Articles Of Loathing

Musings For An Audience of Some

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Writer who is occasionally insightful.

  • From Citizen to Customer: The 1-Star Review of Modern Politics

    I often find that the public’s feeling toward government is morphing into how they might rate a bad movie, book, or video game. Where criticism of how a country is governed was once tempered by a foundational belief that public institutions and civic responsibility were inherently good, today’s discourse—even after filtering out the bots—looks more like: “1 star, would not vote again.”

    The idea that politics has drifted in this direction is not new. In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that when we shift from a citizen mindset to a consumer mindset, we lose our capacity for collective moral reasoning. While consumers ask, “What is in my best interest?” citizens ask, “What is best for the community?” I largely agree with this distinction, and I would argue that the total domination of social media in our daily lives has accelerated our drift toward consumerism when it comes to politics. After all, social media algorithms are built entirely around hyper-personalization—the ultimate consumer experience. When our feeds are custom-tailored to our exact preferences, we naturally begin to expect the physical world and the political landscape to adapt to our individual desires too, destroying the messy compromise required for citizenship.

    It is tempting to neatly map consumers onto the traditional Right and citizens onto the traditional Left. When people imagine the state and the individual working in harmony for the common good, they often picture a fictional, socialist utopia of free everything and far too much dancing. However, the traditional Left/Right divide fails to define our current political moment, which is exactly why the consumer/citizen distinction is so valuable.

    Those on the political Left are certainly guilty of consumerist politics. They frequently view the government as an ally to sanction anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their “flavor of the month” issue—using it to browbeat and shame those who haven’t updated their lingo. This crowd is just as uninterested in genuine debate as those on the political Right who scream for blood in the streets the moment they hear foreign accents in the queue at Greggs.

    Conversely, those considered to be on the far-right have historically valued a version of citizenship: a strong state, serving its people and bolstered by their contributions, allowing those who work hard to rise to the top and prosper. Yet, as Hannah Arendt warned in The Origins of Totalitarianism, citizenship can exclude just as easily as it unites. Arendt deeply valued civic life, but she famously cautioned that when the state demands duty and productivity in exchange for belonging, it inevitably creates a hierarchy of “good citizens” and “outsiders”—marginalizing immigrants, the disabled, and the vulnerable. As political scientist Benjamin Barber later observed, when a thin, purely self-interested democracy forces people into a community without a shared moral framework, they often “turn it into a weapon against those who do not look like them.”

    But while citizenship carries the risk of creating an “other,” consumerism suffers from a different flaw: it completely isolates those who are unable to “buy into” the society they live in. They are left to ride the volatile ebbs and flows of the market, where the only logical escape is to amass enough personal wealth to climb out. Those with the means to do so are relatively shielded from a failing society; they have the resources to invest in private schooling and healthcare, or simply leave the country altogether.

    A classic complaint from the consumerist political mindset is: “Why should I pay for the NHS? I don’t even use it!” This makes perfect sense if you view the government as a private service provider, and taxes as mere subscription fees. This is the ultimate expression of what economist Albert O. Hirschman called the “Exit” strategy. When a commercial service falters, the consumer exercises their freedom to exit and buy a private alternative. A citizen’s stance, possessing what Hirschman called “Voice,” instead argues that paying taxes is not a service charge but a vital contribution to the state’s functioning—funding that allows society to work and provide for all its members, opting to repair the public asset they collectively own rather than walking away.

    So, does political discourse ultimately boil down to collective well-being and civic duty versus personal freedom and individual utility? Mostly, yes, but it is not the full picture.

    While the easiest way to distill the debate is the individual versus the collective, the individual’s current ascendancy didn’t happen overnight. Beyond social media, this trend can be linked directly back to the rise of New Public Management in the 1980s and 90s. This public sector philosophy argued that citizens should be treated as “customers” of the government, shifting the metric of state performance from the “overall public good” to customer satisfaction and cost-saving efficiencies.

    This wasn’t just corporate theory; it fundamentally reshaped the physical and economic landscape of Britain. Policies like the Right to Buy scheme turned shared council housing into private financial assets to flip on the market, while the privatization of water and rail networks re-engineered public utilities into corporate entities where shareholders took precedence over stakeholders.

    To this school of thought, treating the state as a “noble public good” is naive. Bureaucrats and politicians are viewed as self-interested actors rather than saints. Therefore, the theory goes, the state should be run like a business—forced to compete, held accountable via consumer choice, and leaving citizens with the “freedom to exit” if the service is terrible.

    This management style worked in tandem with the “greed is good” philosophy of the era, which birthed the ill-informed doctrine of trickle-down economics. The premise was that enriching a tiny minority would spur entrepreneurship and naturally create prosperity for the wider population. We are still waiting for that particular bud to bear fruit.

    Another way to frame this divide is whether it is justified to sacrifice for the greater good of the collective—via increased taxes to fund the state—or if individual prosperity is sacred and should never be stifled by regulations and high taxes. Robert Nozick encapsulated the latter viewpoint brilliantly in Anarchy, State, and Utopia:

    “Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor… taking the earnings of x hours of labor is like taking x hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work x hours for another’s purpose.”

    When you view your relationship to the state as a part-owner of a collective enterprise, the idea of taxation as theft completely falls away; the citizen sees it as an investment in the nation’s future prosperity. To the consumer mindset, however, it will always look like resources being unjustly seized by a ruler.

    Ultimately, the rise of consumerist politics goes a long way toward explaining the intense polarization in our society. If the sole metric of a successful society is how well the individual is personally prospering, there are going to be a lot of angry, 1-star reviews left by those on the losing side of the wealth gap. That frustration is easily funneled into extremism against “the other.” Meanwhile, those on the opposite side of the political divide entrench their sense of personal superiority, distancing themselves from the realities of society and screaming for progressive cultural shifts, while the majority of people are simply trying to afford the cost of bread and butter.

    If articles like this can ever have a truly satisfying conclusion, I would leave you with the one quote that sums up how we might best rebuild a genuinely functioning society:

    “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

    — Nelson Henderson

  • Toxic Individualism – The Slow Death of Community in the Age of the Self

    “The belief that the individual is the sole architect of their fate ignores the structural, communal, and historical forces that shape lives.”
    — Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit (2020)

    It seems as though society has atomised to such an extent that even speaking about “community” or “the collective” conjures visions of a sci-fi dystopia — or, at best, a Facebook group. Political discourse often urges us to “preserve the institutions of the nation,” but what this actually boils down to are curated images of “go-getter” entrepreneurs, quirky cafés selling “shoe buns” (buns shaped like shoes — all the rage, I imagine), or smiling families holding keys to suburban homes with one child at their side and another on the way.

    In short, the aspects of society we commonly champion are those that elevate the milestones of the individual — success, ownership, visibility — not the health of the whole.

    No one in modern history encapsulated this idea better than Margaret Thatcher when she famously declared:

    “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”

    This worldview — of atomised individuals and families competing for limited resources and space — harks back to Hobbes’ state of nature, where life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” But are we forgetting the collective struggles fought and the triumphs achieved by people working together? Is it too difficult for the modern mind to grasp that meaningful social change has always required the coordination of many — not the grind of one?

    Consider how our culture places business owners, inventors, and athletes at the very top of society — envied, emulated, celebrated. With the rise of influencers and fame-for-fame’s-sake celebrities, these waters are even more muddied. People whose only visible achievement is self-promotion are now seen as aspirational. In such a world, how can individuals possibly feel empowered by their communities, when every route to “success” is increasingly portrayed as individual, not communal?

    But what about society itself? Should we not be equally proud of the systems we’ve built — free healthcare, universal education, social services, and welfare — that allow people to live with dignity and security? Isn’t it a remarkable achievement that, as a collective, we’ve moved beyond Hobbesian chaos toward peace, prosperity, and even the possibility of eudaimonic fulfilment?

    Yet the rights and protections won by collective struggle are now routinely minimised or ignored — obscured by the myth of individual merit. It’s natural to attribute our own successes to hard work, and to blame society for our failures. But the toxic self-made person does the reverse when looking at others: they see failure as a moral flaw — a result of laziness or poor decisions — just as they see their own success as a series of correct, righteous moves.

    The logic becomes: If I fail, it’s because the world is unfair. If you fail, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough.

    This is the foundation of a culture that erodes empathy, discourages solidarity, and nurtures an individualism so toxic it ensures the many will fail so that a select few may rise. In that sense, the “state of nature” has returned — just with better lighting and branding.

    Toxic individualism doesn’t just harm society — it harms individuals, too.

    The pressure to keep up appearances with peers or influencers leads many to spend beyond their means, chasing status symbols or embarking on commodified “journeys of self-discovery.” Debt and dissatisfaction follow. As Brené Brown put it in Braving the Wilderness:

    “We are living in a society where the myth of self-reliance has left millions ashamed of their vulnerability and isolated in their suffering.”

    In this world, vulnerability is a liability. Saying “I can’t afford that” or “I might need to wait” feels like an admission of failure. Businesses exploit this with “FOMO” marketing: a glance at any inbox reveals payday deals, abandoned cart emails, and sales posing as self-care — all designed to make us feel lesser if we don’t give in.

    “Hustle culture” and self-help content feed the same beast. Rarely do self-help gurus speak of growth for the benefit of others. More often, society is ignored altogether — except when it’s an obstacle to be overcome. Yet it is society, in all its complexity and imperfection, that makes any personal success possible in the first place.

    This has affected even how we view work. It’s no longer just bored shelf-stackers watching the clock — even those in roles of power and responsibility often seem disengaged, prioritising personal convenience over public duty. The “race to 5 p.m.” is rampant across statutory services. Consider Rachel Reeves evading a Gaza question during the 2024 campaign — a small example, perhaps, but symbolic of a growing apathy. In such a climate, can we really talk about duty at all?

    Meanwhile, wellness culture — promising salvation through yoga, apps, and supplements — has become another industry cloaked in neoliberal ideals. As Wendy Brown wrote in Undoing the Demos:

    “The real contradiction of neoliberalism is that it glorifies individual choice while ensuring that only a few can actually exercise it meaningfully.”

    This contradiction is poisonous. People are told they can change their fate if they just hustle harder, fit more in, optimise better. But this fantasy disproportionately punishes those without time or resources — making them feel ashamed for failing to “self-actualise” and fearful of seeking help.

    Yet another way is possible.

    The Ubuntu philosophy — “I am because we are” — offers a counterpoint that is both simple and profound. It reminds us that our freedoms and our ability to live meaningful lives are inseparable from the wellbeing of those around us.

    It is only through our community — through functioning institutions, collective empathy, and shared responsibilities — that individual flourishing becomes possible. To forget this is to risk everything.

    I’d even argue that the rise of dangerous cultural phenomena on both the right and the left — from “cancel culture” panic to “great replacement” theory — stems from a society obsessed with the personal, not the public. These are individual anxieties masquerading as collective threats. And when elevated, they obscure real issues and sow division. Left unchecked, such narratives may erode the very communal freedoms they claim to defend.

    In closing, I leave you with the words of Robert Bellah from Habits of the Heart:

    “Society must make it possible for people to form attachments and commitments larger than the self.”

    We must reclaim that possibility. Individuals need to look beyond their own well-being and that of their immediate circle. They must ask: What can I do to support the society I live in? What can I do to uphold its values, protect its institutions, and defend its most vulnerable?

    After all, none of us got here alone. And none of us will make it alone either.

  • The Porn Delusion – False Sexual Freedom and a Culture of Exploitation

    There are few issues in the modern world as confusingly divisive as pornography. Back in 1964, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” Today, we are arguably further than ever from a shared definition of pornography — especially one that captures the scope and scale of what now falls under that umbrella.

    Porn has long been considered a private matter, but the nature of that privacy has radically shifted with the rise of high-speed internet. Where once a group of boys might sneak a magazine from a bush or an older brother’s drawer, explicit videos of hardcore sex are now just a few taps away for anyone with a smartphone. This ease of access has slowly normalised pornography — though in a strangely taboo way. Almost everyone will admit to watching porn or masturbating to it at some point, yet talking openly about porn use remains awkward, even shameful. It’s the elephant in the room in many relationships, friendships, and families — an elephant caked in heavy makeup and sporting surgically enhanced features.

    Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the advent of the Pill, Western society has largely become more sexually permissive. Where once cohabiting couples and sexually active women were scandalous, these are now commonplace and accepted. Pornography has piggybacked on this shift, positioning itself as part of that broader sexual liberation. It sells itself as empowering, progressive, and inclusive.

    Advocates argue that “sex work is real work” and that women monetising explicit content are reclaiming agency and autonomy. But this argument often ignores the dark realities of the industry: countless women are coerced, trafficked, or abused, and the infrastructure supporting cam sites and porn studios is often exploitative. Revenge porn, hidden cameras, leaked videos — these are not fringe phenomena. They are part of the mainstream consumption pipeline. For the viewer, it may be just another click; for the subject, it can be a life-destroying violation. As legal scholar and feminist Catherine MacKinnon put it: “Pornography is not about free speech; it’s about paid silence — of women who are abused and objectified and can’t speak against it.”

    Some counter that “ethical porn” or “feminist porn” offer better alternatives. While well-intentioned, these niches are a microscopic fraction of the online porn landscape, and their impact is dwarfed by the industry’s ever-growing shift toward violence, degradation, and novelty for novelty’s sake. If porn were truly moving toward progressiveness, we would not see such a sharp rise in content featuring abuse, coercion, and humiliation. The worrying trend of step-sister or step-father content becoming popular, or simulated rape and the utterly deplorable “barely legal” pornographic videos, symbolise the further escalation of extreme content becoming normalised and widely accessible to anyone.

    Others defend porn as a harmless private indulgence — a sexual outlet that hurts no one and should remain beyond moral policing. But even if we set aside issues of exploitation, trafficking, and non-consensual uploads, the effects on users themselves are deeply troubling. In “Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction” (Love et al., 2015), researchers found that excessive porn consumption alters brain function in ways comparable to drug addiction. In another study, “Pornography Use and Relationship Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis” (Wright et al., 2017), higher porn use correlated with reduced relationship satisfaction and commitment.

    Porn doesn’t just change what people look at; it changes what they want. The sexual script it promotes reduces intimacy to performance and people to body parts. As Gail Dines puts it: “The problem is not that porn shows too much, but that it shows too little. It reduces the human person to body parts and the sexual act to performance.”

    When sexual gratification is defined purely as the pursuit of orgasm without mutual connection, how can real intimacy compete with the endless novelty of online porn? Many partners find themselves pressured to perform acts popularised by porn — acts that can be degrading, painful, or emotionally alienating. This rewiring of expectations bleeds into the bedroom, often creating dissatisfaction and confusion. The phrase “masturbating with your body” is often used to describe the experience of those who cannot reach orgasm without imagining pornographic content even during real sex — and the implications for relationship satisfaction know no limit.

    Worse still is the effect on children and adolescents. In the absence of comprehensive sexual education, porn becomes the teacher. It instructs young people on what sex is supposed to look like, how they should behave, and what their bodies should do or endure. Without context or care, porn becomes the default blueprint for sexual development. This does not only distort boys’ expectations; many girls and young women also internalise these scripts, measuring their worth against pornographic standards.

    It is difficult to view the scale of today’s pornography industry without seeing the commodification of women at its core. For young men especially, it risks distorting how they view women, sex, and relationships. When sex becomes mere stimulus-response, input-output, we lose something sacred. We lose the possibility of real intimacy, real connection, and a sexual ethic grounded in mutual respect. The rise of OnlyFans and other sites where women can sell explicit material through memberships is only feeding this commodification, while paradoxically parading itself as women’s liberation.

    To bring it together, sexual freedom is a vital human right. The fight for bodily autonomy and equality is not one to be dismissed lightly. But if our vision of freedom leads to exploitation, desensitisation, and emotional detachment, we must ask ourselves whether we’ve mistaken erosion for progress. The question is not whether we are free to consume porn. The question is: what is that freedom costing us?

  • Modern Day Fanaticism

    It only takes a quick scroll through the comments section of any borderline political post to see how easily people descend into keyboard warfare. An article about veganism? Cue someone claiming meat is the only source of fibre. A piece on tax reform? Prepare to be swamped by conspiracy theories about immigrants or circular logic explaining how the poor are somehow hoarding all the money while still remaining poor.

    At first glance, the internet seems like the last place you’d go for a learning experience or healthy debate.

    The Promise of the Internet — and Its Downfall

    In many ways, the original promise of the internet has become more realised than ever. The entirety of human knowledge is now at the fingertips of anyone with a decent connection. With the advent of complex language models — or “general artificial intelligence” as some call it — it’s easier than ever to access vast troves of information.

    But access to all the facts doesn’t mean people make reasoned choices. In fact, despite all these tools, many seem to be narrowing their worldview. Some respond to the pace of change by retreating into the comfort of the familiar — and unfortunately, for some, that familiarity seems deeply at odds with values like acceptance, progress, and tolerance.

    Why Beliefs Feel So Personal

    Maybe I’m overthinking it. Humans have always been factional. History is littered with conflicts — not just ideological, but physical — waged over differences of opinion.

    Still, it feels especially grating now. In this part of the world, people have more freedom than ever to think, feel, and believe what they want. They also have more time to explore why they believe it. And yet, many still defer to whatever tagline, headline, or influencer happens to confirm their views.

    It often feels like being “clued in” gives people the confidence to assume they’re unchallengeable. We’ve all had that conversation with someone who proclaims:

    “Do your own research!”
    or
    “If you don’t get it, you’re part of the problem.”

    But these are often just defense mechanisms. What they really mean is:

    “I can’t articulate why this resonates with me… but it does.”

    That’s human. We don’t just believe things because of logic or data — we believe them because those beliefs become part of who we are. So when someone questions them, it can feel like a personal attack. And when we feel attacked, we rarely stop to reconsider. We double down.

    Curated Realities and Cultish Thinking

    The danger becomes greater when you add algorithms to the mix. We’ve all heard exaggerated stories: a boy who starts watching gym videos ends up in a far-right pipeline, or a girl watching makeup tutorials finds herself pushed toward OnlyFans. These stories are oversimplified — but not entirely wrong.

    According to a Uswitch survey, people in the UK spend over five hours a day on screens. If that time is filled with carefully curated content — and only one kind of content — then those ideas start to stick.

    Media doesn’t tell you what to think. It tells you what to think about. If your feed only shows one side of an argument — and the other side only when it’s being mocked — you lose the tools to handle disagreement in a healthy way.

    Some say we don’t argue anymore because we’re being polite. I’d argue it’s the opposite: many people don’t argue because they don’t respect the other person enough to bother. And that’s far more corrosive.

    Individualism Turned Inward

    So why call this modern fanaticism?

    Because what we’re seeing isn’t just disagreement. It’s belief turned into identity, identity turned into purity, and purity turned into a kind of tribal extremism. It’s toxic individualism — the kind that celebrates personal freedom so aggressively that any sense of shared community begins to erode.

    Government programs and charities used to be the lifeblood of communal care. Now, governments increasingly prioritise individual “success,” and charities are left struggling for relevance, reliant on shrinking grants and dwindling donations.

    What’s left? Online “communities” where everyone agrees, speaks the same language, and recites the same talking points. At a certain point, it’s hard to tell where community ends and cult begins.

    The Power of Compromise

    Historically, progress comes from compromise. It’s rare that everyone is happy about big societal changes — higher taxes burden some; welfare reforms hurt others. But compromise is what stitches society together. Demonising the opposing side just to win short-term support only creates long-term resentment.

    A Quiet Conclusion

    If there’s any advice to take from this — and I hesitate to even call this a “conclusion” — it’s the simplest and hardest thing to do: avoid the noise.

    Social media is engineered to provoke. Outrage is one of the most effective tools for grabbing attention — and once they’ve got it, they’ll try to sell you dresses or branded supplements or ironic mugs with inflammatory slogans.

    Try to stay informed, yes. But also stay grounded. Come back to your core beliefs. Tune out the clickbait masquerading as commentary. Let go of the indignation treadmill.

    At the very least, your blood pressure will thank you.

  • Hello Internet!

    Welcome to Articles of Loathing. A name I thought of in a few seconds of very pained thinking.

    Here I hope to write articles about topics that interest me. I also hope to use this space to work out how I feel about certain topics, as we all know, sometimes just writing it all out in a mess of word vomit can really help clear the way of the true kernels of wisdom. Or at least that is the idea.

    Here’s to what I hope to be many articles discussing why I think things are interesting and worthy of some poorly written pieces!