A blast from the past: "The Fandom Cults of Draven"

 

Self-portrait by Kurt Draven from his manifesto Codex Veritas Neo

In the early years of this blog, I noted Kurt Draven, a fellow who'd started a cult where he claimed to be Neo out of The Matrix (a trans dude in an era before the Wachowskis came out, which says a lot I suppose). I critiqued his idealism and he came into the comments to whine at me.

Now I find out, years later, that it wasn't the first or the last cult he'd created; that he'd also been Fox Mulder and Angel out of Buffy and went on to be Anakin motherfucking Skywalker; that he was a multiple drug addict and arrested for several crimes. And all this without the charm and grace of my other favourite dubiously-multiple, possibly-faking-illness, fanfic-based cult leader, Andy Blake.

 

 

 

TWENTY YEARS CHAOS MARXISM

The conceptual categories have changed, several times; the original impulse remains valid; the project continues, such as it is.

 In the meantime:

One of the complexities of the social world is that magic is simultaneously real (as in, an activity that humans actually do and that has practical impacts in the social world), and the vast majority of the magical thinking that occult communities engage in is utterly complete make-believe bullshit....

The essence of Real Magic (not fabulist bullshit) is something like the art and science of understanding and utilizing the actual real feedback loop between our imaginations and our socially (and materially) constructed world. Which ironically fabulists are tapping into when they traffic in bullshit 

 

 

weev was always a nazi, again

90s & 2000s Internet culture was filled w/ ppl playing w/ the idea that 90% of reality is perception & that thus if you alter perception, you change the world. Lotta good people & interesting work came from those waters, but so did misanthrope edgelords like thiel, weev, andreessen, yarvin, land, &c

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— Dr. Damien P. Williams can't think of a fun display name right n (@wolvendamien.bsky.social) April 17, 2026 at 1:17 AM

Chaos Marxism was part of that tendency, and - as RU Sirius pointed out - perhaps destabilizing consensus reality altogether wasn't exactly a well-thought-out strategy.

Next time the sorcerer's apprentices will have to study more before we open the door to the Other Zone. You were so enthusiastic about the solve that you didn't even think about the coagula. And that's why we're in Issue 12 of Moore's Providence right now and goddamn Shub-Niggurath is coming right this way.