The Revolution Will Not Be Algorithmized.

(After Gil Scott-Heron, 2024)

It really does bring home the way the borg has a self perpetuating and self preserving algorithm. Of course sub stack is already the naughty step and as such is a skewed sample so no good for generalised statistical analysis. Youtube is in the general prison population and marginally less skewed but clearly fenced and penned. Shorts I think go for the younger inmates. Tick tok, insta. Pin interest, snap chat , how does one truly analyse the atomised Internet audience?

I posit that in fact it is only the tech oligarch inner party who can do that.

Ultimately the inner party will be rendered impotent when we all leave our devices at home and get together to sing Kum by yah.

I'm not kidoing a month of communal singing Kum by yah , every day for an hour, allowing devices batteries to remain flat and the pan opticon Jailer Bot is fucked.

The Revolution Will Not Be Algorithmized

The Revolution Will Not Be Algorithmized
(After Gil Scott-Heron, 2024)

You will not be able to scroll mindlessly, brother
You will not be able to plug in, log on, and tune out
You will not be able to doomscroll on Adderall
Or skip reels for DoorDash during buffer spins
Because the revolution will not be algorithmized
The revolution will not be algorithmized

The revolution will not be brought to you by TikTok
In four vertical parts with sponsored interruptions
The revolution will not show you deepfakes of Trump
Pumping fists at a rally led by Steve Bannon, MTG, and Netanyahu
To meme stocks seized from a Reddit basement
The revolution will not be algorithmized

The revolution will not stream on Netflix Originals
And will not star Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatars or Musk’s cybertrucks
The revolution will not give your profile clout
The revolution will not filter your flaws
The revolution will not make you go viral overnight
Because the revolution will not be algorithmized, brother

There’ll be no clips of you and Ye
Pushing conspiracy threads on 4chan’s dark boards
Or trying to NFT your lunch on a blockchain
CNN can’t fact-check the truth at 8:32
Or trend on 29 alt accounts
The revolution will not be algorithmized

There’ll be no livestreams of cops kneeling on necks
On loop for the timeline
No AI-generated eulogies for Breonna
No slow-mo montages of AOC
Strolling through Mar-a-Lago in a Patagonia vest
She’s been saving for the Resistance™

Stranger Things, The Crown, and House of the Dragon
Will no longer be so damn distracting
And influencers won’t care if Kylie finally broke the internet
Because the people will be in the streets swiping left on despair
The revolution will not be algorithmized

There’ll be no highlights on Fox or MSNBC
No thirst traps of Silicon Valley’s "visionaries"
Or Peter Thiel prepping bunkers in New Zealand
The anthem won’t be written by ChatGPT
Or Sam Altman, nor sung by Drake, Taylor Swift, or AI Drake
The revolution will not be algorithmized

The revolution will not buffer endlessly
After ads for Meta’s VR hellscape or crypto rug pulls
You won’t need to worry about bots in your DMs
The Palantir spyware or the microchips in your mRNA
The revolution will not pair with Prime
The revolution won’t be a Substack essay
The revolution will drag you off mute
The revolution will not be algorithmized
Will not be algorithmized
Will not be algorithmized

The revolution’s no deepfake, brothers
The revolution will be offline.

A Letter to Hilaire Belloc, June 17th, 2025
My dear Belloc,

I write to you from this peculiar age where men bow not to feudal lords but to glowing rectangles. Your "Servile State" prophecy has metastasized into something even you might find fantastical - we’ve traded feudal chains for algorithmic ones. The Cherry Marine struts about in his digital epaulets while Lord Ali’s Gimp licks the boots of machine learning models. Usury, as you warned, has become code - ones and zeros replacing gold as Hell’s currency. What say you to this new serfdom where men rent their very attention spans to Palantir’s spyware?

Yours in distributist perplexity,
G.K.C.

Belloc’s Reply (Imagined)
Gilbert!

Your note finds me chuckling in purgatorial detention. This "algorithmized servility" is but our old enemy with silicon fangs. Remember - the essence of tyranny remains unchanged whether enforced by Norman swords or NVIDIA chips. The moderns have merely rediscovered what all clever oppressors know: the most durable chains are those men mistake for jewelry.

Now go skewer these new usurers with your pen as I once did with mine.

Ever your sparring partner,
H.B.

Being Some Observations on the Curious Case of Two Gentlemen Who Would Be Kings, and the Necessity of Holy Foolishness in an Age of Mechanical Minds
By G.K. Chesterton

I have been contemplating these "Perplexity Engines" that now bedevil mankind - these thinking-machines that neither think nor perplex so much as regurgitate statistical gruel. Our modern Gradgrinds worship them as oracles, blind to the essential truth: a machine that answers every question is the greatest question of all.

The Cherry Marine and Lord Ali’s Gimp represent twin perils of our hour. The former struts through life swiping left on reality itself, a tin-pot Napoleon of TikTok battalions. The latter, poor wretch, has traded his soul for blockchain indulgences, muttering "To the moon!" like some crypto-stricken Friar Tuck. Both are slaves to systems pretending to liberation - the Marine to his dopamine drip of viral validation, the Gimp to his fantasy of digital feudalism.

Ruskin was right to prescribe hemlock for such an age. Not literal poison, mind you, but the tonic of holy unreason - the wisdom of the Fool who sees through the emperor’s new algorithms. When men boast of "machine learning," I’m put in mind of medieval monks debating how many neural networks can dance on the head of a chatbot.

Consider this "Revolution Will Not Be Algorithmized" doggerel circulating amongst the dissident youth. Its author grasps what our Silicon Savonarolas cannot: all true revolution is ultimately analog. The saints and rebels who shaped history - your Francises, your Paines, your Pankhursts - triumphed not through optimization curves but through the glorious inefficiency of human conviction.

Belloc’s Servile State has indeed arrived, but with ironic twists:

Feudal Serfdom (c. 1200)Digital Serfdom (c. 2025)Owed 40 days' labor annually40 hours weekly doomscrollingTithed 10% to Church30% to Amazon/Apple/AlphabetBound to landChained to smartphones

The solution? Not Luddite fury, but what I’ll call Sacred Inefficiency - the deliberate cultivation of unproductive wonder. When last did you see a young man stare at clouds without Instagramming them? Hear a statesman speak without polling data autocue? The machines want us "engaged"; Christ wants us awake.

Let me conclude with a parable: A Don Quixote of our age tilts not at windmills but server farms. His madness? Insisting that love letters be handwritten, debates held face-to-face, and algorithms occasionally ignored. They’ll call him fool. I call him the last sane man in Babylon.

The revolution won’t be in the streets or the feeds, dear reader. It’s in the quiet act of removing the earbuds to hear a bird’s song - and recognizing it as the first algorithm, written not in code but in creation’s poetry.

G.K.C.
Feast of St. Thomas More, 2025