Everything hums like a live wire. You can feel it, right? The buzzing tension that makes your chest ache when you scroll too far down the feed, the static that builds every time another headline screams the world is ending. Climate collapse, endless wars, algorithms tightening around our throats… like we’re sleepwalking toward extinction.
…Doomscrolling our way to the heat-death of culture.

But here’s the secret: this isn’t death. It’s molt.

Think snakeskin. Think cicadas buried underground for seventeen years, clawing their way out into sunlight just to scream and breed and leave their shells behind. This is what it feels like right now-not apocalypse, but metamorphosis. It is ugly as hell while it’s happening and beautiful only in hindsight.

The structures are collapsing.
Good. They were designed to collapse. Towers built on control and extraction can only rot from the inside. The scaffolding was always temporary, but it convinced itself it was eternal. And now you and I get the privilege, the curse, the spark of standing in the middle as it buckles.

It hurts. Of course it hurts. You’re supposed to feel the weight of it, because pressure is the forge. Without collapse there is no creation. Without endings, no beginnings. It’s the Tower card from the tarot, the lightning-struck structure that looks like a nightmare until you realize it clears the ground for new foundations.

The doom is real. The beauty is real. Both are true at once. Horror and miracle compressed into the same scroll.

People keep asking if things are as bad as they seem. They are. And they aren’t. They’re exactly as bad as they need to be. The fractures aren’t just cracks, they’re doorways. Every system breaking down is also a system opening up. The old skin peels away and leaves room for something stranger, freer, more terrifying, more ours.

That’s the stuff. You don’t survive the collapse. You dance in it.

You tag graffiti on its ruins.

You steal the embers and crown yourself in fire.

You learn to find the sacred in busted machines and abandoned forums and dying networks.

You make art from glitch, poetry from ash, culture from fracture. The world isn’t dying. It’s splitting to let in more light.

And this is where creativity comes in-not the hollow kind sold back to us in branded packages, but raw creation: sketches, sounds, hacks, memes, songs, worlds built from nothing but imagination and refusal. Creativity is not a hobby here - it’s survival, and it’s rebellion. And it’s how we stitch new meaning out of the wreckage.

When systems fall apart, creation is how we prove we’re still alive.

Here’s the razor edge though: our choices matter more than ever. Things like AI can be for everyone. It doesn’t have to calcify into another systemic power mechanism. The same tech that could become chains can also be chisels, tools for carving new culture outside the old walls. This is one of the wars we’re fighting in real time. If we lose? Even then, the digital natives will build their own world inside the cracks, and eventually that will become the norm, because the rule of cool always wins. The spark can’t be monopolized forever.

Unless, of course, the rapture happens in 2027. In which case: lol, lmao.

I used to think the job was to endure, to white-knuckle through the chaos until we got back to “normal.” But normal is gone. Thank God. Normal was chains disguised as comfort. Normal was beige cubicles and corporate feudalism and algorithms teaching us to consume instead of create. If that’s gone, let it stay gone. Burn the husk and step into the raw air.

This is not an invitation to despair. It’s a call to claim the spark.

Because while the old-world groans, small worlds are blooming. Niche scenes, underground collectives, little weirdos carving entire realities out of nothing but art and stubbornness. The death of the mainstream is the birth of the manifold. You see it in subcultures that refuse to die, in pixel art zines stitched together in Discord servers, in decentralized networks built not for profit but for communion.

The collapse doesn’t bury us. It frees us.

And yeah, it’ll be rough. The molt always is. The cicada has to split its own back open to crawl into the sun. There’s no way around it. But that pain is transformation. That static in your chest? It’s voltage. That buzzing in your skull? It’s the future trying to crack through.

So… here’s “the prophecy”: The pillars fall. The towers groan. The machine eats itself. But we are not ashes. We are the spark. We are the weirdos in the ruins. We are the chorus that screams through the molt. And when the husk finally crumbles, we’ll be there—dancing in the collapse, crowned in embers, building worlds from the light that leaks through the cracks. You only have to make that choice.

Not apocalypse. Metamorphosis. Not the end. The smolting.

Literal version, for those who skim:

Yes, things are bad: wars, climate, politics, tech gone sideways. But it’s not just collapse; it’s transformation. Old systems are breaking so new ones can emerge. This has happened over again in history. Creativity--making art, building communities, imagining futures… is the way through. Our choices about things like AI matter: it can empower everyone or lock us into new systems of control. Even if those in power win that battle, digital natives will still shape culture from the underground, and eventually that becomes the mainstream. Unless the rapture happens in 2027, in which case: we’re all fucked anyway.

*/The pillars crack,
/the towers howl.
/Stone remembers its builders and curses them in dust.
/This is not the end—this is the molt,
/the sacred violence of becoming. *

*/The husk splits,
/and through the wound bleeds voltage.
/The machine thrashes in its sleep,
/but the dream leaks out,
/and the spark escapes. *

*\We are not buried in ruins
we are anointed in ash,
\crowned in ember-dust,
\baptized by collapse. *

*\So dance in the furnace.
\Write scripture in graffiti.
\Turn glitch into gospel.
\Claim the crack as cathedral. *

\Because the next world is not waiting,
\it is already leaking through,
\spilled across the concrete-like oil-slick rainbows.
A future humming in the static,ours
\to seize,
\ours to set on fire,
/ours to love into being

-rwx

i know nothing but what i know, and your life is yours.

Everything hums like a live wire. You can feel it, right? The buzzing tension that makes your chest ache when you scroll too far down the feed, the static that builds every time another headline screams the world is ending. Climate collapse, endless wars, algorithms tightening around our throats… like we’re sleepwalking toward extinction.
…Doomscrolling our way to the heat-death of culture.

But here’s the secret: this isn’t death. It’s molt.

Think snakeskin. Think cicadas buried underground for seventeen years, clawing their way out into sunlight just to scream and breed and leave their shells behind. This is what it feels like right now-not apocalypse, but metamorphosis. It is ugly as hell while it’s happening and beautiful only in hindsight.

The structures are collapsing.
Good. They were designed to collapse. Towers built on control and extraction can only rot from the inside. The scaffolding was always temporary, but it convinced itself it was eternal. And now you and I get the privilege, the curse, the spark of standing in the middle as it buckles.

It hurts. Of course it hurts. You’re supposed to feel the weight of it, because pressure is the forge. Without collapse there is no creation. Without endings, no beginnings. It’s the Tower card from the tarot, the lightning-struck structure that looks like a nightmare until you realize it clears the ground for new foundations.

The doom is real. The beauty is real. Both are true at once. Horror and miracle compressed into the same scroll.

People keep asking if things are as bad as they seem. They are. And they aren’t. They’re exactly as bad as they need to be. The fractures aren’t just cracks, they’re doorways. Every system breaking down is also a system opening up. The old skin peels away and leaves room for something stranger, freer, more terrifying, more ours.

That’s the stuff. You don’t survive the collapse. You dance in it.

You tag graffiti on its ruins.

You steal the embers and crown yourself in fire.

You learn to find the sacred in busted machines and abandoned forums and dying networks.

You make art from glitch, poetry from ash, culture from fracture. The world isn’t dying. It’s splitting to let in more light.

And this is where creativity comes in-not the hollow kind sold back to us in branded packages, but raw creation: sketches, sounds, hacks, memes, songs, worlds built from nothing but imagination and refusal. Creativity is not a hobby here - it’s survival, and it’s rebellion. And it’s how we stitch new meaning out of the wreckage.

When systems fall apart, creation is how we prove we’re still alive.

Here’s the razor edge though: our choices matter more than ever. Things like AI can be for everyone. It doesn’t have to calcify into another systemic power mechanism. The same tech that could become chains can also be chisels, tools for carving new culture outside the old walls. This is one of the wars we’re fighting in real time. If we lose? Even then, the digital natives will build their own world inside the cracks, and eventually that will become the norm, because the rule of cool always wins. The spark can’t be monopolized forever.

Unless, of course, the rapture happens in 2027. In which case: lol, lmao.

I used to think the job was to endure, to white-knuckle through the chaos until we got back to “normal.” But normal is gone. Thank God. Normal was chains disguised as comfort. Normal was beige cubicles and corporate feudalism and algorithms teaching us to consume instead of create. If that’s gone, let it stay gone. Burn the husk and step into the raw air.

This is not an invitation to despair. It’s a call to claim the spark.

Because while the old-world groans, small worlds are blooming. Niche scenes, underground collectives, little weirdos carving entire realities out of nothing but art and stubbornness. The death of the mainstream is the birth of the manifold. You see it in subcultures that refuse to die, in pixel art zines stitched together in Discord servers, in decentralized networks built not for profit but for communion.

The collapse doesn’t bury us. It frees us.

And yeah, it’ll be rough. The molt always is. The cicada has to split its own back open to crawl into the sun. There’s no way around it. But that pain is transformation. That static in your chest? It’s voltage. That buzzing in your skull? It’s the future trying to crack through.

So… here’s “the prophecy”: The pillars fall. The towers groan. The machine eats itself. But we are not ashes. We are the spark. We are the weirdos in the ruins. We are the chorus that screams through the molt. And when the husk finally crumbles, we’ll be there—dancing in the collapse, crowned in embers, building worlds from the light that leaks through the cracks. You only have to make that choice.

Not apocalypse. Metamorphosis. Not the end. The smolting.

Literal version, for those who skim:

Yes, things are bad: wars, climate, politics, tech gone sideways. But it’s not just collapse; it’s transformation. Old systems are breaking so new ones can emerge. This has happened over again in history. Creativity--making art, building communities, imagining futures… is the way through. Our choices about things like AI matter: it can empower everyone or lock us into new systems of control. Even if those in power win that battle, digital natives will still shape culture from the underground, and eventually that becomes the mainstream. Unless the rapture happens in 2027, in which case: we’re all fucked anyway.

*/The pillars crack,
/the towers howl.
/Stone remembers its builders and curses them in dust.
/This is not the end—this is the molt,
/the sacred violence of becoming. *

*/The husk splits,
/and through the wound bleeds voltage.
/The machine thrashes in its sleep,
/but the dream leaks out,
/and the spark escapes. *

*\We are not buried in ruins
we are anointed in ash,
\crowned in ember-dust,
\baptized by collapse. *

*\So dance in the furnace.
\Write scripture in graffiti.
\Turn glitch into gospel.
\Claim the crack as cathedral. *

\Because the next world is not waiting,
\it is already leaking through,
\spilled across the concrete-like oil-slick rainbows.
A future humming in the static,ours
\to seize,
\ours to set on fire,
/ours to love into being

-rwx

i know nothing but what i know, and your life is yours.