I’ve been writing about BusinessMagik for a while and I love the articulation that Venkatesh gives to Lorecraft here:
I mean, this stuff is at some level ridiculous to my hidebound Gen X mind. Lore? Magic? Witchcraft? Vibes? Management by memes? Lexicons and larps? Tweeted incantations of power? Work as a multiplayer game? The workplace as an extended universe fiction?
Good for fun and games and actual fiction, but as a basis for Serious Things? Really?
When you’ve spent the first 45 years of your life convinced you are some sort of hard realist, with an imagination shaped by the end of the Cold War and the unforgiving economic landscapes of the early neoliberal world order, it is hard to entertain the thought that perhaps reality is, or could potentially transform into, some sort of malleable medium for imaginations addled by something uncomfortably close to magical thinking.
But of the two worlds I’ve been witnessing, I am becoming convinced that the emerging weird world being claimed by lorecraft, with tarot cards and literal magical thinking in the mix, is actually more real, and has been all along.
The dying world I spent so many years understanding on the other hand, despite the powerful normalcy field surrounding it, is in fact the less real world. The magical thinking that governs it is all the more powerful because those caught up in it are not even aware of it.
There’s more where this came from. We’re only getting started.