The Hero In the Age of Secondary Orality
the deep right + new media
Introduction
Welcome, again, to Deep Socks, a year-long book project, serialized live each week. In our first month, we have surveyed Managerial Society in Winter. In this month, we examine the fading glow of the right, as the 20th century’s efflorescence of right wing energy fades slowly into the enveloping cold of winter.
This week we will explore three concepts from media theory: secondary orality, McLuhan’s Four Laws of Media, and the anti-environment, in order to “clarify” the condition of Shallow Winter on the Right. There are Fascist Embers in this winter, but also Jeffersonian Embers, and Jacobin Embers. The Past Glows, but in a feeble and sad way.
Why Media Theory is So Unpopular
Before getting into each of the concepts, let’s consider the perpetual unpopularity of media theory. McLuhan could be said to have mythically founded the field of media studies with the notorious proclamation, or Koan: “The Medium is the Message.” These words allow the “ground” of human communicative practices to enter the foreground, and this is annoying. Why? Very generally because it blocks the all-too-human tendency towards narrativization. Instead of telling a tidy story about a visible historical dynamic with recognizable good and bad agents, media studies points attention at the backdrop - at the alphabets, televisions, printing presses, radio networks that structure our experience, all of our experience.
We exist today in a phase that Jesuit Priest and media theorist Walter Ong designates as ‘secondary orality.’ This is the age following that of literacy, the visual age—where the dominant media are oral, inheriting and structured by the qualities of this media. This is the reintroduction and return of supremacy for acoustic experience. Secondary orality also calls attention to this structuring backdrop: to the way that mass broadcast and electronic media structure experience. Here are the McLuhan’s on the difference between acoustic and visual space:
Acoustic space is a complete contrast to visual space in all of its properties, which explains the wide refusal to adopt the new form. Visual space, created by intensifying and separating that sense from interplay with the others, is an infinite container, linear and continuous, homogenous and uniform. Acoustic space, always penetrated by tactility and other senses, is spherical, discontinuous, non-homogenous, resonant and dynamic. Visual space is structured as static, abstract figure minus a ground; acoustic space is a flux in which figure and ground rub against and transform each other.
Both secondary and primary orality share this flux quality, but it works differently now. Here is Ong on the differences between primary and secondary orality:
Orality is orality in some ultimate sense, of course. Certain points of resemblance between present-day phenomena related to our orality and primitive phenomena related to orality are startling enough. Sound always tends to socialize. The drive toward group sense and toward participatory activities, toward "happenings," which mysteriously emerges out of modern electronic technological cultures is strikingly similar to certain drives in preliterate cultures. But the startling likeness carries with it an equally startling difference.
For primitive man, happenings occurred. Today we program happenings. With all the inner-directedness we can muster, we plan unplanned events, and we label them happenings so that we will be sure to know what is going on. If I may use terms which I fondly believe I have originated, I would suggest that we speak of the orality of preliterate man as primary orality and of the orality of our electronic technologized culture as secondary orality.
Secondary orality is the borderland between the visual/alphabetic/individualizing Gutenberg Galaxy and the acoustic/mass media/collectivizing Global Village. This is where we live. Ong identifies a central tension, or what he called a “dilemma” in this borderland media situation.
“The present age is thus in a dilemma, on the one hand driven to the use of cliches by its new orality and on the other driven to mock them because of its relentless literacy.”
When we say orality, then, we must define it as non-literate communication, communication of impression, of indefinite, ambiguous meaning that 'produces sound' in your head. In secondary orality, the visual may in fact be part of this oral life—but the sensation of the visual must give way to a fundamentally oral experience.
When you see JK Simmons with a toothbrush moustache laughing, you’re hearing him, you are recalling the feeling of him. A gif of a man laughing or yelling or having an extreme emotion, a gif of a known or popular dance, the visual response is primarily intended to create or recreate oral sound. This happens in a space where the visual is secondary to the context, where the figure and the contextual grounding of the figure are interrelated, and transformative. The meme, the reaction gif is the visual subordinated to orality.
The Gutenberg Age was the age of the visual. It was an age where people remember its great men, unblemished by reality. Napoleon is the ur-hero of the high Gutenberg Age. A man like Caesar, who endures beyond death, who endures beyond defeat—accomplishments so grand that losing them is a mere quirk of fate, perhaps loss elevates his victories.
Napoleon pointing towards the Alps on a Shetland pony, the continuous ironies of a remarkable man in a fake situation on a friendly little creature like a Shetland—the image is curation itself, the selection of all elements, arranged in a conceptual vertical that tells you: Napoleon, France, Power with an uninterruptable singularity. To look at the painting is to see a monolith of meaning, arranged indivisibly and vertically. Here is the visual center of a cult of writing. You do not hear Napoleon calling out to you. Indeed, few did. But you see his name.
Gabriele d’Annunzio, the dictator of Fiume and the godfather of Fascism, himself a charismatic and adventuring cad who embodied the future of 20th century politics in his strange and tumultuous life—in a sense his career began with father giving him the eight volume Mémorial de St. Hélène by the Comte de Las Cases, a confidante and companion of Napoleon. D’Annunzio used writing to make himself singular: “an abstract figure minus a ground.” But such a figure cannot survive in the age of radio, the age of film.
Napoleon As Livestreamer
Nobody, as themselves, seems to be able to survive in the age of radio, which endures to this day, (though the function of radio is far more sophisticated now than in the past), and it gets harder and harder as the mass media become higher resolution, more participatory, more temporally unbounded. What is it that gets harder? It is not so much the being public and present.
Many hyperpublic figures, the modern charismatic ‘leader’ is often a streamer or influencer, maintain an extremely low-effort kind of physical presence, they merely turn the camera on and inhabit the character at rest, picking up as needed to affect some play-acted emotion at a video, video game, or random bit of information. But historical figures are never at rest. Their existence is a matter of biography, not constant and excessive documentation. Napoleon’s leisure time is for many unimaginable, but more importantly it is also inconsequential—the big man lives a big life, and we know him through great deeds, recorded with appropriate respect and distance.
This is the fundamental problem facing the charismatic individual in the age of secondary orality, in the current perpetual media environment. How may I be a hero, in an age where people yearn for them? No longer does a charismatic man experience freedom from his own charisma, freedom to live as himself, or be unguarded. Instead they are victim to an immediate biographer public. Mistakes, slights, insults, are no longer moments, they are potentially episodes, revelations of character and essence. The public figure today is in continual evaluation and judgment. Think on the extreme political conditions imposed on those who seek to influence politics, but are not ‘born to the manor.’ Consider a political figure like Richard Nixon. Nixon was colorful, folksy when he wanted to be, personable when he did not feel so slighted. A gonzo nutcase like Hunter Thompson thought of him fondly! Even then, their media presence existed for a mere few hours on film. An up-and-coming political streamer laps that in a week. Figures who are accidentally political cross that easily. There aren’t hundreds of hours of Nixon, unscripted and streaming, grasping with a cockeyed desperation at any content chunk that might come his way, reading off superchats and having to judiciously sever himself from any potential blemish on his reputation.
A serious political person does not necessarily put themselves ‘on blast’ as it were, 24/7. Streaming is a field for those in it for the money, or trying to establish a name and brand for themselves. Yet even as mercenary-minded publicity-seeking pundits their exposure is far greater, far more intimate, far more horizontal than it would have been in the past. The right, shallow and deep, depends on charismatic leadership, its tradition ultimately deriving from the hereditary military aristocracy—which renewed itself through the natural event of new conquerors emerging from its lower ranks or previously undistinguished citizenry. Now, the difficulty of a charismatic man in public is to maintain their “curated” profile, the “abstract figure” quality, the “vertical” aspect necessary for any kind of heroism. It is difficult to inspire with the real self. The real self has to go pee, the real self eats and shits and fucks and is quite often embarrassed. We don’t live in an age where the humanity of those with kingly bearing is elided to further their greatness—the ages where this was possible witnessed media where either the essentials of meaning were all that could be conveyed (primary orality), or where meaning could be arranged and sculpted appropriately (primary literacy).
Clout, Charisma, and the Empty Center
Power derives from this characteristic—the integral image of the leader. That our current leaders in America have such violable images is a sign that American society is centerless, and leaderless. This will not do for the right, nor will it do for the charismatic, ambitious, and politically minded. The problem of charisma is extreme and sharp for people seeking to be influential, because of the high potential for commercial exploitation in the age of secondary orality. It is easy to become moderately wealthy using your charisma—the attention economy exists, and privileges those who are willing to sacrifice some dignity for fungible attention.
The charismatic individual, possessed of what Machiavelli would call virtu, the characteristics of leadership, then faces a fork in the road. Said fork:
Do they want eClout? This is the clout of Twitter, and such similar mental vortexes like Twitch, YouTube, and so on. This will produce symbolic capital. Symbolic capital is status that is relevant in homogenous fields of experience—a skilled surgeon has symbolic capital in medicine, a lawyer in the legal field, an actor to those seeking entertainment, a YouTuber amongst the broader ‘community’ they target. It is not fungible to other fields.
Do they want real clout? This is the clout that gets asses in seats and boots on the ground and your enemies shot in the back of the head and declared a suicide. This is social capital, a broadly fungible level of fame and celebrity that confers status in a wide variety of fields—a federal judge, a billionaire, a corrupt person like the head of an NGO or a politician.
Secondary orality is primarily experienced in the economic realm as ‘the attention economy.’ While there are many social technics involved in the creation of the attention economy—the algorithmic management of both content and personality, the revolution in lithography, and the overall managerial revolution—the subdivision of attention into discrete chunks and the perpetual auction for the ears and eyes of sick, sad, unhealthy public is the most profound. These people are hungry for content. They look for what sounds best, they listen for what offers the most coherent experience for their time. Either the algorithm provides it, or a personality does.
There are two paths:
Relative anonymity. This is the path of people like old SaloForums people, eugyppius, 2CB, Russians With Attitude. They portray themselves as part of a samizdat movement. Their identities are unimportant, their ideas and persona, (as-mask, not as-identity) are.
Facelording. These are people like Hassan Piker, Cenk Uygur, the breadtubers, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes Jordan Peterson, the Internet Bloodsports crowd—they are exchanging their real identities for financial betterment, and for symbolic capital.
Anonymity gives you a higher potential for cultural capital, but it is not immediately fungible nor will it necessarily accrue to you. Should you have ideas that displease future power structures, you might be boned. This is a longer-term investment in the intellectual production system. It might have good returns, if you’re very lucky or are possessed of exceptional charisma and a good character to inhabit.
The problem with symbolic capital is that it is highly speculative! It is not the best investment. Your crowd can turn on you after years of careful management. Your crowd can shrink. Your desperate attempts to hold on to anything like a crowd, or reallocate your social capital, can result in a conga line of humiliation and you end up a lolcow, no better really than Chris chan. This is the probable destiny of all of these people, and for some of them it is ongoing now—Ben Shapiro is known mostly for his sister’s tremendous ‘Khazar milkers’ and Jordan Peterson for his ‘benzo addiction’ and Hassan for his ‘embarrassing personal wealth taken from his audience’ and the breadtubers for the many different embarrassing things they have chosen to do with their lives, which are ignored here for brevity’s sake.
Let’s now consider two very specific figures in the deep right world, very different in approach.
Bronze Age Pervert
Bronze Age Pervert is not a facelord. He might be Costin Alamariu, a rosy-cheeked Romanian who disappeared from Twitter and public writing around the time of Bronze Age Mindset’s success. This is the dox provided by spiteful gremlin Kantbot, who had some sort of ridiculous slapfight with him. But his name, his face—they do not matter all that much. BAP might be an uglier or more handsome man. BAP might be Pietro Boselli, object of his lust of many years. BAP might be Kantbot, a spiteful gremlin. Again, his face does not matter, his personality, his real life, his sexuality, his location, they are irrelevant for his message and messaging. The persona and message itself do. BAP is a creature of this secondary orality, his life is as indifferent to his listeners as the life of Homer is to a reader of the Iliad. Bronze Age Mindset might as well be an audiobook, it is written his ridiculous gag accent, which only drops to reveal American vowels in the most infrequent of moments. BAP offers an aspirational, rogueish persona to inspire and mold his listeners. Whether he has or does not have symbolic capital is quite irrelevant—though it’s clear he has very little and lives mostly as a boogeyman; his is a strange persona who exists to discredit his audience to the public.
Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug
Once, Yarvin was Mencius Moldbug. He might have stayed that way, and remained a figure of his time, perhaps, or been remembered quite differently, as a brief flash of brilliant light for the right wing. Now, he has a successful substack, is a well-known author under his own name, and is able to attract exposure and publicity in many circles for all the hats he wears in life—programmer, lover, kind-of-funny-guy, and political writer. Learning of his identity at first was a surprise, surprising to see one take off the mask. One of his posts on his Substack is a eulogy for his wife, who appears to have been a wonderful person. Now, when we read his poetry, the void in his life is much more apparent. When he appears on a Catholic podcast and does a strange affected Boston accent inconsistently, you can see his face. It’s not a particularly handsome or ugly face, but his shortcomings become all the more visible. What is uninspiring about Curtis Yarvin, or what is, more accurately, real about Curtis Yarvin is much more palpable. As a writer, he is possessed of no small measure of charisma. His prose is good, his thoughts are lucid. But when you develop a parasocial relationship with a philosopher, you are entering into a very strange relationship. And a parasocial relationship holds in it the inevitability of conflict, when the persona you know and the reality of the performer begin to rub against each other.
Yarvin is fundamentally a creature of this Gutenberg Galaxy, and he may have been better off remaining an anonymous writer than as ‘himself.’ Secondary orality’s demands are strict—they require a person to reduce themselves to a repetitively-viewed socially-understood object. That is, a cliché. The self is constantly examined, a victim of excessive documentation, of constant streams of content tied to a real name and personality, unmediated, yes—but who said mediation was a bad thing? Automatic biography is when all your public actions are a matter of documented reality, and when your livelihood depends on making frequent public actions.
To exist as a creature of literacy, as Yarvin is, a talented writer and programmer, is to remain uncapturable by cliché, by orality. Emerging with your face into the world of secondary orality, with your personality and its imperfections whittles away at a potentially heroic figure, and turns a relationship of ideas into a sticky and unpleasant parasocial one. It does offer more opportunities, and a chance to earn symbolic capital, which may one day convert into cultural capital.
To exist as a creature of secondary orality, on the right, means to be a mysterious figure. To live only as a fiction—this is staying “anon.” Only the fictional can be heroes, and the only fiction that exists now can be in the mode of secondary orality. The Gutenberg Galaxy does not contain people’s imaginations and wonder any longer. And the right wing, the deep right especially, needs heroes! And remaining heroic requires that the human underneath not surface, that they not form a ‘relationship’ with their audience, they must remain as indifferent to you as Catholic Jesus and not be needy and intimate like Protestant Jesus.
Secondary orality, when a person offers themselves up to it, has a destructive effect. Delegitimation follows when the human underneath the mask is exposed, or when the mask wears thin to the gaze. The human underneath deteriorates under constant performance, to turn into a cliché-human, and they are caught between their own relentless literacy (if they are a person possessed of self-awareness) and the demands of a voracious and amoral collective, the audience.