Proxy | Ludicrous

The Cold War gave us the —the genuine believer who unknowingly served a foreign power. The ludicrous proxy is the useful moron : an agent so transparently cynical that no one could possibly believe them, and yet the machinery of media and law must treat them as a legitimate actor. Chapter Three: The Digital Accelerant The internet did not invent the ludicrous proxy, but it perfected it. Consider the following contemporary archetypes:

Or consider the of 1996, where a physicist submitted a gibberish paper to a humanities journal as a hoax. The paper was accepted. The scandal was contained. But the template was set: use the enemy’s own credibility against them by feeding them something so absurd that their acceptance of it delegitimizes them entirely. ludicrous proxy

We are already seeing the signs. The employee who calls in sick with a reason so implausible ("My cat is on fire") that the manager cannot question it without looking absurd. The student who submits an essay composed entirely of emojis, then claims "post-literate expression." The defendant in a small-claims court who represents himself as a chatbot. The Cold War gave us the —the genuine

Another is —drowning the ludicrous proxy in an even more ludicrous response. When the mimes appear, the EPA sends its own mimes, who mime the arrest of the first mimes. The cascade of absurdity collapses under its own weight. But this risks turning governance into performance art, which is exactly what the proxy wants. But the template was set: use the enemy’s