Anarchopapist has triggered a twitter storm with this. It is a post that has many different threads running into it, and through it. The most relevant compliment I can pay it is to say that it is potentially disturbing, in something far more than a psychological sense. It will be interesting to see how contagious it proves to be. (As this post demonstrates, Outside in is already infected.)

Laliberte asks: “is there a difference between Prometheus’ fire and Pandora’s box?” Given everything said about the Promethean, and the very considerable ideological-theoretical work that it does, is it not strange that the Pandoran is scarcely recognized as a term, or a concept, at all? To talk about fire is mere shallow bedazzlement, in comparison to any serious examination of boxes. Boxes not only have a shape, but also an inside and an outside, which means — at least implicitly — a transcendental structure. They model worlds, and suggest ways out of them.

Pandora’s box, of course, is significant above all for its content, which is released, or gets out. Promethean flame, which is stolen, is contrasted with Pandoran plague, which escapes. Laliberte seizes the opportunity to discuss memes (and the ‘hypermeme’). An infectious being is set loose, in the shape of a Neoreactionary Basilisk. (On twitter, Michael Anissimov deplores the irresponsibility of this outbreak.)

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Catherine G. Evans (@tipsfromkatee):

i for one welcome our new overwords

[Replicated without mutation from @Outsideness]

The simplest twitter mind virus simply says “retweet me”. No one expects epidemic virulence from that (or even from “retweet me please”).

What the twitter mind virus ‘wants’ is propagation of the replication strategy. Communication extraneous to that is a supplementary payload.

Expect twitter mind virus to begin training its users — were that not to happen, basic Darwinian assumptions would be called into question.

Twitterverse population should be increasingly dominated by twitter mind virus adapted to controlling users to spread more mind virus.

“Retweet me” (or “Click Retweet”) is the twitter mind virus core command, variously coded, for efficiency rather than user intelligibility.