The Lost Boys of the Internet and the Spiritual Dangers of Metamodernism

'We urgently need good fathers to heal the lost boy syndrome of contemporary young manhood. I don’t think that one learns to be a good father by being overly-present on the internet.'

From One Peter Five

By Theo Howard

Are you based?

For a certain type of traditional Catholic, this question seems to bear a comparable weight to that of whether someone fulfilled their Sunday obligation or Easter duty in the pre-conciliar Church. But where does this term based originate? Like much of the internet culture of the online dissident right (DR) ecosystem, it seems to have gained widespread dissemination during the 2014 ‘Gamergate’ controversy when ‘conservative feminist’ Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys (2000), was dubbed a “based mom,” and the term caught on with that viral and mimetic velocity that has only become possible in the age of the internet. The Gamergate controversy decisively politicised the world of very-online young men and triggered their gravitation towards ‘the Right.’ This internet milieu would subsequently form the matrix of the meme culture and internet activism that was at the heart of the original Trump campaign energy in 2015-2017 and lives on among contemporary internet sub-cultures like the ‘groypers.’

While the term was widely employed by the alt-right during the early 2010s, it perhaps originated in earlier street slang – referring to freebased cocaine. During the 1980s and 1990s crack cocaine wave, “basehead” referred to someone addicted to the narcotic, and based was applied to somebody behaving abnormal or eccentric; in the manner of a crack addict.

Altogether a nice illustration of how the English language evolves (or devolves) in our de-Christianised debased culture.

Figure 1. An example of the meeting of metamodernism and Catholicism

The term based continues to be a slippery notion however, not just because of the rapid contemporary evolution of language, but because it has arisen in the most unstable cultural era of the decaying West so far – the ‘Metamodern era.’ In periodising the gradual apostasy of the nations, we might borrow the terms which have predominated in the secular academy.

The cultural movement of Modernism upheld certain universals (‘liberty,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ ‘reason’ [!]) after deconstructing the grand synthesis of Western ‘pre-modernism’ (in fact Catholic Civilisation). Postmodernism (or ‘hypermodernism’) continued the dissolution by proceeding to deconstruct these withering universals themselves; easily done as they were untethered from any reference to God. Metamodernism is characterised by oscillation. The deconstructing irony and cynicism of postmodernism is in turn being replaced by the ambiguous sincerity and irony of the metamodern, particularly within the dominant cultural media of the internet.

Think of the favourite based meme, Pepe the Frog; he is often used to communicate sincerely ‘traditional’ modern or even pre-modern messages, but just as often in an ironic and even sarcastic register. Likewise, without a usually very-online context you cannot tell if the term based is being used ironically or sincerely as it is used in both ways, often simultaneously. The oscillation between and affirmation of both is metamodernism. This ambiguity and even ‘double truth’ (itself a rather kabbalistic concept) is almost always present.

Now, certain “based” Catholics may respond that such ambiguity is necessary to maintain plausible deniability in an age of aggressive oligarchic-revolutionary/’boomer’ cultural hegemony. You try saying that “man is the head of woman,” or that “the Synagogue conspires against the Church” in a non-ironic manner and see how long your career prospects last. Nevertheless, by employing this mode of discourse, there is an implicit participation here, of which “based” Catholics may not have given too much reflection. In the cultural age we find ourselves in, such participation may serve to accelerate the de-incarnation, or virtualisation of life, and, ultimately, even quicken the footsteps of Antichrist which characterise modernity as a whole.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of the territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – that engenders the territory…

– Jean Baudrillard

This inversion of metaphysical realism, precipitated by the rise of nominalism, gives the character to our age’s obsession with the image over reality, the sign over the thing signified, the appearance to the essence (Ludwig Feuerbach).[1]

Figure 2. ‘Gigachad’ priest

Consider how the ‘gigachad’ image, so in vogue among the “based” online, could only have emerged from a culture saturated in that heinous simulacra of conjugal love: pornography. The impossibly muscular, steroidal body and square jawline of this creepy computer-generated image are all simulacra of a masculinity which the lost boys of the internet yearn for but cannot find “IRL” (in real life), so they render it in the hyperreal in which they increasingly spend their time.

But the Holy Catholic Faith is not a simulacrum or a “LARP” (live action role-play), nor is it ironic. The Four Last Things are realities, the Faith is deadly serious and this life a mortal combat for the members of the Church Militant against the devil. Ironic and edgy memes are hardly the means to convey the gravity of these realities and often profane them.

The medieval man would not be winkingly coy about the evils of Feminism, Liberalism or Modernism, he would unironically admonish evil in the world and seek to end it. It therefore goes without saying that cartoon frogs and pseudo-pornographic virtual images are not going to restore Christendom.

Meta-modern based culture could yet be taken in a darker direction. The competition of contemporary metanarratives which conflict with each other presents us with the temptation to oscillate between them; witness the common shifting among Catholics between pious Catholicism on Sundays and right-liberalism during the week. The danger of performative Catholicism, present in every age, is perhaps most acute today.

The lament of Job is a complaint and accusation of God, according to Agata Bielek Robson (Polish-Jewish philosopher). Metamodern irony is also a nihilistic lament about the absence of truth, or the impossibility of truth or reality. Postmodernism is suggesting we have to construct our own metanarratives because there is no universal truth. Metamodernism takes it a step further, the conflict of these metanarratives engenders an option for us to oscillate between the two. By this dynamic, the absurdity of the conflicting narratives is the true meaning of reality; at least as socially perceived. This serves to ratchet up the cynicism all the more.

– Will Tucker

The ‘lost boys’ of the internet seemingly most susceptible to the spiritual dangers of metamodernism are the product of a feminised culture (“we are a generation of men raised by women”) and, most importantly of all, often the sons of defective fathers (both biological and spiritual). We urgently need good fathers to heal the lost boy syndrome of contemporary young manhood. I don’t think that one learns to be a good father by being overly-present on the internet.

Now I will admit that meta-modern based culture is often funny and insightful; in a dreary and oppressive age it has been part of the journey of many towards the Faith. Perhaps with due proportion it could have a place in an authentically Christian culture.

Figure 3. A ‘redeemed’ meme?

Nevertheless, Catholics should sail with particular prudence through the ‘shallows’ of the internet. For, within its shallows and its depths the fallen angels have placed many treacherous sirens. To take another example – as my friend Will Tucker put it to me the other day – both sides (Left and Right) are trying to make us gay. Emulating ‘nudist bodybuilders’ is gay. Obsessing over your ‘macros’ is gay. Sharing AI-generated homo-erotic memes of a muscular semi-naked Turkish man to convey how based your opinions are about something is gay.

To the overly-online young ‘consumers’ and producers of metamodern culture: log off, get based in reality, build something, “take heart and be a man.” (1 Kings 2:2)

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[1] For those wanting to read more about this epistemic landscape I suggest Dr Douglas Haugen’s thorough treatment in his recent book In Pursuit of the Metaverse.