A few weeks ago, at the midtown dive bar where I often have a post-dance nightcap, I saw something terrifying flash across the TV screen.
It started with Pepe the Frog: the cartoon batrachian turned alt-right symbol turned occult chaos magick symbol. He didn’t last, though. At some point the video of Pepe turned, instead, to videos of dogs, then skateboarders. There was something uncanny about these, too – as uncanny, despite their ostensibly less-objectionable content. The camera lingered too long at unnatural angles, or in unnatural places; the dogs didn’t look quite right. The effect was ritualistic, even fetishistic: as if designed not for mindless scrolling but for slaw-jacked concentration.
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