We need unhinged, euphoric, rabid, psychotic levels of engagement.

Your chin rests in your left hand and your elbow is propped on the forest green armchair you bought from Amazon. You saved $79 by opting out of “professional assembly” but now you’re wishing you hadn’t as you feel the cheap wood bend and creak beneath you. Your right hand rests upon your wireless mouse, flicking the scroll wheel up and then retracting. You continue just like that as you surf down your Twitter timeline: flick, retract, flick, retract, flick, retract - HALT!

You’ve finally found a tweet that tickles your fancy. Your machinic desire senses an interior urge, it must be modulated through exterior stimuli. Something must change. How will you satisfy this spontaneous urge to “engage?” Let us review the tweet:

This tweet is certainly not a magnum opus, it falls short of even being called a “tour de force.” But the concept is undoubtedly solid: the poster has stated her conviction clearly. The poster’s preference is not unusual; many others like dogs. Yet to state something so banal and yet so earnest, without feeling any corollary compulsions to elaborate, is this not all we have ever asked of art? This poster loves dogs. The misspelling of “loves” as “loaves” is merely the icing on the cake. Clearly, written in a state of canid ecstasy, the poster has no need to edit their work. It is delivered as it is delivered. It is pure and undeniable. She loves dogs. Yes!

What level will you engage with this tweet? You have a few options at your disposal:

1. You can like the tweet
2. You can retweet the tweet
3. You can quote tweet the tweet
4. You can comment on the tweet

You can go ahead and do that now. Choose wisely! Here you go: TWEET

Very good, you have interacted with this tweet. You have rewarded the tweet and the tweeter. You have connected with them. This is the system that Twitter operates on, operating as it is intended. We Milady’s understand the power of engagement and cultural capital, so anytime a tweet qualifies for our interaction, we are doing our job.

…but are we doing enough? Let us mind surf together.

First, a fundamental question: why does a tweet have to “earn” your interaction? What do you bestow upon a tweet by taking the time to like, RT, quote tweet, comment, etc.? What does it mean to do any of these things? Does it mean you “applaud the effort?” Does it mean you “like the joke?” Does it mean you “agree with the sentiment?” Probably a mixture of all of these things. But let us not be coy, certainly there are other reasons for throwing out a like or comment. I will try now to be exhaustive:

1. You feel bad because this person doesn’t get a lot of engagement. You can see they’re trying hard to really make a splash and, though they don’t quite “get it” yet, they’re putting in the effort and you’d like to make a small donation to their self-esteem.
2. You want more attention from this person and figure a little quid pro quo isn’t out of the question. Perhaps if they see you’re a loyal RTer or Reply Guy, they might just keep you in mind next time they’re looking to engage with someone else…?
3. You are attracted to this person as a friend, or as a romantic or sexual partner. You engage with their tweet either as a form of simping or simply as a form of “attention nudging.” For the former, no amount of engagement is enough and it’s not the point. You just like the idea of unfurling your tongue and drooling in their general direction. For the latter you are trying to hit the “therapeutic range” of attention that keeps them in your orbit without over-saturation.
4. This person always likes your tweets and they reliably boost your stats, so might as well throw them a bone every now and again.
5. You accidentally clicked the heart and now it would seem strange if you “unliked” it.
6. This person writes along the same ideological lines as you. Liking their tweet produces a sort of “rising tide lifts all ships together” sort of vibe.
7. You wanted to click a button. It didn’t make you feel any better but you still did it.
8. You’re in a manic episode or stimmed out - you crave human interaction right now and ergo are being a slut with your twitter engagements.
9. You’re in a twitter beef and so you go out to your timeline in the desperate hope that liking other’s people’s posts might somehow cue them to find your thread and start liking each of your posts and therefore ratio-ing your opposition.
10. You are just one of those really nice people who likes and comments on everything.

I want to make a slightly confrontational suggestion: your reasons for “choosing” to engage with certain tweets are located in your ego and are mostly bullshit. For many of us, the algorithm we run through to determine whether or not we engage with something is an automated decision-tree. It is the result of outdated firmware, installed into our subconscious some time during 2007-2013 during the height of millennial marriage between online persona and actual person. This does not serve you any longer.

Belief in post-authorship is not just a philosophical position. It is also a practice. It requires the habitual extinguishing of your egoic demands in the name of something higher. It is not easy. Two nights ago I started a mini-meme on Discord only to have it attributed to someone else within about 30 messages. My ego felt wounded and wished to cry out: “But I was the one who came up with that joke!!!” I try to imagine if, at message 35, I suddenly reasserted the fact that it was me who came up with the joke. Imagine how that would be received, especially if I did it in a way that was dead serious. Everyone would of course hate it, not because I “posted cringe” but because I missed the fucking point. The joke was well received, people were having fun, they were being creative with it. This is joy. Joy is higher up on the ladder than attribution. To conceitedly reassert my ownership of something - especially something that was only “some thing” because others reacted to it - would essentially be me saying to the group: “my ego is more important than your enjoyment.”

It’s not. Nor is my ego more important than your learning, your sense of belonging, your connection with others, your ability to be authentic and true. My ego is not enough to overrule any of those. And neither is yours. Our ego fills us with the delusion that an idea can belong to a person, perhaps one of the most exploitative ideas in human history. If you truly stand for post-authorship, and if you truly wish to be an accelerant, then the only thing you should need to justify an engagement with a tweet is that the tweet comes from a Milady.

Consider for a moment the outdated model of selective engagement. If you enter into that mind space even a little, what you find there may be a schematic that you did not realize that you were still operationalizing. It contains two misguided premises:

1. Interacting with certain posts online will make you feel a certain way about yourself. Specifically, liking stuff that you “actually like” will make you solidify your conception of yourself and bolster your self esteem/self-ownership.
2. Liking and retweeting things is a means of identity curation. It is the action of the persona in service of the person. We are signaling to others who were via a demonstration of our preferences.

The first one is a lie, the second one is meaningless.

Who you are is not what you like. The most laughable part of that construction is that being selective about your likes will lead to more self-ownership. While it likely will not lead to this (use your whole lifetime on social media as proof), it will likely lead to much less-self ownership as your personal data is extracted from your brain and sold off to advertisers who wish to excise you and relieve you of self-ownership at every turn. The truth is that “who you are“ is your business, you can share or not share your selfhood at your leisure. Sometimes it may even be helpful to be strategic about it, liking things you don’t like, retweeting things you don’t believe in, and commenting in a thread you know nothing about (Try saying, “I know nothing about this” and see where it goes from there). The more that we do this, the more that we accelerate our cultural capital, and the gains are exponential.

Use twitter as an individual, you will do nothing. Use it as a swarm and you can overwhelm just about anything that stands in your way.

Consider the normal routine of likes and comments you perform. Consider the overall dilution of your actions. Outside of stalking ex-boyfriends, how often do you think anyone clicks the “likes” on a tweet to access the full list of likers? How often is a retweet confused for the original tweet? How often does your comment remain untouched and unseen, buried beneath an endless thread of nonsense.

And what about the specific “tendencies” of our little club? We operate an economy of free ideas, pseudonymity, and shared authorship. We believe that inspiration is channeled, not produced. I, for one, allow anyone to steal any of my tweets or blog posts at any time and claim them as their own. I even want people to monetize them and make money off of them and share none of it with me.

If we truly believe our words our not ours, why then do we cling to the idea that our clicks and scrolls and typing on twitter shouldn’t be the same? Why not give likes freely, write comments festively, do quote tweets constantly, retweet indiscriminately? Why don’t we run down the list of suggested friends and add everyone with a milady pfp? Are we truly worried that our interactions will lose meaning? Are we worried that “over-engagement” will lead to dilution?

If dilution is what you’re worried about, then I assure you that need not be. Your single “like” is a packet of Kool-Aid in the Atlantic Ocean; it’s not going to make it taste grape. How long does the feeling last when you see a new notification pop up? 3 seconds. So fleeting and ephemeral it’s sometimes hard to even clock it. Looking at it from the other side of things, do we ever actually question why we get that like or RT? Or are we just happy to have it? Whatever dopaminergic rush we fear to lose by becoming more unhinged with our engagement, I promise that this concern will summarily smashed to pieces by the orgiastic explosion of euphoria that comes from rampant engagement?

You know what? Rampant engagement is actually not enough. Rampant engagement only indicates an increase in volume or frequency. We must push it beyond mere quantitative metrics. We must accelerate the form even if the form is Twitter. Beyond the mountain of rampant engagement is the meadow of PSYCHOTIC engagement. Psychotic engagement not only is an increase, it’s a proliferation. It breaks down barriers of causality, it disorients the observer. It buries our content in more of our content, and then buries that pile with even more content. It floods timelines. It erases the pathway of original authorship. It is a RAVE.

It is a rave of frenetic engagement that leads to a blooming of the Milady culture. That is precisely what we want. Culture is our currency - we must go beyond the normal mechanisms if we wish for continued growth. From the looks of things, we certainly wish for that and have the human capital to do it. The growth should uncontrollable and messy, something akin to a metastatic cancer. But because we are pure of heart, I have chosen to refer to this as “Benestatic Cancer.” We spread like the most pure-hearted tumor there is. We benastatize all over twitter, allowing new bridges, trails, and doorways to avail themselves, producing through vibes and invitation for those who have not yet gazed upon the neo-chibi majesty of the Milady. Remember my friends - all it takes is for someone to take one good look, and if the Milady speaks to them, they’re already hooked.

It is undeniable that when @CharlotteFang77 posts something, it’s going to be a banger. Many people have already noted that she is quickly re-discovered on Twitter every time she recycles into a new handle due to her very distinct and powerful way of writing. She has close to 10k followers on this latest iteration alone, and will surely get many more in short order. When she tweets, the engagement runs high. Part of what makes Charlotte special is her ability to enter into any online space and bend light toward her celestial body. Her philosophy and means of expressing it are enticing and people are naturally drawn to her. Part of our “brand” is to be enamored with her, and it’s not hard to be:

However, my friends - I have news. It is a pill that may be bitter to swallow for some. But I must inform you that Charlotte is as much Charlotte as I am Charlotte. In fact, I run Charlotte’s account four days a week. Another person named Wayne runs it three days a week. Marva takes the reins on weekends, and holidays and both Bruce and Shaila work as a sort of “pool staff” to fill the gaps when the rest of us need time off. Charlotte actually has little time to be on her account because she spends most of her time running my account, which I personally have not used since December of 2014. On the days that Charlotte is not running my account, my account is automated by an auto-text generating software named “HonestAbe,” who I have set up to only tweet things that are 100% honest and true (backed up by research/science/eminence).

Remember that Charlotte Fang is a VESSEL. She is a holder of the collective power of Milady. The collective power of Milady is held by the other vessels. The other vessels are each and every one of us.

This is a call to arms: we must achieve the level of engagement that Charlotte has on her posts for ALL of our posts. We must follow every single person with a Milady pfp. We need to follow back every person with the word “milady” written in their profile bio. On a daily basis, we must engage in a frenzied onslaught against the algorithm. Rather than attempting to “hack it” in our favor, we will instead cause an avalanche that no data scientist could produce a meaningful graphic to explain other than this:

It should be no question: when a Milady tweets in a forest, it always makes a sound. The sound is the thunderous, locust-like clickity-clack of likes and retweets. In the comments is where we should show our individuality, in the likes and retweets we show our uniform energy and monolithic power. In our comments should be heart first, find the good in every post, we should even be saying positive things about one another in the middle of an argumentative tweet thread. Why hold back on the positive while letting loose on the negative? Why not let loose on both? Why not run up the scoreboard? Why not dance in the end-zone? We are inevitable, undeniable, irreplaceable, and so very very very loving.

Though you may see the symbols for “like” and “retweet” as a heart or a circular arrow, reorganize your brain until you see them for what they actually are: a button you press to signify that you have read the tweet and it what was written by a Milady. Charlotte Fang exists to model a certain brand of charisma and incisiveness that we should not only emulate, but that we should steal. Charlotte has a gift to create a cult of personality (the only type of cult she has ever created, mind you). But cults of personality built around one person are tables with only one leg; they may stand high but are easily tipped.

We should be a cult of personality comprised of many cult-like personalities. We should engage in the collaborative co-worship of each other. Curated likes don’t give us self-ownership, but you can be damn sure that the more we love each other, the more we will love ourselves (whatever that is). Approve everything. Love everything. Support everything. Be benestatic cancer. Infect everything with purity and love.

The more we notice each other, approve of each other, love each other, and build each other up, the more quickly we will become a massive font of overwhelming cultural production. The way that we can provide the fuel to accelerate this process is through a psychotic application of our engagement. It is a small form of labor, mostly attention and repetition-based. But it will pay unimaginable dividends. We will not be the fools and losers who paywall their “product” to simulate the idea of scarcity or intrigue. We will do the opposite: open ourselves so wide open that no one is afraid to enter our loving embrace.

We are not scarcity, we are abundance.

We are not intriguing, we are overwhelming.

We are not a “hive-mind,” we are the swarm.

Pure hearts click red hearts.