#twentian studies

[frances-kafka]

Here's an example of some of that shifting frame I'm talking about, as we truly enter the 21st, and leave behind the 20th Century. This is actually a really normal interaction that you see in 20th century media. Most people my age and older understand it as completely normal and it is not seen as autistic.

I have had to reassure any number of people that asking for the same beverage two visits in a row, and or being a regular at a specific restaurant, is not weird.

Maybe it is weird now. I don't know.

But it would not have been considered weird at ANY point during the majority of my lifetime. You will see this kind of an interaction in a majority of 20th century sitcoms. Probably even later ones. But I suspect that the people the most worried about this, are not in the media consumption silo that would show this. Sitcoms will show this, but lots of the most socially anxious people do not watch sitcoms. (I've noticed this for ages.)

"The Usual" is actually NOT an inconvenience to shopkeepers.

[frances-kafka]

So this is specific to fairly high-compensating autists who used to get called Asperger. A difference I've observed in pre-2010s adult autism writing is that there's less association, at least on the part of autism writers, with severe psychiatric decompensation. Though sometimes there's misdiagnosis with a psychiatric condition because the clinicians don't understand adult autism. Later stuff about autists seems to portray people who are actually much more unhappy, alone, and decompensated. I actually knew some relatively happier autists in the 90s-early 00s, especially in sci fi culture and especially in computers. There is more discourse in the world of older autists about having learned to navigate the social world intellectually, or... often, a narrative of being a kid who was a late bloomer, and caught up. I feel like different language was used to describe what's all being described with just one term now, "masking." This implied that there were a lot of different methods of coping. Some people described, just learned to navigate stuff better. Some people (this is kinda me bc I was actually developmentally delayed/late talker?) just "caught up." Some people internalized a set of personae they adopted (which can be damaging but was described a lot better than "masking" describes it; Donna Williams gave pretty good descriptions about this). Some people faked it, sure. The narrative is different now and it's all called "masking" and the conversation goes like this: "Oh yeah, I was masking." "What was that like, what did you do?" "Y'know. Just masking." Older work is a LOT more concise about actual autism presentation and masking and newer work seems to be much more vague. Enough that I've told people to read older work because it gives much more concise descriptions of cognitive, proprioceptive and motor, processing, and learning aspects of autism whereas modern work focuses very very much on feelings and a very poorly elucidated description of masking that lumps what is actually a lot of behaviors into one term. And I've found it common to talk to older autists who are much more self-aware about the "why" of their social breakdowns and what specific issues it's downstream of. (Part of my own compensation is because I'm EXTREMELY self aware about what my issues are downstream of, and what exact cognitive or sensory thing broke down, and have learned to navigate around this. I started learning this very young and was taught this very young. It could be because I have ND parents who themselves have relatively developed coping skills.

[frances-kafka]

I almost see the following happening.

Firstians will have 20 year old avatars forever, which live in the OASIS, and step into the luxury death pod when they stop being able to support their life

Victorians will inject themselves with teenage virgin blood

It's Twentians that have to deal with getting old and will have to fight for rights as aging workers and the right to have a post-work existence

[frances-kafka]

I’m really beginning to feel that Cool Girl/NLOG discourse was about certain women coping and seething this entire time. It’s Millennial for what Twentians just called some synonym for “loose woman.” Moderns would have just called the other woman a slut about 30 years ago.

the irony is that you can actually openly say a woman is a Cool Girl or NLOG but back then, you could only whisper or gossip that she was a tramp.

so in a weird way, it’s effective social policing in a different way than slut-shaming was.

in the 21st though you’re not really allowed to openly police women’s sex habits openly. Has to be done with some degree of plausible deniability.

Slut-shaming is what’s historically generally weaponized against heterosocial women, but we don’t openly slut-shame anymore, so we do what 21stians do: launder the concept through something else.

[frances-kafka]

Part of the headspin brainfuck of today's current zeitgeist, for me, is how horny Christian culture seems now that we only have Puriteens, "Everyone Is Beautiful And Nobody Is Horny," and media products that are formulated to sell in markets with far more puritanical viewpoints. We have done a bizarre-ass pivot to where some Christians are now defending the (fertile) horniness of Christian life as a contrast to the (literal) sterility of secular life, not only is it fun to have kids, it's fun to MAKE kids! Fucking your spouse is how you get kids! Something must be wrong with you if you DON'T want to fuck! Hearing gay life described as sterile is a weird vibe shift from hearing it described as oversexed. And to be fair I definitely hear the latter more often but I hear the former enough and never used to hear that before. It's actually giving me a bit of insight into how horny Greatest and Silent Generation normies really were. And insight into the idea that Twentian romantic heteronormativity, wasn't at all at odds with the Sexual Revolution, not really. It actually sprang from the same culture, and was propped up by the same economic and infrastructural and social conditions. Flower children weren't angry at their parents for being prudes. They were angry at them for being hypocrites. But all the same, I still feel like there is vibe shift going on with what was formerly the less *comparatively* horny culture. To the point that I ALMOST can easily imagine the Fosterites from "Stranger in a Strange Land" happening at some point.

[frances-kafka]

I just so much wanna start calling modern aesthetics Kelloggcore

[frances-kafka]

A shifting frame in the shift from 20th to 21st:

I think a certain presentation of autism has actually gotten stigmatized *worse.*

It wasn't as big a problem in the social and professional framework of 20th century men and high masking men were likely to escape detection. Also, the Twentian middle class social order provided many of these men with unacknowledged aide workers (wives, secretaries).

No, it was actually the problem for WOMEN, who - at much milder levels of apparent difference - got clinicalized (and this is a part of a prevailing social order of the late 19th and isn't even specifically Twentian) with SOMETHING, though it wasn't often labeled autism.

One of the biggest disruptions to this social order for middle class men who'd now be recognized as autistic is that in the 1970s through 80s, these men's aide workers collectively went on strike and never came back.

And the economy did the rest.

[frances-kafka]

I’m splitting Twentians into two cohorts. The second cohort I’m calling Atomics, a megageneration that encompasses Silent through Gen X.

what would we call the first cohort? Radio Twentians? What would you consider foundational and characteristic of the 1910s through mid 40s? Revolution Twentians?

And finally, just as the smartphone is probably the big foundational technology of 21st culture (at least), the automobile is probably the actual foundational technology of much of the culture of Twentians.

in any case, as a Gen Xr, I was raised an Atomic Twentian. My mother and father are Atomic Twentians.

[frances-kafka]

Cause-and-Adjacency: a new techno-occultic social logic

"Cause-and-Adjacency" means that association is cause.

Cause-and-Adjacency is the dominant logic of this part of the 21st century, with a "latent space" aspect to it.

Cause-and-Effect: Things happen because of causative agents and are downstream of sequences of causative agents. Analytical people using C&E logic understand that things can have multiple causative agents and multiple types of outcomes, but relatively less analytical or informed people might think "something has only one causative agent, and if that statement is wrong, then ALL cause and effect logic is wrong."

Many things are stuck with Cause-and-Effect as their dominant framework. Cause-and-Adjacency logic doesn't apply when you have to deal with the physical world and its laws. Adjacency is primarily a social logic, and the physical world often isn't governed by social logic.

Cause-and-Adjacency: Things happen because of their adjacency to other things or because they share a latent space.

Cause-and-Adjacency is actually the logic of algorithmic sorting, prompt engineering, etc.

For example, in Cause-and-Effect, something being associated does not mean that thing is responsible.

A simple example of Cause-and-Effect:  I'll use a dumb example.

Let's say that Neo-Victorians like trains, train engineers like trains, New Urbanists like trains, WWII Nazis liked trains, and many autistic kids like trains. In standard Cause-and-Effect logic - and in more 20th century social logic, but NOT modern social logic - this does not mean that train engineers, Neo-Victorians, New Urbanists, Nazis, and autistic kids are part of the same social subgroup. They're just five different groups that are non-causally associated with trains. If you are examining this via Cause-and-Effect, you don’t equate “liking trains” to “is a train engineer, Neo-Victorian, New Urbanist, Nazi, or autistic.” Sharing an intersection doesn’t mean sharing probable cause. These things are not synonymous with each other.

But if you’re applying Cause-and-Adjacency:

In Cause-and-Adjacency logic, adjacency is causation even if the two things have nothing to do with each other. Guilt by sharing a common latent space.

You avoid anything that shares an intersection. This may actually be necessary online, in terms of SEO stuff. If you’re a particularly Twitterbrained [1] Firstian who doesn’t “know how the sausage is made” and your social experience – including your education in social logic - is dominantly shaped by your interactions with a post-Web 2 social media space, then all you know is that whenever you activate a particular intersection, all of the fellow travelers come along for the ride. Here's why: Post about trains, and you’ll get stuff from or related to train engineers AND WWII Nazis (ok, probably not) AND New Urbanists AND autistic kids. Providing more context won't help because you're still going to be optimizing your posts to all of those groups or topics. You may need to actually use much more specified language - or avoid the topic altogether. If you’re on Twitter, then your posting about trains made you hypervisible to ALL of them. Interacting with ANYONE posting about trains made you hypervisible as well.

In Cause-and-Adjacency Logic, the entire cloud of associations is held as a causative agent, especially since the people using this logic often are completely mystified as to how trains, Nazis, Victorians, and autistic kids are all connected.

According to the social logic of Web 2 and onward, you would avoid the entire “thing cloud” if you want to avoid even one of the things in that cloud. Firstians move through clouds of association.

Another strategy:

You invent a secret code word for "trains" to confine the context you are referring to (such as when tech people overly use the term "qualia" when they mean "soul") and avoid the Victorians, Nazis, and autists. This is social media algorithm and SEO logic. Marketers understand this better than many programmers do.

If you’re part of particular tech subcultures – like Rationalists/EA – you might make up your own term for “train” in order to throttle your engagement specifically to other people within your circle. This is what they are doing with the very subculture-specific language they use.

This is why I NEVER say "tr*gg*r" and ALWAYS say “the Vapors” when referring to the overzealous use of the word "tr*gg*r." It’s also why I am asterisking out that word for that matter! It’s algospeak.

I’m saying “the Vapors” because – in the context I’m using this – I don’t actually want to engage with either the people who overzealously use the term or those who attack them. “The Vapors” gives me a way to talk about this within the specific context in which I'm using it, while lowering engagement from the people not involved in that context.

In many ways, this kind of algospeak is like reverse prompt engineering. Instead of building a big LLM prompt or doing SEO tagging that strengthens the signal to a broader group, you’re throttling engagement down to what is only understood by your in-group, or even to a frame you control (which is the beauty of always using your own language and framing for things wherever possible; it filters out the people who don’t actually want to engage).

All of this may point out, very much, to how Firstian society is evolving downstream of its foundational technologies.

[1] Being Twitterbrained may actually be a functional mode of operation if you’re on Twitter.

[frances-kafka]

Sex is written differently now. I found myself digging into 60s-80s stuff again to get the vibe right for my writing, and... whoa.

Much of 70s/80s stuff is very much for people who are experienced and or who are getting their sex education elsewhere. Even when it's written for 20 year olds. Modern work is expected to do the load-bearing component of sex education and appropriate relational modeling in ways that older work didn't. There were whole other genres of work for that. This is even expected of stuff that 30 year olds are going to read, and it will be 30 year olds who complain about it the most, especially if they're lonely (like a lot of modern 30 year olds).

And in general I think that modern work is expected to do the heavy lifting for "this is an accurate and socially appropriate picture of reality" in ways older work wasn't. It's speaking to a middle class audience that's more sheltered and less experienced than 20th century audiences were.

Stuff that's primarily written for 20somethings who are assumed to be socially and sexually experienced Boomer grass-touchers... hits different. This really comes across to me *writing characters who code as Boomers* and finding their mindset is possibly not legible to moderns.

[frances-kafka]

Ok, now that I've got a grasp of uniquely Twentian things and Neo-Victorian things:

What is specifically 'Firstian?

I think that relational forms are changing. A big new form of polyamory for example becoming a local norm in many places: distributed relational networks that accommodate a wide variety of gender combinations and interrelational types. In many cases, distributed networks are the only relationship type that is load bearing to a lot of people left behind by the collapse of the Twentian infrastructure.

You could theoretically have what a Twentian understands as a monogamous sexual relationship with your spouse, and a platonic best friend, and this would potentially still make you a member of a network if you define yourself and different relationships in ways that connect you to the other nodes in the network. Whereas Twentian marriage and social dynamics are not scalable. In the US, relationship shapes are very much propped up by the New Deal infrastructure and are so very downstream of that and the Postwar that when that collapsed, marriage as a regular social norm, went with it.

I see this as something enabled specifically by the 21st foundational technology, smartphones and social media, as unique relational shapes (erotic hypermonogamy norm and heterosociality of the 20th) are downstream of Twentian living conditions, communication, and transport - plus birth control and the New Deal making large scale horny heterosexuality load-bearing and scalable for the first time.

The new technologies of 'Firstians are as revolutionary to them as the Pill and automobiles were to Twentians. Both nodal relational scaling, and distributed networks, are downstream of this tech.

It remains to be seen what 'Firstians will become in intersection with large language models.

What else is specifically 'Firstian?

[frances-kafka]

This is blowing up my Twitter rn and is making me kind of stabby

[frances-kafka]

It's wild to me that it's possible to Moral Panic a bunch of childless 35 year olds now, and have them all bully each other into obedience about rightthink and the proper reading material, in ways that were not previously possible on this side of the Red Scare. For so many Twentians, this seriously was over once you were out of high school for the most part. Reading was much more private. You really weren't going to have water cooler workplace bullying over what sci fi you read, chances were good nobody was even going to know. Satanic Panic did not really have THAT much of an impact on people over 21, aside from the labels and lists helping us find the good shit.

In the 90s, you would have to actually be working at a Christian college or something to experience anything like our present culture.

[frances-kafka]

Hot take: "Is this an Appropriate image of a relationship and/or sex" is huuuugely cared about by... lonely people.

And a lot of people are lonely.

I really have the suspicion that this is not something a reader who's in a fairly long term LTR is going to think a lot about, unless of course they're evaluating works *for their children.*

I think that married women may be who actually read the more escapist stuff and don't really evaluate the messages it sends.

[frances-kafka]

I think people born after Gen Jones often don't realize that hippies weren't uniformly leftist

...nor that 60s/70s politics weren't necessarily "the left vs the right" and also moderns aren't aware of all of the different factions and subcultures of 60s/70s counterculture, youth, and radicalism. Like, I've really been sitting with the fact that Modern Libertarian Boomer Who Is Ex Hippie was really probably always legibly Libertarian.

[frances-kafka]

The big thing with Cause-and-Adjacency becoming a dominant social logic, is that we dominantly meet online now, downstream from SEO and marketing algorithms. And there is almost no separation between grass-touch life and the internet anymore. So whatever you do in the 3d world, is going to have a feedback loop with the internet. To extend the dumb example I used again, about "the railroad fandom" being an intersection of WWII Nazis, train autists, New Urbanists (many examples possible, but limiting the field for simplicity's sake): In the 1980s, if you were in a third space dealing with Train Fandom as a topic, it was a *very different experience* from dealing with Train Fandom online.

(I was not part of train fandom, but I was part of other spaces this applies to.) One big thing is that the third space in question may in fact be under Robert's Rules of Order, or have to default to the "house rules" of wherever it's being hosted. And there is a certain amount of stuff that people just weren't going to say right to another person's face. You are also having participants in your space, in an in-person third space, sorted by area. (This has plusses and minuses. It's great if you fit into your area and it's terrible if you don't. But a big thing is that the more extreme people aren't actually going to physical spaces, where I live. Your Mileage May Vary.)

You meet the people you like, you leave with the people you like.

Modern internet interaction *isn't like this.*

Anything within the latent space of a thing you're into, will get spammed into your face. The only real surefire way to avoid Nazis for example is to have a rule about contamination; if Nazis even like this thing, it's not "safe." SEO will drive the Nazis to wherever you are if you like *anything* that shares a latent space with Nazis.

You either have to keep running until you find something they are categorically Not Into or you have to somehow learn to interact in a space that contains Nazis (which can include all kinds of strategies, but none of them will 100% remove Nazis from your existence.) This is downstream of SEO and marketing silos, and is a massive failure mode of most of our life being online. Radicalization pipelines worked differently before the internet.

Web 2 has actually created a public world where nothing can even be engaged.

1980s talk shows' formats of doing hard hitting investigative journalism or interviewing Nazis or what have you, couldn't really exist in this context because we've come to see "sharing latent space" (being in the same room) as a broad social taboo and under the New Social Rules, even arguing is platforming. But I think a chunk of this is downstream of SEO and of internet-first social interaction, because of how much post-Web 2 online interaction *does* require a bit of an eggshell walk. Unfortunately, it means there is a massive amount of stuff that can't really be talked about in the open. And we have lost a half century of work done just to secure that very thing, to get people talking in the open about real problems. And for the most part, now, you just can't talk about anything.

Web 2 has turned every conversation into a contextless public square argument between people that, in the past, you could just... not invite to your space.