☎️✨The Nexialist #0215

techno-fascism | hollywood infected your brain | everyone is crazy | new aesthetics of slop | keynote | taylorism | cybersigilism | you killed the music

Mar 06, 2025

welcome to your weekly cyber-flaneur digest, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this e-mail finds you well. this week, i did feel some dystopia in the air with that horrible trap of an interview (i’ll keep it at that). but there are also some good news to celebrate, especially the first ever oscar to a brazilian movie “i’m still here” (tn#202) (best foreign feature film) and also nice to see a dutch short movie i posted here getting best live action short: i’m not a robot (tn#201).

this weekend was also carnaval, and i tried to avoid social media (reason: carnaval jealousy, a disorder common to brazilians living abroad and also reaching any person that has experienced carnaval but cannot do so for any reason), but i couldn’t and part of me wished i was shirtless in the streets of brazil. i did have my share of fun here in amsterdam: myss keta (tn#211) was here, and we got to celebrate my boyfriend’s juan birthday. so that was quite nice!

also, this week i was at rotterdam business school, for their innovation week. i taught a class called: how to be nexialist: forecasting, cultural insights and curatorship (and other skills for the 21st century), where i shared some things related to work and what i do here at the nexialist. i think it went very well, so maybe soon there’ll be a digital version 😏

this is it for today’s intro! i hope you enjoy it 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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📱techno-fascism

recently, i posted about the techno-fascist roots of silicon valley in headed for technofascism (tn#213), focused on the the local history. in this post by kyle chayka for the new yorker moves he takes us back to 1930s japan to brings some insights into what is happening now:

In the second Trump Administration, a class of Silicon Valley leaders was insinuating itself into politics in a way that recalled one of Mimura’s primary subjects of study: the élite bureaucrats who seized political power and drove Japan into the Second World War. “These are experts with a technological mind-set and background, often engineers, who now have a special role in the government,” Mimura told me. The result is what, in her book “Planning for Empire” (2011), she labelled “techno-fascism”: authoritarianism driven by technocrats. Technology “is considered the driving force” of such a regime, Mimura said. “There’s a sort of technicization of all aspects of government and society.”

this text is worth the read to get at least a better grasp of current american (and world) politics. another term that cause brainsparks: siliconization

According to McElroy, the first signs of Washington’s current siliconization can be traced back, in part, to the Administration of Barack Obama, who embraced social-media platforms such as Facebook as a vector of government communication. For a time, digital platforms seemed to support democratic government as a kind of communal megaphone; but now, a decade later, technology seems to be supplanting the established authority of the government. “There is a crisis of the state,” McElroy said, and Silicon Valley may be “trying to corrode state power” in order to more quickly replace it.

brainsparks: cloud capitalism (tn#214), critic of technology (tn#121), technocracy incorporated (tn#213), headed for technofascism (tn#213), technofeudalism (tn#143), netocracy vs. consumtariat (tn#18), digital feudalism (tn#136), technowashing (tn#67)

🤮hollywood infected your brain

this is one of my favorite songs from marina (how is this 15 years old??), and since last week i was listening to her new song, butterfly (tn#214), my algorithm picked this up for me. i didn’t remember the lyrics, but they seem timeless. or slightly off.

Hollywood infected your brain
You wanted kissing in the rain, oh, oh
Living in a movie scene
Puking American dreams, oh, oh
I'm obsessed with the mess that's America, ooh

i wouldn’t say obsessed would be the word now, it’s more like “distressed.” maybe it’s the remake we need.

brainsparks: butterfly (tn#214), this is not america (tn#63), american wh*re (tn#108)

🔥everyone is crazy

jain is famous for her upbeat hit makeba, which is bright, dynamic and organic, so i was caught offguard with her new song, tout le mond est fou (everybody is crazy)— but also, a product of our times, as they say.

the song is more on a dark side (it reminded me of justice) and the video made entirely with ai-slop. the timing is quite impressive with the absolutely appalling ai-slop of an ethnically cleaned gaza —or the riviera of the middle east project (and i’m not sure if it was a response or a coincidence). it made me think of amusing ourselves to death (tn#208).

brainsparks: marigold (tn#206), model collapse (tn#211)

🫠the new aesthetics of slop

The Honest Broker

posted a manifesto for ai-slop and i’m here for it: the new aesthetics of slop. if you don’t know what it is, you’ve probably seen it: these slighly (or very) off ai-generated images, perfect for the age of absurdity in which we find ourselves in. here is part of the manifesto:

Slop is a creative style that emerged around 2023 with the rise of generative AI. Slop art is flat, awkward, stale, listless, and often ridiculous. Slop works are celebrated for their stupidity and clumsiness—which are often amplified by strange juxtapositions of culture memes.
These Slop works are widely mocked by the audience—and even by the people who create and curate them. Yet they are the results of hundreds of billions of dollars in tech investment.
Slop is all about wastefulness!

it made me think of glitch-art from 15 years ago and how we’ve come to appreaciate glitch in a moment when things are neat —glitch nostalgia (tn#34). except glitch-art was not profiting for the tech companies, so there is this layer. however, when i see slop art being used for a pertinent message, like the video above, it’s a perfect match.

brainsparks: synthetic media (tn#18), anti-design (tn#169), glitch nostalgia (tn#34), the cult of ugly aesthetics (tn#134), model collapse (tn#211), capitalists killed the internet (tn#212), enshittification cycle (tn#106), the banality of online recommendation culture (tn#198)

☎️keynote

i was listening to slow song (tn#62) for such a long time, so i’m happy this triad is coming back together: the knocks, dragonette and aquaria. the official song they released is called revelation, but this video, which you can’t find in other players, makes me keep coming back. an existential bop, with the back to the office aesthetics —for sure it’s in my music to refine to playlist from severance.

Do you ever feel restless
Ill at ease
Tell me, please
Do you ever forget your dreams?
Where you want to be?
Who you want to me?
Where did you leave your keys?
Your memory, is incomplete

brainsparks: slow song (tn#62), dissociation music (tn#82), wtf is an office job? (tn#94), back to the office? (tn#194)

🏭taylorism

Scientific Management, sometimes called "Taylorism" after its founder, Frederick W. Taylor, is the idea that human workers can be fine-tuned to be more efficient. {…] That was back in the 1880s, but lately Taylorism hasn't just been surviving — it's thriving, as wireless gadgets and management software allow bosses to monitor workers in ways Taylor could only dream of.

not about taylor swift’s influence in the musical industry. also, not a black mirror episode, but could be. or not, because it’s too much in the present. this post from futurism exposes a optifye, a surveillance ai for factory workers, after a demo video was shared basically harassing a worker for not reaching their productivity goal. they also show other companies using tech like that, and it’s quite… how do you say… distressing.

brainsparks: plantations, computers, industrial control (tn#125)

⭐️cybersigilism

there is a name for this kind of aesthetic! i was calling it chromed-tribal in my head, others call it gen-z tribal. but cybersigilism is just perfect. also, this 032c piece about it is a nice read, by cassidy george. she interviews a philospher and tattoo artists and it’s quite cool to learn about their perspectives.

At some point in the late 2010s, it started growing like a weed in the dark corners of the Berlin club scene: a style of blackwork tattooing that fuses ancient looking symbols with digital aesthetics. “Cybersigilism,” as some call it, is difficult to describe, but easy to identify.

briansparks: pixo (tn#156)

🎤you killed the music

this song has been on repeat here, more so than i would like to admit, and it’s doing some sonic healing to the depths of my soul, so please do yourself a favour and press play. the shiny blurry 70s abba homage is just perfect with the bells and progressions. the lyrics mixing the sad love story while narrating what’s happening to the music is just chef’s kiss song writing:

You killed the music
Made feel foolish
Put out my fire
Major to minor
I closed the door
And changed all the chords
Till my feet start to move
Now all these brand new
Melodies keep falling off the tip of my tongue

brainsparks: abba voyage (tn#201), sonic healing (tn#11), spiritual disco (tn#43), it’s euphoric (tn#114)

see you next week! 🫀✨

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