Navigating Nonsense: A Guide to the Vibe Shift
A Venn diagram, and accompanying commentary, to help you navigate the vibe shift.
Over in New Media,
, and ’s Substack are shouting “Trust us! We are not mainstream”. Riding that “vibe” shift1.We also have the revered public intellectuals Theo Von, Logan Paul and Andrew Shultz. Easily malleable comedians who, after ingesting too many edibles, started philosophising on air, inviting to their boudoir the OG bro, the Donald, ruthlessly cross examining him and sharing their own, vast expertise of government.
Joe Rogan, the ultimate Brolisopher, officially crossed the proverbial Delaware River (not the Rubicon, see what I did there?) to slaughter the dems at the election and forced upon us his nuanced political analysis and metaphysical musings (stick to MMA and mediocre comedy).2
Zuckerberg 2.0 is awkwardly lurking around on podcasts, oddly boasting about masculinity trying to prove BROs he is not beta (meta?). If anything, bowing to the emperor only makes you look more like a B*TCH! (Footage below shows Zuck at an MMA fight looking like he totally belongs).
Now firmly involved in politics, oddball martian extraordinaire Musk rebrands himself as NazAI (or Lil Naz X?). Yeah why not. After all, before Space X’s rocket-grabbing chopsticks, there were V2s and Wernher von Braun3.
Peter Thiel - seen below revelling at the prospect of destroying all muggles - is the Éminence grise of the new American Techno-empire4. He installed his padawan as VP5, also known as “doormat” to Trump.
In general AI/Tech, you’ve got your standard NPCs: Altman, Denis, Dario and Liang Wenfeng building our new AI overlords (or B2C SaaS… really). Oh and our favourite mail man Bezos of course, all looking at where the wind is blowing.
In Politics, Trump is now Imperator Donaldus Julius, with a Potemkin Congress and Supreme Court, picking on the EU, rather than the CCP (easier target, but also the only jurisdiction aiming to regulate tech7 ;-) And I hear AOC is in contention for the Dems8? Good luck with that.
And at the centre of it all is yours truly A.K. Bell: polymath; Renaissance man; occasional flautist (I play the flute9). I am Neo from the Matrix, holding this entire circus together, dodging nonsense in bullet time.
Subscribe and pop that red pill, let me take you to wonderland and show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…10
Bari, The Free Press and Substack actually are doing a pretty good job of it, huge fan guys. Xoxo
The podcast bros on the other hand… not so much… Credit to the FT weekend for the visual. Read the excellent piece here: https://www.ft.com/content/9f2be125-ba1b-4062-ab2d-4b2977db20b0
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Read his manifesto here: https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/28/jd-vance-peter-thiel-donors-big-tech-trump-vp/
Seriously, how much does this guy look like an egg? It’s uncanny! LOOK!
Anne Applebaum’s excellent piece here, as ever, incredibly well informed about European politics.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/aoc-mark-cuban-democrats-2028?srsltid=AfmBOoqDmD-3JjtCOCUoLMMbdOusqwYBOJJ-eSILraMrZxIGGwXiXvpr
Stewart Pearson - Goolding inquiry:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/red-pill-and-blue-pill