Something I never thought I would have to
say is
ELON MUSK IS NOT GOING TO ENGINEER YOU CAT
GIRLS. Most of you will be apologist when
it comes to this, claiming that the trend
to glorify Elon Musk as the tech-daddy who
will open a portal to the anime dimension
is just people being ironic. Perhaps you are
a participant of this trend. But we’re going
to put the pin back in that grenade for a
moment.
I shall start with an introduction and an
apology. I, the writer, go by Cherryboy writer
around these parts. However I, Calliope, am  the speaker
for this video for a variety of material conditions.
in this wild west known as the internet you’ve
got a pretty fine collection of nice, tame
people running this here youtube channel.
(myself included)
However, as with with all cowboys they need
an attack dog with a vicious bite.
For context, back around October of 2018,
Elon Musk, multi-billionaire CEO of Tesla,
made a tweet saying he liked anime. As you
can image having our collective degenerate
hobby of anime validated by some rich dude
sent twitter fans into a tailspin of joy.
He responded in memes as well as talked about
some of the anime he liked. Evangelion being
one of them made way too much damn sense so
that’s why you have this video now. Perfect
chance for us to expose both.
For quite sometime the other Ronin and some
of my other friends have been pushing me to
make an Evangelion video. I’ve always hated
the show even since hearing about it and dreaded
watching it. Perhaps the worst part about
my experience watching it was that it was
just about as headache inducing as I expected.
unfortunately it seems I've fallen
into the Greek trap of trying to escape destiny
and now it’s come back around to stare me
in the face. If you’re of the opinion that
Elon Musk is okay or you’re an Evangelion
fan then mash dislike button now. Because
we have a lot to talk about and the first
response humans have to truth is always to
reject it.
Part 1: Elon Musk, The NeoLiberal Supervillain
Truth be we are far from the first to talk
about how awful Elon Musk is as a human being.
If anything we come late to talk about this
issue. however, the anime community
(due to its escapist tendencies  is still far from reaching it’s political awakening)
So here’s a question for
you viewer.
When I say the words “supervillain” what
sort of image comes to your mind? Perhaps
it’s a sneering megalomaniac bent on destruction
as so over represented in media. Maybe he
has some sort of tragic backstory about his
suffering as a child and he’s mad at humanity
or whatever.
That’s a decent enough framing for a traditional
conception but mine is slightly different.
When I see a supervillain I see three things.
I see someone privileged enough to never have
suffered with having to not eat for extended
periods of time because he just wasn’t able
to acquire food. I see someone hoarding immense
amounts of wealth and power and not sharing
it with others. Instead of improving working
conditions for his employees he makes them
worse and sets up a charity work not even
a fraction of his collective wealth so that
he has an excuse to say “I contributed”.
And more than anything, I see an unfettered
egotist with the gall to say that everything
he has achieved is a result of his own Individual
hard work instead of giving credit to the
thousands of years of innovation and his countless
employees that developed the technology he
claims to have made, repackaged, and then
sold you as some sort of generous god.
To me, a Supervillain is a wholly incompetent
man who leeches and steals the work of other
and then asks you to love him for it.
That man, like so many other “self made”
capitalists, is a man like Elon Musk.
Understand that Elon Musk doesn’t give a
fuck about you. He’s rich literally why
would he? What has he given you in exchange
for your hard earned money other than some
cars that breakdown faster than they should
because of planned obsolescence? “He’s
made advancements in the green car technology
that we wouldn’t have without him.”, so
you say? First of all that’s, bullshit.
The market was trending that way regardless
and he just rode the wave. None of his success
is his own. Secondly let’s just run down
a list of his accomplishments.
Elon Musk heavily discouraged if not threatened
his employees to not unionize so he could
continually exploit them for greater profit.
He wasted incredible amounts of money, money
that could have gone to better working conditions,
or foreign aid, or investing in infrastructure,
to launch a fucking car to space. Elon Musk
wanted to create a website to rate journalist
because he feels like they attack Tesla with
FAKE NEWS while simultaneously claiming distrust
of journalist led to Trump's election. The
media also attack him personally with the
horrible slur of billionaire, oh dear. Elon
Musk wants to colonize Mars!? ELON MUSK CALLED
A BRITISH CAVE DIVER WHO RISKED HIS LIFE TO
SAVE CHILDREN IN THAILAND A PEDOPHILE.
Christ it just doesn’t stop with this asshole.
Elon Musk wants to waste potentially billions
of dollars to develop a mecha? No I don’t
care if it’s a goddamn joke. First of all,
you know if you gave him encouragement, (not
your money he already has that) he would totally
do it. Second of all are you trying to kill
more people in countries that aren’t yours?
Thirdly, the square cube law would immediately
fuck that idea out of existence. And finally
and perhaps most importantly… WE HAVE ONLY
12 YEARS TO CONTAIN GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
BEFORE ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE. Actually no
it’s even less than that because scientists
found that the oceans are warming even faster
than that so we have even less time. Do you
remember that? Do you remember any of this?
Are you too busy escaping to into Isekai worlds
to care about your own, or do you actually
believe that this is all just some simulation?
And yet people praise this ego driven maniac
despite time and time again that him and others
of his ilk have proven themselves shallow,
incompetent and borderline sociopathic. At
worse, instead of doing something productive
people submit to this nihilistic attitude
of “I’m going to die anyway so I’ll
just cover it up with memes”.
I think one of the hosts of the Majority report
said it best,
"The thing with Elon Musk is you take all
these structural things that I wish people
could talk about instead of looking for someone
to save them which is the big structural problem.
And then specifically with this guy it's all
hat and no cattle. Tesla is a cool car. That
ain't solving global warming." The Majority
Report
I hate irony, even on a surface level I usually
find most ironic jokes and memes more pointless
if not cringe worthy. So forgive me if the
humor of making memes about the things Elon
Musk claims he wants to do is lost on me.
But you want to know what I really hate about
irony? It’s that all too often it’s used
to normalize things that should not be normalized.
I don’t want to spend too much time on this
topic since Innuendo Studios just recently
added another video to his Alt-Right Playbook
series about post-modern conservatism titled
“The Card Says Moops”. But when people
make ironic jokes about everything I’m always
left wondering, “If this is all a joke to
you when will you actually take things seriously?
Until it’s right in your face and you physically
cannot avoid it anymore”. And that largely
seems to be the attitude I see when even the
issue of the planet being actually fucked
comes up. People just want to shrug their
shoulders, say “have fun till you die”,
and “leave it to the tony stark CEO’s
in the shiny buildings to save us in time
since after all I don’t have the power to
change it”.
This sort of devil may care attitude to the
actual death of the planet makes me nothing
but sick. You have to be the improvement you
want to see because even if Yahweh flooded
the Earth again for humans being shit… do
you really think a multi billionaire who’s
never heard your name is gonna let you an
the ark?
Forget making you a cat girl Elon Musk wouldn’t
make you a sandwich.
Understand that by spreading these ironic
defeatist memes and ironic glorification memes
for guys like Elon Musk, you're sedating yourself
and others into complacency.
After all what you intended the joke to mean
doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s
about the material affect your actions have
on the world.
Dear viewer, do you really what to know what
forced my hand to combine these two topics
I desperately wanted to avoid at all costs?
It wasn’t this hilariously good title for
the video, it wasn’t just Elon Musk being
Elon Musk. That’s a completely ignorable.
It was in fact, seeing this image right here
of Elon Musk photoshopped as Gendo Ikari.
Followed by a profound sense of disappointment
that reminded me of both everything about
the technobillionaredaddy phenomen and the
messages of Evangelion.
Well I say messages but Evangelion really
only manages to say to one thing throughout
it’s 24 episodes of run time. Again I’ve
always hated this show but not solely because
I think the show is mediocre in almost every
regard. When it comes to the story of Evangelion
itself the show is completely undermined by
the endless amount of bad ideas Anno put into
it. The Christian symbolism from what I understand
is confirmed to be all half baked only there
to add aesthetic flair. And you know honestly
the only semi decent religion is Buddhism
anyway, something that Shinji desperately
needed in his life so be less of an emotional
trainwreck. The other issue with the show
is that it’s all based in Freudian psychology.
And if you want to talk about having the lowest
amount of credibility when talking about psychology
it would be unironically using the “Freud
was right” meme as an argument. The only
other things Evangelion has beyond that to
it’s credit is a lot of emotion driven character
moments that I can see why people heavily
relate to.
Unfortunately all the character’s I happen
to like in the show are hated by the show
itself.
Just so I’m not 100% hate bashing the show
here is a list of things in order I actually
really like from Evangelion. Toshi, shame
he’s dead. Gendo, for being the only person
in the show with a functioning brain between
his shoulder blades. And that one time Shinji
drank tea and was a savage to Misato. That
was fucking hysterical. Why couldn’t I have
that Shinji the entire time.
And that’s it.
Then when it finally came to the much talked
about ending of the show the only message
that the show imparts that isn’t couched
in a mountain of armchair intellectualism
is, the answer to your emotional problems
is to be an individual and take pride in that.
Because by being your own person you’ll
be able to see an entire world you weren’t
able to before.
And as a penultimate message for a show…
that’s incredibly weak.
However, I say weak but I don’t say incorrect.
Believe it or not despite all my vitriol for
the show I do not think that’s actually
the worst thing you could possibly say to
someone who is attracted to this show. Personally
I abjure individuality because it’s become
bolted on with so much meaningless crap like
emotionality that in popular usage it’s
just become a justification to be a degenerate.
And that really is my biggest issue with Evangelion.
Not the show so much which I could have ignored
and just written of as entirely not my thing,
but the rabid fans who are overwhelmingly
degenerate freaks. I’ve had a lot of interaction
with EVA fans since getting into anime and
found that if they aren’t into politics
they desperately need the Buddha in there
life (then again who doesn’t honestly).
If they are into politics I find that they
give fucking Ayn Rand credit of all people.
Seriously. I WISH I had screenshots to contextualise
this because I cannot make this stuff up.
But honestly this is entirely to be expected
when this show somehow breeds people to languish
in there own individuality. Although from
what I understand Hideaki Anno hates this
just as much as I do so clearly something
got lost in translation from the shows content
to the fanbase. A good representation of this
melancholic self dramatization is Hiding in
Public and his video called “Evangelion
- I Feel Sick”. As well as his other ones
on the series but this one in particular gives
me a migraine.
Let me tell you something about Individuality
that your friends, family, government and
basically anyone else won’t tell you. It
only servers one function, to diagnose problems.
After all if you are just another minor drone
complying with the system and never stopping
to question things, how much of “your own
life” are you really living? Being an individual
gives you a more unique perspective both to
your own life and to the world around you.
So yes, if someone is having a hard time with
their personal problems developing some sense
of identity is probably going to benefit them
to see everything differently.
However, I have to stress this next point.
Despite what the liberal humanism cult of
the world will tell you, the individual is
not a monolith. Just because you chose or
decide something doesn’t mean it’s not
wrong. And I think a good example of this
is, again, another one of Hiding in Public’s
videos called “Shogo Makishima Was Right”.
Where he unironically stands behind the opinion
that titular character Shogo Makishima did
nothing wrong. A man who killed multiple people
and also slit a innocent girls throat in front
of the protagonist because, “Wah. My society
makes me feel bored.”
Are… are you serious right now? Listen I
like Psycho Pass just as much as the next
guy because it’s a well made show. Maybe
even good considering at the end the Sybil
System still stands so Gen Urobuchi understands
that human beings need order. But Shogo Makishima
was not right. At all. And if I see you supporting
him I really am going to avoid you on the
streets.
But let’s bring this right back around to
full circle. Elon Musk and this image as him
as Gendo. Why does this bother me so? I’ll
tell you. It’s because this combination
is a contradiction of the highest order. On
the one hand you have Evangelion. A show advocating
you to be your own person and find the answers
to your on problems. On the other you have
the anime communities “ironic” glorification
of Elon Musk as Billionaretechnodaddy that’s
going to give them everything they’ve always
wanted so that they don’t have to.
what the anime community has unconsciously
done is morph the image of Elon Musk as the
bringer of anime to the 3D realm, and turn
him into their own version of the Holy Grail
from Persona 5. A massive entity for them
to dump all of their wishes on too in hope
that he will grant them what they’ve always
wanted.
Genetically engineered cat girls. Does no
one else see this as unhealthy. Sacrificing
your individuality and thus your creative
energy to a fictionalized possibility. No,
not even a fictionalized possibility, a JOKE
about a fictionalized solution to the trainwreck
of a world we live in. Youtuber Mexie recently
had this to say about reclaiming creativity
for radical purposes. "Creativity right now
is how to create the maximum amount of useless
crap the market will actually bare and I think
it is so vital to reclaim creativity for revolutionary
purposes. And this is the time to do it."
If you hate interaction with people so much
and living in the “real” world why not
pool together your efforts and genetically
engineer your own superior race of of cat
girls and leave the planet to them.
But no, that’s too hard right? You have
a shift at your part time job with no security
for tomorrow. So that’s right anime community,
keep normalizing this sociopathic fuck wit
who wasted millions of our dollars and resources
on this planet to launch a car into space,
normalize the decadent neoliberal wealth inequality
he flaunts as people starve in the same country
he lives in, normalize the abhorrent working
conditions, the animators who can barely eke
out a living, and normalize the fact that
most of you are sitting at a computer in you
room with no economic prospects and dreading
going to work tomorrow because you know you
social anxiety will weigh on your neck and
your paycheck will never be enough to support
your lifestyle
Normalize all of this with a funny meme of
Elon Musk smoking pot with his waifus ironically
of course, and thus free of the blame of being
complicit in this fucked up world you hate.
I hate Evangelion. But there is one I thing
the show was absolutely right about.
You’re so fucked up.
