Help me @sneerclub you’re my only hope https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/matt-yglesias-considered-as-the-nietzschean
Edward Teach is supposedly the pen name of The Last Psychiatrist who was sort of a precursor blog to slatestar, if only in the sense that it was a psychiatrist who was also a good writer, blogging about the human condition. He was doing parable-style short-form fiction way before slatescott, for instance.
While I don’t remember there being any particular ideological overlap, both him and siskind seem to scratch the same itch for a lot of people, and siskind claims to be a fan.
He wasn’t usually. Another difference with siskind was that with TLP you mostly knew where you stood, or at least I don’t remember any near-end-of-text jumpscares where it’s revealed the whole thing was meant as really convoluted IQ apologetics, or some naive reframing of the latest EA embarrassment.
Yeah I mean, TLP is a lot more perverse. His reactionary ideology pemeates everything he writes but he never comes out and actually affirms anything. The only rhetorical mode is critiquing the supposed psychological perception of theoretical persons. No statement of fact is ever made. Any opinion one could ascribe to the author is plausibly deniable. I find it despicable.
ideological overlap
Oh they absolutely are both infuriatingly coy reactionaries.
Here’s for instance a million words by TLP, and they all say “i hate women”.
I might actually hate TLP so much more, because he’s more seductive, better at that typical nietzschean flattery of the reader, and for some reason even people here tend to view him more positively.
Wasn’t that like his last post ever though?
Him not being an overt eugenics enthusiast while also not being the popular face of AI scientology probably helps ingratiate him to people here. Additionally, even though admittedly I haven’t really bothered to revisit since he stopped posting like a decade ago, whatever overall sociopolitical agenda he might have had can’t have been as glaringly obvious as siskind’s, which can make for some inconsequential reading.
I think his aggressive contempt for the reader also makes TLP a much easier writer to bounce off of into a healthier direction. Like, I remember reading his stuff and thinking “wow, this guy is an asshole” and being more concerned than excited when something made sense. Eventually those parts that kind of made sense connected to a framework with less hate and rage.
