(In bed with) the Russians

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For this week’s vamp valley stream, I talked to C. Derick Varn about the backstory of Mark Fisher’s controversial (at the time) and influential “Exiting the Vampire Castle” essay and why it still matters today.
I wrote about Fisher’s essay last summer as part of my attempt to understand the way hyper-connected communication technology is affecting our world — and how structural forces built into internet technology have worked to pacify people and have foreclosed on the possibility of any sort of politics by turning everything into entertainment...a virtual cage match of endless culture wars where everyone is constantly pitted against each other in an endless fight that involves constantly evolving identity politics, fringe causes, peripheral issues, and perceived slights.
Derick was one of the editors who worked with Mark Fisher to publish the essay in the now-defunct The North Star online magazine. He’s also a sharp critic of the influencer economy and the effect of technology on culture and politics. Check out Derick’s show on YouTube or the podcast version of the show.
Thanks…and see you next week!
Yasha
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I’ll be doing these streams every Friday at noon NYC time, broadcasting against the Vampire Castle from within the Vampire Castle. All live streams will be available to the public but some recorded streams will only available to paying subscribers. Influencers are people. We need to eat, too! Reminder: If you donate $100 or more to my Vampire Valley doc, you will automatically get an annual sub. If you’re thinking of giving a larger tax-deductible donation, get in touch with us at [email protected]

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Rowan and I were at UC Santa Barbara last month presenting Pistachio Wars. We had a wonderful Q&A after the screening, which you can see below. Subscribers can listen to it on our usual podcast feed and read a cleaned up transcript below.
Thank you to Rich Farell and everyone at Carsey-Wolf Center for having us out and being such gracious hosts. Sorry for being such a doomer. But desperate times and all that… Of course watch Pistachio Wars if you haven’t already.
—Yasha
Rowan and I were at UC Santa Barbara last month presenting Pistachio Wars. We had a wonderful Q&A after the screening, which you can see below. Subscribers can listen to it on our usual podcast feed and read a cleaned up transcript below.
Thank you to Rich Farell and everyone at Carsey-Wolf Center for having us out and being such gracious hosts. Sorry for being such a doomer. But desperate times and all that… Of course watch Pistachio Wars if you haven’t already.
—Yasha
RICH FARRELL: Okay. My name is Rich Farrell. I’m a graduate student in the Film and Media Studies Department, and I’m pleased to be joined by the filmmakers of Pistachio Wars, Yasha Levine and Rowan WERNHAM. So a round of applause for you.
YASHA LEVINE: Thank you.
RICH FARRELL: So I just wanted to start the Q&A with some background and beginnings. First to you, Yasha. At the beginning of the film, you say that the story started with a piece that you wrote, “A Journey Through Oligarch Valley,” in 2013, which was published in Not Safe for Work magazine online. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to work on that story, and then how you decided to adapt this into a documentary?
YASHA LEVINE: Well, I’ll try to keep it brief. Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming.
I had been out of the country and started my journalism career reporting out in Russia, and I kind of missed the whole real estate bubble, the speculative boom that happened here, and the collapse that happened in 2007, 2008. I had been abroad watching it from afar. And when I came back to America, I was really curious about what it was all about. So I moved to LA and I was casting about for the best example of a speculative city that embodied the speculative boom.
I kind of toured California and chose Victorville -- a little suburb in the Mojave Desert, halfway between L.A. and Las Vegas -- because I really wanted to understand the kind of society, the kind of civilization that this boom created. Like what remained when Wall Street crashed and had to be bailed out…

For this anti-vamp stream from my newly established NY basement studio, I’m joined by Mike Pepi, author of Against Platforms. We talk about the failed utopian promises of the internet and how the tech platforms that now dominate our world are concentrators of power and destroyers of all other forms of organization that came before them. This monopolization/destruction isn’t an aberration or a corruption but is built into the very nature of this technology.
Mike opens his book by talking about an Apple ad that came out a few years ago that illustrates this Borg-like monopolize/destroy drive. I’m embedding it below because Apple had scrubbed this ad from the internet, following a backlash.
Compare this Apple ad…
…to the Borg. Who is more honest?
Help me make my Vampire Valley doc series. Give here. Or if you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation, write us at [email protected].

Buy Mike’s book today!
Help me make my Vampire Valley doc series. Give here. Or if you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation, write us at [email protected]. If you give $100 or more, you will automatically get an annual sub! A two-for-one deal!



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Evgenia pays tribute to Nikolai Komyagin, the frontman of the Russian cult band Shortparis. He died recently — tragically and unexpectedly ay 39.
As Evgenia explains, he was a true poet — and a total artist. With his music and videos, he did something that no one else had done yet. He captured on a pure emotional level the feeling of Russia with its failed utopian past and its violent present and all the ideals and the people that got ground up and spit in the two revolutions — the Bolshevik one and the Market Bolshevik one it had in less than a century. Ironically, the last big thing Shortparis made was the soundtrack to Limonov’s biopic, Limonov: The Ballad.
—IBWR
PS: Evgenia recently wrote about Limonov’s prophetic view of Russian politics.
PPS: The song in the intro/outro is Apple Orchard (Яблонный сад).

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For this anti-vamp stream from my newly established basement studio, I’m joined by internet by Brian Merchant, author of the wonderful book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. It’s a book about the rise and fall of the Luddites, a decentralized 19th movement of English textile workers against factories and the centralization of power. We talk about the history and politics of the Luddite movement and how the conditions they faced are not that different from what we all face today.
Eventually, the Luddite insurgency was crushed by a military force larger than the one England sent to fight Napoleon, which was happening at the same time. The history of this rebellion was erased, the state and its factory owners won, and the term “luddite” became synonymous with ignorance and laziness — any opposition to tech was branded as crazy and stupid. At the same time the Luddites were a huge cultural power, inspiring the Romantic movement and launching the sci-fi genre with works like Frankenstein. Of course, in the end, the Luddites were right. We’re all Luddites now, whether we realize it or not.
Watch and/or listen…and buy Brian’s book!
Yasha
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I’ll be talking to people about the internet and the tech that’s destroying our minds and destroying our world — as part of my research for Vampire Valley. Live streams are available to the public but recorded streams are only available to subscribers. Reminder: If you give $100 or more to Vampire Valley, you will automatically get an annual sub. If you want to give a larger tax-deductible donation, get in touch with us at [email protected]