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In-Group Feudalism

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In-Group Feudalism

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In-Group Feudalism is a recurring concept in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 27, 2025 and February 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “you were telling me those stories about In-Group Feudalism”. It most often appears alongside Aesop’s Fables, AGI, AI Grifts.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 1
  • Issue count: 1
  • First seen: February 27, 2025
  • Last seen: February 27, 2025

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Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Favorite Grifters Favorite Grifter
February 27, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Saturday, February 22 And then, it was a nice few nights. Nothing ever tends to actually go wrong on these nice and glittering nights. And the weekend was nice, and not over yet, even, though I'm being terribly lazy this Saturday morning, acting like I could let the momentum of the past few days carry me for a while, descending into half asleep fog lying on the floor because in my mind I am content, very content, with having already done enough of it all. Everything feels a bit inflamed today or, the day is just slow to start or, there is the clean laundry on the floor that's been overdue to put away and it's starting to spread across the room like clutter or, David says the way that I've been writing about Purity and Routine is a bit Strange and Off Putting or, at least kind of Mentally Ill. "Do you want to be famous," the manager asked me at the party last night and then, before I could respond, "if you want to be famous you should write gossip, not esoteric thoughts on bullshit." "Well I don't really want to do reporting," I had said, which threw the manager for a loop, because I know this manager does not really like reporters very much and here I was suggesting he was implicating me as a journalist, and then he said "not reporting. I’ve been telling Poppy this too, not reporting just gossip and then you'll be famous, dumb bitch!!" "People already do that," I think I said, but then the manager had already walked away. Later, you were telling me those stories about In-Group Feudalism, and I was thinking this is probably what he means by things of gossip, but it wasn't a very good story, and nobody new gets famous anymore, and this isn't something I actually ever wanted in a real sense, or maybe I used to want this, but I have always kind of known myself to be very bad at the sorts of things that people become famous from. And, I disagree that you'll get famous from gossip, anyways. I disagree that these stories are any good at all. Another light snow has started by the afternoon. I thought it might be spring soon, but there's a grayness to this week's frigidity that feels uniquely never ending. a young couple roller bladed on by me on this gray and snowy street on the walk to the bar. Sunday, February 23 "Whenever I see a guy in a Yankees cap I assume it's a cop," David said, of the clearly undercover officer observing the turnstiles at the Bleecker St station.” At the bar, I was playing journalist. They were celebrating an AI software that marketed itself as undetectable as AI, good for cheating in school, or in screenwriting, code, whatever you want, and it was clear they thought more people would be at the party, they bought raspberry lemon Svedka, I was fighting these Florida tech guys for proximity to the only small space heater in the room. "Do you have any moral qualms about what you do?," Allison asked one of the founders; and he said "no, we're building a tool. you can use a hammer to build a house or to kill someone." Then Alison said something like yes but you aren't building artificial intelligence you are building explicitly undetectable artificial intelligence with the express purpose of cheating and then the founders started talking about the overton window and you're in or you're out and they called my boyfriend over to tell him that he needs to work specifically and only in web app development if he wants to survive the AGI and ASI apocalypse. David was all ehh about it, humoring them a bit but then like oh excuse me I'm going to get a drink and never came back, and then the founder said to me, I like him he's disagreeable and not effeminate unlike most of these N-Y-C guys man, but he needs to listen to me about being a web developer because of the overton window and AGI and ASI coming fast. Then I said why do you work in this industry if you think AI development will only have bad implications and the founder said because it's an arms race and you don't want to land on the wrong side of the glass wall. I didn't ask but thought of this later - do you really think AI will respect its creator? Or, does working on an anti academic artificial intelligence cheating software save you from apocalyptic doom? Later, the founders were telling everyone that the next step of their plan is a pivot to building a game connected to some NFT about mentally ill women called SSRI-wives. Later, a few people kept telling me you should talk to the Gen-Z kid, there's a Gen Z kid here and this program does all his homework, and I didn't meet this kid until late in the night when the founder called him over and said "do you know what Urbit is," and the kid said yes, and the founder sighed and said "he's very online." And then they brought in some girls from Miami off the street because they needed more heads, and then these girls on the street were talking about being from Miami and so the founders said want some free drinks and they pulled them into the room, and then the girls were talking to me about Dinner At Kikis and Quitting Her Server Job Even Though She Loves All The Friends She Made. Then, David sent me the company's TrustPilot reviews and it was all things like “TOTAL SCAM” and “took $6000 from my bank account” and he said this is clearly a total grift even from my preliminary research. Then, there was dinner at Forgetmenot, and there was never returning to the Strange Grift Party, and I was going to write a story. I was going to tell you about grifts and technology, but then, well, I am not sure if there is too much left to add. And I’m not sure if I like to think about these things, although the doomerism fades when you quickly find that the cartoonishly evil project was just a hologram all along. Monday, February 24 When I was eighteen years old, I lived in a hostel in Prague by myself in the springtime, and I was so lonely. I would walk to the park everyday and I would lie in the april grass and I would close my eyes and imagine that when I opened them, I would be surrounded by company. I would imagine that I would laugh and grab someone's hand and we would twirl down the streets towards the old town that reminded me of a fantasy land, a true fantasy land because everything there was all made up. McDonalds were housed in historic old buildings and I didn’t understand why the others I worked with would go on runs every morning just to drink more beer on their returns. Prague was a hologram to me too. I liked the people I met and I liked that they were never going to grow up. I had no friends there. Eventually, I did, but in April I was always alone. These days, I am never alone. I was so sleepy yesterday and not in a nice way. I would like to avoid these things. I will drink green tea on the terrace this morning. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO After reading Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1872 novella Carmilla for my Irish Lit class last week, I’ve been feeling big on fairytales and magic. My sister Sylvie is the most magical girl in the world, as well as the most well read. She has offered her list of recommended fairy tales for this letter: Fairy Tales (by Sylvie Pingeon) I try to read a section of Lady Jane Francesca Wilde’s Ancient Legends of Ireland: Music Charms & Superstitions of Ireland with Sketches of the Irish Past every night before I go to bed. It’s a truly magic book that brings fairytales into daily life with spells, remedies, and little bits of fairy advice: “People ought to remember that egg-shells are favorite retreats of the fairies, therefore the judicious eater should always break the shell after use, to prevent the fairy sprite from taking up his lodging therein.” A fairytale self-help book, and I love it. As a child, my favorite book was House Above the Trees by Ethel Cooke Eliot. Everything by Eliot is so special: she writes of wind creatures who look like the wind feels and tree girls who wear skirts made from the leaves of their trees (green in the summer, red in the fall), and the humans who can see these forest people have the clearest eyes around. All her books are like this, but House Above The Trees is my favorite: an eight year old orphan follows a Wind Creature into the forest and is taken in by Tree Mother, who lives in the treetops. A wonderful, fairy adventure ensues. Brothers Grimm is also always great, although Bluebeard gave me nightmares as a child that still sometimes come back. My mom gave me a beautiful copy of Aesop’s Fables for Christmas this year. It’s beautiful but I haven’t read it yet. A lot of second-wave feminists wrote retellings of fairy tales, and I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but I found Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber to be a truly beautiful read. On the topic of AI Grifts, Gabriel Hollis (of Margin for Thought and Microculture) recommends the following articles on Technology and God and Our End Times. All ideas that fall under near debilitatingly large banners, and all topics which Gabriel explores well. To be honest, I need to dive into these pieces with more intensity before I offer any original thoughts, but I will leave you with the links: Seeking God, or Peter Thiel, in Silicon Valley by Emma Goldberg, for NYT
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!y7LO!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4a60216-3a6a-4640-99b1-3e95af177324_1600x927.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JTRE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F03385ed5-b5ac-4cc9-8d10-8542c7ed383e_1600x873.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yfjy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc2217312-7969-4c84-bcb5-e2f349100218_1600x855.png, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1872 novella, Sylvie, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde’s, House Above the Trees, Aesop’s Fables, Angela Carter’s, Margin for Thought, Microculture, Seeking God, or Peter Thiel, in Silicon Valley

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