The Basilisk: Memetic Hazards and You
An essay
You just lost the Game.
It’s ok.
You probably didn’t tear out your hair and weep after finding this out.
The Game is a baby Basilisk.
Basilisks paralyze with a look, their memetic counterparts infect through awareness alone.
The Game is innocuous because it speaks to no hidden depth, when a Basilisk gazes deep into the soul, you’re in trouble.
The Roko’s Basilisk thought experiment functions similarly, awareness of the Basilisk is enough to damn the perceiver.
Though there are many, many internet Basilisks, I’m going to focus on two in this article: the Black Pill and the conspiracy ‘Project POGO/Project Zephyr"‘.
POGO/ZEPHYR
This conspiracy starts with a dead man’s tape.
He’s an Elite Illuminati insider, and he is warning America of a horrific project that is already underway…
The globalist zionist illuminati reptillian cabal is threatened by the great awakening of true American Patriots by way of memes and youtube videos.
Now they’d initially thought “let’s just censor these bastards”, but in their infinite wisdom decided upon this.
I’ll let the conspiracy speak for itself:
“If you are watching these channels, if you are informed, if you’re awake on these issues they want to tag you, they want to track you, and they want to know exactly who you are.”
And why is that?
“They’re going to exterminate these people.”
This is a perfect modern conspiracy. You are dangerous because of the youtube videos you watch, the beliefs that you have, and there are forces that care about this enough to kill you for it.
Let’s see the Basilisk.
This conspiracy is not like the Game, it’s targeted at a specific group of people, the group of people who the conspiracy claims would be targeted!
It’s seamless, the paranoia is evoked and captured within the conspiracy itself. Anybody not ‘in the know’ would be unlikely to read about this conspiracy in the first place, only the people who would be targeted are targeted.
The fact that you’re aware of this conspiracy will lead to your death.
The fact that you’re aware of the game means you’ve lost.
The vector of infection is the political belief itself, it’s the weak point where the memetic venom seeps through.
The Basilisk smiles (as best as a chicken can smile)
The other thing, I’ve written before about how nearly all internet based beliefs do not significantly effect the lived experience of the believer.
The Internet Fascist lives the same cookie cutter life as the Internet Communist.
These ideas generally fail to cross the digital threshold, but they do serve to isolate the believer.
Project Zephyr’s supposed execution date has already been passed. But for many believers, the meme induced dread further isolated them from this world.
The Black Pill
The Black Pill Philosophy is one centered on a sort of pseudo-divine Nature, a biological determinism that ensures vast amounts of the Male population will be involuntarily celibate forever, due to circumstances far beyond their control.
Who does this philosophy target?
Online virgins.
The only people who would find out about the black pill are people who would be considered hopeless in the philosophy itself.
This is a case of Tailless Foxes convincing young foxes to cut off their tails.
And of course, many do.
It has many vectors of infection, chin size, face and eye shape, wrist size, height, and of course, penis size.
If any one of these is cursed with predetermined inadequacies you are doomed to eternal virginity and lovelessness.
Basilisks
These digital Basilisks are many, they take a vector of infection, something generally innocuous, something related to your body, your beliefs, your interests, your childhood, etc, and it recontextualizes them according to a toxic reality tunnel.
Like the new believer is able to recontextualize their entire life as a journey to whatever religion they’ve happened into, the Basilisk makes terrible sense of your life.
What is the goal of the Basilisk? To spread itself further, but unlike memes it wounds the infected, sometimes quickly, sometimes over years and years of belief.
The Cure
Medusa and the Gorgons are very like Basilisks, both have serpentine elements and turn men to stone with a gaze.
It takes the Mirror shield of Minerva to see Medusa without dying.
One should be careful gazing into the abyss directly, the digital basilisks work because they pierce you and envenom you in places you were not even aware of, and the venom reforms your body accordingly.
Know Thyself.
If you have true self knowledge the Basilisk will be unable to infect.
The problem is that essentially nobody has self knowledge, but pretty much everybody has internet access.
So polish your mirror shield.
There will be more and more Basilisks that get better and better at crossing the digital threshold…
I may be creating a basilisk by saying this but wouldn't there evolve a basilisk which dooms those who hold mirror shields?
If I, the amateur analyst, who exposes and directs the basilisk's gaze back towards itself encounter a memetic hazard about analyzing itself, then the polishing is useless.
So I guess the true armor is to Know Thyself and as with all true cures it is the most painful. But I wonder in the case of self knowledge and basilisks, would it prevent me from wandering into the caverns in which these creatures lay? Or would my utter lack of self doubt and brilliant intuition simply not allow the gaze tho effect me?
Great article!
Perhaps psychedelics can be both a cure and a catalyst for basilisks. On one hand they can open the mind to new thoughts that crowd out the basilisk. On the other hand this openess can make one more vulnerable to other basilisks.
Maybe a strong ego could be a decent protective measure, but as algorithms become more targeted, we’ll all be at risk. A personalized basilisk for everyone, fused at the hip with the ego through an endless barrage of reinforcement.
Traditional organized religions or other shared belief systems that invite all regardless of conflicting perspectives might help? But we’re losing those at an accelerated rate. Aside from polishing a mirror shield, maybe our best defense would be redirecting algorithmic reality tunnels so that they lead to an intersection of beliefs.
Some burgeoning digital basilisks:
- Doomerism/climate doomerism
-self diagnosing and psychosomatic illness(tik tok Tourette’s , mental illness as an identity)
-astrology(benign, for now)
-FIRE/grind set/hustle culture (could be freeing for some, but imposes limiting beliefs equating wealth with enlightenment )