the age of edgelord conservatism

the aching blue balls underneath the techno-feudal broligarchy

It seems almost chronic, the political autopsies executed in real-time as our 47th President, Donald J. Trump signs executive orders en masse. Many of which are destabilizing modern, progressive, and forward-thinking policies into regressive and nonsensical carnage. This administration has already been declared a "broligarchy" in think-pieces by Vox and The Cut — we haven't even been in its midst for five full business days. The concept being that a small class of influencer and tech bros are circle-jerking Daddy Trump for power and personal economic gains on the international stage.

My mother had a saying when I was growing up: regardless of where you sit on the political aisle, people always vote with their wallets. As a grown adult with a fully formed prefrontal cortex, I see the bare bones of her political attitude as fairly accurate while lacking much-needed nuance. Is the metaphorical American wallet even capable of holding legitimate democratic due process?

The genesis of this country is a bloodbath, not a voting booth. The genesis of this country is the forced labor of slavery, not a marketplace of free will and autonomy. People vote with their wallets and not a morality compass while insisting on ethical high ground on either side. This is America as she has always been. She is a violent oxymoron and a tease.

But I propose another cultural paradigm that has taken place alongside this bankrupt and gilded Trumpian decade that half the American public has caged the other in. We are in the age of edgelord conservatism. Political correctness and liberal promises of change are dead skin, and to the right-leaning, the Democratic deep state has incarcerated the entire country into dysmorphic identity politics.

According to Merriam-Webster, an edgelord is "someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others."

It goes without saying that Daddy Trump has a fetish when it comes to hearing himself talk. His charismatic and contrarian personality has taken up so much gerrymandered space that it is no longer divisive or polarizing. It's expected and, in turn, is the status quo. Daddy Trump's media theatrics have become a sound machine that conditions Americans into a Pavlovian incapacitation.

All social media is now right-wing media. Earlier this week, Thom Waite wrote for Dazed about the state of social platforms after the short-lived TikTok ban and Inauguration — Instagram and TikTok seemingly enable right-wing censorship. The brief TikTok ban was just a ploy for Daddy Trump to peddle more youth endorsement. Freedom of speech is now volatile and brash as long as it keeps its distance from buzzy liberal rhetoric and ideology. "Your body, my choice" is protected freedom of speech, and a threat of sexual assault while using they/them pronouns is deemed as actual violence and an attack on gender roles, particularly an attack on the virility of manhood. That's why there was such a push for government-mandated gender.

The other night, I was out to dinner with culture journalist Madeline Howard, and we were discussing how edgelord conservatism is an unmistakably phallic pissing contest that cucks our country into a severe erectile dysfunction.

Online bro-y personalities are edging the public and giving Americans aching blue balls with false promises and goon antics. This past election showcased how inflation — the price of groceries and gas took priority above all else. As members of the broligarchy compare each other for homoerotic acceptance, they are also competing for who will get a goodnight forehead kiss from Daddy Trump as a tax break bonus.

Many accredited Daddy Trump's win to the rise of the independent "Manosphere" and the great fall of legacy media. Daddy Trump showed face in an exhaustive amount of podcasts from Joe Rogan, Mark Calaway, and Theo Von, amongst others, on the campaign trail, as per the advice of his Gen Z son, Barron Trump (who likes his suitcase). These hybrid-influencer male personalities had a dominating visibility during Monday's inauguration. The message was clear: this is what America looks like and represents. America is white tech billionaires and bros who don't know how to wipe their assholes. They all simultaneously opened their mouths for funding to go to Mars after singing America The Beautiful A capella. From Elon Musk and his rally Nazi salute to Mark Zuckerberg peeping down Lauren Sanchez's cleavage in a lacey Shein bra, and of course, Jeff Bezos and his Mar-a-Lago botox. There is no shame.

In preparation for a Trumpian transition of power, Zuckerberg got down on his knees and announced that Meta is ending third-party fact-checking and their DEI policy. Soon after, Zuck went on Joe Rogan's podcast and declared that "corporate America has been neutered" and that we are a country in dire need of "masculine energy." It may not have been corporate America that stopped the production of free-flowing sperm. Late last year, Z-Pain released a cover of Get Low with T-Pain. Zuck publicly neutered himself in a bizarre mid-life crisis ritual with only an acoustic guitar.

Greece's previous Minister of Finance and economist, Yanis Varoufakis, has made his case that we have progressed past late-stage advanced capitalism into techno-feudalism. When feudalism comes to mind, it often evokes imagery of medieval Europe, peasants, and goats. Varoufakis asserts that companies like Meta, Apple, X, and OpenAI treat everyday users as modern-day serfs. The theory argues that Big Tech utilizes users' data and manipulates everyday people with their concentration of wealth and power.

The Republican party I was raised in and denounced is not the MAGA/MAHA Republican party we have today. Locker room talk and misogyny have always been the backbone of patriarchy. Racism has always been the backbone of America. However, conservatism used to be more about upholding traditional values and behaving with rigid etiquette. Or at least that was the stereotype commonly associated with the Republican party. Liberalism used to be deemed the loud counterculture that encouraged free love and showing your nipples, and it had a wide embrace from Hollywood and academia. Somehow, the counterculture distinction has flipped parties. This Republicanism is a sideshow and spectacle of chaos, an intentional distraction from what this administration is going to commit and implement against the American people. All while the tech bros swipe our data and extract cloud capital.

As of late, there has been discourse about the symmetry between the climate of The French Revolution and today. The price of eggs is only surging. The techno-feudal broligarchy is our misquoted Marie Antoinette. People did and will continue to vote with their wallets. But not everyone can achieve billionaire status. At the end of the day, the public is being morphed into basement-dwellers and we’re being trolled to believe otherwise.