Brandon Marcus

This idea that in today’s world, counterculture must embrace invisibility—that it must rest on a bedrock of withdrawal—appeared in every conversation that I had for this article. Biz Sherbert, culture writer and cohost of the podcast Nymphet Alumni, offers a moral angle. “If mass culture runs on conflict,” she says, “then the only real... See more

We are pantomiming our ideas and convictions rather than living them.

The Silicon Prairie is more than a geographic rebranding or rebuke of unfettered global capitalism – it is an ideological project that fuses conservative nostalgia with techno-libertarian ambition. By elevating the figure of the homegrown entrepreneur and minimizing the role of the state, its vision champions private innovation while disregarding... See more

he socially disintegrative movement of marketization,

Proponents of the ‘tech right’ – figures like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andrees -sen – increasingly frame American progress through their lens of frontier mythologies. In their telling, the future belongs to bold entrepreneurs and small startups, not bloated federal agencies or coastal elites.

Human labor, inquiry, creativity, and expertise is spurned in the name of “efficiency.” With AI, there is no need for human expertise because anything can be learned, approximated, or created in seconds.