WTF Ya'll Be On Man?

Every time I come online in 2025 you niggas bein hella weird.

Capitalism’s greatest weapon is narrative. You can read marketing and advertising books about how nothing sells without story. When you give inanimate objects a larger plot—say a car (that lasts to pass on to your child when they leave for college)— the consumer who is looking at it connects and confirms their own life experiences. This is not because the narrative is particularly true or essential but an affirm of something or anything you want to be— a “girldad”, a “radical”, a “bad bitch”. When you buy a product you have a reason why you bought it or a story about how you got it; the emotion it made you feel. Often that feeling has already been presented to you, otherwise why would you spend the money? The more you have the more stories/affirms you collect about your class, race, identity, tastes. But in order for billions of different people make it make sense for themselves, the story is usually subjective fluff. Something so subtle or so rote that it can be taken however needed. (See: the brilliance of horoscopes.)

This country loves narrative; imperialism would be impossible without it. You need Japanese kids to love hip-hop so they don’t remember you nuked them 80 years ago. You need international McDonald’s characters so all the money you give other countries in aid comes back to you and so your citizens are comfortable all over the globe because the world is theirs. You need people to find their place and their part in the empire so that you can control them, always make sure they ingratiate themselves into the march. Things like Black Capitalism or GirlBoss-ing are just propaganda to remind you: “Don’t be left out! Don’t be apart” without making any actual space. The key is subtlety and repetition. It has to be subversive enough that nobody notices it doesn’t mean anything because they’re too busy applying their individual emotions to it. If you are too specific, too intentional or even literal, there’s a chance for them to reject the idea it relates to them. Like the rich say: it’s all so hush hush. When the audience can lose themselves in healing fantasies of what your symbols mean, you can then promise them any manner of upholding that fantasy with more symbols. There are no real goals just the camaraderie of subscribing. We all gang when we can make up whatever gang means to us with no approval.

We are two weekends into what might well be the last nationally recognized Black History Month for half a decade and the narrative has been absolutely horrible. Granted, there’s always a desperation this month to make Black people feel like we have alway been considered full citizens in this country and forget that half our limited rights in the constitution were given to us like 60 years ago— like, less than the average human lifespan ago. But this month we are watching those rights crumble in real time and our response is to push forward into empire and demand our place. I will never understand how in times of duress when the system is being cruel beyond measure we decide it’s institutions will lead us to the road of change. It’s nothing less than a selfish need to be inside the tanks instead of under them, but why have the tanks at all? You’re asking for the soldiers to take you with them because your grandpa put that bolt in the wheel with a gun to his head and was shot immediately after he finished so he wouldn’t get paid. The NFL hates black people so bad they had to hire black people to get black people and you think anything done on a stage like that matters; one completely controlled by white people? Sure.