| 894 words
Go read that thing first! This post is a response to that, and it won't make sense otherwise. Or maybe it will. I got a bit of the rails there...
Soooo, what exactly does it want from us? What is it trying to make us do? Something....
Something.... new? exciting? creative?
That's not clear.
Maybe, you'll say, that it simply wants us to do and not to consume.
But that simple view misses the context, the context i've provided here with some painstakingly stolen css. The whole thing's a response to “I came to youtube, but I don't know what I want to watch”. It's specifically criticizing mindless consumption.
The page ends with «I know what I must do». And it is on you to know this. Nobody else can! Cadence isn't hiding it because she's being cheeky, but because it's something she simply cannot tell you. What you must do is find something.
So it's arguing for a kind of intentionality. For you to know what you're doing. You may consume, if you're doing it for a reason, for a purpose. Like, if you want to learn a new programming language. That's a good reason. But what if my reason for watching youtube is to relax after a long day of work? Is there a place in our lives for mindless consumption, or can there be better kinds of rest?
But this intentionality goes deeper. It's not just about consumption, but about the way you live your life. And, you know, there are other takes on this as well. Anti consumption sentiment is very old. It existed 200 years ago just like it does today. People consumed books, newspapers, TV, radio.
The interesting part is what's poised as alternative to consumption. Stop playing the same thing over and over, you should instead... go outside!
«Do something you've never done before. Go skydiving. Get drunk at a football match and glass someone. Meet a nice member of the opposite sex and invite them out for some... cake.»1
The takes on this by older people,2 maybe just 10 years ago, are about going outside, escaping the fake world of the internet, so that you may find meaning and connection in the real world. There is nothing for you in the world of simulacra. No power can be exercised here. That world is a barren wasteland of complexity and information, and even though it's so dark and grim you still feel like you want to be part of it.3
But now, in 2026, for many the world has become The Bloom,4 and no longer offers them any kind of meaning or comfort. The Bloom is the collision between the real and the imaginary, it is the world no longer world, the hyperreal remnant of the places you used to know and love. The Bloom smells of cherry blossoms, of lavender, and of rotting apples. It shines bright with hues of purple, pink and blue, of octarine,5 of infrared and ultraviolet. The sun shines directly on it, always too bright to look at, never occluded by clouds, flaring into your lens, forming a kind of white haze. The Bloom is filled with the sound of buzzing crowds and cicadas, it is filled with rainbows nobody stops to look at. It is both indifferent and merciless. It is neither beautiful nor ugly. It is the nauseating green of blooming algae, it is the silver grey of rising plumes of smoke, it is the chunk of iron slag left from a furnace. The Bloom is just outside your door and incredibly distant, so close you can touch it, but when you reach it is covered as if by a thin film of glass. The Bloom is intentionally engineered to demoralize you, and yet, it is immovable: no human force could possibly slow it down in any way. The Bloom is exponential, it grows and consumes without rhyme or reason, until it runs out of space, and then it grows and consumes more. It is an alcoholic drink, addicted to itself.
And yet, Cadence blames you for being caught up in all this. Her whole page is written from a standpoint of hate. It looks down on you because you Can't Think. In a way, its aim is to instill in you a specific kind of self hate. How vile of an objective!
But can there be self improvement3 without self hate?