Thread by @CEBKCEBKCEBK

Good old post from @curtis_yarvin on the viral Compact Mag essay: the culture industry’s a MLM federal jobs program designed to produce people capable of noticing & replicating & teaching the preferred narrative, bc this comes with status benefits, & it’s what allows for capture-

@curtis_yarvin The first creative writing program was only created in 1936—at Iowa, still the top of the pyramid & origin of every official fad. By 1980 there were over 250 in the US; now ~500. As writing becomes this kind of commissariat, ofc it’s vulnerable to dysfunctional campaigns & purges

@curtis_yarvin Wokeness is worst in academia, journalism, publishing, etc—the culture industry—bc they all fit the same patterns Yarv noticed about MFAs: they’ve been “generously” institutionalized into MLM jobs programs which also teach laity how to “appreciate” their officially valid “craft.”

@curtis_yarvin Thus thx to MFAs, postwar litfic taught us that good writing is about pointedly not saying something so the audience can feel smart or involved or alive by filling it in (“show don’t tell”): “Hills Like White Elephants,” Carver stories etc—a neat old trick

@curtis_yarvin This doesn’t mean Carver’s bad, just that he’s easy for MFAs to turn into silly tricks. Likewise the take economy was about teaching us how to have ironic takes on how “X pop culture item is actually about Y political issue—& that’s Z” (which can be fun!)

@curtis_yarvin But if the point of a system is peer review, then it quickly falls; many great institutions take off by attracting the greatest peers, then attract strivers who cargo cult & so smother greatness, & then fall prey to fads, as greats begin again from scratch