dukedevin

This is a collection of works I’ve pulled together over the last couple of years—poems, articles, and designs that feel like pieces of myself. Two articles, five poems, and a mix of art for you to wander through. It’s all packed into 28 pages, a half-page zine, so 14 sheets to print, fold, and hold. I call it Sacrifice Zone because I’m from Louisiana. And if you’re from Louisiana, you’re already marked. Denied personhood in a way. You live in a sacrifice zone.

What’s a sacrifice zone? It’s a place the EPA has declared so saturated with toxins, with the very things that twist life—birth defects, cancer, untold suffering—that it's been sacrificed. To capitalism, to industry. That’s where I’m from, the traditional lands of the Caddo people. Louisiana, a place written off before it had a chance to scream. A place of poverty, of less-than, where escape feels like a dream. But even in this zone of rot, we are home to art. One of the fiercest cultural engines in the country, and I’m proud of that.

Jazz musicians, hip-hop artists, storytellers, street artists, culture creators—we keep pushing the world forward, even as they write us off. From the land where we are born dead, I bring you Sacrifice Zone.

The emergence of the video essay as a cultural phenomenon is more than just a quirky trend; it’s a symptom of the West’s broader failure to harness and cultivate its productive forces, a visible marker of our economies slowly unraveling. On a macro scale, it reveals a profound mismanagement of labor—watching as a generation’s potential is funneled into crafting endless hours of content, dissecting Shrek or analyzing video games, instead of engaging in work that builds or sustains society. In China, the youth are driven by the desire to contribute to tangible progress, to build, innovate, and drive their nation forward. But in America, the dream has curdled. We’ve settled into stagnant niches of pseudo-intellectualism, finding comfort in the shallow pursuit of online validation within a system that has long since given up on real advancement.

Our failure is glaring. We no longer even pretend that we can send our youth to universities to study subjects that matter—if they do manage to attend, we burden them with crippling debt, forcing them into absurd career paths where ad revenue from lengthy video essays becomes a lifeline. It’s as if we’ve collectively agreed that these pursuits have some intrinsic value, when in truth, they are little more than distractions in a society that no longer knows how to channel its workforce effectively. This should be a source of deep embarrassment—a nation once proud of its industrial might, now reduced to a hollow shell, its workforce chasing clicks and likes in the absence of real opportunity.

Capitalism, with its endless rhetoric of innovation and efficiency, has failed us. If capitalism truly optimized labor and resources as it claims, we would see the fruits of that efficiency in our infrastructure—in high-speed rail lines connecting cities like San Antonio and Austin, enhancing mobility and productivity. In China, such connections are not just ideas but realities, tangible proof of a system that recognizes the value of investing in its people and their ability to move, work, and create. But here, in the heart of the capitalist West, we languish. Our labor force is squandered on content creation that serves no purpose, producing nothing of real value, a testament to the unproductive reality of our so-called efficient system.

The irony is stark—capitalism, in its current form, is profoundly unproductive, a fact laid bare for anyone who takes a cursory glance at the vast ocean of content on YouTube. The platform itself is a monument to our collective failure, a digital wasteland where the intellectual potential of a generation is frittered away, not on building a better future, but on the futile pursuit of relevance in a world that no longer offers them a meaningful role. In this sense, the video essay is not just entertainment—it’s a quiet cry of despair, a reflection of a society that has lost its way, where the dreams of the young have been reduced to the pursuit of fleeting digital fame in a collapsing economy.

i've been unemployed for the last few months, really at the end of my rope as of late and it's looking like things are finally starting to look up. I'm not sure if they say this to everyone who applies but i was told I was the top canidate, head and shoulders above the others who have applied, but they have 2 more interviews before they can confirm I have the job. I'm going to hedge on optimism for this and hope that comment (among a couple of others are genuine) because I really need them to be, if this job doesn't pan out. Well. Let's not get into that.

Dungeon synth with layered vocals and strings inspired by Hildegard von Bingen, but it’s polyphonic so it’s not

probably not the right sub for this but idk edit: since this is doing well pls peep my post in /mutualaid https://hexbear.net/post/3345286

I've posted here a couple of times before.

Some good news: Not in danger of eviction (for now), was able to get my Driver's License and I have applied to things like SNAP (food stamps) and similar benefits. Of course, I haven't heard anything back about those benefits, I got some help finding out more about what to do to get those (know where to go IRL now). They absolutely make applying for help so confusing intentionally.

Just asking for a few bucks to get some food while I play the waiting game, nothing crazy, just a bit more help. I was hoping I wouldn't need to beg for money from strangers once I got some food stamps or something but alas. Not going to turn this into a vent post but the help I've gotten over the last few months from random internet strangers has been life saving.

https://cash.app/$slimcongnito

Hello, I'm new to hexbear, was directed here by a friend bc of my situation.

Let me give you the long and short of it. End of January, fired from my job after inquiring about wage theft (missed a paycheck). Texas Labor Board told me to kick rocks because I was a 1099 (so no unemployment either). My Driver's License expired around the time I lost my job, I renewed by mail, but it was never sent, or sent to the wrong address. Either way, I have to renew in person. Waited from January to JULY, only to be turned away do to having the wrong kind of bank statement to prove my personhood. Have had multiple job offers, all said the same "We can't hire you without a valid ID".

I've survived off of donations from friends, gig work (I do free lance web and graphic design) and selling my things. I have a gofundme going right now (please DM if you'd like to donate, I don't want to link my real name to an anarchist website).

I'm $500 short on rent and will be evicted (and thus homeless with no valid ID). My landlord is "just some guy" so thankfully he's been very patient which is good, but he's made it clear he will file for eviction very soon. I'm kinda at the end of my rope here, I don't know what else do right now.

Any help is so deeply and unfathomably appreciated. Money will be going basically directly to my landlord, but also to get some essentials like dog food, hygiene products, etc. The only way I have to recieve donations is the gofundme (Please DM for this) and cashapp.

https://cash.app/$slimcongnito