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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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“Brand safety” killed Jezebel

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library this Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Progressives: if you want to lose to conservatives, all you need to do is reflexively praise and support everything conservatives turn into a culture-war issue, without considering whether they might be right. Because sometimes…they're right.

Remember early in the Trump presidency, when conservatives all woke up and discovered that America's spy agencies – excuse me, "the intelligence community" – were dirty-tricking psychos who run amok, lawlessly sabotaging democracy? Progressives have been shouting this ever since Hoover's FBI tried to blackmail MLK into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But millions of progressives forgot about COINTELPRO, CIA dirty tricks and CIA mass spying when this "intelligence community" temporarily set out to wrong-foot Trump. Remember James Comey votive candles?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/30/james-comey-fbi-memo-leaks-trump-inspector-general-report-column/2157705001/

Anthropologists have a name for this phenomenon, in which one side reverses its positions because their sworn enemies have done so. It's called schizmogenesis, and it goes like this: "If they hate it, we love it":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Schizmogenesis is an equal-opportunity delusion. Within living memory, white evangelicals supported abortion, because their sworn enemies – Catholics – opposed it. Some of those white Boomer women who voted Trump because abortion was literally the only issue they cared about held the opposite position on abortion not so long ago – and completely forgot about it:

https://text.npr.org/734303135

The main purpose of the culture war isn't immiserating marginalized people – that's its effect, but its purpose is to distract low-information turkeys (working people) so they'll vote for Christmas (the ongoing seizure of power by American oligarchs). For the funders of conservative movement politics, the cruelty isn't the point, it's merely the tactic. The point is power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

Which brings me to "woke capitalism." Conservative string-pullers have whipped up their base about the threat of companies embracing social causes. They (erroneously) claim that corporations have progressive values, and that big business is thumbing the scales for causes they despise. The purpose here isn't to sow distrust of capitalism per se. Rather, it's to stampede talk-radio-addled supporters into backing the oligarchy's agenda. Remember when culture war leaders told their base to support being gouged on credit-card junk fees "to own the libs?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

That's schizmogenesis working against the conservative rank-and-file, tricking them into taking the side of a cartel of wildly profitable payment processors who are making billions by picking their pockets (credit card fees are up 40% since the covid lockdowns), because (checks notes), Target pays these profiteers a lot to process its payments, and Target sells Pride merch (no, really):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

It's easy to point and laugh at conservative dopes when they're tricked into shooting themselves in the balls to own the libs. This is not a hypothetical example:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#musketfuckers

But progressives do it, too, particularly when they embrace monopolies as a force for positive social change. Remember 2019, when people got excited about playing loud pop music at Nazi rallies in the hopes that the monopoly video platforms' copyright filters would make any video from that rally impossible to post?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

I warned then that if this tactic worked, it would be used by cops to prevent you from recording them when they're macing you or splitting your skull with a billyclub, and yup, within a couple years, cops were blaring Taylor Swift music in hopes of preventing the public from posting videos of their illegal conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

Conservatives are (partially) right about woke capitalism. It is a threat to democracy. Concentrating the power to decide who gets to speak and what they get to say into the hands of five or six corporations, mostly run by mediocre billionaires, is bad for society. The moderation decisions of giant platforms are a form of (commercial) censorship, even these don't violate the First Amendment:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

(The progressive delusion that censorship only occurs when the First Amendment is violated is a wild own-goal, one that excuses, for example, the decision by school book-fair monopolist Scholastic to remove books about queers and Black and brown people from its offerings as a purely private matter without consequences for free speech):

https://www.themarysue.com/scholastic-response-to-authors-and-illustrators-on-diverse-books/

Conservatives are only partially right about woke capitalism, though. Here's what they're wrong about: corporations don't have values. Target isn't selling Pride tees because they support progressive causes, they're selling them because it seems like a good way to increase returns to their shareholders. Individuals – even top executives – at Target might endorse the cause, but the company will only durably support the cause if that endorsement is profitable, which means that when it stops being profitable, the company will stop supporting the cause:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/business/target-lgbtq-merchandise/index.html

The idea that corporations have values isn't merely stupid, it's very dangerous. The Hobby Lobby decision – which allows corporations to deny basic health-care expenses for women on the basis that a Bronze Age mystic wouldn't approve of an IUD – rests on the ideological foundation that corporate personhood includes corporate values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.

Citizens United – the idea that corporations should be allowed to funnel unlimited funds to politicians who'll sell out the public good in favor of investor profits – also depends on a form of corporate personhood that includes values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

There are undeniably instances in which corporate monopoly power benefits progressive causes, but these are side-effects of corporate power's main purpose, namely: taking money and power away from working people and giving it to rich people. That is what monopoly power is for.

Which brings me to ad-tech, "brand safety," and the demise of Jezebel, the 16 year old feminist website whose shuttering was just announced by its latest owner, G/O Media:

https://www.metafilter.com/201349/This-is-the-end-of-Jezebel-and-that-feels-really-really-bad

Jezebel's demise is the direct result of monopoly power. Jezebel writes about current affairs – sex, politics, abortion, and other important issues of great moment and significance. When we talk about journalism as a public good, necessary for a healthy civic life, this is what we mean. But unfortunately for Jezebel – and any other news outlet covering current events – there are vast, invisible forces that exist solely to starve this kind of coverage of advertising revenue.

Writing for the independent news site 404 Media, reporter Emanuel Maiberg and former Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler go deep on the "brand safety" industry, whose mission is to assist corporations in blocking their ads from showing up alongside real news:

https://www.404media.co/advertisers-dont-want-sites-like-jezebel-to-exist/

Maiberg and Koebler explain how industry associations like the World Federation of Marketers' Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) promulgate "frameworks" to help advertisers automatically detect and exclude real news from consideration when their ads are placed:

https://www.peer39.com/blog/garm-standards

This boycott makes use of scammy "AI" technology like "sentiment and emotional analysis" to determine whether an article is suitable for monetization. These parameters are then fed to the ad-tech duopoly's ad auction system, so Google and Meta (who control the vast majority of online advertising) can ensure that real news is starved of cash.

But reality is not brand-safe, and high quality, reputable journalistic outlets are concerned with reality, which means that the "brand safe" outlets that attract the most revenue are garbage websites that haven't yet been blacklisted by the ad-safety cartel, leading to major brands' ads showing up alongside notorious internet gross-out images like "goatse":

https://www.404media.co/sqword-game-dev-sneaks-goatse-onto-a-dozen-sites-that-stole-his-game/

More than a fifth of "brand safe" ad placements end up on "made for advertising" sites, which 404 Media describe as "trash websites that plagiarize content, are literally spam, pay for fake traffic, or are autogenerated websites that serve no other purpose than capturing ad dollars":

https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-06-ana-programmatic-transparency-first-look

Despite all this, many progressives have become cheerleaders for "brand safety," as a countervailing force to the drawdown of trust and safety at online platforms, which led to the re-platforming of Nazis, QAnon conspiratorialists, TERFs, and other overt elements of the reactionary movement's vanguard on Twitter and Facebook. Articles about ads for major brands showing up alongside Nazi content on Twitter are now a staple of progressive reporting, presented as evidence of Elon Musk's lack of business acumen. The message of these stories is "Musk is bad at business because he's allowing Nazis on his platform, which will send advertisers bolting for the exits to avoid brand-safety crises."

This isn't wrong. Musk is a bad businessman (he's a good scam artist, though). Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisers, notwithstanding the desperate (and easily debunked) stats-juking its "CEO," Linda Yaccarino, floats onstage at tech conferences:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/11/math-problem-for-linda-yaccarino-if-90-of-the-top-advertisers-have-come-back-but-are-only-spending-10-of-what-they-used-to-how-screwed-are-you/

But progressives are out of their minds if they think the primary effect of the brand safety industry is punishing Elon Musk for secretly loving Nazis. The primary effect of brand safety is killing reality-based coverage of the news of the day, and since reality has a well-known anti-conservative bias, anything that works against the reality-based community is ultimately good for oligarchy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

We can't afford to let schizmogenesis stampede us into loving things just because conservative culture warriors have been momentarily tricked into hating them as part of oligarchs' turkeys-voting-for-Christmas project. "Swivel-eyed loons hate it, so it must be good," is a worse-than-useless heuristic for navigating complex issues:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

A much better rule of thumb is "If oligarchs love something, it's probably bad." Almost without exception, things that are good for oligarchs are bad for the rest of us. I mean, this whole shuttering of Jezebel starts with an oligarch imposing his will on millions of other people. Jezebel began life as a Gawker Media site, beloved of millions of readers, destroyed when FBI informant Peter Thiel secretly funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the publisher in a successful bid to put them out of business to retaliate for their unfavorable coverage of Thiel:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/

This, in turn, put Jezebel under the ownership of G/O Media, who are unwilling to pay for a human salesforce that would – for example – sell advertising space on Jezebel to sex-toy companies or pro-abortion groups. G/O has been on a killing spree, shuttering beloved news outlets like Deadspin:

https://deadspin.com/this-is-how-things-work-now-at-g-o-media-1836908201

G/O's top exec, an oligarch named Jim Spanfeller who answers to the private equity looters at Great Hill Partners, is bent on ending reality-based coverage in favor of "letting robots shit out brand safe AI-assisted articles about generic topics":

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ai-articles-disinformation-future-g-o-media-rcna95944

Three quarters of a century ago, Orwell coined a term to describe this kind of news: duckspeak,

It was not the man’s brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

When investors and analysts speak of "content" (rather than, say, "journalism"), this is what they mean – a warm slurry of platitudes, purged of any jagged-edged fragments to render it a perfectly suitable carrier for commercial messages targeted based on surveillance data about the "consumer" whose eyeballs are upon it.

This aversion to reality has been present among corporate decisionmakers since the earliest days, but the consolidation of power among large firms – ad-tech firms, online platforms, and "brands" themselves – makes corporate realityphobia much easier to turn into, well, reality, giving advertisers the fine-grained power to put Jezebel and every site like it out of business.

As Koebler and Maiberg's headliine so aptly puts it, "Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist."

The reason to deplore Nazis on Twitter is because they are Nazis, not because their content isn't brand-safe. The short-term wins progressives gain by legitimizing a corporate veto over what we see online are vastly overshadowed by the most important consequence of brand safety: the mass extinction of reality-based reporting. Reality isn't brand safe. If you're in the reality based community, brand safety should be your sworn enemy, even if they help you temporarily get a couple of Nazis kicked off Twitter.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/11/ad-jacency/#brand-safety

#pluralistic #jezebel #publishing #brand safety #adjacency #adtech #media theory #censorship #surveillance advertising #dynamic ad placement #quackspeak #Global Alliance for Responsible Media #garm #debated sensitive social issue #Third Party Safety and suitability #schizmogenesis #woke capitalism #duckspeak

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summersmithlatinxgyatt · 1 month

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Yes, before we even START this blog, I kindly request that you reblog this. I request a reblog with questions and proof at the end, but reblog this if you see it PLEASE. This is a massive theory on the entirety of Rick and Morty as a show as well as C-137. This is not my usual kind of post, but I’ve been working on it for months. It recontextualizes the entire show and required a lot of proof and effort for it to stay together. If you could spread it around, I would appreciate that so much from the bottom of my heart. This is my passion project.

This is my ‘Rick Meta-Parasite’ theory.

There are many instances of parasitic entities across Rick and Morty that have a common theme. Each one will be explained here first, before I try to explain why they even appear.

There’s the Total Rickall parasites that latch onto the family to create false memories to anchor themselves. These parasites just barely resemble Previous Leon, a similar entity. They both create fake memories to flash back to and manifest themselves over and over, spreading out and multiplying. Previous Leon is more ‘meta’, which is going to be explained later on.

The Total Rickall parasitic aliens likely come from Unity’s planet. I say this because these two episodes are right next to each other. Beta-7 and Unity meet up constantly, meaning there is a hivemind alliance between MULTIPLE hiveminds out there. This is also going to be crucial to remember. Rick says that the parasitic aliens likely came from the bottom of someone’s shoe, so Summer or Morty might have accidentally stepped on this parasite from a hivemind source and brought it to their home as a result. That explains what these parasites are doing to begin with

There are other examples of parasitic entities in Rick and Morty. But these are targeting the mind and memories. We know that the Federation consists of bug-like aliens that created a device that allows them to enter the mind of Rick to extract the schematics of his portal gun, which was still shown to be false later on

So we have a galactic federation made up of bug aliens that targeted Rick and innovated technology to enter Rick’s mind for portal travel. Going back to the aforementioned hiveminds, we know that Unity and Rick had a relationship together. Unity literally tells Rick that he’s more of a parasite than she could ever be. The two relate to this sentiment, which will ALSO be explained soon. One thing at a time, I just have to keep these things in your mind

The fear hole is implied to be sentient, but it leeches off of fear. Although it was stated to go after Rick, I think this was a method used to just get the most fear out of Morty instead. It would allow him to dive deeper into his fears from this false statement that threw him off. It IS interesting that it appeared in a Denny’s. Rick loves Shoney’s, a place that exists as a parody of Denny’s. Instead, this parasitic hole manifested itself in the ORIGIN of this parody that Rick holds close. This will be the final thing to keep in mind before I dive into this theory one final time

Rick is a meta-fictional parasite.

We already know he IS a parasite. I mean come on, he came into another Beth’s life and travels through dimensions. Unity sees him as a literal bloodsucker. Morty tells Summer that Rick goes into people’s lives and just leaves them once he gets what he wants. It’s not a new idea that he’s a parasite, but this is a change of pace. Already, this is basing itself on the idea that Rick is a parasite in the NARRATIVE sense.

When we say Rick, we are referencing C-137, NOT Prime. That’s because Prime is the Rick of the Rick and Morty franchise. C-137 is pretending to be a Rick that eventually found this property to latch onto. There’s a few reasons as to why this happened at all. The first is that this parasite took the place of the scapegoat of Rick Prime, who would inevitably create portal travel

This portal travel method would allow him to escape his own dimension if necessary, not to mention it would create a container and franchise to exist in. This would be the border of the meta structure. But first, let’s explain the cosmology so far:

The Central Finite Curve is capped out at a certain point. The reason it curves is due to the deviations on every single dimension. The word dimension being used is very interesting, because it can be used to describe the features and aspects of an object. To ask the dimensions of a box is to ask how long, wide, and tall it is. To ask about the dimensions of the Central Finite Curve, you’d also be asking about what makes it up and causes it to curve. That would be the slight alteration to every single hypothetical Rick scenario

We end up seeing that dimensions can have sub-iterations added onto them from deviations OF DEVIATIONS that are specific enough to be noted. The D-716 Ricks are classed as B and C. They are minor divergent points from D176, which is already a branch from Prime’s dimension. And like how dimensions describe the shape of an object, the way it branches out would be literally spiraling out into a curve that is off by JUST a bit each time

The Central Finite Curve caps out at Rick being the smartest being several times over. The outside of the curve is chaotic because it has boundaries or shapes. There is nothing that centralizes and defines it, so it is a mess. And since Rick slowly becomes more and more irrelevant as the curve displaces each dimension by adding deviations, the point at which Rick no longer matters is the point where the multiverse actually begins. This explains both boundaries clearly. With that being said, there’s still more to explain

There is the edge of the canon itself and what was considered non-canon. This is the outside level of the continuity that is basically formless and desperate to find some format in any way. We know that the story train is circular. If it were to deviate, it would form a spiral, a CURVE. That describes the still state of the curve when it originally began as well.

Something important is that the outside of the train is referred to as the non-canon state of reality. But it’s also worthy of an explanation. Check this scene out

The outside of the non-canon isn’t just not canon. It’s formless as described before. It is ‘free floating’, so to speak. The Tickets, Please Guy is being submerged into countless narratives to try to anchor him. It spirals out of control. Every single non-canon instance we see is one that has no set narrative or format

That’s also why the self-proclaimed non-canon Rick and Morty series takes place in another medium entirely to try to anchor its narrative. It needs some way to anchor itself, so this outer shell also relies on trying to find the nearest location. That would be the multiverse, the Central Finite Curve at least. This explains how Story Lord already considered himself an enemy of Rick, someone who’s clearly able to travel through all of these spaces and saw Rick’s clear potential (which will be explained later in full detail as to why Story Lord is his nemesis)

That would also explain Previous Leon’s existence as someone who implants false memories and causes feedback loops through flashbacks. It’s to find some way to anchor themselves and tread through the multiverse. But why?

It seems that each parasitic entity is capable of finding their designated host. The entire point is that they can navigate through the non-canon or similar spaces to find a host for themselves. They’re mainly concerned about the meta-fictional parasite known as Rick C-137. That’s because this version managed to rebel against the usual Rick format. Being the ‘Rickest Rick’ despite not even being Rick is insane in this context now. Even LOOk at the dimension they assign him in:

C - 3, prime number

1 - prime

3 - prime

7 - prime

3,137 - prime

His assigned dimensionality is prime. Going back to what I said about the dimensions, we know that he and Rick Prime were the first ones to start this. A prime axis would be the very center of this ‘shape’ I keep describing, C-137 being a false prime as well but still as important

Finally cycling back to the original point I was making, Rick took this spot to be the other Rick who created portal travel. Where does the meta-fictional parasite part come in? Oh, that’s right

We need to talk about The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti first. That’s right, the thing that actually started Rick and Morty that’s never referenced. This is the part of the theory that goes crazy. If you just wanted an explanation of the Central Finite Curve and stuff, now would be a good time to leave. Otherwise, strap in.

The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti started as a Back To The Future parody. The actual source is crude and does include sexual scenes that won’t be explained here. It would lead to something disturbing, though. Back To The Future also literally has an incest subplot with Marty and his mother in the past. If these two became Rick and Morty, then yeah, it’s also gross shit between them. And we know this sadly became a theme in the show that popped up over time. But that…sadly matters to this theory and explains a lot

When I use this term, I am also referring to a self-parasitic method that Rick is initiating. He is surrounding himself with OTHER Ricks as well, despite them being deviations. It’s some universal sibling relationship, if you think about it. I mentioned that the non-canon system is free floating and allows any format to manifest. When this Doc and Mharti…you know, off-screen and shit, it created a deviation level that was not possible. It is detached from the parody on another level. It’s not related to the original source and parody anymore. As it passes, there is less satire and parody. It becomes its own thing. It creates an original character, just like how Rick and Morty is no longer tied to Back To The Future

We get Rick Sanchez, C-137.

That’s not where the theory ends, though.

If this parasite was born through that and was self-parasitic, it would anchor itself to a character that resembles him and Doc and Mharti. That would be Rick Prime

That explains how C-137 and Prime existed at different times despite being the ‘main characters’, so to speak. Think of it like this

Rick and Morty was ALREADY EXISTING with Rick Prime, until C-137’s parasitic form pushed through the non-canon and latched onto this host that resembled his ‘dad’ and himself to continue the cycle. Every now and then, these gross themes and parodies pop up as the literal lifeline of Rick C-137 to sustain him. He is also fueled with the resentment of Rick Prime for destroying Diane, which can also be explained in this context clearly

If Rick has to exist as an anchored character, that means he needs an in-universe anchor as well. He needs to blend in and exist in the narrative. That’s where Diane comes in

Diane kept Rick C-137 from leaving into the non-canon and actually existing in-universe. When she was unexpectedly killed, it threatened Rick and caused him to create portal travel. He kills two birds with one stone when he hunts down Rick Prime. That would also explain why portal travel, Operation Phoenix, and other lifelines are used. The theme of incest is also being used metaphorically like I said - it persists because it was the origin source. That’s also why parodies are so prominent across the show too, but are somewhat spread out. UNTIL it peaks around the time Rick Prime is killed

And Season 7, the season he’s killed, has no incest. There aren’t as many parodies either, because he is fully independent. He has removed all anchors from himself at this point by instead cementing his new purpose in-universe, not just through meta-fiction or non-canon instances

By the way, we still aren’t done. We have a lot more things to explain

If Doc and Mharti exist as a parody backstory, we can also explain Shoney’s easily

Shoney’s is a parody that also anchors Rick. It’s the first thing that we see in The Rickshank Rickdemption and Rick’s mind when these parasitic Federation soldiers try to extract the backstory from Rick’s memories. Shoney’s as a parody of Denny’s shows the idea that this is a lifeline. Ironically enough, there seems to be duality when it comes to…the whole Szechuan Sauce existing here as an extended reference that affected the real world. Why am I mentioning this?

Well, Rick is still using ways to contextualize himself in the world of Rick and Morty. Yet he’s using a parody instead of the real deal. The real Denny’s would be on the same plane as Doc and Mharti’s level of reality. That means it actually pierces through these layers, the fear hole is a hole drilled across all three layers of reality being shown here. Why do you think it was able to show Morty the TRUE nature of Rick??

It literally shows how Rick is unhealthy by exposing Morty through the ugly truth. You know how the hole has layers? That’s because Morty is passing through those layers of reality - the ONLY way to know Rick inside and out across every possible layer. He basically learned his origin and primary function during it

We also have Evil Morty to explain. How did he extract Rick’s backstory when The Citadel of Ricks couldn’t?

That’s easy

Evil Morty is basically a counter parasite

So I started this theory showing how there’s so many parasites, then explained that Rick was one. Even if that seems like a good segue, I didn’t actually explain how it works. But I can now!

Previous Leon is able to pass through the fourth wall, it’s shown to be a power early on that Rick SOMEHOW KNOWS ABOUT when he sees it happen before him. That’s because all of these parasites can pass through these layers of reality, mainly the meta and non-canon ones. Remember how I said the non-canon is basically formless like the multiverse? Previous Leon is one of many beings who can anchor themselves easily. If they use Rick’s origin source, they would be the only ones who could actually use that information meaningfully. The Federation extracting portal travel information means they can’t even have quick travel methods like Rick’s portal gun. Do you expect them to actually be able to travel through the meta and non-canon layers when, as shown before, it’s impossible to navigate and stay latched onto one narrative?

These are meta-fictional parasites because they are narrative parasites. They are the only ones capable of pulling this off. And just to prove a point, The Self-Referential Six are literally the same type of idea

-Flash Back enacts flashbacks, which has been shown before with Leon and the Total Rickall parasites

-Protago Nick, who would be establishing hosts before latching onto them with the weight of protagonism

They are literary devices that become real. They exist within these characters, because their named and designated designs are the Rick and Morty version of these characters. Of course they can travel through non-canon easily, they’re the sentient extensions of actual literary devices!!

Okay, this did derail a bit. I just explained how, technically, retcon itself exists in Rick and Morty. But let’s get back to my point after I explained why there’s parasites everywhere.

Evil Morty led Rick C-137 to kill Prime. This would be Rick killing his main host to leave him as an empty shell with no purpose and nothing to feed off. Evil Morty was also able to subvert the curve and leave it entirely. He denounces the name ‘Evil Morty’, which has an in-universe explanation. But also in the context of this theory, it’s because he is not just some deviation of a dimension. He transcends that, meaning he is a parasite and not a byproduct of this parasitic war. That also explains why he can eventually pass through the multiverse and outside the Central Finite Curve, a power I keep saying parasites hold

The reason he can actually get Rick’s backstory is because it’s more of a dissection device. He is aware of his own nature and was able to create a device that extracted the mind of a parasite. This would be identical technology to the one that Evil Morty implants in Rick Prime’s brain! He has anti-parasite measures because he knows about his nature! Don’t believe me?

This is the same Morty that located an Evil Rick who himself stated he was a few deviations off C-137. This is the same Morty that created an eyepatch that CONTROLS THE BRAIN.

What do all of these parasites do? GO AFTER THE BRAIN OF RICK.

So Evil Morty clearly has this technology in place to use, besides the fact that he was a parasite among Ricks by taking a place of power within The Citadel of Ricks. That enough is an explanation for continuing the fight between both Ricks and somehow being able to extract his backstory when everybody else failed. Remember - multiversal variants are deviations, the few beings I’ve been mentioning are parasites. And as the cherry on top, who does Story Lord allow to be the leader of an entire army of Ricks in the Story Train’s manifestation?

Evil Morty.

The parasite killer. The one thing Story Lord knew would stop this meta-fictional parasite right in his tracks.

There are still a few things I need to explain before I wrap this theory up

For one, I mentioned Operation Phoenix being a lifeline. Wouldn’t it be worse for Rick to go to a dimension other than his in another body? Even if it helps him come back?

Operation Phoenix would re-establish Rick’s place across the Central Finite Curve, even if he’s in another set of deviations. He already moved dimensions, so this is fine. He would also be spreading out his influence, which is what he did in The Rickshank Rickdemption and when he switched to other dimensions

What about Memory Rick?

At first, this actually stumped me. I felt like this was too important to dismiss but also had way too little information to its name. Until I realized that this is a manifestation of Rick in Birdperson’s memories that acts completely different

Kind of sounds like how I explained multiversal deviation off-sets or parody deviations that become their own character

That become SENTIENT.

Sentient enough to willingly cross minds and memories…

In a way, Memory Rick was dormant and became a willing parasite in Rick’s memories AS WELL. That can explain how Memory Rick works as well

This can also explain Slow Mobius’ wife AND my theory on Summer becoming Rick. I couldn’t hold back, I just had to mention Summer at some point. But the idea is how hunting after a host makes you a parasite. Again, this echoes a statement by Evil Morty about how if wanting Rick gone is bad, then it’s considered evil and is more of a demoting statement. They are classed as parasites hunting their host. Their lives were ruined and feel fulfilled AS they chase their target, but it leaves them meaningless once they actually kill their host.

I’m referring to how Slow Mobius went on a hunt for whoever killed her husband. I’m also referring to my theory about how if Rick left Summer’s life, she’d become just like him when HE was finding Rick Prime - taking the mantle of Rick without any of the glamor.

There’s also the theory I have that Summer is likely being turned into Diane. She can either be a parasite anchor and canonizer OR another Rick-esque parasite on the prowl. These deviations are being set AS WE SPEAK and Rick is fully aware of it in some way

This is the archetype of these parasites. That’s why Rick C-137 is so desired across these people who want his origin. His numbers are prime, he SEEMS prime, HE IS THE FALSE PRIME!! There cannot be an even number of primes though, that’s against logic, LITERALLY! Instead, he exists as the prime PARASITE archetype that they all come from. Meanwhile, Rick Prime is the prime HOST instead. Since one is native to the franchise first, one is seen as ‘actually prime’, while the outsider is not seen that way

So, for the recap of this entire theory that honestly, can hold way more information than shown:

Rick C-137 is the son of Doc and Mharti. This deviation of parodies and sources created an abomination parasite that sought out a host to leech onto. It found an existing franchise with a character similar to its dad and itself. As it settled, it became an in-universe being until its in-universe wife was killed. This would kickstart portal travel, a way to spread out its influence and to kill its host now. Even if this removed their purpose, this meta-fictional parasite would not care at ALL. Throughout the journey, we see similar beings who want to find the origin of this parasite for two reasons. One, it allows portal travel, and two, it allows them to dissect this current parasite that dismantled an entire franchise and remade it around itself - a ‘Rickest Rick’ more Rick than Rick Prime.

The themes of incest and parody exist as the metaphor for how the show satures itself WITH its own crude nature, like its father origin and itself. Over and over. A parasite feeding on itself because its host is gone. And this parasite then decides to critically examine itself when its host, show host, SHOW RUNNER, LEAVES THE PRODUCTION OF THE SHOW. Around the same time the SAME host known as Rick Prime also leaves the picture. This leaves the parasite purposeless without realizing how far they’ve come and become their own character - right until their companion runs into a hole plunged through all of this that exposes them.

Oh and for the record I do not endorse incest or it happening in the show or fandom. DO NOT HOLD THIS AGAINST ME. PROSHIPPERS, DO NOT USE THIS EITHER. This is a meta-fictional theory that also managed to involve that element into the narrative because that’s what this theory is all about, got it?

Please reblog and comment if you have any questions or any more proof to support this theory!

#rick and morty #rick and morty theory #theory #media theory #show theories #rick sanchez #RAAAAAH #headcanon

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tiredtransalien · 10 months

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The speculative biology of crystal gems

So i dont know why i thought this but this randomly popped into my head but i was wondering how crystal gems from steven universe work on a biological level and so i got a theory to share. As we know the crystal gems form is just a physical hologram that can be touched and touch things, And that the crystal gems themselves are their gems, Now i also read all tomorrows and so of course i bet you can see where this is going. So what if the crystal gems are like the gravitals, so basically the crystal gems in my theory are almost microscopic organisms that once born are put into a casing (gem), and that the injectors (which intentionally look like bacteriophage that inject dna into bodies) inject crystal gems into earth and perhaps thats their form of asexual reproduction, them birthing a gem and encasing it while injecting it into a planet to absorb organic material to make up their hologram.

#speculative biology #spec evo #alien species #alien #media theory #media analysis #xenobiology #alien biology #speculative evolution #sophont #steven universe #crystal gems #su future #cartoon #cartoon analysis

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noosphe-re · 1 year

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Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of "time" and "space" and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstituted dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the new technology than "a place for everything and everything in its place." You can't go home again.

Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects

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sex-ray-spex · 1 year

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Scientists estimate that approximate ninety percent of the cells in the human body belong to non-human organisms (bacteria, fungi, and a whole bestiary of other organisms). Why shouldn’t this also be the case for human thought as well? In a sense, this book is an exploration of this idea – that thought is not human.

Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy

#eugene thacker #speculative realism #horror #cosmic horror #lovecraft #object oriented ontology #critical theory #media theory #postmodernism #philosophy

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annaxmalina · 2 years

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{2022} 01 thwarted desire

"This artificial body may be called the 'medium' (and not just 'material') in the sense that images needed embodiment in order to acquire visibility. To this end, a 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 is exchanged for the 𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 of the image.” (p. 3) » An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body {2001/2012, Hans Belting}

#gif #animation #anna malina #dall-e #black and white #digital collage #ai art #marching ants #formaldehyde #2022 #quotes #hans belting #portraits #media theory #reading #gimp #gimp selection tool

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publicatiosui · 6 months

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The faster the system learns from you, the more likely it is that you can get trapped in a kind of identity cascade, in which a small initial action—clicking on a link about gardening or anarchy or Ozzy Osbourne—indicates that you’re a person who likes those kinds of things. This in turn supplies you with more information on the topic, which you’re more inclined to click on because the topic has now been primed for you. Especially once the second click has occurred, your brain is in on the act as well. Our brains act to reduce cognitive dissonance in a strange but compelling kind of unlogic—“Why would I have done x if I weren’t a person who does x—therefore I must be a person who does x.”Each click you take in this loop is another action to self-justify—“Boy, I guess I just really love ‘Crazy Train.’ ” When you use a recursive process that feeds on itself, Cohler tells me, “You’re going to end up down a deep and narrow path.” The reverb drowns out the tune. If identity loops aren’t counteracted through randomness and serendipity, you could end up stuck in the foothills of your identity, far away from the high peaks in the distance.

Eli Pariser, Filter bubble

#social media #media theory #identity #you #recursion #click bait #self #identity cascade

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artofthemindblog · 2 years

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[O]utmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery – concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application... lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

#Walter Benjamin #Benjamin #The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction #social revolution #marxism #genius #quotes #punk #punk philosophy #punk cinema #media #media theory #Fascism #democratisation of art

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cjestie · 27 days

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the phrase "consuming media" gets a lot of flack on this website and while I Do Get what the ops of those posts are meaning about the like. sterilisation of media to favour mindless overconsumption instead of the creation of art and stories but every time I see those posts it makes me mad because What Else Do You Want Me To Say?

"consuming media" is a sexy two word phrase that tidly makes it so you don't have to say watching/reading/listening/viewing art/music/movies/tv/literature/podcasts/etc and you want to jettison her gift??? you want to make your and your readers lives actively harder?? why????

"call it art! that's what it is!" while yes creative products do all fall under the umbrella term of art there's two issues here. what word am I using in place of consuming. and also. actually there's two subparts to this second part. subpart one is that sometimes what ur consuming isn't necessarily "art". like. yes creative products and pursuits are inherently artistic endeavours but also sometimes its just not art. personally wouldn't call a marvel movie art but that doesn't mean that people don't watch those things

and secondly. "art" has a fairly specific connotation of "visual art" for most people, which means it fails at doing the job that "media" does, right. if I say I'm like. partaking in art. then not only do I sound so fucking pretentious but my words also have a very specific set of connotations for most people and so it's not effective as an umbrella term

so all this to say that while i get the intent behind all those posts. leave my girl alone she's doing her best and you're jettisoning her gifts :(

#media consumption #media #media theory #ig #this is a niche hill to die on but every time i read those posts i get so annoyed #also marvel movies are the example because theyre a really good one for the prioritisation of money and comsumption over compelling stories #if u dont agree thats fine but theyre an easy point to make #also u may not agree with that point about not everything being art but personally as someone who makes art not everything is art #sometimes a thing i make is just a thing and thats fine #it doesnt make it bad or detract from its value but its just a thing as opposed to being art #squishy rambles

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americascomic · 28 days

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You really can't comprehend the world of early aviation.

When the Wright Brothers first started building their airplane, early airplane engineers were looked at as insane people. I think the closest comparable thing is how we look at Doomsday preppers - insane people with too much money trying to build something that ultimately is pretty unfeasible. I go so far to argue that early aviation was nearly a pseudoscience.

When Orville Wright was requesting aviation resources from the Smithsonian, he had to sign the end of the document "ps I'm not crazy."

I feel that this culture was fed by the technology of photography, and that we would not have flight if it wasn't for the photograph. Photographs of gliders certainly inspired the Wright brothers, but also all the cranks around them as well who succumbed to "aviation fever."

There was a lot of pushback in the engineering community about the idea that aviation was possible. One of our nation's top federal engineers wrote in a national publication a long peice on how aviation is technically impossible and also we wouldn't really want it anyways since it has no practical purpose.

When Orville first arrived at Kitty Hawk, this bumfuck hick town where they first did their flights, one of the hicks came up to them and told them (possibly jokingly) "we believe in a good God, a bad devil, a hot hell and that man was not supposed to fly."

I think all these facts look absurd in history, and you look at them as absurd because the technology of captured images and/or lived experiences. You've seen airplanes at some point in your life even if you've never been in an airplane or an airport. We are in the same boat as the Wright brothers where the mass produced image of flight has transformed how we feel about the feasibility of flight.

As a tour guide, I think that's the most fascinating thing about history, is how perspectives and consciousness shifts so gradually that it becomes incredibly difficult to imagine a world where people can't imagine flight.

The Wright brothers, when they first went to Kitty Hawk, as a part of the research they used to spend all day with binoculars observing the flight of condors and then extending their arms and running around in circles trying to mimic the shapes of their wings. To the town's folk, they looked insane. And today we look at the lack of imagination of the townsfolk is being just as absurd as two weird Brothers with stretched arms and closed eyes, imagining themselves entering into the domain of birds.

#wright brothers #history #aviation history #flight #media theory

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Mainstream American political journalism has built in a structural bias toward Republicans.

It took exceptional ingenuity for someone at NBC to figure out how to wrench one side’s embrace of race science into the consensus frame, where “both sides” “agree” that major presidential candidates should not imitate Nazis. That frame squeezes out any understanding of how Trump’s provocations rest along a continuum of Republican demonization of immigrants going back decades (“Build the dang fence,” as John McCain put it in 2010), and that most Republicans nonetheless support Trump (or candidates who say much the same things) down the line.

- Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect

#political science #fascism #media theory

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longtheriverrun · 10 months

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OF DIZZYING HEIGHTS: only up, twitch, gambling, and the pipe-dream of capitalism

Dilapidated favelas, densely packed. Concrete and rebar, vandalism and trash piled up, compacted. The latest Twitch phenomenon, Only Up, starts us here — the “humble beginnings” of our protagonist, a nameless boy.

Only Up descends from a lineage of rage games: experiences engineered for frustration, games which forsake traditional progression, or punishment & reward systems, offering instead an inherently infuriating gaming experience, often sending the player to the absolute beginning with even minor mistakes. Jump King, Getting Over It, all being huge hits in the landscape of gaming content. The appeal of these games is elusive; one would expect such an unfair and absurd experience would be far from ‘fun’ — other games which often frustrate, like from Fromsoft or of the roguelite genre include a system of progression or metaprogression, which allows the player to beef up their stats or abilities, before attempting the intimidating task before them. The games termed ‘true / real’ roguelikes lack metaprogression, but are still dedicated to a fair and rewarding experience. They reward knowledge, adaptation, reaction.

Yet these rage games more or less are designed for unfairness. They feature jank controls, unclear rules, and rapidly changing level design. It is impossible to predict or even react, especially if one is approaching the game blindly. Every player is going to fall at some point. The games taunt you with a seemingly intuitive ruleset and design philosophy, but the only static is surprise. Even so, these games garner millions of eager viewers, and many eager players.

Essayist Patricia Taxxon makes a vital observation of rage games: The thing to understand about Getting Over It is that it was at least partly made with an intent to be observed second-hand.

Perhaps the most surprising phenomena to many, at its inception, was the popularity of lets-plays. Many confused parents have asked their children the question: ‘Why aren’t you playing the game? Why are you just watching someone else play it?’ It’s a very Baudrillardian experience, watching someone else have an experience, as an experience. But, it’s also a very human experience, to live through the experiences of others, for both the experiencer and the observer. If one doesn’t share their experiences, have they really happened? Living vicariously is perhaps the most important human desire in regards to social media and our content landscape — in some ways, in our overwhelming and complex world where no one really has agency, the experiences of others are much more tangible and immediate than our own.

Baudrillard discusses the concept of “transcendence” in relation to the modern experience: a meta-referentiality that “dominates the trajectory of modern art, not only of art but also of all our deeper perceptions, of all our apprehensions of the world.” This transcendence is, inherently, denial, a denial of evidence: by stating something is irreal, and it becomes palpable to us, bearable. “The world has become so real that this reality is only bearable at the expense of perpetual denial.” His example being Magritte — Ceci n'est pas une pipe — without the “transcendence”, commenting and denying itself, the not-pipe doesn’t become a pipe, it just disappears — the pipe lives, reflected, in the commentary on the pipe.

Magritte’s surrealist denial of evidence itself – this double movement of, on one hand, the absolute and definite evidence of the world and, on the other hand, the radical denial of this evidence – dominates the trajectory of modern art, not only of art but also of all our deeper perceptions, of all our apprehensions of the world. We are not talking here about philosophical morals, we are not saying “the world is not what it should be” or “the world is not what it used to be.” The world is the way it is. Once transcendence is gone, things are nothing but what they are and, as they are, they are unbearable. They have lost every illusion and have become immediately and entirely real, shadowless, without commentary. At the same time this unsurpassable reality does not exist anymore. It has no reason to exist for it cannot be exchanged for anything. It has no exchange value.

In his book, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact, Baudrillard proposes what he terms Integral Reality, a state of hyperreality where everything becomes Real. He specifically notes that in this hypothetical state that everything would have a meaning, “whereas it is in the nature of meaning that not everything has it.”

Now, this state isn’t something that comes naturally, it’s specifically only achievable through a process, a task, the “undertaking of realizing the world, of making it technically, integrally, real” — giving everything a meaning, giving everything a metaphor, transitioning from reality (0) to reality (prime).

What we see now, behind the eclipse of the 'objective' real, is the rise of Integral Reality, of a Virtual Reality that rests on the deregulation of the very reality principle.

In T. Fleishmann’s essay “House with Door,” they comment on the tendency to experience words as metaphor rather than literal meaning, as exemplified by a statement a child makes to them: “I live in a house with a door!” Fleishmann points out how their first instinct, and all of our first instincts to this puzzling sentence, is to assign metaphorical meaning to this statement — Fleischmann illuminates the mundanity of metaphor, and how we seek out things that make us feel real and not a metaphor —“I shouldn’t have to think about [being not a metaphor], but thinking of the absence of a thing is still thinking about it.”

Right now, as I am writing this post, as the popularity of Only Up is growing with great ardor, the most vital recent news story in regards to gaming content is the competitor streaming platform to Twitch, Kick, and it’s tremendous bids, hundreds of millions dollar deals with many of the most popular streamers.

Kick has garnered considerable controversy for its finances, being linked to gambling money. Gambling itself has been, for years, a key puzzle piece in the modern content machine — from gambling on phase 4 doppler talon knives from CSGO to straight up gambling as done by streamers such as xQc — it’s a subsect of gaming / content culture that’s perceived as a bit embarrassing, yet is hugely important to how things are.

The appeal of gambling content is surprisingly similar to the appeal of rage games — it pits the inevitability of losing or falling with the possibility of success. The observer, the watcher knows that the gambler or streamer will lose, but they continue watching, just as the streamer continues, repeatedly, until the slim likelihood of a run with little mistakes or a gambling win happens. Which is in turn, similar to the appeal of the growth of high stakes personal investing such as that of Reddit board “WallStreetBets” — a communal experience where every individual has a low chance of winning, but the serotonin of seeing someone winning significantly, or even losing significantly, keeps people hooked. These intensely frustrating, high risk activities are long in a line of escalating stakes Content — in our mundane, boring world with little agency, watching someone win or lose it all feels Real, in a way many things don’t.

This economy of stakes is driven by another quality, of gambling, rage games, and investing — namely that it looks easy. Rage games have deceptively simple control schemes: For Getting Over It, the hammer mouse control looks easy and intuitive, but is quite unforgiving. For Jump King, the jump itself requires precision of timing, that seems simple but is again unforgiving, requiring trial and error. And Only Up perhaps has the worst control quirks of all of them — entirely predicated on a jank mantling system which is seemingly random and unpredictable.

For gambling and investing, the prospective player sees many losses and a few wins, and asks themselves “what if I won?” — the prospect and possibility of winning being infinitely more appealing than the cost & risk evaluation going in one’s mind. Similar to players of rage games thinking to themselves after observing other players, “what if I could easily beat the game?”

Even the losses provide an experience of reality, of real stakes and real experiences.

Only Up, specifically, is deeply ironic, in its connections to investing — the title itself is a reversal of the crypto / investing phrase “Up Only”. As has been pointed out many times, Only Up features many spray painted images of NFTs, including on the back of our very protagonist.

Only Up features a faux-realistic aesthetic, with tech demo-esque sunbeams and lighting, rolling off vaguely impressive-looking rusty structures straight out of a game engine’s asset marketplace. An AI voice calls over the favelas of the earth, rattling off platitudes and faux-profound statements about life, and childhood. The objective of the game is to scale to the top of a sprawling floating debris field, impossibly tall, reaching to the heavens, hanging above the favelas — when the player starts their journey, and start climbing, they come across countless floating vignettes, of train stations, factories, homes, schools; the boy’s ascent clearly representing a synecdoche of life.

From the protagonist’s beginnings in the visually impoverished favelas, he climbs rusty pipes and old railways — when he ascends, the vignettes become less dilapidated, more metropolitan, more modern.

At some point, luxury becomes the norm. The protagonist platforms over floating piles of money, personal helicopters — he weaves through highrise offices and through gold-lined hotel rooms.

And after this point, the images become increasingly stranger, more thrown together and abstract. There’s a giant anime girl with platforms built of innuendo around her. There’s a pirate ship. And on and on.

Something I have to address though — the soundtrack is scattershot, appearing at random, sometimes with the AI voice. The track selection seems to rotate between a few emotional tracks, but all of which have been lifted from other works — for example, there are tracks lifted from the anime Aria; one of the most used tracks in the game being Senoo’s “Shourou no Patori~Neo Venezia~” [鐘楼のパトリ〜ネオヴェネチア〜].

I just gotta point out the irony of this blatant IP stealing. I just have to. It’s so comically bad. Many other tracks are stolen but I fr just do not have the patience to watch this game again, im gonna be honest.

Only Up’s faux-profundities and it’s idealistic ruminations just seem to expose the fraudulence of its ideas. The dream of capitalism, of course, is vertical mobility. Starting from the bottom and ending at the top (insert drake voice: started from the bottom now we here). That’s the ideal at least. But the game is purposefully built to be unfair. It has inconsistent platforms. Some of which aren’t solid, for no reason. Some of them fall. It throws curveballs, even more unfair than the rest of the rage games. It’s deeply ironic, in regards to its idealization of this boy’s journey. It’s almost a sadistic relationship between the designer and player.

In Ayn Rand’s novel Fountainhead, the protagonist, Howard Roark is tried at court. The crime, you may ask? Blowing up an in-progress construction of a building he designed. The company constructing it however, went against his original specifications, and he decided that his individual idealism, weighed against everything else, prevails. In classic Randian fashion, Roark makes a speech about individuality and how Man will Prevail against The Things Trying to Crush Him. The courtroom claps and he wins the case.

Roark, represents a stubbornness and arrogance, exemplified by the action he takes, which is of taking the building down. It’s a fundamental disrespect for the construction workers who were working on it. Glory in destruction, in tearing down others for one’s personal gains. And likewise, Only Up tears down the players, leering with fake-profound dialogue. It is never fair, it is all spectacle. It is a journey in the way “venture” in venture capital is a journey. Only Up is the dream of capitalism, on full display, in all its unbecoming, illegitimate, unfair, and straight up criminal glory. But we can’t look away.

This was a bit of a rough, impressionistic essay I did in one day... there are so many ideas that i couldn't get into, and many of these have been swarming in my head for so long. i hope you enjoy!!!!

#essay #philosophy #theory #twitch #culture #media theory #criticism

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summersmithlatinxgyatt · 27 days

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There's likely a part 2 to my Rick Parasite theory coming. Thank you to anyone who reblogged it, but I am hoping it still explodes. This is something I removed from the theory originally to make into its own post

Season 4, Episode 1 shows other dimensions have become fascist seemingly without an explanation. These are the dimensions that have Operation Phoenix set up. Rick had no back-up clones due to killing them all in 'Big Trouble in Little Sanchez'. The fact he goes into other dimensions for this means that the other Ricks must have known about him, but each of them comes in confused and ready to kill. So what's going on here?

Rick had escaped the clutches of The Citadel and cosmic prison. He would go out of his way to destroy it, leaving it in physical shattered remains. In Season 3, Episode 1, we see that Rick changes bodies with other Ricks in a similar way. However, that's because his mind was still intact - it was the body that was being cut-off forcibly. He dies in an accident in Season 4, causing the chain of events of his holograms and clones. I think this is an attempt from The Citadel to rebuild and catch Rick. What's the proof?

The Ricklantis Mixup shows blatantly (mainly through its cold opening) that not everyone hates The Citadel and wants it gone. The fact there's politicians at all means there are people who genuinely care for The Citadel. That means it can splinter off properly - again, this is evident through the existence of political parties. Other Ricks would create their OWN Citadel. Even if they're small compared to the scope of The Citadel, they're still the smartest man in their own dimension. This would allow them to create a government in their dimension that serves as a mini-Citadel that controls the entire planet

As the Wiki points out, there seems to be no racial hierarchy in the first fascist government we see. I don't know if this applies to any other government we see because they're based on species - we don't know if they coexist or all species are divided

However, the system of fascism in the first one mentions sterilizing China. Rick would obviously be able to pull this off, but it seems that each politician Rick went out of their way to set up their own government in their dimension, as I hinted at. This allows total control and means private Citadel-esque systems control each dimension personally rather than having a watchful eye over each dimension

Fascist Morty might seem like an anomaly, but there's a great explanation for this

He says this Rick was 'too political', meaning he must have been focused on his new role as a dictator. When he mentions missing old adventures, this is something that can explain why they did this in the first place

This is sort of a chicken and egg situation on which came first, so bear with me. But I think when The Citadel was destroyed, Ricks in their dimension were distraught and wanted to bring it back in some way. They must have also heard that Rick C-137 was on the loose, causing there to be a perfect solution. If Rick ever dies, they can cause the rerouted Operation Phoenix vats to bring C-137 to them. With these fascist Citadel-esque governments in place, they keep their ideologies going and kill C-137 right in their own dimension. In a way, they brought the Citadel home and to Rick

The thing about adventures though - they KILL

The idea of a Meeseeks Box still existing is interesting, even Kirkland versions of them. This IS an autocracy, meaning that Rick can literally spawn in Meeseeks to do whatever he wants. It's perfect! That means no soldiers can turn on him, they're temporary servants that can only do one thing and do it right

In the situation of an 'adventure', even if Rick can leave for a while by using a Meeseeks or two (or relying on other figures like the president), it's still dangerous. If he dies, the vat is used as Rick reincarnates. They CANNOT allow that to happen. Considering Operation Phoenix carries a limited number of bodies (and Rick seems to have had the most growing), it's risky because they'd be wasting one on the fascist Rick while waiting for C-137 to come

Wasp Rick doesn't seem to be an outlier, though

Notice how Fascist Morty took control quickly of the situation and seems to follow these political ideaologies as well. He just wants to have a stable mix of a controlled government and adventuring Wasp Rick also mentions that Wasp Morty has been looking at alt-right forums after berating C-137 for using up a vat. Sound familiar?

However, Wasp Rick goes on about how his species is already brutal. So here's the final part of this theory before a recap

The dimensions that Rick's vat can reroute to seem to be on the perpetual state of having a body available to use. Considering the hatred that a Morty might have against Rick (already being shown), the death of The Citadel means that they resent Rick-centered governments AND the Rick who also caused adventures to slow down! That means Wasp Morty was likely looking at anti-Rick forums that explore a DIFFERENT kind of political ideology. I mentioned that there are different parties already, so maybe Morty was looking at a forum that introduces Morties to hating their Rick

This episode LITERALLY has Morty already going against C-137 Rick's wishes so...this theme is still continuing

Wasp Rick is angry because his Operation Phoenix vat system is being restricted to catch C-137. Rick is also aware that Wasp Morty is looking at these forums, so this is clearly an ongoing issue where other dimensions' fascist Ricks try to introduce this ideology. Wasp Rick has his vats being restricted right now as a result through what I'll call a phantom Citadel - the conceptual Citadel still trying to control each Rick and the orders that'll usually be sent out to follow

RECAP: The Citadel is trying to reform through Ricks that are angry and they decide to set up their own fascist Citadels they can run. During this, they realize that C-137 is still out there, but they decide to bide their time. In the event he dies, they'll have Operation Phoenix vats monitored and restricted. If adventuring is banned, it would also give these Ricks excuses to stay in their dimension and rule as well, creating either angry or prepared Ricks that are all branching off a similar fascist ideology - even if the political systems seem to be different across each dimension

I'd suggest leaving a comment if you'd like to see more Rick and Morty theories. These do not do well on my page sadly, and this acts sort of as Rick Parasite Theory 1.5. Part 2 might come out as well so...let me know if you want that. Or I should make this all into a YouTube video...

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #rick and morty theory #media theory #show theories #theories #rick and morty theories #PLEASE.

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