the complex reality of consciousness. I operate on a different level.

ND:

There’s an alchemical presence in a lot of your art. How would you characterize your worldview and spiritual vision?

SF:

Symbols and motifs can be extremely powerful. I experiment with them while building up my own mythology. I like that they can be ambiguous and I wouldn't want to pollute them with my own worldview. You can find my spiritual vision in my work. To put it simply, my art is the spiritual vision.

ND:

Where do you think your sector of the art world is headed?

SF:

Digital artists like me are being massively impacted by AI, so for better or worse this will impact my own approach. Yet it's important to keep an open mind with these things and look for the opportunities rather than focus on the negative. It’s about the mythology.

ND: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, Skinless Frank. I’m honored to have gotten a glimpse into your reality, and look forward to seeing more of your art in the future. It’s been a pleasure.

All images courtesy of Skinless Frank

Leave a comment

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

If you like what I’m doing here at The Cultural Futurist, don’t forget to buy me a coffee.

Hello! If you’ve been a member of The Cultural Futurist for a while, this type of email is nothing new to you. If you’ve joined recently, welcome to the aesthetic renaissance. Tomorrow, we’ll be going for a fun little trip.

During my last salon, we discussed all things art and philosophy as we performed live theatre and esoteric poetry. We engaged in hardcore debates and forbidden improv during a sacred Art Imperium that kicked off the foundation for our era. Word on the streets is that people are still discussing this event, so we’re keeping the momentum up on high at The Cultural Futurist.

We’re doing Speeches and Spectacle.

Cultural Futurist Salon VIII - Speeches and Spectacle is an online event. We’ll hang out and recite our speeches, everyone on the lineup getting a 5-10 minute slot. Our orators will hold the floor for the first half of the event. After they’ve commanded the stage, we will enter Total Spectacle Hour. Anyone who wants to read a speech will be given the stage until we shut the entire ordeal down.

You’re welcome to attend if you don’t want to recite anything. Your presence is enough. There are no limits as to what you can read, (only time limits) and you’ll have the choice to keep your camera off if you have any privacy concerns. No Cultural Futurist Salons are ever recorded. This is a members-only event, and what happens at my salons stays at my salons.

Get ready for Speeches and Spectacle. It’s loud and it’s controversial, just like the best orators of our time.

Our Ultimate Spectacle starts on April 19th at 2 PM EST. It will go on until 4 PM EST. This is literally tomorrow, so put it on your calendar before it’s too late. You can attend by becoming a paid member of The Cultural Futurist, which will cause the Zoom link to be displayed for you under the cut. Membership also grants you entrance to all my future salons and book clubs while giving you access to my writing archives and private chat.

So! Join the frontlines and grab a front-row seat to the creative vanguard, read your speeches to the craziest audience you’ll ever encounter, or simply stop by to have a great time and meet like-minded people. Become a member of The Cultural Futurist and join the spectacle before it has ended like it never even began.

Subscribe now

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

Don’t ask me if I’ll have any live recordings because the answer will always be the same: no. We’ve already been over this. Make the function or miss the regime change. You are free to show up late as long as you are intellectually appealing and don’t mind potentially missing your turn to recite your speech. The Zoom link is below and for paid subscribers old and new:

Read more

We’re creating tastemakers for the new regime.

We’ve got a new Culture and Couture Brief today. Our last brief was with creative writer and aspiring model Layla, and you can check it out here if you missed the release. Twice a month, I’ll feature someone who is leading the culture in an unexpected way. We’re inf…

Read more

Read more

We’re creating tastemakers for the new regime.

This is today’s Culture and Couture Brief. Our last brief was with creative producer and Seinfeld actor CK Steefel, and you can check it out here if you missed the action. Twice a month, I’ll feature someone who is leading the…

Read more

We’re creating tastemakers for the new regime.

This is today’s Culture and Couture Brief. Our last installment was with cultural critic Mo Diggs here, so you can check it out if you missed the release. Twice a month, I’ll feature someone who is leading the way on the aesth…

Read more

Remember when startups were about building apps and disrupting fallen industries? How quaint. We're about to enter an era where the most exciting ventures aren't about coding, unless we’re talking about coding entirely new cultures. Take a minute and think about the last time a tech company really blew your mind.

I’ll wait.

You’re bored, aren’t you? You’re bored with Silicon Valley. You miss the early days of the Bay Area in which pioneers and visionaries were breaking new ground. You miss the founder parties in which AI philosophers would mingle with creative geniuses focused on reinventing biotech. You miss the days when the blockchain was a cool idea you were discussing with your developer friends. Now the culture has declined and you’re sick of everything related to Silicon Valley.

So, what’s the problem? The problem is that Silicon Valley is boring. The solution is for us to create something better.

Chinese workers already behave like AI with their high-level conformity, yet somehow their ChatGPT overnight project DeepSeek managed to win over many OpenAI users. Today’s entrepreneurs who build products are in competition with monopolies that discard them like trash. These entrepreneurs are headed out the door on a one-way ticket to some shady self-help seminar. The same faction of the same names and the same faces run the same show. It’s all fake, and everyone authentic is done with the charade.

This traditional world of startups have become predictable at best. Another B2B platform, another marketplace app, and another AI tool promising to revolutionize something that doesn’t need revolutionizing. When a startup isn’t predictable it’s so over-the-top it seems like a prank. “Uber for sweatshops” was the latest pitch at Y-Combinator. We’re funding sweatshops in Silicon Valley now, but the efficient kind.

Nevertheless, anyone with good strategic foresight understands how the ways in which we’re accelerating will be defined by a new set of rules. Startups are, and have always been, set for disruption. What better way to create disruption than to disrupt the entire startup ecosystem itself? The political stage has left us with an exciting new market opportunity that we’re already seizing.

Real startups are about culture.

Welcome to the Age of the Cultural Startup

Always look on the fringes if you want to see what comes next. We’re seeing micro-communities spawn their own economies, aesthetics, philosophical frameworks, and nations. These aren't subcultures. They're startup cultures filling a lost void. Look at Praxis Nation. They recently received $525M to build a city based on what they define as heroic beauty. Praxis is cultural startup that only marks the beginning of this changeover.

Cultural startups are poised to create a new ruling class by producing myths for an ascendent elite. These ideas force founders and investors in Silicon Valley to become more innovative if they want to stay in the game. Real disruption is headed our way. Cultural startups will begin to reach critical mass in mid-2026.

So, how do you create a cultural startup? How do you know that a cultural startup will be a worthy investment? What is the anatomy of a cultural startup?

Read on.

The Anatomy of a Cultural Startup

What makes a cultural startup different from a traditional startup is the recognition that the culture itself is the product. The MVP isn't a platform or an app. It's a worldview gaining traction. The network effects aren't about user growth or financial data. They're about memetic proliferation.

Here are some features of cultural startups:

1. They're antifragile. Traditional startups can be killed by market shifts or tech changes. Cultural startups thrive on chaos and opposition. Each struggle makes each cultural startup more resilient on a memetic level. Cultural startups are generational projects that become more powerful with every thrust of competition. They are Nietzschean in essence.

2. They're infinitely scalable. You can copy code but you can't copy culture. Once a cultural startup hits critical mass, it shifts the zeitgeist in a way that affects the life of your family, friends, and neighbors. Culture is able to scale in a way that products cannot. Culture is always rising. Therefore, investing in culture is investing in civilization.

3. They create a third space. Many of us have been longing for a third space and seeking an end to the loneliness epidemic. That is where cultural startups come in. Whether they are a creative network state, bold new fashion institution, literary speakeasy, or some combination of all these things—they fill a lost void and bring people together IRL. Cultural startups are the third space we’ve all been waiting for.

   ---

How to Create a Cultural Startup

You may find a lot of this thought-provoking, but you also may have some doubts as to the rational execution of the whole thing. I’m going to tell you how to create a cultural startup because the process isn’t as complicated as you may think.

Read more

We’re back and we’re walking the tightrope. Get ready for another Nietzschean Book Club here at The Cultural Futurist. Last time, we discussed Twilight of the Idols, a classic title in which Nietzsche smashed false doctrines and idols with a hammer, sharing his life-affirming philosophy as he blasted the lies of universal morality. We discussed Nietzsche’s beef with Socrates and how he believed mankind had become weak in its pursuit of “progress.”

This time, we'll be discussing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the first of Nietzsche’s books that I ever picked up. It was my gateway drug to becoming who I am today. Thus Spoke Zarathustra introduced us to the concept of the Übermensch. It became a Bible for freethinkers throughout history, its brutal and beautiful poetry remaining with us to this day. If you don't have a physical copy, you can find yourself a digital copy here.

This is a book club for vitalists who see beyond the mundane and lead their own way, even in the most difficult of times. This is not some networking event and we are not interested in hearing about your views on celebrity culture or political media. Of course any of you celebrities and politicians in my audience are welcome to attend, as long as Nietzsche speaks to you in a way that ignites the fire in your soul. Simply do not talk about your tabloids at the book club. As long as you’re a freethinker who can stand alone through the test of time, you are welcome to join us. No slave moralists allowed. Do not show me resentment for keeping the rabble out.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re the only person who knows what it’s like to think in a very certain way, Thus Spoke Zarathustra will bring you home. You may need to embark on a difficult journey, but who wants things to be easy when easy things are for dull and unfortunate cowards? Let us triumph through our struggles and discuss what it means to be alive in an era that is finally starting to awaken. At least a little bit, I mean! You don’t need to be a scholar of Nietzsche to attend. It’s fine if you haven’t read any of his books, as long as you’re ready to learn. There are 5 books discussed in this series, and their order is as follows:

1. The Birth of Tragedy

2. Twilight of the Idols

3. Thus Spoke Zarathustra [you are here]

4. Beyond Good and Evil

5. On the Genealogy of Morals

This will give everyone the opportunity to digest these books rather than skim through them like dilettantes. This selection of books does not mean that other works of Nietzsche are off-limits. It simply means that Thus Spoke Zarathustra will be our main focus for this particular event. Get ready to transcend the herd mentality and walk the tightrope toward a higher species. It’s the next step of human evolution and it’s not taking place in Silicon Valley. It’s taking place at The Cultural Futurist.

I’m offering a 40% off Lifetime Discount to anyone who joins The Cultural Futurist as a paid subscriber for the rest of this month. Why? I want to you enjoy the pleasures of my community, even if you’re a temporarily embarrassed aristocrat. You’ll be able to take part in my book clubs—starting with this one—and attend my salons. You’ll even be able to join my private group chat and view all of my locked posts. What are you waiting for?

Get 40% off forever

Share

Share The Cultural Futurist

This Nietzschean Book Club will take place on February 22nd @ 4 PM EST. If you become a paid subscriber you’ll see the Zoom link under the cut. If you’re already a paid subscriber, you’re one of the select few. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon, even if you just want to come hang out. What matters is that you’re a freethinker who is on the level. It’s our time now. Don’t miss it.

Zoom link under the cut:

Read more