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Monday, August 18, 2014

Rachel Haywire: Look At Me! Look At Me! Even If There's Nothing To See!

Alex Knapp directed my attention to this piece in which "Extreme Futurist" Rachel Haywire bids farewell to the so-called neoreactionary movement with which she has been lately identified.

Rachel Haywire's rather spastic bids for attention -- of which that piece is painfully one -- once got her fired for publishing one of my own more popular anti-transhumanoid rants in the transhumanoid propaganda vehicle humanity+ (for folks who aren't all humanity-minus like you and me), and so I do follow her shenanigans in a desultory fashion. In her latest missive, Haywire explains how she was once a sooper-radical leftist kinda sorta Robot Cultist but, like, Occupy is for Silicon Valley sell-outs (presumably Haywire has decided Justine Tunney is more representative of Occupy than Alexis Goldstein or something), and then she was a sooper-reactionary right-wing Robot Cultist but, like, they were all racist and sexist and stuff (racist and sexist reactionaries, the hell you say!) but no, like, you don't understand, they were like being racist and sexist and stuff at HER, so she had to "break up" with them.

That choice of phrase is all the more plangent when we realize that Haywire's stirring intellectual (or whatever) saga also included a break up with also now-neoreactionary Robot Cultist Michael Anissimov --allegedly! Oh, the post-humanity! Anissimov, once a regular and voluble critic of my anti-futurological critique here, was a brainwashed bottle-washer for various Robot Cult outfits from his early adolescence who, when he found himself stranded without legible accomplishments or credentials in that robocultic cul-de-sac, and in a future that didn't seem to be panning out particularly in the techno-transcendental department, decided to make a bid for muckety-muck status in his own sooper-reactionary auxiliary sub-basement sub-annex of the already, let's face it, auxiliary sub-basement sub-annex of the Singularitarian sub-sect of the transhumanoid Robot Cult archipelago. There's probably still quite a lot of attention and even cash to be had in the online futurological pseudo-science pseudo-philosophy pseudo-policy mega-church scam, after all, gross infantile spectacle and serial predictive failures aside. Like late-nite herbal boner pill infomercial circus barkers Robot Cultists are selling big dreams not, you know, reliable results or anything!

Anyway, Haywire has found herself in the aftermath of her futurological explorations of anarchotechtonic extremities clicking her ruby red slippers together and returning to her homely "punk rock girl" roots. That "punk rock girl" is a fairly densely multivalent conceptual site with its own real left, phony left, racist right, trustafarian ramifications leads to me wonder if she ever really went anywhere or if she ever has been anywhere particularly -- especially given the fact that Haywire never provides much in the way of a sense of the actual beliefs she had along her ideological travels or any arguments offered up to her or by her at any point in the itinerary.

I mention all this not least because Rachel Haywire has been given a spotlight from time to time, from various robotcultic eminences grises, to indicate the youthful vitality or radical energies still presumably invigorating futurological sub(cult)ures since the passing of the glory days of 90s dot.bomb long boom virtual reality cyberspace home of mind no death! no taxes! cypherpunk manifesto manifold irrational exuberance in which Extropians and Singularitarians were the most irrational exuberants frothing the fraudulent libertechian cauldron. The vapid narcissistic nonsense of Haywire's actually resulting travelogue isn't exactly a surprise, but it is another data point for dead-enders who need one, I guess.

1 comment:

Chad Lott said...

The first time I heard about this kook was when I stumbled across an interview she did with famous autistic ranch advisor & slaughter house designer Temple Grandin.

It's definitely a peculiar one if you can still find it.