aiislove
2yr ago
Google has been failing to innovate for years. The last time they put out a useful innovation was Google Images, and every change they've made to it since its debut has made it worse. (Most recently hiding the link to images under a "more" button, dumbing down the "size" option years ago, and a handful of other things I can't recall at the moment.) Even the Russian search engine Yandex's image search is better than google images. The search pages are loaded with ads and irritating "helpful" information that just makes me spend more time trying to find what I want. Don't get me started on trying to find the names of songs by song lyric, the one thing a search engine should actually be good at 100% of the time...
I don't know if it's specifically "AI chatbots" that are going to threaten google but it seems like they've been stagnating for years so I'm sure some emerging technology is going to make them obsolete if they continue the same trajectory. I don't know why they're not incorporating AI into google images for example, the possibilities there are endless, it's like they're stuck in the 2010s while the rest of the internet has moved on
aiislove
2yr ago
I actually think it's cool, I like the surrealism of the setting and the repetitive rhythm of the audio and the physicality of the woman on the floor who is really beating herself up for the audience. I can't decipher the words or figure out where the banging is coming from but I don't think it's a terrible art piece. Obviously it's been decontextualized in this clip and I'm too lazy to find out more but I appreciate it for the absurdity alone.
And ironically I think you're wrong to say that the leaders of the western world even enjoy this, they're mostly far too cynically gone from the world of enjoyment at this point and sort of just accept it as the state of performance art today and view it through the lens of the Nth generation of like disruptive subversive irony that this class of person is supposed to view everything through at this point. I don't know it that makes it better or worse for you.
What kind of art do you prefer?
aiislove
2yr ago
That was happening to me too, I thought it was something wrong with my browser
aiislove
2yr ago
Can you give me a link to the tool these images were made from? I googled "imgn_ai" and the first result was "imagen-ai.com" so I installed their program before realizing it wasn't that, then I found "imgnai.com" which is a telegram thing and I don't know what telegram is, and then I found "imgn.ai" which is yet another thing that doesn't seem to be what made the images.
I reverse google image searched the first image and there are lots of twitter posts of the image but none are pointing to an original source or mentioning the program used to create it.
I'm asking because I want to generate similar imagery.
aiislove
2yr ago
I never knew exactly how we were supposed to read that part. I always felt like we were supposed to be rolling our eyes at Hermione and that her attempts at elf liberation were a satire of overly zealous leftism but then other times it felt like we were supposed to be on her side, granted I haven't engaged with the material since I was like 17. What do other people think?
aiislove
2yr ago
Great post, it's interesting to hear many of my observations validated from a heterosexual perspective. I've been trying to unpick the dynamics of straight relationships and how it mimicks or differs from gay ones so your post has given me much to consider.
In my experience it also takes a certain kind of person to be able to do this in the first place: either you have it, and any sex you have is going to be good... or you don't, and it's bad
True but I think it's a skill you can learn and develop over time. I definitely have it a lot more now than I did 10 years ago. I'd say it's on a scale, and some people have it a lot and others have it a little, and the more of it there is in a relationship the better it will be.
This also mimics straight-top (male) personal progress. This takes longer when the social conditions are literally just "top bad".
FWIW I encountered tons of "masc bad" messaging from fellow gays (especially on tumblr from around 2010 to 2016) that was really toxic and a similar impediment to straight-top personal progress as feminism is to them, I would imagine
Yes; you're absolutely right- it would destroy the entire scheme of homosexuality in the exact same way, and for the same reasons, that feminism-as-expression-of-"man-bad" destroyed heterosexuality.
This is a really interesting point that I hadn't considered before you mentioned it!
aiislove
2yr ago
For the longest time I'd assumed that gay men engaged in a pragmatic and egalitarian division of the passive and active roles so that both people get a fair turn.
There are gay relationships where they trade roles sometimes, but it's kind of just a nice thing for the top to do, or something to add excitement to the relationship, but you have to maintain the power dynamic at the end of the day or the relationship is going to fall apart.
I was more surprised to learn that apparently the passive role is predominant among gays.
I would say it depends on who you are and where you are. If you're 6'2 and 300 lb of muscle, everyone's going to look like a bottom to you, and you're going to look like a top to them. It would be degrading to you to be topped by 95% of the guys you meet. But if you're 5'2 120 lb and fem, trying to top, 95% of the guys you meet will be unwilling to be topped by you. Most guys fall in the middle, and younger guys tend to be more bottom and older guys tend to be more top. I don't think it's true that there are always more bottoms than tops, but it may be true that there are more men who see themselves as bottoms or are afraid to top.
Reframing the social dynamic as one where you give up and compete with the woman to win the man is incomprehensibly gay.
This made me laugh. Yeah, I know, I guess I'm trying to elucidate the more base situation that informs my homosexuality versus any straight man, and the best I can do is point to the fact that I'm afraid to compete with men for female attention so I want to compete with women for male attention instead
That's a great article, thanks for linking to it. Actually, homosexuality in the Middle East and Islamic cultures (and Greece) has been really interesting to me and something that I've been trying to demystify for myself and that has informed a lot of my viewpoint above.
For context, I'm a white American but I've spent a small amount of time in Greece, Turkey and the UAE. So by no means am I an expert, but during my travels I have dated and interacted with men and have had some really interesting experiences. The messaging we hear in the west, over and over, is that the Middle East is extremely homophobic, that they stone gays, throw them off buildings etc.. But in my experience, men in Islamic cultures are even more predisposed to homosexual behaviors than men in America or Europe are. I believe it's a combination of men from the Middle East being more egoic and drawn to gratifying their ego in a more shameless way than we are raised to do in the West*, and the natural consequences of a highly gender segregated society where the rules around heterosexual sex are very strict. As you've gestured at, it seems that a sort of makeshift "prison sexuality" abounds in the Middle East. And it is overt: in one instance, my cab driver was hitting on me, he was not shy at all; I refused his come ons because it was weird even though I did find him hot. I went to a restaurant and the guy I sat next to gave me his number and halfway through our meal his friend showed up who was definitely a homosexual, and there are entire areas of Dubai where 95% of the people you see on the street are men. Indeed, I've been all over the world and never experienced more men hitting on me randomly than in the Middle East. I can only imagine that homosexual behavior abounds in these areas, but to identify as homosexual is where people in the ME/Islamic cultures draw the line.
tl;dr "All" gay people in Saudi Arabia are bottoms and act effeminately, and they pick up straight men to penetrate them in hook ups.
That's not exactly how I would characterize the gist of the article. The conclusion I drew was that basically, gay identity is a western/globalist import, and the identification of an individual as a homosexual, itself, is what people object to in these cultures: whereas the pre-globalist position in the Middle East is that you're just a regular person like everybody else who happens to have same sex habits sometimes. And frankly I think this position is so much more relatable to my experience. I'm not gay because I was just born this way, I'm gay because I looked at straight sex, and couldn't conceive myself as having sex with a woman, but I can't escape the allure of sex so I am drawn to performing sex in a way that is unaligned with straight sex: basically I want to do the same thing that straight people are doing, but I'm a man attracted to men so it's going to look different. This is all a bad, rambling version of the point Foucault is trying to make when he pointed out that homosexuality changed in Western society from being a thing people did to something that people are, and that Islamic societies are still operating on the earlier "thing people did" version of the concept, and the "thing people are" version was helpful for gays in the west but has unintended consequences for people when they get imported into other cultures.
So: It's not that all gay people in Saudi Arabia are bottoms, and act effeminately, it's that there are certain people in SA who are adopting western/globalist concepts of what homosexuality "is" and "looks like," interacting with the "straight men" who are really just the old school pre-globalist guys who sometimes have homosexual relationships, but that don't identify with a "gay" label.
And from other research I've done, outside of the modern west and outside of situations where there are just absolutely no women around anywhere for extended periods, most homosexual relations are like this.
Yes, precisely. But actually, it also operates like this in "situations [with] absolutely no women around." (not sure if that's what you meant to say?) Indeed, I think the situation is even more pronounced in "prison gay" situations.
Bottoms don't want to be tops, and tops are only doing it because it's harder to find a woman to hook up with.
I suspect that many bottoms do want to be tops but are afraid to try. But it's more complicated than that. I think most guys aren't total tops or total bottoms, I for example prefer being a top especially in LTR situations but at the same time if there's a guy who I think is really hot I really don't mind if he tops me if he's confident and really able to do it well. Tops topping men because they can't find a woman seems plausible as I've stated above.
Do you have any sexual desire for women? Does seeing a conventional attractive naked woman do anything for you?
No. When I was very young I would masturbate to images of naked women but I rather quickly realized my attraction was really only to men. Recently I have gotten in the habit of watching straight porn occasionally, but only when it's bisexual or cuck porn where the male is the focus. I like to see beautiful women for aesthetic reasons outside of porn but I have no desire to pursue them. I could imagine having sex with a woman if I really believed she liked me, but I can only ever see this happening realistically in a desert island situation where there were no men for me to sleep with instead.
*and also, perhaps, a predisposition to homosexuality/pederasty: See Richard Burton's concept of the sotadic zone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton#Sotadic_Zone
aiislove
2yr ago
Yeah. Before I saw that pornographic film I'm referring to, I had looked at Playboy magazine and other softcore porn of nude women and masturbated to them, and did not imagine myself attracted to men in a sexual way. But after seeing that film, and seeing other films with nude men, I knew the feeling I had toward men was much stronger than the feelings I had toward women previously. In another universe, where I wasn't exposed to grown men in porn at such a young age, would I have grown up to be straight? I'm not sure, maybe. But at the same time, I remember I was infatuated with a boy in my first grade class who I would talk about so often that my dad got sick of hearing about him, so maybe I was just always wired to be gay from the beginning and my experiences just revealed my homosexuality to me, rather than causing a homosexual attraction to begin. I have no idea.
But the gay men I know don't report any such desires
This is what I'm trying to elucidate somehow (though it remains mostly opaque to me): the mechanism by which I as a gay man do not feel desire toward women. It seems like it's a matter of personal ego: that I can't imagine them liking me, so to imagine me trying to get them to like me back bruises my ego in such a bad way that I have no desire to pursue them. My brain seems to think of men as more receptive to love and able to reciprocate my feelings so while I do get worried about rejection from men, the thought of being rejected by men doesn't keep me from still trying to pursue them.
aiislove
2yr ago
I actually think he's not narcissistic at all, but is surrounded by narcissistic people and he doesn't know how to cope. Like all good creatives and artists, he's doing his best to represent the world as he sees it because he wants to help people but he does it in a way that steps on toes, and he thinks it's ok to step on toes because he thinks he's revealing things that will help people because it's helped him in the past. But he, like many of us at themotte, finds that exposing his reality gets him in hot water, but he's past the point of caring about not stepping on toes of people he sees as the elite, when he thinks it can help empower people who really deserve to be helped.
More plainly: Kanye sees Jews as oppressing poor people in America. He wants to help poor people in America, so he attacks Jews. He's not crazy, he just has a different perspective than everyone else who thinks "I can't attack jews because [fill in the blank.]" He thinks "I need to attack jews because they have the power, they are literally the ones who can keep me from being a billionaire (see what happened) and I'd rather attack people with power than poor hillbillies who wear White Lives Matter t-shirts" (hence his wearing a white lives matter t-shirt and attacking Jews.)
I'm not defending his actions or beliefs but it drives me crazy to see everyone misunderstanding him and thinking he's mentally ill when he's so clearly just working from a different perspective than the vast majority of people, in my opinion.
aiislove
2yr ago
All right, reading this feels like you're kind of pointing to some interesting observations but have come to different conclusions than I have. As a gay man I have complicated feelings about the matter but let me try to unpack some of your points from my perspective. This is going to be really long and informed by a ton of personal anecdotes combined with pop psychology that I literally just made up from my own experiences, so if anyone objects they can feel free to share their experiences instead, but otherwise here goes:
First of all I want premise this with a certain framing that I don't think many people are privy to, even among gay men and certainly not more broadly understood outside of gay circles*. That is to illuminate the dynamic of being a "top" or "bottom." Now, I was misled by this premise for years, believing it only referred to the sexual position of each partner during anal sex: The top puts his penis in the bottom's rectum. This is the broadly accepted and understood meaning in American mainstream society today. And according to your shiny mainstream LGBTQIA image, the top/bottom dynamic basically ends there.** But outside of that narrow American perspective on homosexuality, these terms are more loosely interpreted: In many languages, the terms for top and bottom are more translatable to "active" vs "passive," (aktiv vs passiv in German) for example. And indeed, at the end of the day, what determines who is the top and who is the bottom in a homosexual relationship has literally nothing to do with self identification as a top or a bottom: this sorts itself out naturally. There will always be one partner who is more dominant and one who is less dominant. Any third party can see this. It is strange and disorienting to see a bigger, stronger, taller guy be bottom to a smaller, weaker, shorter guy. It happens but it is weird. It is basically against the way of nature. Homosexual relationships that last are nearly always ones where the top has legitimate, physical, material claims to being the top over his partner. Gay relationships always fail when the bottom is sick of being the bottom, or he believes the top isn't worthy of being the top anymore, or the top starts doubting his ability to be the top.
From my experience, what I've outlined above is exactly how things play out, constantly, even though no one parses it into plain english the way I have. Basically, all gay men exist on some hierarchy or spectrum, that is sort of opaque to each of us at first, but that always sorts itself out in the realm of sexual play. The more dominant man will always become the top to the more submissive man, regardless of who's trying to put what body part where. Bad gay sex is when a submissive man tries to top a more dominant man. You can put up with being a bottom for a man who deserves it, but to be made a bottom of a man who doesn't deserve it, is horrible and degrading beyond the regular degredation of bottoming for a man who you do respect.
I'm rambling a bit so let me get on to some direct responses to what you've written now that I've gotten my own framing out of the way.
I feel like homosexuality is correlated with a lack of thirst of competition. Homosexuals like to win but they want to win without a struggle. It seems to me that non-gay men LOVE to be engaged in competition.
Here I get to talk about my observations of straight men, which have really enlightened me greatly about myself and about other gay men. Straight men are motivated to reproduce. But evolution has complicated things: It wants the most fit males to reproduce. So straight men must compete for the right to reproduce with women. It is not that straight men "LOVE" to engage in competition, it is that straight men WANT to engage in the competition, and believe themselves worthy of doing so. Now, an anecdote. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I saw a pornographic film of a man having sex with a woman for the first time, and this video really shocked me. I saw how huge his penis was, compared to my 8 or 9 year old penis, and how his body was so much more mature and fit than mine, and at that moment I was sort of "cucked" out of ever wanting to compete in the sexual arena with women. I thought, there's no way, this dude is obviously way more fit than I am to reproduce so I better just not even try. Having sexual energy in abundance, and mortified that I'd never be able to compete in sexual competition, I began rather to see myself as an object of sexual desire and tried to repress my masculine urges as I was so unconfident with my own ability to compete with them that my ego couldn't bear being rejected as a male. So I was drawn to conceiving of myself as a bottom, to be used as the sexual gratification of other men- because at least then my ego wouldn't be damaged when I tried to compete with other men.
Near the end of my 20s this role began to really grate on me. I was frustrated in love and sex; I would date many older men, who I was drawn to because it was easier for me to respect someone with more experience than my peers. But I didn't respect them particularly at the end of the day because I didn't see them as good enough to satisfyingly top me. So none of those relationships ever went anywhere. But I also dated a handful of men who were my age or a bit younger, and I always dragged them out, never going anywhere with them, and I never understood why until I realized that at the end of the day I wanted to be a top but was worried about rejection from these guys. In these relationships I was basically their top but too scared to actually make a pass at them because I was afraid of being rejected by them. I spent a few years at the end of my 20s not dating anyone, because I was tired of playing the bottom role and hadn't yet realized my desire to play the top role. Finally I did some self reflection and came to the realization that what I wanted was to be respected and play a top role in a relationship and once I got over my fear of being rejected, and accepted that I'm actually valuable and worthy of being someone's top, I've had much much more fulfilling relationships with men and dating is much more gratifying.
In summary, I'm trying to say that straight men perceive themselves as being a good fit for reproduction. They are driven to compete with other men to reproduce. In a way, my ego was too fragile to risk the rejection of women so I decided not to compete with other men for sex with women. It's as though part of my brain thought I should instead, seek the role of the female, and become the object of men's desires.
More directly:
Gay men are afraid of losing more than straight men. Our egos can't bear to be rejected by women so we create a new game within our own minds where we can become the object of affection of other men, who we know are horny so it seems impossible to lose.
I feel like non-gay men like the back and forth between opponents ALMOST as much as winning.
Actually, the most gratifying gay sex you can have, in my experience, is when the bottom is trying to do his best to be the top but the top is always secure in his position and brings up the bottom to his level but they both know who's in charge. Which echoes the back and forth you are describing here. But is this type of gay sex super common? Not really, in my experience. Usually it's the sort of safe sex where the top and bottom agree beforehand which position they're taking, and then they just do that, without any play or experimentation. It's better when the bottom can try to push the limits of the top, and the top is secure enough to be like, yeah dude you like that and play into it, while maintaining his status as a top. If a bottom tries to top the top and wins, it's gross and bad because the top has been degraded and the bottom feels bad about it too.
The point I'm trying to make here is that gay men probably aren't really predisposed to this sort of back and forth competition, but it is very gratifying when it happens in a good way where both partners are secure and enjoying themselves. Does straight sex have a similar dynamic? I'm curious to know.
It would explain why gay men are found in careers that don't necessarily have the strictest of win conditions. (Fashion).
I have a degree in fashion design and I don’t know what you mean by this. The fashion industry is extremely competitive.
"Competition is for losers"
At the end of the day, the barrier for gay sex is so insanely low that any “competition” that happens is purely elective. Like, as long as you aren’t aiming to top a guy way above you on the totem pole, i.e. your expectations aren’t totally unrealistic, you can get laid with little to no pushback from your partner. So if you’re competing as a gay man, it’s either because you’ve realized that it can be fun, or it’s because you’re a loser trying to top someone way out of your league. So I can see where Peter Thiel is coming from with that book title, but the underlying logic isn’t the same for straight men.
*Though sometimes I wonder if some Ayn Randian type cynical old women could sus out the top-bottom dynamic as I've laid it out in this post. I'd love to hear more straight people's takes on homosexuality as the echo chamber of gays talking about gays can really leave me feeling insane.
**I believe this is meant to empower people who play the bottom role in homosexual relationships. I personally find this role degrading for long term situations but pointing that out is extremely unpopular politically and risks the entire scheme of homosexuality imploding on itself, if every bottom decided to see their role as degrading, so I guess it's really best if all the tops just shut up and act like it's not degrading to be playing second fiddle to a fellow full grown man, but I digress.
aiislove
2yr ago
SoftWhiteUnderbelly
This one is really cool, thanks for telling us about it. I love the show Intervention and this channel reminds me of like raw footage from the interview portions of that show which is cool.
IsaacArthur. A man with an amusing accent (Virginia?)
It sounds to me like he has a bit of a speech or hearing disability, the one man I know who speaks similarly to him is from California but I think he grew up in a very poor household and didn't have speech therapy but most people who would speak this way as adults have had their speech corrected. I only listened to a few minutes of him speaking though so I'm not sure.
primitive technologies
Yup, the guy I was talking about is the one @JhanicManifold linked to. Primitive Technology.
Link it up. I love watching craft and Japanese woodwork videos.
Incredible braided cord: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXF_-eXRnUo
Handmade fans: https://youtube.com/watch?v=olIUslC6mv0
Also everything else on that channel is great: https://youtube.com/@aoyamasquare/videos
Good video on Japanese carpentry: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rMtSc2MJLcw
And not quite as relevant but I'm obsessed with this Japanese fruit sandwich making video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eatQ9-79zGU
aiislove
2yr ago
Nice tip, thank you! The videos on that channel remind me of this documentary I watched recently that I found engaging (ignoring the clickbait video title, the documentary itself is good): https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q1w5CKs19MY
aiislove
2yr ago
The squids are cool
Oh I found Vihart on soundcloud, I like her Christmas songs she has posted there. If you like her, she kind of reminds me a little bit of Maya Ben David: https://youtube.com/@MayaBenDavidMBD (though I think Maya seems a little more into irony/satire whereas Vihart seems more genuine from the bits I've watched just now)
aiislove
2yr ago
That train video is great, I'm traveling now but once I get back home I'm gonna love watching it on my big tv.
Thai night markets are awesome, I got to go to one a few months ago, that video you linked is making me hungry now haha
aiislove
2yr ago
What are some niche things you like to watch on youtube? The more obscure/random the better. Here are some of mine:
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People grocery shopping in Seoul/Tokyo (they don't speak, they just show them picking up items and putting them in their carts)
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People who use metal detectors and "fish" with magnets to find old relics (usually in the Eastern US and Western Europe, lots of civil war bullets and things like that are found)
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This guy who builds huts and other primitive technologies in the woods by himself
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Nail art videos
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People building small models of things (like dioramas etc)
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People doing traditional crafts (especially Japanese art craft like urushi and kintsugi, wagashi making etc)
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Old documentaries (especially from the 70s or about foreign cultures or groups of people who are unfamiliar to me)
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Videos from people who've bought castles in France showing their homes
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How It's Made type videos (particularly bakery food production)
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"Walk with me" type videos where people post high res videos of their walk through neighborhoods or nature
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70s cable tv variety hour skits
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Women doing their makeup while talking about true crime stories
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Videos of people eating at fancy cafes and restaurants in Paris
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Videos about people who live in far flung places like rural Alaska or Siberia and how they survive or make their home
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"Nostalgic footage" videos ranging from early 1900s street scene footage to compilations of everyday 70s and 80s scenes in east Asia
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Animated fairy tale videos (usually anime or Eastern European ones for me)
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Soviet movies (I particularly like fantasy ones for girls)
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Animal Crossing island tours (people showing you how they've decorated their islands)
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Walmart Story Time videos (mostly girls telling you about when they worked at walmart and weird stuff they saw or experienced)
I could go on but that's probably enough haha, let me know if anyone is interested enough in any of these and I can give recommendations for videos or channels to check out. But yeah I'm always looking for new interesting ways people use youtube so I'd love to hear what you all are into
aiislove
2yr ago
I guess to me, this is how I would see the distinction. The Ancient Athenian boy is tying his identity to the religion of his family and community, and the modern American boy is tying his identity to a story that was created by someone entitled to royalty checks every time someone sells a shirt with the word Spiderman on it. The ancient boy's family, friends and everyone he's ever met believes the myths as fact and has never met anyone who doesn't believe them. No one in today's America believes Spiderman was real and it would be weird if you did. If today's boy wants to grow up to make all his money writing Spiderman comics, he's going to have to hash out property rights with whoever's managing the estate's IP from some guy who died 30 years ago or face a big lawsuit, while the Athenian boy could have grown up to create his own myths about Achilles and spread them to everyone he'd ever met and no corporation was going to be able to silence his stories.
aiislove
2yr ago
Is that really that much different from an Athenian youth tying their identity to Achilles or Odysseus?
Do you mean an Athenian youth as in a young man from Athens, Greece today, or do you mean a hypothetical young man living in ancient Athens?
In case you mean the former, the main difference I would point to would be the test of time- that tales of Achilles and Odysseus have survived millennia to still be relevant and resonate with us today, whereas Spiderman (specifically) was just invented a few decades ago. Additionally there is more cultural legitimacy afforded by the proponents of ancient Greek myth, today and throughout history: philosophers, religious and government leaders back in the ancient times, professors and scholars of literature today and so on. People can argue that this shouldn't matter, but I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that in practice it does matter.
Additionally, I am personally very particular about aesthetic and the form that media takes. For example I have huge respect for anime and most Japanese art forms and find that American art forms are deeply unappealing in comparison. Modern Japanese tying their identity to (90s anime/manga*) Sailor Moon doesn't bother me nearly as much because I think the artwork that Naoko Takeuchi created and the 90s anime are both stylish and attractive and elegant, whereas the style of Western comic books I find garish and amateur and crassly commercial and lacking refinement. I know many Western media fans don't understand this but as a creative/artistic person, I can't stand when media looks bad, and Western media nearly always looks bad, in my opinion.
That was kind of a tangent but to tie it back in with your question: ancient Greek art generally looked good, or at least what's left looks good in the museums today. So if someone of Greek heritage wants to tie their identity to ancient Greek legends, I don't find that terribly embarrassing because it's rooted in something aesthetically pleasing. But when I leave America and have to be associated with the culture that brought the world Spiderman, I'm embarrassed by the lack of elegance and consideration for aesthetic that I see in Hollywood movies, Western comic books, American art and architecture and so on.
I may be destroying the basis of my original argument with this post, but I think the main point I'm trying to make is that if you tie your cultural heritage to someone else's ugly art, you're going to first be associated with ugly art and then you're going to be upset when the owners do something with it that will upset you. Neither of these things are good to me. So in my mind if you want to tie your identity to media, first seek out good media, and then have the foresight to understand that JK Rowling can be a TERF in 10 years or Star Wars can go woke in 50 years, and don't place too much stock in this identity to begin with.
*Sailor Moon Crystal looks bad.
aiislove
2yr ago
That's really disturbing to me and I'm sorry to hear your culture is going through that. I've always loved traveling and the pervasiveness of globalization is super depressing to me when I visit other countries. As an American I feel terrible that exporting our power and values bulldozes everyone else's.
To be charitable I try to also look at what the American cultural exports offer to people though- in many cases people's lives are improved by adopting new technologies and opening their borders to international trade and so on. You have to accept people's agency and their own right to choose to have their culture molded to fit international standards even though I don't think a lot of people do, or even can, consider thoroughly the negative effects of this in the long run. I mean, that's what I have to tell myself to keep from going crazy, haha.
aiislove
2yr ago
That's true, but the "convince congress to change copyright" solution doesn't do much for me as it allows people to continue to tie their personal identity to Spiderman, in a novel and more atomized personalized way and I don't really see much value in that.
My solution isn't entirely "unactionable" either, really, it's not like people can't have their opinions changed en masse in certain ways (that are outside of my scope of abilities but not everyone's)
aiislove
2yr ago
Older men, especially in service jobs, are more competitive and irritated by my presence these days. In my 20s and younger most older men would dismiss me as a kid but I've noticed that they are trying to jockey for control with me much more the older that I get. If I act anxious or like I expect them to give me bad service (which happens all the time) they can sense this and act hostile toward me, while when I was younger they would be more comfortable with their seniority and just do their job without their ego getting in the way. I have to sort of consciously act respectful and passive toward cab drivers and servers and so on these days just to get an acceptable level of service.
I get more positive attention from fellow gay men though. I think gay men are attracted to masculinity and maturity and getting older has given me more confidence which all make me more attractive to others. A few years ago I was worried that I was getting too old for men to be attracted to me but once I started embracing my 30s and playing up my adult traits I actually became more attractive to people.
aiislove
2yr ago
Alternately, just don't build culture around proprietary intellectual property. Having your cultural identity as an American tied to the whims of corporate interests is a recipe for disaster. See: Disney's Black mermaid. Millions of white Americans grew up identifying with Ariel and Disney World as part of their core identity, and now when the globalist interests of Disney shareholders decide that white America is a liability and not an asset, white America's cultural heritage is in the crosshairs.
At least when white American identity was more closely tied to Christianity you didn't have this problem. It actually really bothers me as a white middle American to think about how much of my own childhood and shared culture is owned by corporations or even just by people who wrote and published books or created something of their own. I envy European and Asian cultures who in many cases have many thousands of years of folk tales and traditions to draw from when American culture is locked behind IP protection laws from decades ago.
Your proposed solution is to end copyright protection sooner, but to me the ideal solution is to avoid building identity on anything proprietary to begin with. Admittedly I find Marvel and mass market films kind of gauche to begin with and the idea of people rallying around these properties as cultural entities worth tying identity to makes me uneasy.
I'm really flattered my post got AAQC'd. I had no idea how it would be received but I'm glad I could spark some interesting conversation. It's all really informed by years of lurking on the motte and applying lots of logic and lessons from other topics to my own experiences with sex and relationships
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