@coolcalmcollected @iris_meredith

So much juicy discussion that Mastodon has been hiding from me in the black hole of missing filtered notifications.

The thing about the "nerds rule the world" culture of the 90s is that it was about perquisition. A subculture of folk who had been abused for being weird and different were suddenly in positions where being weird and different gave them access to the perks granted to those few who possessed the secret knowledge that would build a new future.

Exchange-value was not the primary motivator, ego-value was. This was coupled with exchange-value, yes, but only as receipts. It was proof that being smart made one superior to those who tormented the smart kids.

It was about power and prestige, mediated by money, perhaps, but power and prestige, nonetheless.

But again, that was a generation ago. The triumphalism has passed, and the culture has become a syncretization of that old woundedness and an influx of folk who came into the industry simply because it was, for a time, the next doctor or engineer, drawn by status and promised job security (unmourned retrofuture promises) without any attachment to the pain of having been outsiders.

Naturalist cosmogony, which would flatten all explanation to a monolith ("capitalism"), does not leave space for lived history, reducing all past, present and future to an ahistorical narrative of fetish objects.