HYPERFIXATION noun
/ˈhaɪ.pərfɪkˈseɪ.ʃən/
1. A complete obsession or absorption in a subject or hobby to a point where a person appears to completely tune out their surroundings and where the person repeatedly returns to said subject or material.
Each month, paid subscribers can expect a break-down of some of the things I’ve been hyper-fixating on. №I is free for everyone. If want to continue receiving observations filtered through an Inigo-shaped prism in your inbox, consider joining the dark side and becoming a paid subscriber.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Obviously.
My most recent essay is a polemic against Artificial Intelligence. It’s likely I’ll be screaming about this topic until a mysterious tactical drone strike sears me from this mortal coil from the comfort of my bedroom but in the meantime, there’s someone who’s a little less alarmist and a lot more knowledgable than me that I’d like you to meet. Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, studied Mechanical Engineering at MIT. After university, she turned her attention to journalism and has been reporting on AI for nearly a decade. Her book focuses on OpenAI but her overall classification of AI corporations more broadly very much aligns with some of the concerns I have:
Her insights on the technology are robust, principled and fascinating—confirming a lot of my more vibes-driven concerns with the precision of accrued wisdom. If I could recommend one interview, it’d be this one:
THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS
Before this week, my understanding of Mormonism began and ended at vaguely noticing Book of Mormon advertisements in tube stations and their weird practice of “soaking”.
I’ve since learnt that the Mormon Church is bonkers.
A random guy called Joseph Smith from 19th Century New York was wondering the woods when he had a vision of Jesus the Son and God the Father, who visited to tell him that all the worldly religions had strayed too far from God’s light (he was 14).
It seemed the heavens couldn’t leave him alone because three years later, the angel Moroni came down and said, “God says you’re chosen, bro” and directed him to a GOLDEN-PLATED BINDER written in an unknown language. Smith diligently translated these unknown texts. The Book of Mormon was born and it apparently told him he can’t masturbate—which should surprise absolutely no-one seeing as most of the whacky white innovators of this time had a weird sex thing. John Kellogg preached sexual abstinence but was a purveyor of yoghurt enemas. I don’t know about you, but that fact changed relationship to cornflakes irreparably.
After making up and spreading the word of Mormonism—Joseph Smith was incarcerated and killed, largely because he kept fornicating with the wives of the men in his immediate circle. Not cool, bro. Also, he was running for president. It made his death the first presidential candidate ever to get assassinated. The Mormons made a mass exodus for Utah to realise Joseph Smith’s dream of finding a site where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond the control of other governments.
Brigham Young, the Lion of the Lord, came along and established Brigham Young Academy—now known as Brigham Young University. Young had 56 wives and 57 children and formalised the prohibition of Black men attaining priesthood because why would you want your batshit crazy sister wife cult to have anything to do with Black people, right? Fast-forward to today and there are more members of the LDS Church in Africa than in Europe. Yikes.
My biggest takeaway from this Mormon dive is that colonialists were doing whatever the fuck they wanted in 1800’s America. It truly was a land of opportunities if you were a white guy. Leftists have made some of the greatest art ever but there’s something about the sheer willpower of a weird, right-wing white guy who wants to change the very fabric of reality by shaping the world to fit his fucked up delusions which is kind of admirable.
If only they’d use their deranged erotic energy for good.
DICKHEADS AND ONLINE SHOPPING
A woman won her court case calling her boss a “dickhead” and another woman won her case for shopping on Amazon and browsing Rightmove on company time:
Absolute W for British workers.
IT BE YOUR OWN NAZIS
Mia Schem was one of the Israelis taken hostage on October 7th 2023. As a traditionally attractive European woman with blue eyes, Schem’s ordeal proved a perfect opportunity for Israeli Hasbara to ramp up the media manipulation against Hamas Freedom Fighters.
Even right now, the Wikipedia page reads that she was “forced to undergo surgery for her gunshot wound” by her captors. In a reality unreliant on perpetual propagandising against Palestinians—we would call that “being given medical assistance”.
After her release on November 30th 2023, Schem gave an interview detailing her story.
What’s most noticeable about Schem’s testimony is the constant insinuation of rape. There appears to be more references to the possibility of her captors sexually assaulting her than fear for her life.
As a prisoner of war, I don’t expect there’s a right way to process being held captive. Yet, the assumption that her captors would default to sexual assault begins to veer into the conspiratorial. No rape took place while she was a hostage in Gaza.
When she was relased, however, is a different story.
In March 2025, Schem reported she’d been assaulted by a Tel Aviv Gym Trainer in her own home.
When you consider the sordid realities of Israeli society, everything starts to add up.
Schem likely assumed the Hamas fighters she constantly referred to as “terrorists” would rape her because the occupying state she calls home is such a festering wound of sexual violence.
A report by B’Tselem—The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories in August 2024 documented the horrific conditions Palestinians endure under Israeli kidnapping:
A 2021 report of Thai workers in Israel found 100% of the women had been sexually assaulted.
In 2024, The Association of Rape Crisis Centers reported that 81% of sex crime complaints in Israel closed without an indictment.
Sex offenders in America and other countries commonly use Aliyah to find safe haven in Israel.
THE GREAT DEBATERS
The way I watch Jubilee videos is somewhat anthropological. I’m not necessarily concerned with the arguments themselves, rather how the contributors are able to seize the environment. It goes back to the The Utility of Morality, which explores the idea that—to enact political change—being right pales in importance to convincing others you’re right and thus, having moral elasticity is a crucial for “winning the room.”
1 Capitalist vs 20 Anti-Capitalists is a great example of how someone seizing environmental control.
From a purely superficial perspective, Patrick Bet-David comes out of this video the victor. He remains calm and assertive despite engaging his opponents in terrible faith, being disrespectful in underhanded ways, and dispatching ignorant and functionally incoherent talking points with a slick, salesman-like confidence.
He spends the entire video deflecting, misrepresenting and spouting patriotic apologia for American capitalism all for his last claim of the video to be “The US today is more socialist than capitalist, if you hate the system today, you’re anti-socialist”. Wild.
Being a far better writer than orator, I’m in absolute awe of people who are able to engage in the nimbleness of debate. I’m probably not alone in imagining how I’d be when I watch these videos and it always makes me curious when people don’t take the lines of approach that I think might work best.
If I were to respond, I’d likely ask: Why don’t you leave America? You said earlier that Zohran Mamdani’s victory as a democratic socialist in New York would drive away all millionaires and billionaires from New York elsewhere and insinuated that he’d make himself a Mayor of a barren wasteland. If you truly believe that America is more socialist than capitalist—why haven’t you left America for a more capitalist country?
Tactically, I’m not sure what would happen after this. I’d have to see where he’d go because he’s a slippery fellow. Of all the Surrounded videos, this one felt like the most biased I’d seen in terms of presentation. Bet-David is given quite a few instances to finish his point after the clock ran out. Subtle, but you can see the effects when reading the majority of the Youtube comments applauding him (which, I guess, is unsurprising when so much of his conduct feels Paul Fussell BAD).
Jordan Peterson’s Jubilee appearance seizes the environment by disengaging combat.
He dispels anyone’s animosity towards him through lofty paternalism, going so far as refusing to engage with one opponent for being “a smart-ass”. Peterson is a lot like Bet-David. They both retreat in similar ways.
Peterson retreats into semantic fractals, demanding the determination and re-determination of linguistic definitions whenever he finds himself on the ropes. Bet-David retreats into the bosom of American mythology, whenever he feels threatened he dispatches reductionist and/or propagandised misconceptions that require too much energetic real estate to debunk in a debate, allowing him to perpetuate fictions that are already patriotically ingrained in the common American psyche.
ikeme, who comes close to penetrating Patrick Bet-David’s defences, adapts super well to Peterson’s pseudo-armistice. There is no seizing the environment if your opponent refuses to acknowledge the environment and, ironically, nonchalance is a great tactic win the room in ambience.Ikeme sacrifices the approach of trying to win the argument because Peterson has already, seemingly, forfeited his need to be right. He inquires until the words are nothing more than basic ingredients that he can form into a prosperous weapon. He can afford to pretend like he’s not trying to win because he’s Jordan Peterson, and atmospherically he believes he is right. By meeting him here, Ikeme manages to bypass his paternalism and position herself as intellectually equal—which is tactically important when Peterson is considered such an father intellectual of the manosphere. There might not be a kill-shot clip or soundbite, screengrabbable moment but the challenge is there and it is robust. I believe the optics of that are important and need to be confronted in every echelon of society where right-wing ideologies have been allowed to oxidise.
The right-wing has been building its echo-chambers and bloating them to envelop large swathes of the population. Leftism became insular and fractured, with a refusal to engage with certain ideologies vs. finding ways to neutralise and dispatch them. I think this has contributed to the expansion of fascism, even though it is not responsible. I’m glad to see confrontation. It’s good to see Cambridge students (and professors) school Charlie Kirk. Intellectuals cannot just confine themselves to the wards of academia when anti-intellectualism is so rife. Academics need to stand up to the rapid-fire misinformation of disingenuous actors who are trying to manufacture consent on christo-fascist autocracies powered by techno-billionaires. Public Intellectuals must return, political punditry needs to go.
For a long time, I’ve felt like this is a war, and to confine it as one of cultural is far too reductive. Our opponents know its a battle but our side has been under the impression that its something more gentle, something more diplomatic, something more civil. The mask of civility is falling. To win this war, there must be fights on many fronts. I’m glad to see the front of debate is becoming more robust and more active.
this was so good i ended up reading for longer than i should’ve about “soaking”
inigo if u ever stop writing these i'll come down to london [u give me london boy idk] and fight u