We need to destroy the hive mind.
Hello, I’m Phillip. I write Science Fiction books and perform Standup Comedy which blends dark, existentialist musings with silly poetry.
Right here on Substack I also write about the issues writers and artists face in the modern world, hopefully adding a Sci-Fi Comedy twist to the articles, like that time I suggested aliens from the future were behind the retroactive censorship of Roald Dahl books. So if you’re reading this on Substack, you can expect a healthy blend of comedy, sci-fi, and some stuff in between.
That should mean these posts are entertaining, even if you’re a reader, and not a writer. But that’s up to you, so comments are open.
Today’s musical marvel is Echoberyl, a master of Darkwave Sci-Fi music. I would love for her to do music for a movie I am quietly writing, so cross your toes for me.
We need to destroy the hive mind.
There is a vast, grotesque thing looming in the sky today, and no, it is not the many millions of particulates the British government is considering using to blot out the sun1, nor is it migrants on jet packs. It is something much simpler, something I am qualified as a writer to talk about. That other stuff is above my pay grade. I won’t be bothering with it.
The thing looming above us all is the hive mind, some vast etheral superintelligence (or perhaps more accurately, superstupidity) that hovers and buzzes and makes sure you’re thinking the right things.
You are thinking the right things, aren’t you?
The hive mind controls to an extent what artists create, and in doing so, nudges the human species to a darker, boringerer2 future where we can’t even invent new words for fear of someone having already invented them and declaring they were offensive.
The hive mind was not the intentional product of a secretive shadow government, nor was it the work of a bored alien race who enjoy eating human brains, but only if those brains are flavoured with the subtle spicy tones of cognitive dissonance3, rather the hive mind is something that fell together sort of like a three-way relationship at the end of a night out, but with more limbs and disease. It is the result of several narcissists playing pretend as good people, and being stuck backstage with each other, having to one-up each fresh outpouring of nonsense with a new, more elaborate nonsense.
Recently, FITA (freedom in the arts) launched a report
“exposing a growing climate of fear, censorship, and ideological conformity in UK arts institutions. Based on testimony from 483 artists and arts professionals, the report reveals how many now feel unable to speak openly without risking career damage, exclusion or harassment.”4
Now, I won’t pretend I’ve read through the whole thing yet, but there are parts which resonate with my own personal experience as a writer and comedian, and those are the things I am going to talk about because I can’t speak for anyone else.
I don’t think I’ve ever been cancelled, but I don’t think it’s outside the realms of possibility for someone to try. Indeed, someone did once threaten to put my standup on twitter, which I genuinely took as a compliment before he reassured me it wasn’t.
Show, don’t tell.
In writing, this rule is easy to break down. It’s more interesting (most of the time) for readers to read a passage -showing- what a character is feeling, rather than -telling- them. Here’s an improvised example, using my characters from Who Built The Humans?
Nori Furukawa walked into his office with his head slumping toward his chest. He gazed sideways at the looming shelves to his right, at the old physics books, at the almost conspiratorial writings about psychic phenomenon. All these enemies lined up, staring at him, the man who failed to uncover their most obvious secrets. His head hurt, and his mind spun him in circles, trying to find what he missed in these manuscripts.
Or
Nori Furukawa was sad because he couldn’t figure out how to make a time machine.
It’s pretty obvious which is better. Here, showing and not telling actually shows you more than what plain showing could have done. That’s the trick, and that’s why “Show, don’t tell” often is misinterpreted by new writers who think they can’t explain anything to their readers. You can, but you should try to make it interesting.
In the real world, Show don’t Tell has a similar utility. On more than one occassion I have come across a spoken word poet who listed off all the causes he cared about at the start of his set (perhaps mercifully eating into his performance time) and who would then go on to violate every single principle he pretended to have as soon as he got off stage. He was telling us he was nice, but he was not showing it.
Because in the modern Creative scene, performative goodness is a far more efficient social currency than actual goodness.
The simulacrum has replaced reality.
Allow me to invent a malaphor for it.
If you help an old lady across the street and nobody is there to record it for instagram, does the old lady even make a sound?
Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
For every staged “animal rescue” video where they put the animal in danger before hitting the Record button, there is an artist who is playing dressup with opinions they don’t really hold, perhaps because to hold other opinions is to sacrifice your career.
A few years ago I applied for a radio show, and was told by an ex guest that the only way to get on would be to adhere religiously to the opinions of the host, even which football team they liked. At a poetry night I had someone heckle by screaming “vote Labour” at me, to which I replied “I was going to, but you’ve convinced me otherwise”. The poem wasn’t even about political parties, it was about spoken word poets berating their own parents for being working class, as if being working class is a sin.
The result of behaviour like this is a stultifying miasma that is almost impossible to wade through. If you want to build anything within this toxic green cloud, it will be hard to see the outer edges of it, and harder to see who is sneaking up behind you, stealing your ideas or seeking simply to kick away at your idea’s foundations. You cannot confidently build things now in the Arts, without first checking for local idea planning permission.
Image: The 456 aliens from Dr Who spinoff Torchwood - these evil creatures consume human children, and get what they want through hollow threats and performance, cultivating a culture of fear around themselves, sort of like a disgraced media personality.
Chapter 2
I disagree with everyone.
When I have interviewed
about his books, or been interviewed by about my own, I have no doubt that our conversations are only interesting to our listeners precisely because we are not beaming copies of each other’s thoughts around an echo chamber. I have a different way of telling spacefaring stories than John does, and my sense of humour is different to Patrick’s.The result of this is that I have an interesting life.
And I like it that way, so I want to shatter the hive mind.
Chapter 3
How to destroy the hive mind
Picture taken from a 6 May 2025 issue of THE TIMES, pinched from Gareth Roberts’ twitter.
https://x.com/OldRoberts953/status/1919714877263708488
I believe that, as a writer, my purpose in life is to tell interesting stories. The term ‘interesting’ may sometimes cover topics which other writers feel squeamish about (such as my comedy poem about assisted dying bills) or which they feel are “overdone” (such as my time travel novels where I attempt to find new and unusual plot ideas for time travellers).
When I first performed that poem about assisted dying, I was met with a split audience. A very serious poet came up to me after the gig and said it was amazing someone was brave enough to cover it and write about it, meanwhile others shook their heads from the front row. We need to feel more able to perform stuff like this, because I shouldn’t really stand out as unusual for being brave enough to cover that difficult topic.
Recently, I saw news of a literary agent admitting she would not look at submissions by authors who posted stuff on social media that didn’t align with her own personal politics.
More recently, I asked a marketer friend how to acquire funding for a performance / class I wanted to run. They told me, quite seriously, that I should put my ‘neurodiversity’ front and centre of my application, and consider booking a session with a personal fashion coach so I “look the part.”
I have synaesthesia (I can see music and hear colours) but I don’t want this to limit me as a human being. I want to be a storyteller, not a synaesthete, not an autist, not a ginger, not a white, not a non-trinary, not a bearded bloke. I don’t want to be a lefty snowflake, or a far-right, or whatever the other options are. I want to be me.
And I am afraid this new culture of breaking people down into component parts is getting in the way of that. That we have replaced humanity with marketing, and replaced conversations with slogans.
We are treating people as groups, and giving groups personhood.
That it is not merely an attack on art, but an attack on the individual.
An attack on the human spirit.
Ultimately, I think the best way to break free from the suffocating atmosphere in the modern arts, is to relentlessly tell jokes about it.
The people who are trying to control us are just people, and no people should be lifted to the degree that they are above and beyond satire.
So I am going to write jokes about it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are people in the Creative Industries today whose personal opinions get in the way of good art. There are therefore artists who are going unnoticed because nobody wants to represent them.
Imagine the first cave person experimenting with fire. Imagine if their peers conducted a risk assessment, and extinguished those primordial embers before our clever ancestor managed to manipulate the flames. Imagine if your favourite book wasn’t published because one character said something distasteful, or even if, more innocently, the author simply wrote the book across two genres and confused its future marketer.
I have been told by insiders, more than once, that the industry is “risk-averse” and that my books are that risk.
And this is why The Stephanie Glitch hasn’t been traditionally published.
If we silence voices we don’t like or which confuse our narrow worldviews, we kill creativity, and creativity got us all this way here.
Imagine how much further we could go?
Probably somewhere in space. Might have space worms. We could befriend the space worms.
So let’s start talking about difficult things again.
Because I want to meet the space worms.
There might be a part two for this, containing a few more examples. Depends on how everyone feels about this one.
British government considers making [your town name] more depressing
Note: I apologise for the use of the term ‘boringerer’ which I realise now is an offensive term for people who like digging circular holes in the ground.
Aliens that change our minds before eating them, is a story I am working on. That line was a teaser
FITA report into the arts
How lovely to read your thoughts on creativity and the strength it takes to just be yourself. I, too, enjoy the company of myself. Many years have passed before others appreciated those differences in me. Although I may not agree in totality with you, I do agree that we need more people who aren’t afraid to be themselves. Thank you, and may God Bless.
Keep up the great work. I agree with you, if I only interviewed clones of me, it would be boring even for myself.