Artist: Grimes
Album: Miss Anthropocene (Deluxe | Revised | Revised Deluxe)
Label: 4AD
Tracklist and Lyrics: Genius
Release date: February 21, 2020
popheads [FRESH] thread: Here
Listen: Apple Music (Deluxe) | Spotify (Deluxe V1) | YouTube Music (Deluxe V1)
You know me as the girl who plays with fire,
But this is the song I wrote you in the dark ...
Madness, intellect, audacity?
Grimes, the stage name of Claire Boucher, is an electronic musician and multimedia artist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. How ordinary and uncontroversial that makes her sound. As any Pophead surely knows by now, Grimes is far from either of those things.
Much of the lore behind Grimes' early career seems well-known by now to her fans: she attend McGill University in Montréal, Québec (a very prestigious school) where she had an interest in neuroscience and worked on her Russian, a language she had first picked up in childhood (she is of French and Ukrainian heritage, and her name means "clear (f.) butcher" in French, a fact she finds hilarious). She chose her stage name after hearing of grime music on her MySpace (which is still around), and listed her music as "grime" despite never having heard grime music before (she ended up liking it, by the way). She also goes by c, the physical constant for the speed of light, because she finds her name hard to pronounce (she has a slight speech impediment, as well as a lisp for the sound /s/, though she doesn't care about the latter).
Grimes learned to use recording software in university (Apple's GarageBand) and about music production from friends, and got involved with the music collective Lab Synthèse, which had a production space in a now-closed warehouse in Montréal and spawned the label Arbutus Records, which has since housed many Canadian indietronica acts. Grimes' first two albums were released on this label: Geidi Primes, a concept album about her favourite novel, the science fiction epic Dune; and Halfaxa, an ambient electronica album that has been described as gothic, both in 2010. Not expecting that anyone would hear her debut (it was first released as a run of 30 cassettes with hand-drawn covers by her), both albums were well-received by critics, to her surprise. All writing and almost all production was done on both by her alone.
Grimes' early work was linked to the "witch house" microgenre, an underground scene of electronic music that was gothic in both sound and aesthetic, and was briefly popular around the early 2010s. (This can be seen on the tracklist of Halfaxa with that scene's trademark use of arcane symbols in their titles.) In 2011, she released the split EP Darkbloom with fellow Canadian electronic musician D'Eon, with the first five tracks being by her. Notably, this EP had her first song to have a music video, the self-directed "Vanessa". Her breakthrough, though, was yet to come.
If you're looking for a dream girl, I'll never be your dream girl
Visions (2012), Grimes' first LP with her new label 4AD, won her widespread acclaim and made her a cultural phenomenon in her home country of Canada. The album gave a more accessible and poppy spin on her early mix of dark, ambient and psychedelic music, and is a bewitching, trance-like album to listen through. Although the first single from it was "Genesis" with a music video featuring Brooke Candy, she won acclaim for her song "Oblivion", written about her own experience with sexual assault and trauma afterward. During this time, Grimes' image became linked with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, the concept of "kawaii" (a Japanese aesthetic which roughly translates as "cuteness") and her waiflike appearance; as well as her reputation as an outspoken feminist.
Grimes has expressed dislike of being misinterpreted as a less serious musician during this time because of her turn towards a pop sound and aesthetic, as well as frustration at not being taken seriously as a woman music producer, still fairly uncommon in electronic music. Indeed the recording of Visions is a key part of Grimes lore: she made the album alone at her home in a matter of weeks, neither sleeping nor eating, and taking amphetamines to stay focused (she has alluded to possibly having ADHD before). [Author's note: Grimes has since disavowed the association of her music with drugs, saying that she has struggled with addiction in the past.]
Her next album came in 2015: the widely acclaimed Art Angels, which saw a turn towards an even poppier sound and moved away from the ambient and psychedelic feel of Visions towards classic synthpop and electronica. Art Angels was recorded again at her home, now in Los Angeles, and showed a mix of strong pop hooks with more intelligible lyrics that touched on themes of personal doubts, lost friendships, and her place in the music industry. [Because this album is most likely her best-known on Popheads, I will not discuss it in much depth].
Infamously, she was quoted in 2019 as calling the album a "piece of crap", a narrative she has refuted since, saying her comments were taken out of context. Despite her success, neither Visions nor Art Angels had any singles that charted highly even in her home country, but she gained a loyal cult following online. To accompany the album, she also released The Acid Reign Chronicles, a series of music videos by her and her best friend HANA).
How could one follow up an album that's been repeatedly called one's magnum opus? It would have to be something crazy, wouldn't it? Something that's provocative ... it gets the people going ...
This is the sound of the end of the world
Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? I love Grimes. I think she's a really interesting artist
We come to it at last: Miss Anthropocene, stylized at release as Miss_Anthrop0cene, Grimes' fifth studio LP and my pick for album of the year.

It’s called Miss_Anthropocene. It’s a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world. She’s composed of Ivory and Oil - Grimes via Instagram

?

The way I figure it is that climate change sucks and no one wants to read about it because the only time you hear about it is when you’re getting guilted. I wanted to make climate change fun. Miss Anthropocene has got a Voldemort kind of vibe. She’s naked all the time and she’s made out of ivory and oil. It’s going to be super tight. [...] If I’m stuck being a villain, I want to pursue villainy artistically. If there’s nothing left to lose, that’s actually a really fun idea to me. I think it has freed me artistically. The best part of the movie is the Joker. Everyone loves the villain. Everyone fucking loves Thanos. Let’s make some Thanos art. (Source)

If you haven't heard this album or know anything about it yet, you might be thinking: Wait, what?
Miss Anthropocene is a concept album about the apocalypse. As Grimes said, she wants to make climate change fun. We're living in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, the age of humanity, so named because we now have the power as a species to alter our environment, or even destroy it. Some might find this disturbing. Grimes, however, finds it thrilling.

So my album’s about a modern demonology or a modern pantheon where every song is about a different way to suffer or a different way to die. If you think about it, god-making or god-designing just seems so fun. The idea of making the Goddess of Plastic seems so fun to me. - Grimes

As is common with Grimes: Is she serious? Is she trolling? Being edgy? When the news is full of natural disasters, species extinctions and dire warnings about a climate apocalypse, why would anyone want to make an album about how dying from climate change is awesome? Well, it should be said: Miss Anthropocene is not Grimes. She is a character, a personification of our times, and she is also (this is very key) a villain. This is, as Grimes has done before and shown a long-running interest in, a work of science fiction.
It would be absurd not to talk briefly about how our last year was dominated by the life-altering effects of COVID-19 and how life in quarantine has felt like the apocalypse to many. It's been hard on us, our mental health, our finances. This isn't a "quarantine album", and the album was mostly finished before the virus appeared in the news. Grimes did not predict it, but she ended up making the perfect soundtrack to our dire 2020 anyway and how powerless we felt to do anything about it. "You're gonna get sick, you don't know when", she sings. The threat was always looming whenever we went out, and when we stayed in we had little to do often but doomscroll through news articles about wildfires, protests against police brutality worldwide, a draining election cycle in America, take your pick. Last year was frankly a shitshow no one saw coming - though maybe they should have. Things just aligned right with this album being full of darker lyrical themes, and darker in sound than the bright-sounding Art Angels.
We had a taste of what the album would be like before it came out with the song "Pretty Dark" (video, a demo track released in 2019 that didn't make it onto the album. On this song, Grimes explores alternate characters, being a girl named "Dark", as a chance to escape from her Grimes persona. However, the concept of the album ended up being much more complex, with a whole pantheon of "new gods" that are fitting for our time, each song representing a different facet of the modern world. Here they are as listed on her website months before the album came out:

1. Goddess of climate crisis: Miss Anthropocene
2. Demon of addiction: "Delete Forever"
3. Goddess of ID and social media: War Nymph, her digital avatar
4. Demon of AI: "We Appreciate Power"
5. Goddess of gaming: "Violence"
6. Demon of political apathy: "My Name is Dark"
7. Goddess of simulation: "4ÆM"
8. Demon of ego death: "Before the Fever"
9. Goddess of digital lust: "IDORU"
10. Demon of sexual assault: "Darkseid"
11. Goddess of gender roles: "So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth"

Isn't this pretentious? Maybe. But it's optional: you don't need to know all of the album's lore to understand what Grimes is singing about on it. For those who wish to know the background and thought process behind the album in more detail, I highly recommend reading this interview with another uncontroversial Popheads fave, Lana Del Rey first, then delving into her Genius annotations. For now I'm going to give my own, somewhat subjective (!) takes on what each track is about.
Annihilation sounds so dope!

• "So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth" (Visualizer)

In 2020, Grimes became a mother for the first time with partner Elon Musk, having a child named X Æ A-Xii (the Roman numeral for 12); a breakdown of how they came up with this unusual name can be found here. Grimes and Musk met in 2018 on Twitter, bonding over an obscure philosophical reference (a thought experiment about the dangers of AI called Roko's Basilisk) and made their first public appearance together at the Met Gala that year. Because Musk is (I would argue) an even more controversial figure than Grimes is, I won't be talking about him otherwise, nor do I believe it's relevant to the album. However, this song does touches on her feelings about pregnancy and motherhood, having to (in her words) sacrifice her body to another being.
When Grimes announced her pregnancy in a rather cryptic Instagram post, there was some debate over whether she was pregnant herself at all (remember, she trolled the media in 2019 by claiming to have had an experimental eye surgery which makes zero biological sense). This was cleared up soon, however. On this song, Grimes reflects on being (as the saying goes) heavy with child, bringing new life into a world with an uncertain future. This entrancing song sets the tone for the rest of the album, as does its music video, which begins with a reference to the classic sci-fi film Blade Runner (a movie about rogue androids in Los Angeles that takes place in the far-off year of ... 2019, the year of the song's first release).

• "Darkseid" (Lyric video)

This song references the name of a powerful comic book supervillain, as well as Grimes' Playstation user ID, with online gaming being (her words) "where I go to kill people and stuff". The song features lyrics in Mandarin Chinese by Taiwanese rapper 潘PAN (Pan Wei-Ju), also known as Aristophanes, who had a feature on Art Angels' "Scream". A fan translation can be found here. Here Grimes develops upon her fascination with villains and death, while the lyrics by 潘PAN are hard to interpret literally, but paint a vivid picture of death and decay. The opening line feels quite fitting for a year where many of us sat at home all day being anxious (Unrest is in the soul / We don't move our bodies anymore ...) while the operatic backing vocals call to mind religion and medieval themes, another long-running interest of hers. However this is by far the most difficult song for me to connect with its "god" in concept, and I think its original concept was most likely just abandoned.

• "Delete Forever" (Video)

On this song, released only a couple of weeks before the album itself, Grimes surprised fans with a poignant acoustic ballad with influences from country music - not exactly the kind of genre she is known for doing. Taking the title from a prompt on her computer, Grimes wrote this song about the opioid crisis in North America, being saddened by the death of rapper Lil Peep, who had overdosed on fentanyl (a powerful opioid and dangerous street drug). As well, she touches on her own experiences with drug abuse (I did everything / More lines on a mirror than a sonnet) and being around drug culture in her youth, having lost many friends to drug addiction herself; she compares the experience of feeling euphoric on drugs to the myth of Icarus flying too close to the sun. Grimes describes this song as emotionally hard to perform for her, as is "Oblivion". In the video, she plays a queen overlooking a crumbling empire.

• "Violence" (Video)

Grimes brings up again her fascination with the history of warfare and weaponry over a club banger, produced by the late i_o (Garrett Lockhart) who sadly died in November of unknown causes. Described as a love song sung between the planet Earth and humanity that portrays a dysfunctional relationship between the two; in describing the concept behind the music video, Grimes also talks about digital violence as a modern addition to the physical violence of the past, which is fitting given its "god" is video games.
The video, filmed in the Vibiana cathedral in Los Angeles, features Grimes surrounded by women wielding swords and dance choreography inspired by Tiktok, with a cameo by HANA as the dead woman on the floor. Though Grimes didn't plan to put this song on the album, and the video was choreographed and filmed in a hurry, nevertheless she was pleased with the results. With its edgy and ironic concept (no, Grimes does not really love violence, nor does the Earth; she does collect swords though), as well as its excellent production, this is my own favourite song on the album.

• "4Æm" (Performance video)

Written for the long-delayed video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which Grimes plays an NPC named Lizzy Wizzy, this track has Grimes make use of her love of Bollywood films, sampling the soundtrack of the historical drama Bajirao Mastani. Grimes is well-known for her insomnia (see: the recording of Visions above), which is in turn known for its health effects (explaining the lyrics about getting sick). Here Grimes seems to portray being up all night in an ambivalent way. [Having stayed up all night many times, including to write this piece you are reading right now, I can confirm it only feels fun up to a point, after which it becomes exhausting.]
To me this sounds like great music to play in a futuristic city at night - Grimes is a big fan of the cyberpunk genre herself, which tends to feature this setting, as shown by her previous references to Blade Runner and Akira (an influence upon the video of "Delete Forever").

• "New Gods"

Here Grimes gets into the theme of the album as being inspired by the "gods" - secular replacements for religion - that underlie the concept of the album, the most important being the goddess of climate change (Miss A herself) but including addiction ("Delete Forever"), insomnia ("4Æm"), and more.

I was like, “Well, who are the new gods?” Because we have all this new stuff. We have plastic and pollution and plastic surgery and social media. The new gods sound sick. They sound like … like the Sailor Scouts, like these sick demons. - Grimes

Here Grimes also alludes to her image as gothic, describing herself as wearing "black attire, black eyeliner", fittingly for a bleak-sounding, pessimistic song. Being the slowest track on the album, it may be hard to get into, but it wouldn't be the same without it.

• "My Name Is Dark"

Grimes described her thoughts behind the making of this song in this ... interesting tweet. (I voted for "fighting Balrog", but it seems closer to the latter.) Her "nu metal song about insomnia" ended up being not quite either but does show some of the influence of industrial music on the album; she again brings up drug use, sleeplessness and her alter ego of "Dark" from the single "Pretty Dark".

It’s just about pretty obvious, like, paradise in hell, making the decision to be good or bad. The specter of death always haunting you. It was serious. - Grimes

Grimes depicts herself as jaded and nihilistic (The boys are such a bore / The girls are such a bore / I never trust the government and pray to God for sure, yeah) in the lyrics and alludes to mental illness and self-destructive urges with the opening lines about wishing for annihilation ("When you don’t care if you live or die, when you’re so depressed that you’re like, 'Whatever, fuck it'"). She also hints at her long history of controversies and misconceptions in the media (I'm not shy but I refuse to speak / Because I don't trust you to understand me). Grimes found the song very difficult to make, wanting it to sound "roaring" with its screaming vocals.

• "You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around"

In one of her most melancholy-themed songs, here c. sings openly about suicide ideation, conceptualizing it as another demon of hers. She brings up various suicide methods and self-harm, and imagines herself in death as happy. Despite its morbid subject matter, this is a deceptively upbeat song musically. Although self-destruction and death are recurring themes on this theme, this is the one where she talks most about wanting to die herself.

• "Before the Fever"

First of all, that title is almost too on the nose for an album released in February 2020.
Here Grimes sings about hedonism in the first verse and uses an old joke as a metaphor for death (There are many ways in / But there's only one way out), referring to birth and death. She explains the title thus:

Grimes explained how she wanted "Before the Fever" to invoke the "literal feelings" of dying — the uncertainty, desperation, and bizarre tranquility presumably felt when one knows it's the end. "Fevers are just kind of scary, but a fever is also sort of poetically imbued with the idea of passion and stuff, too," she told him. "It's like it's a weirdly loaded word — scary, but compelling and beautiful." What's more terrifying and more beautiful than committing yourself to another person when everything could very well implode in your face? One could even call it romantic. (Source)

Even though it was written before the COVID-19 outbreak became serious, nevertheless the theme of this song could easily be called love in the time of coronavirus for the way it combines metaphors of illness with romance (cf. the analysis of "Violence").

• "IDORU"

By far the happiest-sounding song on the album, this seven-minute epic is also the longest, and much needed after the dark themes that pervade much of it. Beginning with what sounds like birdsong, it's a fun, cute, lighthearted ditty that gives a bit of much-needed hope to the album (I wanna play a beautiful game / Even though we're gonna lose / But I adore you). Maybe we're all going to die and humanity will go extinct; maybe not. If that's going to happen, can't we have some fun anyway?
As an aside, the title is a neat pun on the phrase "I adore you" but also seems to be referencing the novel Idoru ("idols") by famed cyberpunk author William Gibson, in turn about the Japanese concept of "idols", a unique kind of celebrity.
There has been fan speculation over who, if anyone, the song may be about; Grimes alluded to its meaning on a livestream with HANA but did not say in the end. My own take is that it could just as well be about the Earth itself.
These are all ten of the tracks on the standard edition of Miss Anthropocene; on the deluxe version(s) there are five bonus tracks, four of which are alternate mixes of other songs on the standard edition that differ mainly in length ("So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth", "Violence", "My Name is Dark" and "IDORU"). These seem to have been done to make the longer tracks more suitable for playlists, explaining the name "algorithm mix" for them. As well, there is one more: the original WAP.

• "We Appreciate Power" (Video)

First of all: what a fucking BANGER.
"We Appreciate Power" is a bonus track that was released as a single in 2018. It was originally meant to feature vocals by Poppy, who had featured Grimes on her own 2018 album Am I a Girl? but after a feud between the two, she was replaced with HANA. Musically, it is influenced heavily by nu-metal, it blends crunchy distorted guitars and loud rock drums with an awesome electronic drop. Grimes' and HANA's vocals trade between verses and choruses and blend so well it is hard to tell which part is whose upon first listen. This song was due to have a larger-budget music video, but ended up getting a bare-bones video instead, which is still a very fun watch with its cyberpunk visuals.
Lyrically, it was inspired by a North Korean girl group who make propaganda music for the state, as well as Grimes' fascination with the concept of an AI dictatorship. "We Appreciate Power" touches on common cyberpunk themes like mind uploading, transhumanism and simulated reality. The song portrays AI rule as something desirable yet frightening, punctuating the lyrics with unsettling shrieks and ending the song with Grimes chanting "Submit" repeatedly. Despite its tongue-in-cheek nature, the song's lyrics led to a minor controversy: for her speculation of AI replacing humans, musicians Zola Jesus and Devon Welsh called her a "silicon fascist" and they got into a spat on Twitter that seems to be resolved, with Grimes acknowledging Zola made some good points. As for the prospect of an AI takeover: it's frankly a terrifying thought, but at least we'd have jams like this.
Now is the time to burn twice as bright and half as long. Sincerely, Miss Anthropocene
This writeup is dedicated to all those cyberpunks who fight against injustice and corruption every day of their lives! (DJ mix)
Thanks so much for letting me do this writeup, Popheads - and thank you if you made it to the end. I know there is a lot here, but Grimes is a longtime favourite artist of mine and I had a lot to say. I hope I've been reasonably balanced here and not come off as an apologist stan; I am well aware Grimes can be "messy" or a "problematic fave". However, I've tried to explain the best I can what this album is really about, give my thoughts, and explain why I think it's one of the albums of the year. As well, if I said anything factually wrong, please let me know; I tried my best to source everything and get things right.

Questions for the culture:

• [Voice of Anthony Fantano] What did you think of the album? Did you love it? Did you hate it?
• The album was infamously leaked months before its release. (I didn't listen to the leak.) Did you listen to it or not, and do you think it may have affected fan reception to the album?
• A big problem with concept albums is that they often have an elaborate concept that doesn't come across well in the lyrics. What do you think of Grimes' concept for this album and did she succeed at it? Do you have different readings of the lyrics than what I wrote?
• How would you say this album holds up against her others? Was the darker tonal shift a good thing? Would you have liked her to make a more upbeat or poppy album?
• How would you rank it this among the year's albums? Were they better on average, worse, etc.?

Feel free to ask me any other questions, bring up other topics as you like and I will respond to everyone. (I just have one request though: please for the love of god do not bring up Grimes' partner or child; I think it's messy and like I said, not very relevant to the album anyway.) Any other topic, no matter how "spicy", is fair game though. Just be nice.
Hope reading this was fun! We have more AOTY posts every day for the rest of the month, so be sure to check those out too.
WE APPRECIATE POPHEADS
- vayyiqra

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries. 2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy. 3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later. 4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society. 5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM 6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general. 7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology. (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.) 8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization.” Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential. FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY 10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self- hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism. 11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the world “primitive” by “nonliterate.” They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.) 12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families. 13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.) 14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men. 15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful. 16. Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative,” “enterprise,” “optimism,” etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser. 17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment. 18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly. 19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself. 20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait. 21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred. 22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss. 23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism. OVERSOCIALIZATION 24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are oversocialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem. 25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people. [2] 26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society’s expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another. 27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3] constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most left-wing segment. 28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper classes [4] for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles. 29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black “underclass” they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black- style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers “responsible,” they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn’t care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values. 30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society’s most important principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account, violence is for them a form of “liberation.” In other words, by committing violence they break through the psychological restraints that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized these restraints have been more confining for them than for others; hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence they claim to be fighting against racism or the like. 31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies in the psychology of modern leftism. 32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And today’s society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth. THE POWER PROCESS 33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the “power process.” This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44). 34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power. 35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization. 36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression. 37, Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals. SURROGATE ACTIVITIES 38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized. For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put into the search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretensions; many European aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting, though they certainly didn’t need the meat; other aristocracies have competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science. 39. We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito’s studies in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn’t know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a surrogate activity.) 40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take the physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These are not always PURE surrogate activities, since for many people they may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings, militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the “fulfillment” they get from their work is more important than the money and prestige they earn. 41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals (that is, goals that people would want to attain even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the “mundane” business of satisfying their biological needs, but that is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities. AUTONOMY 42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on a collective basis if the group making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant. [5] 43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors). 44. But for most people it is through the power process—having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goal—that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6] SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We aren’t the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women was common among the Australian aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society. 46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we will discuss some of the other sources. 47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe. 48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were predominantly rural. The Industrial Revolution vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people’s hands. For example, a variety of noise- making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations. But if these machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them.) 49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no ssociety.

Hey everyone!
I wanted to list the problems of the League+ phone app, but then decided to spare myself some time and to instead make a list of everything that worked right on that app. Problem is, League's subreddit doesn't accept submissions without text, so I had to cancel that and go back to client buglists. I was dissatisfied by the last one I made (it was rushed a bit, and lacked quite a lot of things due to that), so hopefully this one will be better.
Each point will have the "Recent" or "New" tag, or no tag. "New" means that the bug started appearing after January, and "Recent" means that it was new at the time of my previous buglist (in January) and hasn't been addressed since. Every category will be implicitly split into two sub-categories A and B. Issues x.A.n are bugs, and issues x.B.n are problems that are bad design choices rather than actual bugs.
Honestly, it's pretty annoying. The client randomly loses functionalities from one day to the next, and most of these never get fixed. A bunch of issues appeared at the start of January, I was expecting them to be gone soon since they had just appeared and had worked fine the whole time before, yet most of them are still here today – seven months later. Another big batch of issues appeared in May. I thought I'd have to hurry up to finish this buglist, expecting them to get fixed quickly. Nothing got changed until two patches later, and most of the new issues are still here now after two months passed.
Those aren't the standards that we should be made to have. The client is supposed to receive improvements, not to worsen over time, without the issues ever being fixed for the most part. And as I was writing this thread and checking my previous ones to see what I had forgotten, I realized something that's a clear bad sign – there are many problems that I initially forgot because I got too used to them (problems that the legacy client didn't have, or even that this client didn't have earlier on). Even pretty bad problems, too.
I deeply hope that someday, these issues will be tackled. I hope that bugs will be fixed, instead of being left there for us to get used to them, for us to get used to a worse client. I know it's a trend among every big product, to leave annoying issues up for years. Battle.net, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, all of them do it. But the case of the League client is worse, when it really shouldn't be. When seeing a new bug, we should be thinking "Oh, that's annoying. But I just have to wait until the next patch and it'll be gone", rather than "Well that's what I'll have to deal with for the next three years now". And I hope for things to be like that someday. "Mordekaiser's bugs leaking onto other parts of League" was supposed to be a meme, not to be made into a reality.
Anyway, let's get started!
 
1) Friends list
 
1.A.a) Receiving a game invite will not play any sound if you have another invite pending.
1.A.b) [New] When a friend is in an open lobby, the names of the players in that lobby aren't shown anymore. Screenshot
1.A.c) [New] The game created doesn't show the map anymore. Only "Creating Normal/Ranked Game". The fun fact is that Discord shows which map a friend is creating a game on, meaning that Discord is a more reliable source than the League client, when it comes to a feature of the League client.
1.A.d) [New] If you hover over a friend while they're in queue or champ select, hovering over them again while they're in game will still show them as being in queue / CS, instead of showing them as being ingame (meaning that you can't see their ingame time, or the champion picked / mode played). Changing the sorting of the friends list refreshes it and clears that problem. (Sort alphabetically > Sort by status, or the other way around. You can also switch back immediately after.) I'm just not sure this pro tip really will help anyone, because since we're already 4 bugs in, there should be a maximum of 3 people reaching that point. Screenshot
1.A.e) [New] Here's the opposite issue! Screenshot
1.A.f) [New] After logging in, and sometimes after playing as well, the Recently Played list (from the Add Friends tab) will permanently display a loading symbol. Without loading, should you be wondering.
1.A.g) [New] There's no way to watch the profile of someone who's in game on another game or region. You can watch the profile of someone who's online on League, you can watch the profile of someone who's disconnected (even if they've never played League and have only played the other games), but as soon as they log in on another game, you can no longer look at their profile from the friends list. The option simply disappears. I'm not sure when this problem started. Screenshot
1.A.h) [New] One of my two computers will often fail to show that someone disconnected, and will keep showing them as being online, until I restart my own client. It's been like that for months, while my other computer has never had that issue.
1.A.i) [New] After someone disconnects, they will sometimes (semi-rarely) show up in your friends list as being offline (or on League+ if they use it). But they'll show up this way in your regular friends groups, while they should be in the Offline (/mobile) one.
1.A.j) [New] If a friend is creating a game while being on Away, hovering over them will show them as Away instead of creating a game. Screenshot
1.A.k) [New] Hovering over your own profile will not show your correct status. Only "Online" no matter what. Screenshot
1.A.l) [New] A person spectating is now going to be shown in green instead of blue (keeping the "Spectating" tag). One good thing coming with that is that they can be invited to a lobby – however, they can't accept the invite until they leave the spectate, just like one cannot spectate while in a lobby. The problem of this bug/change is that it means that you can't spectate a spectate anymore. For as long as I've played League – and I'm on the boomer side of this game by now – when one of your friends was spectating, you could click Spectate on them in order to watch the game that they were spectating. And since you can only spectate someone from your friends list, it's been a nice thing to have. As of this patch, this is no longer possible.
I need to take some time to state what's wrong with this, because there's a bit more than already stated. a) It's good that you can invite someone who's spectating. This should be a normal function, not something we get as a tradeoff for what's likely to just be a bug. b) It isn't normal that we still can't spectate while waiting in the lobby. This is an upgrade that we could have expected years ago already. Ever since we've been told that a new (the now current) client was in the works. c) If you're watching a replay, you can be invited, and you can also be in a lobby. Same thing if you're spectating a game through a file (when spectating through third party websites or apps). So there should be no reason for these two things to be unavailable for a live and official spectate (I don't mean no reason codingwise, but no reason to not make it a possibility). d) There's also no reason to lose the ability to spectate a friend's spectate.
The way things should be is: a) Spectating appears the way it currently does (Showing "Spectating", but in green, and being put alongside the online friends). b) Right-clicking on a friend spectating gives you the option to spectate their game (as it used to until this patch). c) Receiving an invite while spectating lets you join the lobby and queue up. d) You can also start a spectate while in a lobby or in queue (exiting it upon entering champion select).
Side note – Sometimes, for no apparent reason, they're still shown in blue instead of green. But still without giving the option to join the spectate.
 
1.B.a) The friend requests that you received and left pending count towards your friend limit. If I’m not mistaken, they used to only count as they were accepted. And even if I’m mistaken, that should be the way things are, in my opinion (otherwise, why would you have a friends list cap and a pending request cap?).
1.B.b) When someone tries to send you a friend request while your list is full, the request doesn't go through, and you don't get notified of it. It would be best to at least know that someone tried to add you (and who it was, obviously).
1.B.c) The friends list notes can only be written over one line. And besides, the transition in the notes from the old client to the new client was poorly made. I used to have five-line notes such as this: Name Birth date Country Studies/Job Details about the game in which we met What did these notes become? NameBirth dateCountryStudies/JobDetails about the game in which we met They didn’t replace the line break with anything, not even a space or a slash. But the fact that notes can only be put in one line is a downgrade from the legacy client, making said notes a lot less clear.
 
2) Lobbies
 
2.A.a) [Recent] Regularly, after playing a game, the client will stop responding, for either a long period of time, or until you terminate it. In the best of cases, the honor screen will pop up, then clicking anywhere will prompt that the client stopped responding for a few seconds, and after a couple of attempts, you'll be able to honor someone, then use the post-game lobby functions, and so on. That being the best case scenario, the worst one being the client flat out no longer responding, forcing a termination.
2.A.b) [New] In the post-game lobby, the button to invite one of the game's players into your party doesn't work anymore. You can press it, but it won't do anything.
2.A.c) [New] Some of your friends will have their name show as "…" in the lobby, champ select, and post-game lobby. At first I thought this bug worked in a pretty obvious way – if someone in the party is in your friends list, their name gets replaced by those dots in the chat. Turns out it's actually inconsistent, and affects each client differently. Some people will only have part of their friends show like that, with the rest having their name written out normally.
2.A.d) The post-game lobby sometimes (fairly regularly) uses the Times New Roman font instead of the normal one.
2.A.e) [New] Occasionally, a person will be shown as having the roles of another player when entering a lobby.
2.A.f) The League voice mic settings sometimes change by themselves. I've seen cases of microphones getting muted automatically after each game, I've seen cases of the setting "Mute me when I connect to League voice" getting unchecked by itself. The latter is… not something that should happen. I can't give any additional details, as this seems completely inconsistent across people.
2.A.g) After finishing a game in a party, when one of your premades presses Play again, there's a ~5-seconds delay between appearing as having joined the new lobby, and them leaving the post-game lobby.
 
2.B.a) You can no longer press a button in a lobby to see someone’s profile. You used to be able to. And I don’t see why one would ever want to remove that feature, especially since you cannot copy someone’s name from the lobby into the Profile search if they were in the lobby before you and if they don’t type in the chat. Here’s how the lobby used to be, for reference: Screenshot
2.B.b) You can also no longer see someone’s rank as well as ranked (or normal if unranked) wins in the lobby, unless it is a custom lobby. Maybe that has been put there as a design choice, but losing function in exchange of form is a stance that numerous people disagree with.
 
3) Profile and collection
 
3.A.a) Collection > Champions: The ability videos can be extremely outdated. Shyvana's ability videos have been outdated for almost 4 years. Here's her E for one example, as shown in the client. All of her abilities were reworked in 2016, and yet the ability videos on the client are still the ones from before 2016.
Some other examples:

• Kha still has his old R evolution. Removed in May 2018.
  
• Ryze still snares with his default W. Removed in June 2019. Additionally, Ryze's Q and E don't show these spells spreading, while that's the norm for these videos.
  
• Varus' W doesn't show the active part. It was added in April 2018.
  
• Aatrox's ultimate… doesn't have a video. It loads indefinitely. Screenshot
  

3.A.b) [Recent] Collection > Items: In the Item sets, about half of the items can only be hovered once (Hovering over an item gives you its detailed information, doing it a second time will not show anything – for half of the items, arbitrarily – until you exit the item set and load it again).
3.A.c) If you created an item set with the old client and didn’t rename the block for “Starting items”, this block is now taking the name “starting”, while you never changed its name from “Starting items”. Yes, “starting” with a lowercase s.
3.A.d) Collection > Runes: Changing a rune tree isn’t something that can be canceled in a normal way. Let’s say you have a page with Resolve primary, and Domination secondary, and you decide to change it to Precision primary, but then change your mind. Here is what should happen: - You click on the Precision button (you can then fill or not fill the tree, it doesn’t matter). - You press the cross icon. - When you’re asked whether you want to save the changes, you answer no. - You open the rune page again. - The rune page will be back to its previous values. All good! But here’s what actually happens (initial set-up – yes, I'm recycling screenshots from 2018): - You click on the Precision button (you can then fill or not fill the tree, it doesn’t matter). Screenshot - You press the cross icon. - When you’re asked whether you want to save the changes, you answer no. - You open the rune page again. - The rune page will be back to the Resolve tree… but the tree will be empty. Screenshot - You press the cross a second time. - Once again, you answer no to whether you want to save changes, because Kha’Zix says that change is good, but I say that bugs are bad. - You open the rune page a third time. - Finally, the rune page is back to its initial values. Screenshot This happens for both the primary tree and the secondary tree. But! If you try to do that on both trees at once, there won’t be a problem and the page will be fully set back to its initial values.
3.A.e) Collection > Emotes: “Sort by acquired date” shows most recent to latest, but will always show the Thumbs Up emote almost first in spite of it always being the least recent one.
3.A.f) [New] Profile > Match history: The match history no longer includes the experience gained or grade earned in your matches. It used to randomly not display either of them, and I suppose the "fix" of the problem was to downgrade the client (and match history overall) by removing the feature altogether.
3.A.g) Profile > Match history > Overview: The gold graph, by default, shows the team gold advantage. However, the selected graph reads "Champion Gold" instead of "Team Gold Advantage", indicating the wrong category. Screenshot
3.A.h) Profile > Match history > Graphs: There is no “Total damage dealt” line in the Graphs. (There is a Total damage dealt category, but there should be a Total damage dealt line, just like there’s one in the Stats tab, and just like there’s a Total damage dealt to champions line. You currently have no way to show how much total damage you did in the Graphs tab.) Screenshot
3.A.i) Profile > Match history > Graphs: There is no “Largest critical strike” line in Graphs, unlike in Stats.
3.A.j) Profile > Match history > Stats/Graphs: The stats aren’t organized the same way. In Stats, you have one Income tab for the gold earned/spent and for the CS, while in Graphs, you have an Income tab and a Neutral Monsters and Minions category. Similarly, Stats regroup all of the damage dealt in a single category, not separated in Champions/Total.
3.A.k) Profile > Match history > Stats/Graphs: Total Damage To Objectives and Total Damage To Turrets have their place swapped from one tab to the other.
3.A.l) Profile > Match history > Stats: Jungle monsters are referred to as “Neutral Minions”. They’re called “Neutral Monsters” in Graphs. Besides, they are not minions, otherwise spells affecting minions differently would affect them that way too, while they don’t. And no, they’re not coded as such.
3.A.m) Profile > Match history > Stats/Graphs: Team totals are no longer accessible.
3.A.n) Profile > Stats: Stats are just wrong and miss plenty of games. The stats on my second account say that I have played 14 games as top lane Leona in season 2019. In reality, according to the official match history, I’ve played her top lane 33 times in 2019 (all of them being in preseason 10). Where the other 19 went, that I’ll never know.
 
3.B.a) [Recent] Collection > Champions: The page overall was made far worse when changed for the Eternals one year ago. I've described how I find it worse in a few pages, so, I'll just redirect you there for the full write-up of how I find it wrong!
3.B.b) Collection > Match history > Overview: The champion gold graph puts all the lines in the same colour for all the champions of a team. If you want to compare the gold of all of your opponents, there is no way to tell which line belongs to whom. Not even by hovering. Screenshot
3.B.c) Collection > Match history: The fact that you can only download replays from the current patch is really not convenient for the games that are played right before a patch hits. Additionally, the fact that you can only watch replays of the current patch (and must save a copy of each older patch if you want to be able to keep watching replays of these older patches, which takes entire gigabytes of memory), while third-party softwares have been able to restore older versions of the client ever since 2014ish, is kinda mind-boggling.
3.B.d) Collection > Spells: Each Summoner spell shows the game modes it can be used in, among Classic, ARAM, and Tutorial. I don't see a point in keeping the "Tutorial" one, since first, the tutorial summoner spells are the exact same as the Summoner's Rift ones, and second, the tutorial is meant to teach you about the game, rather than the game teaching you about the tutorial.
3.B.e) Collection > Item sets: Item sets cannot be sorted by champions.
3.B.f) Collection > Item sets: Item sets cannot be searched for based on the champion they’re for.
3.B.g) Collection > Item sets: There is now a limit of 100 item sets per account, down from not having any limit. This limit was put because the item sets are now stored online, not locally. But it means that the cap isn’t enough for one set per champion, not even close to it, and overall, that limit makes little sense. The vast, vast majority of the players doesn’t hit the cap or nowhere near it. The only people who reach it are those who already were past it before said cap, and limiting them won’t change anything. The cap was probably put there as a safeguard for if people with malicious intents tried to automatically create billions of sets on lots of accounts, but considering that people who just mean to play the game normally are affected by this, the limit could surely be better placed at 200, or 250. It would still block these negative attempts, while not affecting the experience of normal users.
3.B.h) Collection > Item sets: Item sets need an option to hide event-only items, ARAM/NB-specific items, as well as champion-only items. There are currently dozens of items that are either not accessible at all, or only accessible to one single champion. Dozens of items that simply take up space while being either never used (because they can't be used, not out of choice), or almost never used.
3.B.i) Profile: The profile page lost so much information. We could have stats about our normal games (win rates then wins only, plus other stats), and the win rate in each ranked queue. Riot decided to progressively hide all of this stuff – no longer able to see someone’s normal win rate, no longer able to see someone’s ranked win rate, no longer able to see someone’s top 8-11 mastery. The argument that Riot doesn’t want people to see others’ stats like that can be made, even though that’s a philosophy that I personally disagree with especially when the ranked stats are available in the API thus on websites anyway, but even agreeing with it, there’s a big problem with that. Other people can’t see these stats, but neither can you. Why can’t I see my own win rate in ranked? Why can’t I see my own wins and losses in normal queues? And it’s not even like Riot would want to hide these away from me, I can still get those stats by finishing a game. But instead of being able to simply click on my profile to see the stats about my own account, I must play a game for it.
3.B.j) Profile: The profile background tier ordering sorts skins based on whether they are Ultimate, Mythic, Legendary, Epic or Others. I think that adding at least a “Base” category would be nice, as none of the sortings allows to only have the base skins.
3.B.k) Profile: The profile background tier ordering sorts the champions by mastery within the tiers, instead of giving a choice that would allow for more instinctive choices, like alphabetical. Because I find it easier to search for a champion based on the fact that I know that its name starts with an N, rather than based on the fact that Nami is more or less my 60th highest mastery, fact that I do not know about for any champion that is not in my top 20ish.
3.B.l) Profile > Stats: You can’t remove the Queue filter in the Stats to display the results from all queues combined, which would be really useful to have the stats be taken over relevant amounts of data. It could be solved by simply adding an “All” option. Screenshot
 
4) Custom games
 
Overall, custom lobbies run on an old lobby model, that was already outdated many years ago, and Riot has shown no interest in putting it up to date. It shouldn't be the case considering that it's a part of their client, and it should even less so be the case considering that this is what their official tournaments are run on. This is the reason why rotating game modes aren't playable in custom on the new client (the current RGM, that is), this is why League Voice isn't a thing in custom game (… remember about tournaments?), this is also why you can't hover champs, and why skin previews aren't enabled either, among other things. But, here's for a full list of the issues (grouping bugs and non-bugs, because I don't want to split this one in two parts):
4.a) We cannot play RGMs in customs. The old client always allowed it, and the “improved” one still hasn’t received it. After more than four years.
4.a) You can’t check anyone’s profile from a custom lobby, the only option for that is to go in Profile and manually type their name. Good luck with special characters.
4.c) Custom games do not have League voice. In the mode where you’re technically always with premades. Custom games are also where even League’s official tournaments are hosted, so that makes little sense.
4.d) Trying to reinvite someone who was kicked will not send an invitation. In order to have someone who was kicked rejoin, you have no other option but to create another game and redo everything.
4.e) Can’t hover champions in champ select (that will display an error message).
4.f) There is also no skin display in champ select.
4.g) The rank displayed in the lobby is random at best. It seems like most of the time, when you enter the lobby, your highest rank will be shown, but then it can switch at any time to your solo queue rank, or to any other rank at random without it being either your solo queue rank or your highest rank.
4.h) On top of that, frequently, someone in the lobby will be shown as having the rank, ranked wins, and icon of another person from the lobby.
4.i) If you switch into spectator as the owner of the lobby, you’ll lose your owner rights and they’ll be transferred to the next person who joined. I don’t see any plus side to that, it just makes the organization messier.
4.j) It would be about time we got another way to reorder the teams other than having everyone go to spectate one by one in a specific order. Especially when playing scrims where one team asks for spectate to be disabled, in which case you actually need to have people leave the lobby and rejoin it in order to change the pick order.
4.k) Passwords are the only way to make a game invite-only, since the client doesn’t offer any other. However, when someone is invited to a game with a password, they won’t have access to the chat (and also won’t have any way to type the password anywhere to be granted access to that chat).
4.l) Custom games have no "Play again" button, when they're already harder to organize and set up than normal games.
4.m) Just like how the chat box stays small when you type a long message, since the same patch as the one when this issue started happening, the box to choose bots to add in custom games has also been reduced by a lot. Instead of displaying somewhere between 6 and 8 bots, it’s now only long enough to display 4.
While they technically shouldn’t have their own category, custom games have more than enough issues to warrant one, especially as they've entirely gone unaddressed since the migration to this client.
 
5) Champion selection
 
5.A.a) [New] While I've never had this issue myself, there have been regular reports of people seeing the champ select in the wrong order. Screenshot of the wrong order (you can see the last pick having to select their champion in the first rotation) / Screenshot of the real order
5.A.b) Let's say you have a trade pending in ARAM (or any other game mode with random picks), be you the initiator or the receiver. Whenever someone rerolls a champion, trades with someone else, or trades with the bench, your pending trade will “reset”: the timer will go back to full, and the trading sound will play once more. This is the second time I almost forget to include this one, because we got so used to it. That isn't a positive thing.
5.A.c) The old client allowed you to purchase a skin during champ select. Not the new one. Maybe that’s a choice, but then the fact that clicking on a skin gives you the message “This skin is currently not available for purchase” is a relic of a past gone two years ago. Screenshot
 
5.B.a) When you have the runes open, most of the champ select screen is covered, and you can only see the champions picked, the timer, and a part of the chat. Only a small part of the chat. But most importantly: the summoner spells selection is hidden by the runes.
5.B.b) You can’t see which of your friends are in queue/champ select/in game while you’re in champ select. In most cases, it doesn’t matter, but sometimes, it’s a nice thing to know, and it’s a downgrade from the legacy client. I don’t just claim that it would be nice to have simply for the sake of complaining and to then never use it, but I am currently using the phone app whenever I want that, so it is actually something I need. It also can’t be because Riot wants it to be that way, since the information is accessible through the app. By extension, you also can’t see whether your friends are online/in a blue status/away/offline without specifically opening a chat with each and every one of them (which isn't even possible anymore), and checking all of them. This is once again something that the previous client offered, and once again something that the app allows. Similarly, you can’t open your Recently played list while in champ select.
 
6) Chat
 
6.A.a) [Recent] Receiving a message plays a sound notification, but the client icon in the taskbar will not be highlighted in orange. 6.A.b) [Recent] There is no longer a "New chat" button in champ select, to allow you to talk to someone you hadn't yet opened a chat with. This feature was added shortly after the release of this client, but has mysteriously disappeared this year and hasn't been brought back yet. So that means that if you're in champ select and want to send a message to a friend… you can't! Unless you had already opened a chat with them before during this session, it's not possible.
6.A.c) You can’t copy-paste a chat in a readable format, since a chat will be like this: Person A: Message 1 Person B: Message 2 Person B: Message 3 Person A: Message 4 Person B: Message 5
And the pasted version will be like that: Message 1 Message 2 Message 3 Message 4 Message 5
This is a downgrade of the old client that would show the name of the person before every message, as well as the time stamp.
6.A.d) Typing a message in the chat will not expand the size of the typing chat box as the message goes onto more than one line, preventing you from reading what you wrote before. Screenshot - Note: This used to work fine, even in this client.
 
6.B.a) We still can’t see people’s status in the list of chats. The legacy client had that. At some point, it went down for maybe a week or so, and it was also bugged during the infamous 6.9 patch that killed the entire client. It was easy to feel how inconvenient it was. One day, Riot tried to put that on the new client. But they didn’t do that properly, as you’d see everyone status in the list of chats… as offline. That makes me wonder if it’s actually a design choice, or if it’s just Riot saying that they aren’t managing to do it.
 
7) Clubs
 
Clubs were a nice idea, back in the days of their creation, in early 2016. As of now… they feel like a thing of the past that no longer serves a purpose. They're no longer useful to gather a party to play, they're no longer ideal to chat in, they give you incentives to close them… Their implementation on the new client was really bad, and to make things better, occasional new bugs have kept making the problem worse since.
7.A.a) [New] Here's a fun one, that I can't explain. On one of my accounts, all of my clubs disappeared. I can't use the tags, can't access the chats, and the Clubs tag asks me to join or create clubs. Same results when trying from a different computer. However, when logging on the mobile app, I'm still in the clubs and can still interact with them, and checking from a different account also showed me that I was still among the members of these clubs.
7.A.b) [Recent] The club's page in the profile tab fails to display the statuses of the online club members who are either not in your friends list, or on League+. The status dot will be missing, and hovering on the player will show them as Offline if they aren't in your friends list. Screenshot
7.A.c) If you leave a club chat open, you’ll get a sound every time someone from the club logs in or out. That is, whenever someone from the club logs in, someone from the club logs out, someone from the club closes the club chat. That sound is exactly the same as the sound of a club message. For this very reason, it’s annoying to leave the club chat open.
 
7.B.a) You can no longer have interactions with other club members, as you can’t click on their name. This means: - You can’t open private chats with other club members. - You can’t invite club members to games. - You can’t view the profile of club members. - You can’t copy their names to paste it to look at their profile (for the people using special characters).
7.B.b) You can’t see the list of members without hiding most of the club chat. That doesn’t sound too bad at first, but in practice, where I used to always know the name of every single member of all of my clubs, now I pretty much have no clue about it, because I never have that list of members there to see anymore.
7.B.c) Going with the previous point, you no longer passively see which of the club members are online/available, and which ones are in game. Reminder that the original point of clubs was to play with friends.
7.B.d) You can also not see the actual status of club members, beyond just the color of the status (so, no difference between In Queue/In CS/In Game, or Online/Creating game). That one isn’t exactly a clear downgrade from the legacy client, as the latter was supposed to provide that, but would only do it for your friends among the club members, and wouldn’t display anything for the others.
7.B.e) The club chat has a very poor size optimization, with every message taking a good part of the height of the chat window due to the blank space between two messages and to the low maximum width of a message. If you use the default chat size, only three messages can usually be displayed at once. Screenshot
7.B.f) The “Message of the day” is inexistent now. It can only be seen through the Clubs tag of the profile, which nobody ever goes on, as opposed to the previous client that had it shown right next to the club’s name upon opening the club. Screenshot
7.B.g) Offline friends don’t have their tag displayed in your friends list.
[Continued in the comments, this post has reached the character limit!]

Hello people of Christianity!
I am a lurker and am curious what the people of Christianity feel about this article by David French. French himself is a devout Christian but has some criticism for the Christian activists who participated in the insurrection the other day. The Dispatch is paywalled so I can provide the content down all the way at the bottom. His basic thesis is that there was a fundamentalist Christian element among the people that stormed the capitol that should call for a reckoning among prominent Christian activists today. It of course goes without saying that Christianity as it is practiced is very diverse, and this event should not be seen as denigrating the idea of Christianity itself, but a discussion can be had about the way it is practiced/preached among Americans in the present.
Though I myself am not a devout Christian (I hope I am not breaking the sub's rules by posting), I am subscribed because I want to become more sensitive about Christian's concerns, especially in regards to US politics. Am curious what the people here think about French's framing here. I think one of the more empowering messages here for christians is this part from French (my emphasis added):

And the rebuttal has to come from within. The New York Times isn’t going to break this fever. Vox won’t change many right-wing minds. But courageous Christians who love Christ and His church have a chance.

There is also this report by Vice that discusses how some younger activists in the Christian Evangelical community have a different vision for where they want to see their movement go, though admittedly this report is two years old. Am curious to see if there is an emerging generational divide in all of this as well.
Edit: formatting
His post on the Dispatch :

I’m going to be honest. I can’t shake the sadness. I can’t shake the anger. We have to be clear about what happened in Washington D.C. on January 6th. A violent Christian insurrection invaded and occupied the Capitol.
Why do I say this was a Christian insurrection? Because so very many of the protesters told us they were Christian, as loudly and clearly as they could. The Atlantic’s invaluable religion reporter, Emma Green, compiled considerable evidence of the Christian presence in her excellent report. I saw much of it with my own eyes. There was a giant wooden cross outside the Capitol. “Jesus saves” signs and other Christian signs were sprinkled through the crowd. I watched a man carry a Christian flag into an evacuated legislative chamber.\
I could go on and on. My colleague Audrey Fahlberg was present at the riot, and she told me that Christian music was blaring from the loudspeakers late in the afternoon of the takeover. And don’t forget, this attack occurred days after the so-called Jericho March, an event explicitly filled with Christian-nationalist rhetoric so unhinged that I warned on December 13 that it embodied “a form of fanaticism that can lead to deadly violence.”
Are you still not convinced that it’s fair to call this a Christian insurrection? I would bet that most of my readers would instantly label the exact same event Islamic terrorism if Islamic symbols filled the crowd, if Islamic music played in the loudspeakers, and if members of the crowd shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they charged the Capitol.
If that happened conservative Christians would erupt in volcanic anger. We’d turn to the Muslim community and cry out, “Do something about this!” How do I know we’d respond in that manner? Because that’s what we’ve done, year after year, before and after 9/11. And while there were many times when Christians painted the Muslim world with an overly-broad bigoted brush, it is true that violent insurrections do not spring forth from healthy communities.
That’s true abroad, and it’s true at home. During this summer’s riots, I wrote multiple posts detailing the extraordinary difficulty in quelling urban unrest once violence starts. Sometimes the unhealthy community is suffering from the effects of systemic injustice. Sometimes it’s dominated by outrageous and unreasonable grievances. Sometimes it’s infested with unhealthy fears and grotesque ambitions. Often there’s a combination of all these factors in play. But the violence always has a cause.
This is the time when some readers will respond, “Now’s your chance, David, tell the world the legitimate grievances of the Christian church! Tell the left why people are so angry!” No. Sorry.
Think of it like this. Riots weren’t justified when police knelt on a man’s neck while his life drained away in Minneapolis. Riots weren’t justified when police killed an innocent woman in a botched, reckless raid in Louisville. Riots weren’t justified when a black man was executed in broad daylight by wannabe vigilantes in Georgia.
If that’s true (and it is), then don’t think for one second it’s appropriate for Christians to air their grievances when the right-wing Christian riot was motivated by terrible lies. If a riot isn’t justified when agents of the state actually kill innocent black men and women, it really isn’t justified when you falsely believe wild election conspiracy theories or when you falsely believe a cabal of cannibal pedophiles control Washington and Hollywood.
Marching for a lie is bad enough. Rioting for a lie is an atrocity
So the answer is simple, right? Law enforcement should arrest the perpetrators, victims of conspiracies should sue for slander, and Christian leaders should endeavor to aggressively confront conspiracies and condemn violence. Then we can heal.
Well, no. I’m afraid our challenge is much more difficult. Have you spent any time in conversation with those who fully believe the stolen election narratives, or with people who are committed to QAnon or Q-like conspiracies? It’s a terrible persuasive challenge. Your very resistance to their delusion is evidence of your corruption.
The problem is that all too many Christians are in the grips of two sets of lies. We’ll call them the enabling lies and the activating lies. And unless you deal with the enabling lies, the activating lies will constantly pollute the body politic and continue to spawn violent unrest.
What’s the difference between the two kinds of lies? The enabling lie is the lie that makes you fertile ground for the activating lie that actually motivates a person to charge a thin blue line at the Capitol or take a rifle to a pizza parlor.
Here’s an enabling lie: America will end if Trump loses. That was the essence of the Flight 93 essay in 2016. That was the core of Eric Metaxas’s argument in our debates this spring and fall.
Here’s another enabling lie: The fate of the church is at stake if Joe Biden wins.
And here’s yet another: The left hates you (this sentence sometimes concludes with the phrase “and wants you dead.”)
I could go on, but the enabling lies that have rocketed through the church for years share important characteristics. They not only dramatically exaggerate the stakes of our political and legal disputes, they dramatically exaggerate the perfidy of your opponents. Moreover, when the stakes are deemed to be that high, the moral limitations on your response start to fall away.
After all, when people believe our national destiny hangs in the balance, they often respond accordingly. Or, as I said in a December 4 newsletter warning about potential violence, “if you argue that the very existence of the country is at stake, don’t be surprised if people start to act as if the very existence of the country is at stake.”
Why do so many people fall for these enabling lies? In my book, which warns Americans that our divisions are so great that they could fracture the nation, I noted that catastrophic partisan narratives are often supported by actual events (such as a violent incident or an act of unlawful censorship). These facts, however, are then wrongly used to make sweeping conclusions about tens of millions of ideological opponents.
The fact that a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to execute multiple GOP congressmen at a baseball field does not prove the sweeping statement that “the left hates you” or that it “wants you dead.” Do you think, for example, the Christian attack on the Capitol is now proof that your average Baptist is willing to kill to keep Trump in power? No. It is not.
We are, however, constantly in the business of taking exceptional behavior from our political opponents and trying to argue that the exceptional is emblematic. It proves what “they” are “really like.” It’s an extremely comfortable mode of thinking. It repeatedly reinforces our priors.
It’s also lucrative and beneficial for a certain class of pundit, activist, and politician. There are two classes of people who are most pernicious—the actual liars and their timid allies. The actual liar is the person who’s constantly, intentionally whipping up his or her audience for personal gain. He relentlessly escalates the rhetoric even when he knows he’s spreading or enabling falsehoods. Donald Trump is the archetype of the actual liar.
If you want to know why so many Republicans are now furious at Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz after the Capitol attack? Because they know that both Hawley and Cruz have no excuse for pressing the election objection. They know that Hawley’s raised fist to the crowd before the attack was self-aggrandizing and provocative.
But the actual liars would flounder if not for their timid conservative allies. Here’s a quick way to identify the timid. Pull up a public voice on Twitter, on Facebook, or on their publication’s web archive. If it is exclusively or nearly-exclusively dominated by anti-left content, then they’re not telling you the whole truth. They may not defend misconduct on the right (so their conscience is somewhat clear), but they won’t call it out either. After all, there are libs to own.
Oh, and here’s one more tell that someone’s a liar or a timid ally: if they tell you that critics of Trump dislike him simply because of “mean tweets” or “bad manners” or “sharp elbows.” After all that’s transpired, it’s hard to believe they speak in good faith.
I get why people are timid. I get why even those who are deeply troubled by Trump still focus their fire on the other tribe. Telling the truth to your own tribe can be personally devastating and even physically dangerous. After all, if your friends and neighbors believe one of the enabling lies, then you’re a traitor. You become a threat to the nation or the church.
My friend Russell Moore stated the problem well in a powerful essay for The Gospel Coalition:
"I cannot tell you how many people will say one thing in private, and something completely different in public. I am not referring to prudence in not airing everything publicly that is meant to be private. I mean instead saying the exact opposite in public what they will say in private.
Why?
For some people, it’s what C. S. Lewis warned us about—the desire for the “Inner Ring.” But for many more people it’s the fear of mobs. People are not afraid of mobs overrunning their houses the way they have overrun the Capitol. But they are fearful of dealing with those who do believe in these endless conspiracy theories or who make distinctions between sheep and goats not on the basis of theology, or even political ideology, but in levels of enthusiasm for personalities associated with such ideologies. Many are just exhausted, knowing that every word from their mouth will lead to psychological warfare."
But if you train your fire exclusively (or nearly exclusively) on the left or on those terrible Never-Trump traitors you’re safe. Then you’re a hero. Then you’re bold. And when you get blowback from your enemy, it’s only proof of your courage.
And so the enabling lies spread. They poison hearts. They poison minds. They fill you with rage and hate, until along comes the activating lie, the dangerous falsehood that pushes a person towards true radicalism. How does a person come to the conclusion that cannibal pedophiles dominate Hollywood? Or that a vast conspiracy of politicians, lawyers, journalists, and tech executives (including conservative politicians, lawyers, and journalists) brazenly stole a presidential election?
You believe that when you know your enemy is evil. You believe that when you know they will destroy the country. In that context, fact-checks and rebuttals aren’t just wrong, they’re naïve. All too often, when you’re arguing with the person who believes the activating lie—the falsehood that immediately motivated them to take to the street—then you’ve already lost.
If the church plays whack-a-mole against Q and Stop the Steal while it tolerates and spreads enabling lies, expect to see the insurrection continue. Expect to see it grow. After all, “they” hate us. “They” will destroy the country. “They” will stop at nothing to see the church fall.
Rebutting enabling lies does not mean whitewashing the opposition. It does not mean surrendering your values or failing to resist destructive ideas. It does mean discerning the difference between a problem and a crisis, between an aberration and an example. And it means possessing the humility to admit when you’re wrong. It means understanding that no emergency is ever too great to stop loving your enemies and blessing those who persecute you.
And the rebuttal has to come from within. The New York Times isn’t going to break this fever. Vox won’t change many right-wing minds. But courageous Christians who love Christ and His church have a chance.
We have to lead with honesty and understanding. When you’re in your partisan bubble, the enabling lie is seductive. I’ve fallen for it. In years past, I even spread it. I’ll close with these words from an essay I wrote in response to 2019’s attacks on so-called “David Frenchism.”
Many years ago, before I deployed to an actual war, I gave a speech at a conservative gathering in which I actually said these words: “I believe the two greatest threats to the United States are university leftists at home and jihadists abroad.” Looking back, I’m ashamed I said it. It was fundamentally wrong, as I quickly learned during my deployment. In the course of almost a year in Diyala Province, Iraq, I saw the most dreadful things, sights that haunt me today. Eastern Diyala under al-Qaeda’s thumb was one of the deadliest places on Earth. And as much as I disagree with university radicals, I lived a happy life in law school in deep-blue Cambridge, Mass. My son was born in deep-blue Ithaca, N.Y. I served as president of FIRE while living comfortably on the outskirts of Philadelphia’s so-called “gayborhood.”
My political opponents are my fellow citizens. When I wore the uniform of my country, I was willing to die for them. Why would I think I’m at war with them now? I disagree with the Left and much of the populist Right, vigorously. If and when any of my political opponents seek to undermine our fundamental freedoms, I’ll be there to pick a legal, political, and cultural fight with them. I won’t yield. I won’t stop. I won’t be weak. But I also won’t turn my back on the truths of scripture. I won’t stop seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly. There is no political “emergency” that justifies abandoning classical liberalism, and there will never be a temporal emergency that justifies rejecting the eternal truth.
It took a war abroad for me to absorb this perspective and imprint it into my heart. And as a deeply flawed man, I often fail to live up to the pledge above. But I see things more clearly now, and I’m honestly ashamed that I didn’t see things more clearly before. I hope and pray it doesn’t take a war at home for Christians to gain the eyes to see and ears to hear the truths that rebut our enabling lies.

I grew up in a family of law enforcement and military veterans, with the only acceptions being my mother and my older brother. It was almost a guarantee that I would follow in their footsteps. One of my personal hero,s was my uncle Brian. He was a Navy seal. My uncle and I are very similar. We both want greater things out of life, we hate it when things are too easy, we both thrive under pressure and we are both adventurous men. When I was a teenager, I worked at a party city. It was a decent job with decent pay but I wanted something with more excitement. I decided to join the military on my 18th birthday. The only problem was, I didn't know which branch to join. It was between the Air force, the Marines and the Navy. I was smart like an Air force recruit, strong like a Marine and had the sea navigation skills of a Navy recruit. After I got into the right circles, I instantly removed the Air force as an option for two reasons. 1. Air force soldiers live in luxury compared to the other branches and because of that, the majority of them are snotty and privileged. Everyone hates them. 2. Air force combat classes aren't all that good, compared to the Marines and the Army. Originally, I wanted to join the Navy, but when I went to sign up, the recruiter told me that there was no room for me. So I chose the Marines instead. That was arguably better, because it would be a more realistic goal I could accomplish and I would still be respected. Basic training was relatively easy at first, but it was plenty challenging, especially during hell week. I made friends who I would gladly die for. 3 years into my contract, I decide I wanted to try out for the Marine Raiders. Its a relatively new special forces unit for the Marines, but one of my commanders, captain Shott was hesitant about letting me sign up. At first, I thought this was just another scheme to keep me under his thumb, but I would soon realize that he was looking out for me. I sign up for the Marine Raiders and I passed training. It didn't take me very long to figure out I had made a huge mistake. It turned out that the Marine Raiders were controlled by the M13 gang. If you haven't heard of them, M13 is a ruthless gang that cuts up its victims into 13 pieces. That includes traitors and snitches. Donald Trump tried to scare them off a while back, but it obviously didn't work. How do I know this? because as soon as I passed training, I was brought into a tattoo parlor with the rest of my Comrades. I told them a didn't want a tattoo, but they strapped me down and tattooed the M13 logo onto my inner forearm. it was small but it was definitely noticeable. I tried to fight, but my tattoo artist pressed a knife against my throat.
" Know your place. From now on, you are a member of M13, the lowest of ranks. your ass belongs to us now. snitch and your dead, you tell your family about us, your dead, try to escape us, your dead. You do as your told, period. " she grabs my dog tags and rips them off. " you won't be needing these anymore " and puts them in her pocket. Normally, I would have demanded that she give them back, but if I did, I would have been beaten up until I could barely move. The woman who tattooed me leans to my ear and wispers " by the time I'm done with you, you will be my obedient little bitch. " I respond to that by biting onto her nose tightly and hard enough to break the skin. She,s screaming in pain and drops the knife. She punches me over and over, but I hold my grip. I bite through the cartilage bridge of her nose and let go. The woman is crying and holding her nose with blood gushing all over her face.
" LOOKS LIKE YOUR MY BITCH NOW!!! " I yell.
I was punished by being locked up in solitary confinement. They blasted loud sirens in my cell for 10 hours a day. I was in there for 3 months before the woman who tattooed me actually visited me. Her nose had bite mark scars along the bridge. " oh, its you. " I said with disgust. " you want me to cut it off completely for you? " I asked. " oh please, if I wanted to, I could have snuck in here and slit your throat without you ever waking up. you got lucky. " she said. " your just saying that because you lost to someone strapped down to a chair. And out of the two of us, who,s practically missing their nose? " I asked like a smart ass. I expected her to be angry at that remark, but she smiled and chuckles. " I think im beginning to like you, Taylor Shott. maybe you do have potential here. " she said. " how do you know my name? " I asked. she pulled out my dog tags from her pocket. " how else? " she said. she tosses them back to me. The only difference was that they now said Marine Raiders on it instead of Marine Corps. " New dog tags. you,v earned them. And you,v earned my respect. Call me Liz. " the woman said. She closes the door but opens my window. " don't worry. you only have one more week to go in here. Your tougher than you look. most people would have gone mad by now. That's impressive for someone so young. " Liz said.
I was released in a week just like Liz said. I was checked over by the doctor and he was astonished. other than my hair being 3 times as long as it was, I was exactly the same as when I got in. " no muttering nonsense, no self harming of any kind, no noticeable changes In behavior, definitely no rabbid foaming. Have you been In solitary confinement before, mr. Shott? " the doctor asked me. " no, but my uncle was a Navy seal. He taught me how to survive in solitary confinement under the most extreme conditions. I could survive for years in confinement if I had to. " I said. " So that explains it. Well, we won't make THAT mistake again. " one of the M13 hitmen said. At dinner, I go to sit down at a table but a big black guy stands in my way. " you the punk who bit off Liz,s nose? " " listen, I don't want any trouble. " I say. the guy goes to shove me, but Liz hold him back. " its ok Denzel, we're cool now. No hard feelings. " " Are you sure? " Denzel asked, gripping a knife in his pocket. " yes, im sure. Go sit down. " Liz said. " ... yes ma,am. " Denzel walks back to his seat and minds his own business. Liz offers me a seat in front of her and I sit. " Sorry about Denzel. He,s had a crush on me forever. when you bit off my nose, he took it pretty personally. " Liz said. " Oh, so he,s not your boyfriend? " I ask. " well... we dated briefly, but he wasn't comfortable being the submissive one. " Liz said. I crack up. " whats so funny? " Liz asked. " sorry, I just had an image of you dating. I pity the poor bastard that breaks up with you. " I said. " thank you! At least someone gets it. I knew I liked you. " Liz said. she punches me hard in the arm, but I knew she meant it in a playful way. " Ow. " I said. My plan now was to observe and learn as much as I could, just like I did in regular Marine basic trainining. Sure, Liz was being nice to me now, but I had no idea if she was just faking to get me to lower my guard around her. Something similar happened to me where I rejected this girl In high school. She claimed there was no hard feelings, but 2 weeks later, she tried to cut my dick off. I decided to keep my distance from Liz as much as possible. I kept a close eye on that knife she carried. I made sure to never be alone with her in an area where there were no camera,s. One day, Liz cornered me in my room. " OK, whats up? every time I talk to you, you eye my knife like you expect me to attack you or something and you barely sleep. " Liz said. " Look, if your gonna get even with me, just do it already! The suspense is wearing me out. its been 2 months Liz. " I said. " what are you talking about Taylor? " Liz asked. " on the day that you visited me in solitary confinement, you said that you could have snuck into my cell and killed me any time you wanted, and after I got out, you were being so nice to me, it made me suspicious. people are only this nice to people who have wronged them like I have when they have something planned for them. something sinister. " I said. " is that what this is about? your paranoid that I will take revenge on you? " Liz asked. " why not? I scarred you for life. literally! " I said. " look, Taylor, I was raised in this gang. scarring your initial attackers is a show of dominance. Its how the new recruits can quickly rise in rank. that's how it works. only the tough rise in the ranks. its similar to asserting dominance in prison. The reason I was so mean to you was just to test you. We had to weed out the weak ones to see who the leaders and followers were. Out of all of the Marines that came before you, you were the only one who has ever passed the test. " Liz said. I start to relax. " oh... Oh thank God. " I said. then I realized what that meant. " wait, what rank did I rise to exactly? " I asked. " well, your old rank was private, which is usually everybody,s bitch, but the moment you bit my nose off, you became a private first class, which is the apprentice enforcer. that means your my right hand man. i,Il teach you everything you need to know about how to survive here. " Liz said. " and what rank are you? " I asked. " im a specialist which is a bounty hunter. I get paid to retrieve escapees, and traitors. I usually have the choice to bring them back dead or alive, but the pay is better for the live ones. " Liz said. so escaping was not an option at the time. if I did, Liz would most likely find me out here In this vast dessert. So for the moment, I had to play along. To those who have met me in real life, and those watching this confessional tape, you may be asking yourself, what is your point and why are you telling it? well, I did end up escaping, but not until years later and the point of this whole story- besides clearing my conscience- I ended up meeting my future self. well, one version of my future self. you may find this hard to believe, but its true. I became good friends with Liz, and it wasn't fake. She took me under her wing and showed me the ropes. My relationship with Liz started to change after a while. I began to see her as more than a friend, even though she was also technically my boss. I'm embarrassed to say, but I was a bit submissive to her in the beginning of my crush. Not to the point where I would let her abuse me, but it was with little stuff, like when she would ask me to do something, i,d do it without question. we got to be so familiar with each other, that she even let me call her Elizabeth instead of Liz. That was a major symbol of trust for Liz. The only other people who called her Elizabeth was her parents and her closest friends. I was the only man her age that called her that. She even trusted me enough to let me sleep In her bed and not try to fool around with her when she was wearing seductive underwear. Eventually, Liz grew to trust me completely and I had no intention of betraying her trust. Eventually, I decided to try and ask her out.
" Hey, Liz? " I asked. " Taylor, I thought I made it clear that you could call me Elizabeth from now on. " Liz said with a smile. " is there a rule against switching names? " I asked. " no, but... I,v grown to like you calling me by my real name. " Liz said. " OK, Elizabeth. " I say with a wink. Liz blushes. " So uh... I don't know if there's a rule against this, but I was uh wondering if you would like to... go on a d.. d.d.. " " are you trying to ask me out on a date? " Liz asked. " .... maybe? " I said. Liz laughs. " is that a no? " I asked. Liz responded by kissing me on the mouth. " yes. I would love to go on a date with you, Taylor. " " YES!!! " I shout. I didn't care how much I looked like an idiot, the girl that I was into had said yes.
Liz and I went out to this Chinese restaurant i used to go to frequently. We had a good time. We admitted our feelings for each other and agreed to start dating. Right after we left, I bumped into captain Shott. " Lance corporal Shott! Taylor! " " captain Shott? " " oh good, you escaped! Its not to late to save you! Quickly, we can still get you out of the country. " captain Shott tries to pull my arm, but I yank it back. " I didn't escape. I'm still with the Marine Raiders. " " what? your willingly staying in that cult!? " captain Shott asked. " that cult happened to bring out my true self. I'm respected there. I found true love there. sure, it was hard at first, but i,v earned my place among them. in the regular Marines, you used me like a servent for 3 years. I wouldn't have minded it if you took me on the field once in a while. " I said. " I was trying to protect you! Deture you from being interested in being a battlefield soilder. I knew the majority of the special forces programs of every branch had members of M13, but I wasn't sure which ones they were invading at the time. I found out too late that the Marine Raiders was one of them. by the time I found out... I assumed you were already dead or dying. I tried to rescue you son, I really did. but the Raiders kept moving every few days. " captain Shott says. " wait a minute. how did you know that M13 has spies in every branch of the military? None of the branch commanders even know that. " Liz said. " because I was roped into that same cult. " captain Shott pulled out a pistol and shot Liz right between the eyes. I start crying. " Elizabeth... " captain Shott punches me in the temple and I black out. When I woke up, I was in a car with my hands tied up. We were still driving. " Well hello sleeping beauty. " captain Shott said. " you... you killed Liz!!! " I shout. " look kid, I understand your mad, but in a few minutes, you wont even be thinking about that broad any more. you deserve better. " captain Shott said. " better? Liz was the only woman i,v ever loved that loved me back! We had just confessed our feelings to each other and you took her away from me. Do you really hate me that much? " I asked. " On the contrary, Taylor. You may not see it right now, but I just did you a huge favor. In the future, she ends up becoming paranoid about you betraying her and she keeps you locked up in a dungeon, only coming down to feed you and have sex against your will. " captain Shott said. I forgot about my anger to process that. " .... wait, what? What the hell are you talking about? " I asked. captain Shott drove me to a house, but... it was my old house. it looked abandoned, like nobody has lived in it for decades. In fact, a lot of homes were abandoned. " captain Shott, whats going on? why is my house condemned? " I asked. " you mean our house. " captain Shott said. I look at captain Shott like he,s a pedophile. " if you think im gonna live with you, you,v gone crazy. " I said. captain Shott punched me in the jaw, hard enough to badly bruise it. " arrgg! What was that for? if anything, I should be punching YOU, you pedo! " I shouted. " my God, was I really this stupid when I was young? " captain Shott asks himself. " im not asking you to live with me, im you from the future. Or at least an alternate future. Why do you think we have the same first and last name, kid? Nobody except our family has that name and your the only Taylor Shott that has ever existed in our family. " captain Shott said. " what? no way, that can't be true. " I said. " why? because I'm old? " captain Shott said. " no, because you look nothing like me. " " yeah, sorry, I had plastic surgery to change my appearance. it was a risky move since plastic surgery is outlawed in my time. " captain Shott said. " OK, if your me, then prove it. tell me something that only I would know. " I said. " your actual first kiss wasn't with Mia bits, it was with your sister. She was also your first time. " captain Shott said. " .... I never told anyone that. " I said quietly.
" so... are we in the future? " I asked. " your very perceptive. welcome to the year 2067. " future me said. " we,re 47 years in the future? How? " I asked. " I put up a time portal here after you disappeared. I put it up in case I found you alive and could drive you here. Take a good look, Taylor. " I look around and all I see is empty streets, empty parking lots, houses that haven't been lived in for who knows how long and I thought I saw a few human skulls laying on the sidewalk. " what happened to my home? I don't understand. " I said. " M13 is what happened. In my time, I accomplished my dream of becoming a Navy seal, but what I didn't know is that M13 had infected every military branch and eventually, they got so powerful, they even put one of their people in the oval office to become president. they were patient. they purposely didn't tattoo their spies so they wouldn't get kicked out. they were instructed to become the strongest of their branch so nobody could stop them. All who failed would either die by the gang or die by the military. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of failures, so it was hard to weed all of them out. Eventually, it got to be that only M13 gang members were running the special forces programs either because the legitimate veterans retired or they were killed off when discovered. When I joined the Seals, this was just starting to affect them, so I didn't notice it at first. I was just about done with my 2nd tour, when my commanding officer, lieutenant Gonda was suddenly killed. He was replaced by this man who called himself corporal Hernan. He was much younger and wore a business suit. He immediately started talking down to us as if we were dogs or something. I had the courage to stand up to him and call him out. Instead of being angry at me, he just snapped his fingers and all of my teammates raised there guns at my head. " oh don't be so surprised. they all work for me and M13. captain Shott, you have two choices. either become a member of M13, or die with your entire family thinking your a traitor. " he said. do you know what I said? I said " see, this is normally the part where I'm supposed to bow down and kiss your feet, right? if you had done any sort of research on my family, you,d know they are crooks and theives. My father is a registered sex offender and so are his two brothers who are Navy vets. my mother is an alcoholic whore who used to beat me for showing her affection and I have a brother who is a serial killer because of her. My sister is a female sexual predator that raped me as a kid. Solitary confinement won't work, because im pretty much used to it from my childhood and the only friends I had were imaginary ones. There is nothing you could do to me that hasn't already been done. I have nothing to lose. " Hernan studies me for 10 seconds. " let him go. he,s of no use to us if we can't use his family as leverage. "
" my former teammates lower their guns and walk out of the room. Hernan walks up to me. " my future self said. " you are one lucky bastard, captain Shott. But don't think this means we won't be watching you from now on. a man of your skills is dangerous if un checked. if you see anyone bearing the M13 tattoo, just walk the other way and we won't bother you. do we understand each other? " Hernan asked. " .... yes. " my future self said. " consider this, your early retirement. your military checks will still come as normal as long you stay out of our business. " Hernan said.
" so, you took the deal? " I asked. " I didn't have much of a choice. they said either retire early or I would be given a dishonorable discharge with no pay. And who are you to judge? you willing became one of those thugs. I heard on my police scanner that you cut some poor woman,s pinky off? " my future self asked. " I was just following orders. Liz is my superior, if I didn't obey her orders, there would have been consequences. " I said. " do you know how psychotic you sound right now? Your justifying dismembering body parts like Blake. " my future self said. " leave Blake out of this! He was your brother too. " I said. My future self shakes his head. " I should have gone back in time to make sure you never join the Marines when I had the chance. Or the military in general. " my future self said. " why can't you? " I asked. " because.... the time portal is one use only. time travel is still pretty new in my time. This was actually a prototype a friend of mine designed. once I close it down, thats it, it will never open again. " my future self said. " so anyone can go through and go to the future or visit the past? " I asked. " basically, yeah. But nobody has come down this street for years. " my future self said. " does this friend of yours know that your testing this out? " I asked. " yeah, he asked me to test it out. as you can see, it works perfectly. But that,s not why I brought you here, Taylor. " my future self opened his glove box and brought out 3 cassette tapes and a recorder. He hands them to me. one of the tapes is blank. " what are these? " I asked. " these are the confession tapes of other versions of ourselves. I have gone to many different time zones and different alternative timelines to meet versions of us. in almost every one, their lives ended up ruined by M13. these are the confession tapes of the few who either successfully escaped or ended up fighting the gang. you are the most recent one. " my future self said.
The first tape read " pastor Shott. " I put it in and played it. * tape plays *
" test. My name is Taylor James Shott. whatever lies you,v been told about me, I would like the world to know the truth. I joined the Army at age 18 and joined the Army Rangers. but what I did not know was, the Rangers were being led by a terrorist group called M13. I know this because I overheard one of my teammates talking to someone on the phone. I couldn't hear what the other person was saying but at the end of the call, my friend said " hail M13 " and hung up. I kept my discovery secret because I had no idea who was a real Ranger or who were the M13 spies. I decided to try and find out who it was. I was the team leader so I had to flush the imposters out. I tried to find any paperwork that confirmed that any of my teammates had ties to a criminal organization, but I found nothing. I decided to interrogate each of them the old fashioned way. By beating the information out of them. I went with Benjamin Toll first, since I already knew he had ties to M13. I chained him to a chair and beat on him with brass knuckles. He mocked me saying that my punches felt like pillows. I decided to try a Kevin Hart trick and I said " you might as well confess, we got your ass on tape. " yes, Benjamin was black. That immediately drained all color from his face. " OK, I admit it, im a member of M13. " I had to resist the urge to shout " Aha! The traitor confesses! " " how deep does this go? who else is with you? Give me names " I said. " I can't! if they find out I ratted everyone out, I will be the first to go! " Benjamin shouted. For the first time during this entire interrogation, Benjamin was crying. " look, I know this is gonna sound harsh, but you joined a military branch. the military is all about sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. Grow a pair and be a man! " I said. Benjamin stops crying. " so what is it gonna be soldier? you gonna live the rest of your life being a puppet for M13? or are you gonna step up, be a man and help me salvage this branch? " I asked. " do you have any idea what these people do to rats? " " yeah, I watch the news. " " if I do this, I will never be safe. " " yes you will. you can go to Canada. there's a safe house for M13 escapees at the boarder. " I said. " you think its that simple? countless others before me have tried to make it to Canada and were cut short. they can track my credit cards and plane tickets. " Benjamin said. " not if you use an alias and use cash. Tell me the names of the members and i,Il do the rest. " I said. Benjamin gave me over 300 names, which was way more than I expected. it was worse than I thought. most of the names were my commanders and drill seargents. The rest of our team were also on that list. I decided to hunt them all down 1 by 1. I started with my enemies, so I wouldn't feel bad about killing them. I gave them quick deaths so they couldn't run and report me. I worked my way down to aqauntainces and friends. I used a silencer so others wouldn't hear it. I took no pleasure in killing my comrads. I still cry about it to this day. I gave them the Curtisy of burying them and mailing their dog tags to their family with a written explanation and apology. Killing the drill seargents was tougher, because they had reflexes like boxers. I actually had to fight them to kill them. each one put up a good fight. I almost lost a few times. I was only able to win because I got a lucky shot or I got a lucky stab. These were the few victims I had taken so far that I felt no guilt over and even held a bit of pride. I killed the majority of the army itself. by the time I killed off the 300 names, I was a wanted man. I was on the FBI,s most wanted list. I would have gladly given myself up if Benjamin hadn,t lied to me. We made it through the airport without much hassle. I expected someone to start shooting up the plane, but nobody did. we made it to the safe house unharmed. " well, that was easier then I thought. " I said. Benjamin started laughing maniacly. " what is so... funny... " I said the last part in horror, realizing why. " you... you tricked me into murdering 300 innocent people? " I said in disbelief. " oh no, 150 of them were M13 members, that was true, but I added the other 150 just in case you did end up proving that they were M13. I did it for two reasons. 1. So I could spread this gospel to Canada too, so their would be no safe places to hide. 2. I just wanted to see the look on your face when you realized you just killed your friends for nothing. your already a wanted man Taylor, and even if you prove you were set up, the minimum sentence will be 20 years with the max being death row. " Benjamin said. I was furious. " YOU THINK IM GONNA LET YOU WALK AWAY AFTER THIS!?!? " I shouted at the top of my lungs. " you could kill me, but that would only add to your sentence. " Benjamin said. " WORTH IT!!! " I shout. I take my knife and slice Benjamin,s neck. Benjamin bleeds out and falls backwards. I fall to my knees and cry. Not for Benjamin, but for my friends.
I went into hiding in Canada. I changed my name and tried to live a normal life. I became a pastor dispite being an atheist at heart. I read the lines I was supposed to, I tried to sound upbeat, but deep down I was saying to myself " dear God, you sound so stupid. " I must have been pretty convincing, because all of the church goers responded to my praises with enthusiasm. after the first year or two, I actually started to like being a pastor. for one, everyone is honest in a church. i,v heard so many confessions over the years, some of them minut, some more serious. but I doubt there was anyone there with a bigger secret then me. part of the reason people kept coming to my church was because I kept my true life secret. They knew my name wasn't my real name and small things like that, but I never went into detail about my life like other pastors do. Until one day. A woman who was a regular at the church approached me. " ah, hello sister Serena. " I said. " care to help me set up for the evening corous? " " no thanks. pastor Riley, when are you gonna share more about your life? It's been 6 years. " Serena said. " I don't think that's a good idea. in my past life... I,v done things im not proud of. Things I can never attone for. " I go to walk away but Serena grabs my arm. " Taylor Shott. That's your real name isn,t it? you knew my sister, Ally. " I cry. I turn to Serena. " Serena, I can explain. if you,v come here to confront me about Ally,s death- " Serena hugs me. That just made me cry even more. * crying noises * sorry, I still get teary telling this story. Serena cries too. When we separate she says " I forgive you. " * sniffle * " why? Is it because im a pastor and I preach about forgiveness? " I asked. " because of your letter. It makes sense that you would want to make sure this didn't spread any further. plus... Ally WAS one of the spies. " Serena said. Serena took my hand. " I don't think your the murderer the news paints you to be. " " I killed 300 people out of a traitor,s word for it, and I ended up with 150 innocent victims. I was tricked. " I said. " tricked by who? " Serena asked. " Benjamin Toll, Ally,s boyfriend. " I said. " ug, I never liked Benjamin. he was an asshole and a sociopath. " Serena said. " yeah, I found out the hard way. " I said. " Taylor, you should turn yourself in. the laws are different in Canada. you wouldn't even get 20 years at the max. " Serena said. " you don't understand. if I turn myself in, the authorities from the United States will demand that I be turned over to them and I don't know if you,v noticed, but Canada doesn't exactly have a strong army like the U.S. Even if I do prove that I was tricked, M13 could blackmail the judge and put me on death row. I might not even make it to prison. " I said. " Canada may not have a strong army, but the U.S would have to obey Canada,s law. if an American fugitive is arrested on Canadian soil, the Canadian government gets to decide how to punish them. Do you have any proof of this? " Serena asked. " I have a recording of Benjamin listing the names, but it won't imount to much in court. I got it without his knowledge and I tricked him into confessing. before that, I tried to beat it out of him. " I said. " its enough to start a case. if you pass a lie detector test, it will prove your story is true and you may even get immunity. you don't know this about me but, im a lawyer. I can represent you. " Serena said. " wouldn't that create conflict of interest? seeing as how I directly affected your life? " I asked. " I wasn't a Canadian citizen at the time. That doesn't count. " Serena said. " are you a good lawyer? " I asked. " i,v worked 100 cases so far. I haven't lost one yet. " Serena said. I decided to hire Serena. I turned myself in to the Canadian police and a trial was held. I had to look the familes of my friends In the eye. I was asked to apologize to the families, which i happily did. The jury believed that I was set up and that I had just gone a bit too far with my method of flushing the imosters out, but agreed that it would have been an affective method if the information i got was accurate. I was sentenced to 5 years in a maximum security prison. Prison wasn't that bad. I made friends and I even converted them to God in the meantime. I was easily the toughest person there, so people rarely messed with me. I was nicknamed " Father Blood " because of the body count i left in my wake. I even got a large tattoo on my back to memorialize it. I met my wife in prison. Her name was Elizabeth. She was the daughter of an M13 leader and she was arrested for 19 counts of murder charges. but she was only in for 6 years because 11 of those murders were members of M13 themselves, including her own father. the other 8 were because she had a probation officer who was loyal to her father and she was there watching her all the time, so she had to go through with the murders or die herself. When we were both out of prison, we had a proper wedding and we settled down in Canada. we had 2 daughters, Peyton and Serena. Serena was named after my lawyer Serena, who became a close friend of the family. I kept running the church for 20 more years with Elizabeth, now with more followers then ever thanks to my trial and prison. But.. my happiness didn't last forever. eventually, M13,s reach breached Canada,s boarders too. My family was butchered in front of me. they left me alive so I could suffer. They framed me for the murder and now im on the run again. Recently, I met with a man who proved to be me from an alternate future where he is a former Navy seal. I'm leaving this message with him to give to another version of myself as a warming to hopefully stop this organization before its too late. * tape stops *
I look at the recorder with wide eyes. I couldn't believe it. alternate timelines actually existed. I look at the next tape. It was titled, " Air force Taylor. " I pop it in and hit play. This time the voice sounded younger, maybe in his early 20,s. * tape starts * I hear shivering and crying. * crying and shivering *
" hi, uh... my name is Taylor Shott. I'm an air force veteran. I don't know much time I have before food runs out so i,Il try to finish my story as fast as I can. In case I'm dead when you find this, please, give it to the police, or anyone not associated with the people i am about to mention. The criminal organization known as M13 has invaded the military. All branches of the military as far as I know. I have learned that they have sent in spies from every state. I am not one of them. in fact, I was the only legitimate recruite of my platoon. I know this because I stumbled upon a secret meeting. I was still a clueless private then. Drill seargents and soldiers of every rank were there. they were standing in front of a black flag with the M13 logo on it. My 1st seargent stood at the front. " tonight, we welcome a new member of M13. When I call your name, step forward to receive your official M13 badge. Carla Willson. " I almost gasped. Carla Willson was my new girlfriend. Carla stepped forward and the seargent pinned a skull badge on the inside of her dress uniform and shook her hand. So this was the special club she was trying to recruit me for. I recognized everyone there. everyone in my platoon was there. But now that I knew who the imposters were, I knew who not to trust. I slipped out without being seen. The next day, Carla tried to talk to me, but I gave her the silent treatment. She tried to get me to talk to her for hours. The only thing I gave in response was a middle finger. Eventually, Carla got so mad, she screamed " WHAT DID I DO!!! " I just responded with " you disgust me. " I could tell I broke her heart with those three words. She cried and walked away. I expected her " club " friends to gang up on me, but they never did. I became paranoid that they would find out i had seen their meeting. I decided to steal a jet and get as far as I could. You can call me a deserter, you can call me whatever you want, but I would rather be a deserter than being cut into bite sized pieces. I had to knock out another pilot who tried to stop me. Some of the Air force commanders saw me stealing the jet and tried to blow me out of the sky, but I dodged the attacks. I flew straight to Costa mesa. Why Costa mesa you ask? because I,v flown in the forth of July beach air show they have every year. I had friends there. I made it to Costa mesa just in time for the tank to run out. I crash landed on the beach, but not hard. one of my friends from Costa mesa runs out to help me, but stopped when he realized it was me. " Taylor? " my friend Sébastien asked. " Sébastien! Oh my God, I am so happy to see you! " I said. Sébastien looked furious. " whats wrong? " I asked. " you... you killed my brother. " Sébastien said. " what are you talking about? " I asked. " I got a phone call yesterday from Brandon's drill seargent. He said that you killed him in cold blood in front of everyone and fled. " Sébastien said. " Sébastien, that wasn't me! The air force is trying to frame me because I discovered that they are controlled by M13! " I said. " come on Taylor, i know M13,s reach goes far, but they couldn't have gotten into the military. your just lying to me! " Sébastien yelled at me. " I can prove I wasn't there when Brandon was murdered! When did you get the call? be exact. " I said. " ... 3:50 p.m. " Sébastien said. I get back in the jet and go through the navigation log. When I get to 3:50 p.m it says I was in Texas at that time. Sébastien watched me as I searched through it. " see? I was flying above Texas when you got that call. I left the Air craft carrier at 10:00 a.m yesterday. When did he say Brandon was killed? " I asked. " around 2:00 " Sébastien said. " there,s my alibi. " I said. " but... if you didn't kill Brandon, then... holy shit. you were telling the truth. " Sébastien said. " I have no idea how long it,ll be before the military hunts me down. a few days at most. they,v probably frozen my savings account by now and are portraying me as a traitor and a deserter. im miles away from home and I don't have a dollar on me. " I said. " I can help you escape bro. my dad has a hunting cabin way up in the mountains. its deep enough to where you cant reach it by vehicle for miles. I can come by once a month to bring you supplies. " Sébastien said. I took him up on his offer. for months I lived in this cabin, with my only companionship being Sébastien once a month, but after the 8th month, he stopped coming. I know its not because he abandoned me. He was likely killed by M13 for helping me escape. If he had given my location, I would have been dead by now. I have about a days worth of food if I ration it. I'm too far away from any fruit bearing trees to last even if it was summer. I am leaving this message as a warning to anyone who finds it. Find a way to escape at all costs. " * tape stops *
This one had me In tears. " I found that tape next to his courpes. he had decided to commit suicide to avoid starving to death waiting for help. He died alone. And these were some of the better versions of our future, can you imagine what's in store for someone like you if you keep this up? " my future self asked. I break down crying. I had never cried so hard in my life. My future self took the other two tapes out of my hand but left the blank one. " now, make a choice. Are you gonna make something better of this life, or are you gonna live this life as a villian? " " i,Il change my ways, I promise! " I said. " you had better. because im not bailing you out a second time. your on your own from now on. I can take you to Canada, but thats as far as my help goes. what you do with your life is up to you. " my future self said. " i,Il make something good of myself, I swear. " I said.
My future self kept his word and took me to Canada. before I got out of the car, he spoke to me again. " kid? " " yeah? " I asked. " im.... im sorry I was so hard on you. I was only hard on you because I wanted you to be the version of me that had a somewhat happy ending. Every part of my life was filled with pain. I never got the kind of happiness that pastor Shott got or the bonds that Air private Shott got. Hopefully you will be the one version of me that does get a happy ending. " my future self said. he saluted me and I saluted him back. We both had tears in our eyes. I removed my dog tags and gave them to captain Shott. " it was an honor serving you... captain Shott. " " have a good rest of your life, kid. "
I left his car with the recorder and the remaining cassette tape in my pocket. I did end up living a good life. I got a job as a police officer and I soon became captain. I married and had a family. my son Shawn wants to be a Marine, but i,v always talked him out of it. He never understood why until I told him my story. I didn't tell him the full story, because I knew he,d never believe me. but I decided to use that last cassette tape to record my version of my future for him to listen to, so that if I die again by M13, he will continue the fight in my place. i,v taught him everything he knows. he,s a brave kid. if he wants to try and risk it out there In America, I won't stop him. but I might give him this tape to listen to when he enlists. if not, he,ll probably listen to it on my death bed. To my son, please, whatever you do, do not join any special forces units.