7 ms·

Weird Nonfiction

83 points by samclemens 2y ago

Rodeoclash 2y ago
Nothing else to add except this was an exceptionally well written piece.
- FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
  It really wasn’t. It was the kind of writing you get when someone desperately wants to be deep and profound, but lacks the skills to pull it off.
nine_k 2y ago
"Weird nonfiction" is a weird name for it, because it still pretends it's nonfiction. I'd rather call it in a more distinct and weird way, say, "ficnontion".
- bear141 2y ago
  He also mentions “creative nonfiction”.
- helloplanets 2y ago
  Then there's also autofiction, which sort of fits some of the examples given in the essay, even if not literary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofiction
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  I like your new word. It is both eloquent and awkward simultaneously. I call this quality awkloquent.
motohagiography 2y ago
important idea. a theme in these is they are variations on story forms that break the fourth wall. where literary fiction breathed life into characters and gave words to essential human experiences, the horror in these stories feels like iterating on a kind of transmissible schizophrenia, not unlike the meme virus in Snowcrash. we're into version 4.x or more of this, where the doubts about the real shown by AI are the effect earlier discoveries about the consequences of a "hyperreal" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality). decades ago those cultural studies people (who now run our institutions) were on to more than we knew. they were reasoning about how to operate in a world that disconnected from a shared Real. we can see these weird fictions as the artifacts of devices operating on todays fragmented, narrative driven realities. i'd call it post-nihilism, where culturally we're downstream of a great unmooring and in an all against all struggle for narrative dominance with no safety in a base reality or truth. the weird fiction devices are patterns of reframing, analogous to exploits for injecting cognitive associations (or dissociations) to align other minds. It's like in the "wet cement" stage of a news event where everyone crowds in to establish the dominant meme first for their "side." I don't indulge in these stories because I read most of PKD's "Exegesis" and it is among the works you hear about from people who shortly thereafter break down completely. I've met more than one person muttering about Jung's red book and Kripke's theories of truth, PKD's exegesis, evola, and junger, before disappearing into rehab or homelessness. some ideas are just not healthy recreation, and what they all have in common is a meme complex that causes people to dissociate with all the zeal of a religious conversion but imbued with existential horror. in short, avoid. these weird fictions should be studied, but mainly to innoculate people to them, as what we know from LLM's is that we can now produce complete ideologies the way we used to write pop songs, where the hooks are now reframings, and if you can't explicitly source a belief from a first hand experience, it could be the artifact of one so be on guard. we may actually need to form an anti-memetics division.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  Memetic hazards can be real and strong, and you best not delve too deeply.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    One of those memetic hazards is the meme that such memetic hazards do not exist. In infects politics to an alarming degree.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      I don't think I've ever heard anyone (outside of the first two years of college or so) deny that there are writings that are either outright dangerous, or at least need some context in order to be consumed safely.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        > there are writings that are either outright dangerous, or at least need some context in order to be consumed safely Can you name three? In the real world, I can't think of any writing that was/is dangerous on its own. There are some texts people colloquially accuse of having historically caused trouble - Mein Kampf comes to mind - but those were arguably just nucleation sites, themselves little but random objects around which preexisting moods and sentiments crystallized. (I specifically don't want to say "catalyst", because that would imply the writing had to be very specific to the reaction its introduction caused. Nucleation, in contrast, can be trigger by whatever random impurity that happened to be the right size.) I mean, the continued existence of the Internet kind of disproves the idea of outright dangerous texts.
        pavel_lishin 2y ago
        > Can you name three? Personally, without reading the rest of your comment - because I glimpsed one title that makes the list - these are the things I would tell my child not to read without talking to us first: - Main Kampf - Just about anything by Ayn Rand - This one is a bit of a cop-out because it's very generic, but certain online message boards & Facebook groups. When they're old enough to start browsing on their own - which is probably now, come to think of it - I want to make sure they don't start reading something that reads vaguely plausible on the surface, but quickly plummets into weird racist/fascist rhetoric. > I mean, the continued existence of the Internet kind of disproves the idea of outright dangerous texts. I don't think it does, and I would argue that anti-COVID, anti-global-warming, and the other radicalization stuff online is a point to me. Nucleation is a good analogy, I guess, but some people are impressionable enough that they'll glom onto something that'll glow like a horrible pearl in their mind until they think that tampons in the boys' bathroom means that China is, uh, I don't know, turning the frogs gay with Bill Gates' vaccines? I'd wager almost everyone here can personally name one relative who's effectively lost their grip on factual reality in the past five years.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
eigenblake 2y ago
> creative work that presents itself as journalism or nonfiction but introduces fictional elements with the intention of upsetting, disturbing, or confusing the audience. A good time to mention the SCP wiki and some types of analog horror. It was this kind of thing that led me to discover "hard science fiction" which is distinct but related to the previous two.
- genewitch 2y ago
  I think i enjoy hard sci-fi, if my username is any indication of the genre - it's from "A Signal Shattered" by Eric S. Nylund. However i am curious what sort of Sci-fi you meant, where it's plausible but there's SCP/analog horror elements. Evidently a prior comment in the thread about memetics wiped an edge on the graph that would let me infer the sorts of thing you're talking about.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    > it's from "A Signal Shattered" by Eric S. Nylund. What a great book. I read it before I read the book that it's a sequel to. Maybe I'll re-read them this week.
- namaste411 2y ago
  it doesn't have to make you insecure
a_bonobo 2y ago
> They read as if written by a ghost. It is almost impossible to spot the lie in Sebald. One of his final essays, “Campo Santo,” (2003) makes an unlikely pivot in its final moments to speak of the modern world, meditating on the place of the dead in an increasingly crowded physical world There's this older Japanese horror movie, Pulse, which would have fit perfectly - it's about a world where hell is full and the dead 'invade' living spaces via the internet. But it's not a traditional horror movie, the invasion can also be a stain in the dark that slowly grows, until the human is swallowed up. It's weirdly meditative and melancholic, in the context of OP it's a weird documentary about how the internet invades real spaces.
andai 2y ago
>I call it weird nonfiction: creative work that presents itself as journalism or nonfiction but introduces fictional elements with the intention of upsetting, disturbing, or confusing the audience. By this definition, Blair Witch Project seems to fit. Is that right? The examples given in the article seem to indicate a different intention or tone.
- jasonb05 2y ago
  This tripped me up too until point 3 in the piece: > If you are wondering whether or not something counts as weird nonfiction, consider its weirdness. Modern mockumentaries do not work because there is no uncertainty; the documentary element is used to advance the plot, mug at the camera, key the viewer in. I read this as: non-fiction elements in service of advancing the plot is a strike against. Really, "weird nonfiction" is whatever the author wants it to be. The examples are a total grab bag IMHO.
lazlee 2y ago
I was hoping for an article about actual weird non-fiction or "creative nonfiction", unfortunately the author focuses on fiction pretending to be nonfiction which at the end of the day, is still fiction. His label of what he calls "weird nonfiction" is seriously misused here.
DrPimienta 2y ago
Am I wrong for thinking this is a silly name? If it's fictional then by definition it is not Nonfiction. It certainly is weird.
namaste411 2y ago
did he tell you to read his work before it was finished?

Weird Nonfiction

83 points by samclemens 2y ago

Rodeoclash 2y ago

Nothing else to add except this was an exceptionally well written piece.

FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
It really wasn’t. It was the kind of writing you get when someone desperately wants to be deep and profound, but lacks the skills to pull it off.

nine_k 2y ago

"Weird nonfiction" is a weird name for it, because it still pretends it's nonfiction. I'd rather call it in a more distinct and weird way, say, "ficnontion".

bear141 2y ago
He also mentions “creative nonfiction”.
helloplanets 2y ago
Then there's also autofiction, which sort of fits some of the examples given in the essay, even if not literary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofiction
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
I like your new word. It is both eloquent and awkward simultaneously. I call this quality awkloquent.

motohagiography 2y ago

important idea. a theme in these is they are variations on story forms that break the fourth wall. where literary fiction breathed life into characters and gave words to essential human experiences, the horror in these stories feels like iterating on a kind of transmissible schizophrenia, not unlike the meme virus in Snowcrash. we're into version 4.x or more of this, where the doubts about the real shown by AI are the effect earlier discoveries about the consequences of a "hyperreal" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality). decades ago those cultural studies people (who now run our institutions) were on to more than we knew. they were reasoning about how to operate in a world that disconnected from a shared Real. we can see these weird fictions as the artifacts of devices operating on todays fragmented, narrative driven realities. i'd call it post-nihilism, where culturally we're downstream of a great unmooring and in an all against all struggle for narrative dominance with no safety in a base reality or truth. the weird fiction devices are patterns of reframing, analogous to exploits for injecting cognitive associations (or dissociations) to align other minds. It's like in the "wet cement" stage of a news event where everyone crowds in to establish the dominant meme first for their "side." I don't indulge in these stories because I read most of PKD's "Exegesis" and it is among the works you hear about from people who shortly thereafter break down completely. I've met more than one person muttering about Jung's red book and Kripke's theories of truth, PKD's exegesis, evola, and junger, before disappearing into rehab or homelessness. some ideas are just not healthy recreation, and what they all have in common is a meme complex that causes people to dissociate with all the zeal of a religious conversion but imbued with existential horror. in short, avoid. these weird fictions should be studied, but mainly to innoculate people to them, as what we know from LLM's is that we can now produce complete ideologies the way we used to write pop songs, where the hooks are now reframings, and if you can't explicitly source a belief from a first hand experience, it could be the artifact of one so be on guard. we may actually need to form an anti-memetics division.

datadrivenangel 2y ago
Memetic hazards can be real and strong, and you best not delve too deeply.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  One of those memetic hazards is the meme that such memetic hazards do not exist. In infects politics to an alarming degree.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    I don't think I've ever heard anyone (outside of the first two years of college or so) deny that there are writings that are either outright dangerous, or at least need some context in order to be consumed safely.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > there are writings that are either outright dangerous, or at least need some context in order to be consumed safely Can you name three? In the real world, I can't think of any writing that was/is dangerous on its own. There are some texts people colloquially accuse of having historically caused trouble - Mein Kampf comes to mind - but those were arguably just nucleation sites, themselves little but random objects around which preexisting moods and sentiments crystallized. (I specifically don't want to say "catalyst", because that would imply the writing had to be very specific to the reaction its introduction caused. Nucleation, in contrast, can be trigger by whatever random impurity that happened to be the right size.) I mean, the continued existence of the Internet kind of disproves the idea of outright dangerous texts.
      - pavel_lishin 2y ago
        > Can you name three? Personally, without reading the rest of your comment - because I glimpsed one title that makes the list - these are the things I would tell my child not to read without talking to us first: - Main Kampf - Just about anything by Ayn Rand - This one is a bit of a cop-out because it's very generic, but certain online message boards & Facebook groups. When they're old enough to start browsing on their own - which is probably now, come to think of it - I want to make sure they don't start reading something that reads vaguely plausible on the surface, but quickly plummets into weird racist/fascist rhetoric. > I mean, the continued existence of the Internet kind of disproves the idea of outright dangerous texts. I don't think it does, and I would argue that anti-COVID, anti-global-warming, and the other radicalization stuff online is a point to me. Nucleation is a good analogy, I guess, but some people are impressionable enough that they'll glom onto something that'll glow like a horrible pearl in their mind until they think that tampons in the boys' bathroom means that China is, uh, I don't know, turning the frogs gay with Bill Gates' vaccines? I'd wager almost everyone here can personally name one relative who's effectively lost their grip on factual reality in the past five years.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

eigenblake 2y ago

> creative work that presents itself as journalism or nonfiction but introduces fictional elements with the intention of upsetting, disturbing, or confusing the audience. A good time to mention the SCP wiki and some types of analog horror. It was this kind of thing that led me to discover "hard science fiction" which is distinct but related to the previous two.

genewitch 2y ago
I think i enjoy hard sci-fi, if my username is any indication of the genre - it's from "A Signal Shattered" by Eric S. Nylund. However i am curious what sort of Sci-fi you meant, where it's plausible but there's SCP/analog horror elements. Evidently a prior comment in the thread about memetics wiped an edge on the graph that would let me infer the sorts of thing you're talking about.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > it's from "A Signal Shattered" by Eric S. Nylund. What a great book. I read it before I read the book that it's a sequel to. Maybe I'll re-read them this week.
namaste411 2y ago
it doesn't have to make you insecure

a_bonobo 2y ago

> They read as if written by a ghost. It is almost impossible to spot the lie in Sebald. One of his final essays, “Campo Santo,” (2003) makes an unlikely pivot in its final moments to speak of the modern world, meditating on the place of the dead in an increasingly crowded physical world There's this older Japanese horror movie, Pulse, which would have fit perfectly - it's about a world where hell is full and the dead 'invade' living spaces via the internet. But it's not a traditional horror movie, the invasion can also be a stain in the dark that slowly grows, until the human is swallowed up. It's weirdly meditative and melancholic, in the context of OP it's a weird documentary about how the internet invades real spaces.

andai 2y ago

>I call it weird nonfiction: creative work that presents itself as journalism or nonfiction but introduces fictional elements with the intention of upsetting, disturbing, or confusing the audience. By this definition, Blair Witch Project seems to fit. Is that right? The examples given in the article seem to indicate a different intention or tone.

jasonb05 2y ago
This tripped me up too until point 3 in the piece: > If you are wondering whether or not something counts as weird nonfiction, consider its weirdness. Modern mockumentaries do not work because there is no uncertainty; the documentary element is used to advance the plot, mug at the camera, key the viewer in. I read this as: non-fiction elements in service of advancing the plot is a strike against. Really, "weird nonfiction" is whatever the author wants it to be. The examples are a total grab bag IMHO.

lazlee 2y ago

I was hoping for an article about actual weird non-fiction or "creative nonfiction", unfortunately the author focuses on fiction pretending to be nonfiction which at the end of the day, is still fiction. His label of what he calls "weird nonfiction" is seriously misused here.

DrPimienta 2y ago

Am I wrong for thinking this is a silly name? If it's fictional then by definition it is not Nonfiction. It certainly is weird.

namaste411 2y ago

did he tell you to read his work before it was finished?