How to kill art

This is how to kill art.

Artists are always broke and therefore easily broken. This makes it easy.

Get the population hooked on social media. Erect echo chambers. Eliminate competition.

Use social media to make a moral panic by instilling a fear of sex.

Divide the races with hoaxes. Inspire suspicion.

Digitize everything. Get everyone to store their work on the cloud so that it can be erased “accidentally” whenever it crosses lines.

Discourage individuality. Stir vapid controversies. Reward hoaxters and hucksters and punish critical thought. Push conspiracies.

Announce concurrent existential crises. If the world is ending tomorrow, who has time for art?

Make identities more relevant than ideas. Disincentivize diversity of thought.

Implement clearly defined lanes. Make people stay in theirs. Stay in yours.

Destroy all the taboos so there are no lines to cross, then convince society they weren’t taboo in the first place. Make new taboos based entirely on identity. Make everything about identity.

Normalize shame. Destroy traditional religious practices that may ease shame’s burden. Confession should not lead to absolution, but to further degradation.

Convince everyone that deviations from normality need to be fixed, whether with medication, therapy or surgery. Convince young people that if they deviate from norms then they must become permanent patients.

Make people anxious. Make sure everyone has an anxiety disorder. Keep people so focused on themselves they can’t see past their own noses.

Block people from growing up by providing puberty blockers so that there is a population of neutered children instead of grown ass adults who can think clearly, rationally, and creatively.

Block people from growing up emotionally and intellectually by rewarding mediocrity and banality.

Let social groups have free reign to police culture and stifle debate. That doesn’t even look authoritarian; it has the look of of a natural occurrence.

When someone speaks out and expresses a dangerous idea, smear them. Call them a Nazi. Pummel them with rumours. Get everyone to do it.

Don’t let anyone explore any ideas or art works outside their own immediate experience. Tell them they are evil racists for doing it.

Gaslight everyone regarding everything.

Bring into question every choice everyone has ever done, even privately. Transgression leads to cancellation.

Encourage people to abandon their friends and family for having divergent views.

Take away the ability of those who offend to earn a living.

Erase the legacies, histories, accomplishments of offenders. Punish their associates too. Guilt by association is a must.

Keep culture cheap. Keep culture clean. Sanitize everything.

Keep creative people so broke all they can do is hustle, drink, sleep, and seek treatment.

Advocate for comedy that isn’t funny. Tell people it’s funny. Force them to laugh.

Ban irreverence. Forbid heterodoxy.

When all else fails, kill the artists. Lots of authoritarians have done this. It works like a dream.

Disease works wonders. An epidemic to end the epidemic of art.

Go full-on gulag. Round them up and slaughter them, starve them, or work them to death. This will work. Progress will be made.

Repeat as needed.