Are you bold and unafraid or do you just want to banter?
Greetings! If you’ve been attending my salons for some time, you might remember my first official Cultural Futurist salon themed and titled Total Renaissance that took place at the end of 2023. Then there was the more recent Cabaret of Secrets event that took place in late January of 2024. These digital salons and cabarets were unforgettable landmarks of cultural history, yet they both stuck to a lineup and schedule. This time, at Cultural Futurist Salon III – Bohemian Banter, we’re doing away with any type of program. Instead, we are going full chaos mode. Bohemian Banter is upon us. Get ready for the Banter Ball.
Here are some topic suggestions I’ve assembled for your inspiration, but please don’t view them as anything more than suggestions. This is a completely freeform event where anything and everything goes:
- Cults. Cult leader is the new barista. There are cult leaders everywhere you go, and there are even more desperate cult-members-in-waiting. Why are all these cults suddenly popping up? Have cults become the new normal? Is it the death of religion that has kicked this off? Trust in science is at an epic low after the covid regime, and people are now waiting for a great re-enchantment to take place. So, how do we adapt to this upcoming aeon of a million cults? Is there a mysticism to science that can save us all from going off the deep end? Do you have any insights on the age of cults ahead, or are you just another cult leader who wants to pimp out your cult at the Banter Ball?
- Nuclear. Nuclear energy is one of the most exciting frontiers ahead, yet it’s still met with opposition in the public eye. This stems from concerns about accidents and radioactive waste. Or does it? Perhaps anti-nuclear arguments are just mundane blips of liberal propaganda that mean nothing at all. Isabelle Boemeke is known as the world’s first nuclear energy influencer. She’s been debunking major objections to nuclear power for the TED set by explaining how nuclear power is our best hope to ditch fossil fuels. We also have Emmet Penney at Nuclear Barbarians who is an expert in nuclear energy, industrial history, and energy politics. Nuclear has become a hot topic and for good reason. Let’s take a deep dive into all things nuclear at our third Cultural Futurist salon.
- What do we call ourselves now? High in openness? Low in agreeability? That may just get you labeled as Dissident Right, regardless of your politics. This term often gets applied to anyone who shares these common traits and a desire for a greater regime than the farce we have today. Yet not everybody is content with the label. I coined the term Art Right to describe an emerging faction of creatives who saw outside the dominant narrative yet were focused on the arts rather than mainstream politics. Many want to throw out terms like Left and Right entirely, some want to create a “New Old Left,” and others like political satirist Walt Bizmark have taken the audacious move of attempting to rehabilitate and rebuild the notorious Alt Right. Come share your political and subcultural label suggestions with us this Saturday, even if you just want to reinvent radical centrism.
- Dealing with bot farms. We’ve all dealt with bot farms before. They are fairly easy to recognize unless you’re new to the internet. Someone will mine your data, feed it back to you through their bot farm, and attempt to sell you a product or service. Yet sometimes that product is merely your attention, and sometimes you may not realize when a bot farm is taking over your network. If a bot farm mines the data of your community and feeds this data back to your followers through hundreds of fake accounts… what exactly is your next move? Can we compete with these bot farms or are we inevitably becoming obsolete as mere humans on the internet? Is Dead Internet Theory just the cold hard truth about digital reality? Have bot farms rendered social media completely unusable? Wake up. Time to try. To figure this out.
- SBF goes to prison. Sam Bankman-Fried was just sentenced to 25 years in prison. Considered the crypto Bernie Madoff, his story first made waves in the (In)Effective Altruist community that spawned what is either an incompetent moron, criminal mastermind, or obscene combination of both. Personally, I think he should just write an engaging prison memoir and strike up a deal with Netflix. Yet as my reader Strategy Pattern puts it: “SBF could write the new world Bible that could bridge the divide between E/A and E/ACC and align the universal crypto-chakras. The dude could start his own mega-cult. The amount of manipulation power in one curl of his hair would be enough.”
We also welcome the following types of people to The Banter Ball:
- Poets who want to read their poetry
- Authors who want to read from their books
- Musicians who want to play live sets
- Comedians who want to do live performances
- Video artists who want to share their videos
- Philosophers who want to share their ideas
- Purists who want to verbally spar with people they disagree with
- Disaffected professionals who just want to enjoy the madness
Cultural Futurist Salon III – Bohemian Banter, starts at 4 PM EST. It will go on for as long as it needs to. (or until I get tired) You can attend by becoming a paid member of The Cultural Futurist, which will cause the Zoom link to be displayed for you under the cut, in addition to giving you access to all of my archives. I’m giving a 50% off subscription for an entire lifetime to anyone who becomes a paying member of The Cultural Futurist until the day of the salon. This includes monthly and annual memberships. Paid membership gets you access to all of my salons, including Bohemian Banter.
Remember that no Cultural Futurist Salons will ever be recorded. If you can’t make it you can’t make it. I respect the privacy of all my attendees and do not want our discussions or performances to be public. Don’t ask me if I have live recordings of my salons because the answer will always be no. Make the function or miss the regime change. Anyone is free to show up late, as long as you appear ideologically or aesthetically fashionable and don’t mind waiting for your turn to banter. Zoom link is below and for paid subscribers old and new:
