by Sean Bw Parker (May 2025)
The analogue technology of the 20th century, with its poets, Hollywood actors, art, and rock stars, gave way to the 21st century, with its digitization, internet, and attendant ‘influencers.’ The influencers are to the 21st century what those past icons were to the 20th; unlike them, independent journalists need to parse opinions in a way that those working for larger corporations don’t, as they’re often fed lines from management or editorial departments.
The only defence the corporations have against the punk rebellion of the indies is to discredit them—as conspiracy theorists, far right etc. —as the youth are watching the latter, and are feeling increasingly disconnected from any sort of hegemonic view.
The British middle-class, world-renowned for its gentle humour, compromising ways, tolerance and generally genial relaxedness, has been as riven by these changes as anything else. This is largely because the males are heading to the indies, where interesting, edgy material awaits; while women, well catered for in 21st-century media and generally more easily societally coerced, are happy with the comfort of the mainstream.
While the establishment might believe that the kids will come round to their way of thinking in time and leave those edgy indies behind (no guarantee of that), the sex divide is more of a challenge, as the media-feminist-identitarians are deep into their own communications putsch. Despite all this, the British middle-class way of the life remains the most superior in the world, respected and sometimes envied by all, even the Americans and the French, for its general insouciance.
Communities of exiled Bohemians scatter to various extremities of the Isles, and sometimes stay in the suburbs if they can afford it, getting furious about Corbyn, Just Stop Oil, or Jeremy Clarkson, in one direction or another, while growing broccoli in their gardens and watching Hitler documentaries on YouTube or Yesterday. The importance of Cultural Christianity becomes clearer as the societal divides widen, and even strict Darwinists find themselves balking at having to ‘respect’ 72 virgins waiting for martyrs in heaven, or having to take a side on the abortion/MAGA debate.
The fact that 60% of Christians have been wiped out in Syria leads indigenous Brits to remember why old-school dictators like Bashar Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein were necessary in holding together the basket case of much of the middle-east; at least we don’t have that in the shires (until your daughter comes home from university in a keffiyeh, lecturing you about the treatment of the Palestinians under Netanyahu)! Regardless of 21st century tech bringing the world to one’s desktop, it is still not one’s circus nor one’s monkeys, Jacinta.
British Colour shows itself in many ways, not just in many different hues of skin tone but in the colours of the Union Flag, the greys of the built environment and the greens of the countryside at its best. The economy of the gamer, anecdotally working away within the built environment part of this scene, is a much underestimated thing. Gaming is the most lucrative part of the entertainments industry, in which Britain is a world leader.
Beyond the designing, selling and buying of the games themselves, there is the food and drink players people consume while engaged, the electricity running the whole process, the internet charges paid to com companies, and the media connecting it all. Ignorance of these hidden econo-systems leads to increasing marginalisation, where it could be celebrated. In gaming, as in all arts, No activism, No persuasion, Just reflection should be the higher ‘value’, as catharsis is as if not more important as ‘social progress’ —and relaxing convivially is much underrated in the deathless pursuit of good mental health.
But art is the most liable to politicisation of all, and postmodernism did for painting what feminism did for sex. PoMo decrees that chaos and mixing is the way forward, and that all narratives are invented; in the same way that feminism decided that all intersexual relations were based on power and exploitation. The beautiful aspects of painting and sex were thus thrown on to the bonfire of cultural irrelevance as according to the theorists, and everyone wants to be as clever as the theorists, right?
Relationships became as possessions through this power process as much as marriage might be in pre-industrial times in the West (and continues to be in most parts of the world today, particularly the ‘global South’). Meanwhile the sexual revolution of the 1920s through to the 1990s brought forth the the Polyamorous Gene, legitimising multi-consensual partners, as long as the subjective centre was happy. Was this poly-gene wrong? Who can tell, but in PoMo there is no such thing as right and wrong: so no such thing as fidelity, or its opposite.
The feminist-inspired new puritanism of the 21st-century went along with the Autistic antennae for justice on social media, as people whose communication styles were considered unsuitable for public life suddenly had a voice from behind keyboards. The black-and white thinking so often practiced by those with ASD fitted very much into the classical right and wrong frames, so postmodern nuance became impossible to tolerate: the world was wrong, not them.
The autistic war on politeness was concurrent, as many ASD people preferred frank honesty, as many Brits would call rudeness, over social politenesses which they just saw as a flippant waste of time. Eugenics was another favourite hot point, as the logic of weeding out the most useless in society seemed a practical no-brainer. That humanists had worked for centuries to make this not the case was boring old nonsense done by tedious dead white men.
Beyond all the global interconnectedness—and with western convenience on a constant churn of ease—the reality of the local scene, of people, places and activities you could actually do beyond the thrum of the electric screen became a missed and envied commodity.
The sum total of this in the 2020s West has been a hyper-polarised online realm, juxtaposed with a same-as-always street life, where Britain pleases and thank yous along as best it can, trying to pay the bills while not saying anything too offensive at work. The old class differences of accent, background, education and tone remain, even while putative opportunities are open to all.
People who can’t survive the ‘game’ of the grisly professional world go online to express their dissatisfaction through their opinions of the news of the day, and nobody actually gets killed because of it. Careers do end though, and creatives are cancelled, and those same journalists and influencers are hoist by their own new moralistic petard. But they also monetised the whole process—and with that, things get even grislier.
Table of Contents
Sean Bw Parker (MA) is an artist, writer and contributing editor to Empowering The Innocent, a justice reform organisation affiliated with the University of Bristol Law School.
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One Response
“Despite all this, the British middle-class way of the life remains the most superior in the world, respected and sometimes envied by all, even the Americans and the French, for its general insouciance.”
You are utterly delusional.
England is a total basket case. It let in millions of Muslims who raped your women. You stood by and did absolutely nothing. Your politicians were in on it. Your “social services” were in on it. Your press was in on it. Your police were in on it. Your Middle Class did nothing. That’s your Middle Class insouciance? In America we call that cowardice.
At least you did do something. You jailed a journalist, Tommy Robinson, who spoke the truth as did a few others, some on these very pages. Tommy isn’t Upper Class. He isn’t even Middle Class. He’s Lower Class. That’s how England categorizes people. As an American I will tell you I don’t envy a damn thing about your country. I have, however, bought and read Tommy’s books. You should read them because he’s one Brit who has Real Class.
I’ll take him any day in America should you banish him like the USSR banished Alexander Solzhenitsyn.