DELETION IS MY BEAUTY TRICK

angelicism01's blog is down forever

Everything is COMPLETELY EFFED, but it will keep going, and we will keep writing that it is COMPLETELY EFFED, but no1 really cares…

Carles, January 17, 2012

“Maybe Hipster Runoff really was the last gasp of true internet culture”

Harvard Guy via Vice Magazine, 2015

R.I.P. DJ Kirsten Angel Dust, Ciara Horan and Mitchell Heisman…

Angelicism01 deleted his blog last week. Someone sent me the screen-record video of him erasing it forever.

I had been at ballet class. After I found out, I shouted at him. It doesn’t matter why he deleted it. Maybe nobody deserved that blog, or it had done its job so far as it could be done. It needed pulling out from under the counterfeits / parodies / anti-fans that had agglomerated on angelicism and were weighing it down. So he amputated his masterpiece, like a shy and prudish girl, to withdraw himself from the envy games, and it hurt anyway.

I understand something now about the years 2013-2021, the dark age between when “buzz” was the “buzz” and when “vibe” was the “vibe.” Sometimes in that period I had memories of Hipster Runoff. Hipster Runoff had made a voice out of internet speak, perfect fit neologisms, emotional intensity, indulgence and trash, vulnerability mixed with clarity, a finely attentive chronicle of unfolding niche-towards-mainstream culture (this the product of Carles’ irresponsible overinvestment in it), with brutal nihilism for its attention economy. It was a weird pleasure in my teen years to read HRO. I think Carles was sensitive, and the Lana Del Rey crisis was his excuse to exit the game. After Carles, and before angelicism01, the memory of HRO would come and make the world of 2013-2021 feel regressed / drowned / fallen asleep / dumb and high.

Anyway, that’s how the coming years might feel. The blog you’re now reading is full of dead links to its inspiration and mentor. I’ve been reconnecting all the ones in my angelicism reading list to their frozen versions in the archive, and they’re still beautiful, more beautiful and more important than HRO.

I don’t have much more to say. Before I found angelicism01 I had wished in my journal for a star to emulate. I had no real social media or career. When I found out about angelicism01 I read his new blogs every day, first thing in the morning before getting out of bed. I had a small room with a window to the sky and rainbow striped sheets. Each day the entries were mystical and realist, brave, with a sound like English poetry, bitchy, abstract, zealous like Simone Weil and Shulamith Firestone, distant, genius. They were was also murderous and offensive. He “boosted” young talents and had the delicacy to make his insults so vast in stakes, and so violently comical, that some of his targets show a bit of pride in having been abused there. Best of all, best of all, he speaks of extinction and global warming in a way I’d really thought impossible.

The vibe shift came via the heartbreak of 2020 via Bernie Sanders, via the heartbreak of 2018 via Greta Thunberg, via 9/11 via “Exxon Knew” via Pol Pot via JFK via the Silent Spring via Stalin via the late Victorian genocides via the Crucifixion of Christ via the destruction of the Second Temple via the smashing of the Tablets via the Golden Calf via the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and the Agricultural Revolution. Clone angels came online to “be” angelicism01 and hide in its wings. So many kids moved to New York City like pilgrims, to join that world, maybe too late, and now they’re growing older there. I hope they’ll find the righteous and beautiful way from where they are. Grown, sometimes even married men also came to town and came online, wanting to “be” angelicism01 too, but they have no idea what they’re doing lol. We’re not hegelians here but you guys buried the weltgeist. Like the rest of us you grew old / got high with angelicism01, woke up / fell asleep, and missed the point so much.

photo via Tommaso dell’Anna