Christopher Lasch’s Angry Ghost
@ghostofchristo1.bsky.social
In a dying culture, narcissism embodies the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment.
New essay. From triumphal 1990s ideas about an American century underpinned by Internet power, to the mid-2010s belief that social media was a “global conversation,” to mid-2020s anxieties about communication breakdowns and civil war. open.substack.com/pub/paroxysm...
Managing the Global Discourse
Care, Content Moderation, and Cultural Imperialism
open.substack.com
September 24, 2025 at 3:42 PM
New essay. From triumphal 1990s ideas about an American century underpinned by Internet power, to the mid-2010s belief that social media was a “global conversation,” to mid-2020s anxieties about communication breakdowns and civil war. open.substack.com/pub/paroxysm...
A new essay on the ideals of “inclusive capitalism” and late-2010s content moderation. Could social media platforms transcend their origins and become the new and inclusive global civic sphere (overseen, of course, by “machines of loving grace”)? open.substack.com/pub/paroxysm...
Stewardship or Censorship?
Trust, Safety, and the New Sacred Project of Content Moderation
open.substack.com
September 16, 2025 at 7:29 AM
A new essay on the ideals of “inclusive capitalism” and late-2010s content moderation. Could social media platforms transcend their origins and become the new and inclusive global civic sphere (overseen, of course, by “machines of loving grace”)? open.substack.com/pub/paroxysm...
My attempt to capture what the Twitter platform was and how it functioned in the 2010s, as well as what its long term legacies might be. open.substack.com/pub/paroxysm...
What, Exactly, Was Twitter?
One of the perils of trying to theorise social media is that we often find ourselves talking about the status quo ante, the period immediately before.
open.substack.com
August 19, 2025 at 8:26 AM
My attempt to capture what the Twitter platform was and how it functioned in the 2010s, as well as what its long term legacies might be. open.substack.com/pub/paroxysm...
Reposted by Christopher Lasch’s Angry Ghost
Part of being a good online citizen in 2025 is resisting the urge to put the word "epistemic" in front of any random noun.
August 15, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Part of being a good online citizen in 2025 is resisting the urge to put the word "epistemic" in front of any random noun.
Part of being a good online citizen in 2025 is resisting the urge to put the word "epistemic" in front of any random noun.
August 15, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Part of being a good online citizen in 2025 is resisting the urge to put the word "epistemic" in front of any random noun.
Reposted by Christopher Lasch’s Angry Ghost
Paper books printed prior to 2022 will become the currency of the knowledge economy of the future… and I’m not even joking.
The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests
The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests
Academics mull the need for the digital equivalent of low-background steel
Feature For artificial intelligence researchers, the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, changed the world in a way similar to the detonation of the first atomic bomb.…
dlvr.it
June 15, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Paper books printed prior to 2022 will become the currency of the knowledge economy of the future… and I’m not even joking.
2022: “OMG! Elon is a genius! His bold leadership shows that we can make mass tech layoffs with no impact on the user experience at all! Let’s make this an industry standard.
Today’s user experience on Twitter:
Today’s user experience on Twitter:
May 24, 2025 at 2:32 PM
2022: “OMG! Elon is a genius! His bold leadership shows that we can make mass tech layoffs with no impact on the user experience at all! Let’s make this an industry standard.
Today’s user experience on Twitter:
Today’s user experience on Twitter:
"I reject the system!"
"Great! The system offers you the option of identifying as someone who rejects the system, just one among the many Valid identity expressions we respect and recognise."
"Oh, alright then."
"Great! The system offers you the option of identifying as someone who rejects the system, just one among the many Valid identity expressions we respect and recognise."
"Oh, alright then."
May 10, 2025 at 5:54 AM
"I reject the system!"
"Great! The system offers you the option of identifying as someone who rejects the system, just one among the many Valid identity expressions we respect and recognise."
"Oh, alright then."
"Great! The system offers you the option of identifying as someone who rejects the system, just one among the many Valid identity expressions we respect and recognise."
"Oh, alright then."
It occurs to me that in 3-4 years time, professors on here are going to be talking about how none of their students know what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is.
April 28, 2025 at 10:07 AM
It occurs to me that in 3-4 years time, professors on here are going to be talking about how none of their students know what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is.
“It’s funny that the two leading right-wing ideologies at the moment are just different forms of Marxism: Land the progressive eschatological futurist variant … Girard the critical variant devoted to the debunking of ideologies.”—John Pistelli
April 17, 2025 at 10:04 AM
“It’s funny that the two leading right-wing ideologies at the moment are just different forms of Marxism: Land the progressive eschatological futurist variant … Girard the critical variant devoted to the debunking of ideologies.”—John Pistelli
“Verification puts an end to the workings of truth (for truth, if it exists, is something to be fought over, whereas verification transforms it into a fait accompli).”—Jean Baudrillard
April 13, 2025 at 1:31 PM
“Verification puts an end to the workings of truth (for truth, if it exists, is something to be fought over, whereas verification transforms it into a fait accompli).”—Jean Baudrillard
Replacing your institutional cultures—built up over centuries—with a simulacrum made up of rules, regulations, and “best practice” because of “efficiency.” Then watching your entire society dissolve as the cheat codes become universally available and trivial to implement.
April 13, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Replacing your institutional cultures—built up over centuries—with a simulacrum made up of rules, regulations, and “best practice” because of “efficiency.” Then watching your entire society dissolve as the cheat codes become universally available and trivial to implement.
AI “bulldozes everything local, everything intimate, everything singular and idiosyncratic and irreducible to statistical regularities—and tells us the only thing that is to count as human reality is what gets reflected back to us by our machines.”—Justin Smith-Ruiu
March 23, 2025 at 1:20 PM
AI “bulldozes everything local, everything intimate, everything singular and idiosyncratic and irreducible to statistical regularities—and tells us the only thing that is to count as human reality is what gets reflected back to us by our machines.”—Justin Smith-Ruiu
Reposted by Christopher Lasch’s Angry Ghost
The Right Libertarian => Populist Anger that things are getting worse => More right libertarian policies => More misguided anger that things are getting worse => Emergence of Anarcho Capitalism opportunities to accelerate disintegration => People get angrier death spiral seems inescapable.
March 20, 2025 at 9:02 AM
The Right Libertarian => Populist Anger that things are getting worse => More right libertarian policies => More misguided anger that things are getting worse => Emergence of Anarcho Capitalism opportunities to accelerate disintegration => People get angrier death spiral seems inescapable.
The thing about Reform UK—across all its warring factions—is that it is fundamentally a right-libertarian party committed to the type of turbo-Thatcherism that caused the problems many of its supporters are ostensibly voting against.
March 20, 2025 at 8:38 AM
The thing about Reform UK—across all its warring factions—is that it is fundamentally a right-libertarian party committed to the type of turbo-Thatcherism that caused the problems many of its supporters are ostensibly voting against.
One way of looking at Twitter/X is that the Musk regime effectively “abolished the police” (decimating the staff tasked with moderation and responding to hacking and impersonation incidents) and is now facing predictable (and accelerating) breakdowns in order and trust.
March 18, 2025 at 9:30 PM
One way of looking at Twitter/X is that the Musk regime effectively “abolished the police” (decimating the staff tasked with moderation and responding to hacking and impersonation incidents) and is now facing predictable (and accelerating) breakdowns in order and trust.
Everything (everything) now reframed (often retrospectively) according to the binary logic of “whose side are you on?” With whom do you affiliate? All issues and cultural phenomena implicitly tagged with moral and political metadata, coded left or right.
March 16, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Everything (everything) now reframed (often retrospectively) according to the binary logic of “whose side are you on?” With whom do you affiliate? All issues and cultural phenomena implicitly tagged with moral and political metadata, coded left or right.
We really are doomed, aren’t we?
March 15, 2025 at 7:26 PM
We really are doomed, aren’t we?
Reposted by Christopher Lasch’s Angry Ghost
Coming up at Verdurin: Accelerationist Society and its Future with @mrewanmorrison.bsky.social and Nicholas Blincoe.
When Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto finds an afterlife in the cult veneration of Luigi Mangione, are we doomed by the Unabomber’s predictions? /
When Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto finds an afterlife in the cult veneration of Luigi Mangione, are we doomed by the Unabomber’s predictions? /
March 13, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Coming up at Verdurin: Accelerationist Society and its Future with @mrewanmorrison.bsky.social and Nicholas Blincoe.
When Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto finds an afterlife in the cult veneration of Luigi Mangione, are we doomed by the Unabomber’s predictions? /
When Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto finds an afterlife in the cult veneration of Luigi Mangione, are we doomed by the Unabomber’s predictions? /
Only the most oblivious Oxbridge version of university teaching will survive the AI revolution. The tutorial system (fellow plus 1-3 students). Examination by viva voce. Academics who detest publication as “vulgar and rather American,” so their ideas stay out of LLMs.
March 12, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Only the most oblivious Oxbridge version of university teaching will survive the AI revolution. The tutorial system (fellow plus 1-3 students). Examination by viva voce. Academics who detest publication as “vulgar and rather American,” so their ideas stay out of LLMs.
Those who find themselves consistently holding oppositional or "unpopular" views not only have to resign themselves to regular failure. They also have to endure having their ideas temporarily taken up (and ultimately trashed and discredited) by opportunists when it suits them.
March 10, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Those who find themselves consistently holding oppositional or "unpopular" views not only have to resign themselves to regular failure. They also have to endure having their ideas temporarily taken up (and ultimately trashed and discredited) by opportunists when it suits them.
Reposted by Christopher Lasch’s Angry Ghost
My line of response to UBI people is, sounds great, are you planning on raising taxes to give everyone £10k a year or are you cutting £10k from existing welfare spending? The answer is always, we will get it from billionaires...
March 9, 2025 at 4:21 PM
My line of response to UBI people is, sounds great, are you planning on raising taxes to give everyone £10k a year or are you cutting £10k from existing welfare spending? The answer is always, we will get it from billionaires...
“What happened to reality? Well, somebody took a picture of it, and ever since we haven’t needed it anymore.”—Fredric Jameson
March 9, 2025 at 1:19 PM
“What happened to reality? Well, somebody took a picture of it, and ever since we haven’t needed it anymore.”—Fredric Jameson
Systems of audit and accounting that define the basic principles of social reproduction on which a society depends for its future existence as “costs” that must be minimised or avoided. That will ultimately deem social reproduction itself an “unaffordable luxury.”
March 9, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Systems of audit and accounting that define the basic principles of social reproduction on which a society depends for its future existence as “costs” that must be minimised or avoided. That will ultimately deem social reproduction itself an “unaffordable luxury.”
Harry Crane and his giant computer room. The desire to automate “creative” and replace it with pure predictive data. We are all Don Draper now.
March 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Harry Crane and his giant computer room. The desire to automate “creative” and replace it with pure predictive data. We are all Don Draper now.