Millennial Woes and the lawyers
I did a few articles about the nationalist YouTuber Millennial Woes that described his journey from a depressed millennial stuck at home to an autonomous, if notorious, public figure—a progression that took place over roughly ten years, from about 2012 to 2022. What actuated the change was MW’s decision to speak with what amounted to honesty taken almost to excruciation with a particular slant on radical right politics—itself being very realistic to the point of excruciation.
The outcome was that he became both notorious and also underwent genuine growth. This is because to grow you must be prepared to expose yourself to pain—in this case, emotional pain but in other fields direct physical pain. There is no real growth without pain, no real joy without pain—no real love without hate.
I watched a more recent video from Woes and noticed that he spoke about the movement—the nationalist movement he acts as a secular shaman for—as having as its most urgent need “lawyers”. This is a natural development but it is also a cautionary sign. When we go through a period of growth there will come a time when the growth spurt is exhausted and we consolidate our gains; it is not possible to grow without consolidation—without laying down laws. However, this consolidation process is itself a danger.
Woes broke through his depression because he opened himself up to reality and the world and so risked exposure and pain—he received real feedback from the world, often very hostile (the press at his door). However, it was this very self-exposure—whereby he risked being caught out and humiliated—that led to his growth. Now he has experienced the joy that comes from growth, now he has “something to lose”—his reputation as “Millennial Woes” the streamer, his financial autonomy, his influence online, his friends, and so on. He exited the prison he constructed in his bedroom during his depression but now he has begun to construct a new prison.
We hire lawyers, journalists, PR people, and other miserable people to protect us. To fence us in with the “best interpretation of the facts” so that we can hold on to the image we sell other people. “Your Honour, my client is far from being a mentally unstable nutcase with an unquenchable panty fetish but was merely in a psychotic state due to a medication he was prescribed for his insomnia by his doctor, a highly reputable physician in practice for 20 years, who is willing to testify that such adverse reactions are common in 23.3% of cases according to…”
That’s a lawyer for you. You know societies are dead—just like contemporary America—when they are dominated by lawyers and journalists (who are all “PR people” in the broadest sense). We hire them because we think we can hold on to what “what’s ours”—our reputation (to ourselves and to others), our money, our land…ultimately, our lives. Yet the interpretations these people provide—that we ourselves provide when we “play lawyer”—make us go dead. We don’t grow, we go dead, we are depressed…we’re compromised negotiators.
Well, we’re safe—or we think we are, though we’re always nervous someone will catch us out; and we’re depressed…safe but depressed. When Woes first broke out it was easy in a sense once he got going, started to be honest; he had no reputation to lose, no career to lose, nothing to lose—no money or status; no expectations. Now he has consolidated he has something to lose, so he wants to protect it—so he thinks about lawyers, legal advice…
That is the way to go dead again, the way to go back into depression—perhaps at a higher level, with income and independence, but still as dead. It’s when you’re watching your back all the time…You know, you grow a big hipster beard and start a YouTube account to “teach masculinity” and it gets pretty successful but then the videos from that other account you had where you were paid to push dildos up your ass on a livestream come out (true story, bro). It’s a pretty miserable way to live—one that is completely unreal and sees no actual growth, even if you make a living out of it (perhaps you like the thrill that you might be caught out any minute, like the time you swiped those panties, but odds are you’ll just experience constant low-level stress that “those videos” will leak out and ruin your reputation as a “masculinity expert”).
It’s what people mean when they say you should “take risks”…it’s hackneyed but correct. What they mean is you should open yourself up to experience again, forget the “lawyers” and instead risk exposure and humiliation. “I can’t say that because I’m a nationalist, nationalists don’t say that”, “I can’t say that because I’m a Mormon, Mormons don’t say that”, “I can’t say that because I’m a progressive, progressives don’t say that”. These self-policing narratives—often not objectively connected to what it means to be a nationalist, a Mormon, or a progressive—will prevent growth, will keep you from risk.
In MW’s case, where it comes down to expression, it means saying things that people may regard as corny, naïve, “mentally deranged”, “evil”—and being on the receiving end of contempt, pity, and sneers; it means you will be embarrassed and caught out—people will try to humiliate you. They will take a video you did or an article you wrote and wave it in the air, “Well lookey-here boys, looks like we’ve got ‘one of those’ on our hands…that’s a nice vidy-wideo you have there…”
If you want to grow, you have to risk that—risk people cutting you off, risk losing your reputation, risk mockery. Your reputation is a prison: your reputation is bullshit—that’s why the Buddhists say “burn your reputation”. We want reality, we want growth, we don’t want to play it safe.
Even this article exemplifies the trend—I had a little voice in my head that said, “It’s too many articles about Millennial Woes, it’s abnormal, you can’t, it’s obsessive,” then I started to write, because this website isn’t a neatly-packaged media product where you get a box-set on “Millennial Woes Parts 1-4” with a definite story to tell and sell you on; it’s just an organic development with a certain theme but considerable variation on the theme—with articles that arrive as and when intuition demands. “You can’t do it, it’s socially unacceptable to write so many articles on one person—it doesn’t look good.” That is the internal lawyer, journalist, and PR person—the internal nag-hag that must be killed.
If you don’t kill the nag-hag, you will never do anything. The sneers, gloating, and humiliation enacted by others in fact come about because they can’t bear the power of experience. The reason they wanted to shut MW up and demonise him in the first place was because he said what they really wanted—to live in a racially homogenous society. It’s what they all want but can’t say because it would “ruin their reputation”—Woes himself says that he can’t understand why the people he wants to save (i.e. his race) hate him. They don’t, they love him—but they have reputations to lose and they’re cowards so they scream hysterically at him because he’s telling them what they really feel and they can’t bear it. Reality is so powerful, induces so much joy, that it hurts—just like true romance or a little puppy in its basket; so people push it away with their psychic defences—so they never get hurt, but they never grow either.
This is why Woes is now at a dangerous stage; he’s come a long way and he thinks he’s arrived—he talks about videos from his old account he’ll not reupload; and that’s because they’re too candid and naïve for the reputation he wants to defend now. He’s hunkering down, getting defensive—people might find out…What?…I don’t know—things—and then I’ll not be a “serious person” anymore…You’ve not arrived until you’re dead, and if you don’t maintain risk you’ll be dead long before you’re clinically dead. It’s not worth defending your reputation to yourself or other people—that’s why I posted my New Year’s Resolutions to my Twitter account and noted how many I’d completed or not. We think your aspirations are retarded—and it’s pathetic you haven’t kept them. That hurts—but it’s real. Also, fuck you!
πάθος μάθος—suffering is learning, learning is suffering; if you’re not suffering, you’re not learning—you’re not alive, you’re just defending the position; yet to suffer is a joy (NB, Jordan Peterson speaks about suffering all the time but that is fake suffering; he sits behind a completely defended position—once, over transgender pronouns, he actually said something genuine and the shock nearly killed him because he was so backed up with bullshit; he’s gone back to bullshit again now [which is why he talks about “suffering” all the time]—real suffering is a joy, not a burden; not a cross to carry, only lies are a burden).
I conclude with Ted Hughes as ever: “The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.” It’s not about what you do as such, it’s about how real what you do is—“taking risks” doesn’t mean trekking through the Peruvian mountains, it means if your girlfriend puts on weight saying, “You’ve put on weight, you should lose a bit; it would make you more sexually attractive,” and then dealing with the fallout. There are some people who would rather trek Peru than do that—even though that’s what really being alive is.