I love you, guys.
I am not going to say anything here to make you feel bad, guilty for enlisting yourself or others to join in on the folly of participating in the most effective tool for making people NEVER choose to align with Voluntartyism. I promise. I still want to believe that Schramke is your friend and is just so close to the project that he’s blind, like many of you are, as to the purpose of this artistically manipulative editing. But here it is…
Wait! But first, I have to get something off my chest.
Last week, I said that Ep. 2 was turning out to be more of a lesson for us insiders and not a vehicle for outsider transformation. Like, hey, we can make the best of it. Everyone went ballistic that I said that. I still have people getting upset I didn’t echo the crowd in last week’s review. But after Ep. 3, the narrative has changed. I feel like I’m listening to Two Weeks To Flatten The Curve: Voluntaryist Edition, where everyone is changing the goal posts with each episode. Anyone???
Even though I was right from the start and now they know I’m right, it doesn’t matter. And I’m wrong for being right because “transformation of humanity was never the goal. It was for us, for our own transformation.” Well, then, why THE FUCK does it need to be on HB fuckinO for the whole world to see??? Jesus H Christ! You, people! It’s one thing to say, “we can learn from this.” It’s another to turn people OFF to Voluntaryism in a big, public way. And even though I’ve been pretty much on point all along, I’m somehow the bad guy? It hurts to be wrong, but instead of being a big, bag of dicks about it, just fucking say so. I can be cool. Whatever… let me be your boogeyman. I’m easier to take on than the state, I guess.
So, this week, we are learning that the show has shifted in such a way as to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the program is completely about people and not remotely about Voluntaryism, except to demonize it by association and manipulation. Everyone is all like, “well, that was the point all along.”
Mmmm… no. Well, maybe it was the point, but that’s not what I was told. That’s not what Schramke was telling the Rose’s, at least not according to them. It seems we went from “This is going to be the most revolutionary thing for anarchy ever” to “if it just changes 5% of the people, it’s still a good thing” to “it doesn’t matter if we turn everyone off, it was never supposed to be about anything else but us.” Ironically, if everyone said from the get go, “hey, we made a fun personal documentary. It’s going to make Voluntaryism look like a giant dumpster fire no one is ever going to want touch and obv, that’s why HBO picked it up, but it’ll be cool to see our friends on TV” my expectations would have been a lot, lot, lot more… reasonable. “But, Karen, you can’t have reasonable expectations! If they aren’t gushing with saccharine, over the top worshipping on a cult-like level, then you’re not one of us. One of us. ONE OF US.”
Crowd chants “ONE-OF-US! ONE-OF-US! ONE-OF-US!”
And now, for a review in which I was pressured heavily to self-censor but have decided to pursue anyway… and, because, nobody gives a fuck anymore about this series trashing public perception except that it’s fun to emotionally exploit our friends each week (I don’t feel comfy about that, btw), we get to lie to ourselves about what it is a little more or for “fuck that stupid Karen.” Something, something, something. Anyway, rant end.
Ok, now, here it is:
My review of Ep 3 part 1.
This is as effective a tool to promote anarchy as Jason Blum’s other film The Purge: Anarchy. This series is about as effective to getting people to consider anarchy as the State of Chaz. This series is as likely to entice people to hear more of our message as CIA rioters in all black and masks showing up to protest rallies, bashing police cars with baseball bats before lighting them on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails into store fronts all the while being labeled “anarchists” by the mainstream media. Except all those things were fake… and repulsive, and this is real… kinda. Well, not really, but that’s what this review is for. To explain why this explanation of anarchists is no more real than any of these other things that are fake AF.
The reality is: not all press is good press. Stop lying to yourselves. You’ve been played. I’m not saying that your friends played you. Obviously, most of you still don’t see it, so neither do your friends, likely. Please, don’t get me wrong, but it must be said. The damage here is not merely for the optics of Voluntaryism.
It’s ACTUALLY WORSE than mere optics.
If you ever found a really great Larken Rose video you liked to share with people to effectively spread the message of Voluntaryism, it won’t work anymore on anyone who knows Larken is affiliated with this series and has seen it before knowing an anarchist. They’ll be like, “that’s that guy from that dumpster fire TV show!” Especially if Larken and Amanda keep repeating that being affiliated with this “is a good thing.” To “normies,” there is nothing good about being affiliated with what is being shown to them in this series. If your friend or coworker saw up to or beyond Ep 3 of this series, forget about that video having the sobering effect it once did on a tainted audience. They don’t want to hear from a racist who entertains the company of hedonistic, drug addicted murderers. At least, they don’t want to hear from him on anything personal and significant. I know that’s not who Larken Rose is. It’s not who any of you truly are or who I am for that matter. Thanks to this series, though, that’s what the public sees of Voluntaryists now.
Stop asking people that know you or know of you to tell you what you want to hear about this. That’s not going to be honest or objective feedback.
I say this with as much kindness as I can muster.
Wake THE FUCK up!
The only new people you are going to attract to Voluntaryism conferences now (who have seen this series) are lunatics on the fringe, more “Properts.” It’s going to attract people looking for more drama and thrills in their miserable lives. When they meet up with the soberingly dull reality of who we are and what we are about, I hope they don’t decide to create their own drama and thrills to our lives. If that happens, things in real life could get bad for anarchists and Voluntaryists very quickly.
Sorry, but the likelihood is that anyone who has seen this series and wasn’t already reformed will never take Voluntaryism seriously.
And before you say, “we are only halfway through, you have to see how it ends before you judge,” I am going to tell you right now why it doesn’t matter how it ends. If they suddenly turn and go in the direction we had hoped earlier on, it would now only make the effect worse.
So, I have just said some strong things, hard to believe things. Time for the explanation.
What if someone showed you a lovely dessert. It looks beautiful. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way it looks whatsoever. It’s enticing and appealing. They told you how they made it all down to one last secret ingredient added in the end which makes it the healthiest thing you ever ate. Man, you’d be excited. Now, imagine that secret ingredient was a high dose of pure cod liver oil or an opened desiccated fecal transplant capsules sprinkled around. Not so yummy, now? Every time you take a bite, you taste a mixture of dessert and strong fish liver flavor or ew, feces. You gag. By the third bite, you’ve thrown up all over yourself. If they offer you a fourth bite with the caveat, “we added a cherry and extra whipped cream which tastes delicious (as you know), and this will make it more palatable…” You’d look at it, vomit still burning in your throat and nostrils while equating cherries and whipped cream with fish- or feces flavored sweets. You’d be forever turned off to eating those again, too.
That was the point of this show. And for that reason, I hope to God this show does NOT bring up anymore of the great people or fantastic speakers or speeches or good common sense to “rectify” what this series has done to destroy the public’s perception of anarchy. Anything of substance added now to this vomit pie will be equated with the same thing that made you vomit in the first place. They won’t hear it now. Moreover, they’ll be turned off and repulsed by it, even if it is good common sense. This is perception manipulation 101, kids. The viewers’ minds have been artfully manipulated to equate anything to do with you, your message, your events and your community with something they never want in their personal lives. I’m talking ever. You can read more about that phenomenon in Art Of Liberty Foundation’s detailed analysis using screenshots from Ep 2.
The only people that want to eat shit are self-flagellants like Propert. Now ask yourself, honestly, does the movement require more of that?
What’s to come?
Brace yourselves.
It may get worse for anything good we associate with anarchy. I suspect the use and talking points of Dayna Martin have only begun to ruin people’s views of unschooling or how Voluntaryists homeschool their kids. When she was shown on stage saying, “This is how anarchists teach their kids” in episode 3, I got a bad feeling this was foreshadowing more intimate looks at abhorrent, freak show parenting models and the outcomes of their poor, misguided children. If you tell anyone, any normal, non-Voluntaryist person that you are associated with people in this show and you are unschooling, be careful they don’t call CPS on you. I’m absolutely serious.
They also highlighted BitClub this week, showing multiple little photos and video clips of Joby Weeks. I suspect this is why they spent so much energy rehashing the crypto crash story twice in this one episode, starting with it and then circling back to it again toward the end. (As far as “art” goes, that was redundant.) It’s also the second episode disproportionately focused on cryptocurrency which is not an exclusively anarchist interest, moreover, is something many anarchists buck at.
Crypto is also boring for most viewers. It’s not really a topic moving plot, unless… Well, since most people in the world of “normies” have never heard of BitClub or Joby Weeks or give two flying fucks about crypto the editors used it to cement the importance of cryptocurrency to this anarchist community (it’s not) in the minds of the “normie” viewers.
(Hey, I thought this story was about honesty!)
Why? So that before this series is through, they can make a nice tie-in to the BitClub extortion scandal and arrest of Joby Weeks (yes, the same guy who had the lead on the stolen ATM machine) in such a way that the “normies” will be running from unregulated and decentralized forms of exchange and begging for taxation.
If they drop in any mention of Ross Ulbricht in correlation to any of this, just know, that guy’s never getting out of prison.
This Voluntaryist ideas presented in this show aren’t polarizing to the general public. They’re not.
They’re REPELLENT.
If you can’t see it yet, I suggest you read this other thing I wrote about perspectives. You have been sent on a mission looking for dandelions. You are so close that it’s blinding you, like trying to see the details of your hand when it covers your eyes, and you see nothing at all. So, to all those still cheering for how effective this tool will be-even for a few, I now hope to God you are wrong about the scope of its efficacy. If it effective at anything, it’s the opposite of promoting liberty. So, please, please, please, stop promoting the misguided notion that this program is important to our movement. The best thing for Voluntaryism would be that the majority of people on earth don’t bother to see it at all. It would be great if they never heard of it, and then they wouldn’t get the resulting wrong ideas about Voluntaryism purported there in. Yes, this series is shaping perception of Voluntaryism, and you are daft if you say it’s not.
I’m not just being a Negative Nelly about all this. I’m not trying to destroy or shit on Voluntaryism by calling a spade a spade with this series or hoping no one sees it. This series does wreckage to Voluntaryism all by itself. I’m saying and doing quite the opposite. What I am doing is distancing myself and hopefully most Voluntaryists I know as far the fuck away from this train wreck of a series as humanely possible. It hardly represents the traumatic events as they happened. It does not in any way, shape or manner reflect our real day to day existence as anarchists which do have some important distinctions to statist lifestyles.
Voluntaryists are personally and individually responsible. We believe we own ourselves and are ultimately responsible for everything in our own lives. It’s often tedious and boring. This means, we’re sitting behind a computer screen researching food additives and preservatives to find how they might affect our children even in small doses. We don’t outsource as much. We learn to grow our own food and build up depleted soil. Many of us spend a lot of work, time and effort on hot days building aquaponic structures in our yards. We forego vacations or a second car to have one parent stay at home with the kids. We learn about solar energy, water filtration, alternative financial investments that are actually lucrative, and we share the things we learn with others in our community.
Our lives are full, but not of TV show drama. The reality is that even the people in the series at that time weren’t back to back life or death complications as depicted in this series. I know what I am describing wouldn’t make for a good TV show. It doesn’t have to. It should never have been on HBO. And just like the Covid narrative, I would have been crucified for saying that 3 weeks ago. But now, it’s evident to most sensible folk.
I want everyone to please stop promoting this highly exaggerated series to friends to share with “normies” as a conversion tool.
It doesn’t work that way.
Yes, I heard the story of anarchists screening an episode of this show with friends of friends and talking to them before and afterwards and making a conversion. Or someone finding out someone they knew was in the show and then thinking after the first episode, maybe government isn’t the answer. You can’t be in the living room, holding hands with every “normie” in America much less the HBO watching world, talking them out of the misperceptions they are getting through this series. You can’t. If this was a scientific study on how this show affected “normies” who don’t know any Voluntaryists, your example would be considered an unblinding of the test.
So, let’s see a blinded test on how average “normies” (whom we do not know) who are drawn to watch this show perceive it. We need something we can all understand so we can get an objective pulse on their feelings and reactions without our commentary outside the show filling in missing context holes for them. Let’s take a trip on Twitter to see what the “normies” are saying about this program.
This week, I went to the search bar of Twitter. I put “HBO The Anarchists” into the search bar. I read every single comment for pages and pages and pages and pages to get some context on feedback and what people on Twitter in the general public are saying about this show. Why? Because last week people were putting my feet to the fire about suggesting this series wouldn’t convert anyone. Of course, now, the narrative changed so it seems less relevant. I’m doing this anyway. I waited all week to share my findings. I feel like if a group of people are going to attack my views, I want to defend myself. Even if they all agree with me this week and are doing some kind of mental gymnastics to pretend they never said that and the new narrative is all there is. It wasn’t going to promote anarchy, it was going to slow the spread of anarchy. Oh-Kay! Sure!
I will start by saying that 95% of the comments were from ancoms and Antifa who were angry a series about ancaps was called The Anarchists because we “aren’t real anarchists.” Most of them aren’t really even watching the show. They’re just big mad. So, I filtered out that particular 95% of comments to get to the true “normies.” Also, this should be said.
Dear Jason Blum,
Ancoms and Antifa want their own TV series. I realize why you don’t need to make this series as they publicly defame themselves enough with their own antics on the news all the time, and of course, they promote communism. Most people in America still don’t openly want that. But, give ancoms a chance.
Yours, sincerely, Special K
Now, for some good news! Of the remaining 5% of comments on the series that were not big, mad ancoms, 1% was “us.” I thought that was a shockingly, large margin. Hopefully, that means that most of the people actually watching this program have context. Also, hopefully, that means a lot of “normies” are not watching this program.
The last 4% are the bona fide “normies,” our target audience as far as this little research project is concerned.
I noticed most of their comments having a similar ring to them. I will not share the excessively rude ones. I don’t see the point of that. This was the most prevalent take:
“Is anyone else watching this series? It’s crazy! The people in it are so weird you’ll think it’s a parody.”
Then, several comments said something similar to this:
“The parents on this show teaching their kids to say ‘fuck’… Face palm.”
And one woman that said,
“the guy just said he’d rather take his kids to a porn set than public school… just, no.”
What my readers might notice is that these are exactly the problems I pointed out in the show that I suspected the “normies” would focus on.
As of Friday, there were a total of ZERO positive comments about the *people or *concepts in The Anarchists on Twitter from “normies.” ZERO. ZERO. ZERO. ZERO. ZERO. Ok, just wanted to make sure you guys in the back got it. Zero. And that didn’t include Ep 3. I suspect, after the third episode shit show, things couldn’t have gotten better.
The show itself? Yes, they like it. Your friend’s “art” is appreciated. They are enjoying a ride into the freakdom, watching some bad people doing bad things without having to experience it themselves personally. They aren’t wanting to join your club.
So, whatever you think or thought or hoped about “normies” watching this and getting it or getting you, you are wrong.
It’s like I said. It’s not polarizing. It’s definitely not provocative. It’s repellent, the lifestyle or more accurately anarchy.
When 100% of the “normies” say things akin to “just no” you have to admit you were wrong. You can stop getting mad at people (like yours truly) for telling you this isn’t going to play well with the “normies.”
Ok, in Part 2, I will show specific examples of how in the series perception is bent through manipulative clips and images. Stay tuned.