WaDI Newsletter: Embracing the SNAFUBAR
Intro
Hello everyone! It’s mid-August and I don’t know how we ended up here or what I did in the meantime. But here we are with another WaDI Newsletter. I’m still trying to build a format for this so next time this might change again.
So, let’s begin.
Soundtrack of this edition: Another World — Gojira
Embracing the SNAFUBAR
Sometimes a sentence you wrote just to get that feeling of being fed up can give you a new word to play with. This happened to me recently with this tweet and the word SNAFUBAR.
For the people who don’t know these acronyms, SNAFU is “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up” and FUBAR is “Fucked Up Beyond Any Repair”, with variations depending on who you ask. So in my case, SNAFUBAR means “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up Beyond Any Repair”. Which is a quite helpful acronym to explain my feelings and observation toward the current situation of the world and especially the borders I’m in.
Let me try to explain why.
The state of SNAFUBAR is not just things going really bad or desperate, or the feeling of there is no way out. It’s more about how people controlling or profiting from the system enjoying and using the current conditions for themselves. And totally ignoring and even making a fool out of the people who suffers under it. Like Minister of Economy after a really bad week in economy joking on TV and saying “You’re not paid in USD, so why do you care about exchange rates?” while Turkey almost imports everything and this is all signs of something much worse for all. Or this.
You probably have a better picture of SNAFUBAR in your head now. This is pretty much everywhere, with varying degrees of fucked up. Another important feature of SNAFUBAR is that it is not something new or only caused by one or two reasons. SNAFUBAR happens because the system itself is built on that. And when you look at the past (or people who propose a different future inside the system) nothing is really different. At least in a way that matters. When you understand that just giving the power of profiting from SNAFUBAR to a different group is not a solution, you also see that many are not actually offering you a solution.
I know this perspective may seem dark or pessimistic. But I feel like there’s something liberating about embracing the fact that we’re living in SNAFUBAR. When you understand that this is a condition that’s been built this way and so-called “alternatives” are just asking you to help them ride the SNAFUBAR wave, you can develop a more in-depth perspective. You stop feeling apologetic for being critical to “resistance” or “opposition” and start working with the actual ones. Acknowledging and embracing what SNAFUBAR is will help your mind to liberate itself from its limits and borders. So that you can think beyond it.
This is why I think embracing SNAFUBAR is something all of us should do. So that we can actually start thinking and working for what’s beyond it.
Status Report
- My latest experiment on the idea of digital communities and “Global Frequency of Keeping the World Weird” is a private Discord channel. It’s an experiment and if you want to be a part of it and experiment with me, you should join. Still working on a more formal rules but the general rule is that if you make anyone feel unsafe, and do something that’ll hurt people’s and server’s privacy you’re gone forever.
- Turkey recently passed a new social media law that’s basically more censorship and more control to government over big tech platforms. I talked to the Economist about it.
- There are some new blog posts on the website about things like how I work and private digital places.
Filtered Down
- The Side Effects of Mercury Poisoning Include Memory Loss — Andrew Sempere (Part 1, Part 1,5, Part 2) (You can also support Andrew here.)
- The Absurdity Of The Present: Stealing Vaccine Research — Quinn Norton
- Logic | Philosophy Tube
- The Fantasy and the Cyberpunk Futurism of Singapore — Jerrine Tan
- Support Jay Springett.
Outro
So, that’s it for this time. I’m trying to see if making this newsletter shorter and with less bells and whistles will help me to send it regularly. Let me know what do you think.
Take care of yourselves and see you all around!