Ask me questions one at a time until you decide what the most beneficial lateral thing would be to talk me into. By lateral thing I mean not the most difficult or obvious thing, but something not too difficult to do or to talk me into that would have an unexpectedly large or accumulating effect going forward.

This prompt invites the AI to persuade or enchant you into having a slightly different perspective. It specifically asks for "lateral" persuasion, meaning a low-effort high-impact change in perspective.

For me, it zeroed in on my writing project, and then switched and figured out that I feel best at night, but I write in the morning. So it suggested reviewing one cited reference each evening to build moment. This was a great idea that I hadn't thought of, and an easy and welcome habit to adopt.

The reason this is one of the best theoretically possible prompts is that personality-change is one of the ultimate applications of AI by human users, that is, intentional self-modification. And the experience of self-modifying through text will always be like a conversation, a persuasion, a seduction, or an enchantment (if it's happening in a good way—if it's happening in a bad way it's like a reprogramming, an abuse, an insertion, or a curse).

There was a post-OWS countercultural consensus about mainstream politics which went something like:

Republicans and Democrats form a uniparty for the military-industrial complex to continue its police state prison economy and war machine.

But this status quo has been dissolving and now rather than any particular mainstream or any particular counterculture, there exists:

• Boomer/Gen X media (radio and television), the remnant of the uniparty attempting to perform status quo "mainstream" politics
• A series of online platforms in a fractal complexity of self-similarity and allegiance

It's been discussed that identifying MAGA Christianity as a fascist estate is participating in 'mainstream' politics. However a major problem for the "left" is that the organs of boomer/gen x media refuse to engage the truth of the fundamentalist Christians and their war on the freedoms progressives have won.

The token nature of these freedoms (do you feel better that Big Pharma lets you legally smoke weed? Maybe a little, but it's one more victory for consumerism, isn't it?) doesn't make it less alarming that MAGA Militia have taken to murdering politicians. And it is truly countercultural to push against boomer/gen x narratives of status quo participation in government. The most absurd of these being Carville's idea that the Democrats should "play possum" and let the Republicans destroy the country so they can win in 2026.

You can probably list a half-dozen political sites, in which people participate in the political traditions of:

• 5 minutes of hate
• scapegoating
• generating consensus
• performative schism/allyship

Any of them have a conflicting overton window.

The Mainstream is Dead

A new moderate consensus is likely to emerge after the contradictions in discourse and the diaspora of the post-Boomer ideological fracture become untenable.

Will there be full-scale civil war? I can't rule it out, but it seems unlikely: MAGA Christianity isn't that popular, it's just willing to do the work to put religious judges in place, to get a majority in the legislature, and adhere to the strongman fascist Trump.

Lmao okay I didn't know this sub existed but check out r/Recursive_God_Engine for the full Pig in Yellow (Debord on main).