aiislove
1yr ago
The third paragraph in my post was an attempt at pointing to some of the evidence I have seen of the rightward shift in art and culture. Others would be the podcast The Perfume Nationalist, countless tumblrs I've seen lately that glorify poor white underdog Trump's America type imagery and identity, and so on. Also the Barragan Spring 2023 fashion show, and the fashion brand called Praying. Brandy Melville. Recent Prada.
As I said in my last paragraph, most of the people in the scene are sort of doing this shift covertly and hiding behind a mirage of ambiguity as to what they are doing (for example, the Red Scare subreddits are filled with people who have no apparent awareness of the rightwing nature of most of the talking points presented on the show.) So it makes evidence difficult to point at. Indeed, much of art and fashion is based on "seeming" rather than anything overt. For example, I can look at Nicholas Ghesquiere's recent collections from Louis Vuitton and see his weird ugly belle epoque-meets-18th century panniers as a kind of rightwing trolling misogynistic hostility against modern women, while the same modern and progressive feminist women can look at the same garments and imagine them as empowering pieces to help them be single mothers with, or whatever.
I don't think that art and fashion, or the politics of people who participate in creating culture, is the sort of thing that you can study, so I don't know how I could provide sources other than by relating my personal anecdotal observations. I'm not going to dox myself but I can tell you that in the least, I'm very interested and personally invested in the creative industries and read themotte enough to be able to identify newly emerging rightwing patterns when 5 years ago you would have gotten you canceled to the ends of the earth for the same thing.
As an aside, I posted in the small scale thread because I didn't really want to attract the hostility and pedantry of the main thread but it seems I've attracted it anyway. I enjoy themotte because I think most of the posters are smart and have unique points of view but the aggression can really be a lot to take when I'm just looking for a more friendly conversation sometimes. I wish there was another thread that was more low stakes than this one, but the friday fun thread says it's not for culture war content so I don't know what to do.
aiislove
1yr ago
Which artists?
Artists/creatives ranging from the people I mentioned in my post to friends of mine who are not famous but are artists.
And 'right wing' how?
I don't know, as right wing as losing a billion dollars for antisemitism and talking about race science openly on a podcast, which in the grand scheme of /r/themotte isn't probably very rightwing but in the grand scheme of like, NYU grads, is basically literally hitler compared to ten years ago
Ten artists on your twitter timeline going RW is different than, say, half all existing elite artists 'going RW' / a new cross-societal group of elite talented RW artists.
Yeah, I see the mainstream elite talented artists as still being deeply left aligned, but the people with less exposure and fame diverging from that. I don't care if Yayoi Kusama or Jeff Koons goes right wing tomorrow because I don't care about their work. I care about people who have always made interesting work to me veering away from liberal ideology because I care about interesting work and seeing where it fits in the political spectrum.
Is there a RW riefenstahl today? Leaving a deep mark on all filmmaking? And how right-wing - is not being a brain dead liberal and reading Sowell enough?
There aren't even leftwing directors leaving a deep mark on all filmmaking today so I think asking for a rightwing one is pretty out of the question for now
Red Scare and their 'scene' did not cause Kanye to be antisemtic, or anti-left.
Everyone in the NYC/LA fashion/art scene basically knows each other, Kanye is definitely getting exposed to these people and I've heard his rants where he explains that he thinks leftists/BLM are coercing the Kardashians into believing/saying whatever they want. If Patrik Sandberg/DIS Magazine people/Ryder Ripps/Azalea Banks/Red Scare girls/Walter Pearce/a handful of other people in the scene weren't all collectively looking into vaguely alt right ideology Kanye West wouldn't have any idea about it either.
MIA is barely a "thinkier".
She has a platform and a creative oeuvre and is daring to say something other than the democrat party line so I feel she's relevant to the discussion at hand
Idk who runick is, the first google result was ... ballotpedia?
He's a talented graphic designer making interesting work, you spelled his name wrong
Where's the New Right Eighth Edition celine, or pound?
I don't know, I'm not claiming there is such a person
To answer the question directly - artists have 'moved from left to right' a lot historically, and the mainstream RW artistic presence was, for most of history, way more prominent than it is now, and the movement you see is very small.
What are some examples of artists moving left to right en masse? Historical precedences for this, specifically? That's what I was curious to know about.
You may characterize the movement I see as small but I don't see the movement ending where it is today. It's gaining enough traction with enough tastemakers and cultural producers that are young enough that it could be the genesis of some broader right wing thing moving forward and that's what interests me, not really in just the small shift that's happened already.
aiislove
7mo ago
Perhaps the greatest political challenge is what to do with surplus young men.
Give them more money and power and respect. Speaking personally, I felt I had very little incentive to contribute to society for a long time. I would do the right thing and not get much in return, or I would do the wrong thing and at least get the satisfaction of doing what I wanted. Once people in my family died and I was given greater respect and means to change my position in life I began to respect my family and the society that I lived in more. The fact that people live very long lives now is leading to fewer young people with wealth, and old people don't have the energy or interest to improve the world around them in the same way that young people do. A wealth transfer to people with energy and a longer time horizon would really help keep them from eating each other alive.
aiislove
9mo ago
Thanks for sharing your experiences, I can relate to a lot of it. Speaking as an overweight but formerly obese person, I don't think that people in general really hate fat people that much. They hate the idea of themselves being fat, and may resent fat people for getting away with being fat when they wouldn't be able to live with themselves for being fat, but I think that generally people are as accepting of fat people as they are of dwarves or the mentally challenged or some exotic ethnic minority or whatever. Fat people probably hate ourselves more than the average person hates us.
aiislove
11mo ago
a man of mature years than by a child of twelve
Was the thinking (by MacArthur, and/or by the general Western Allies) that Japanese civilization as a whole was a much younger or less developed/more recently modernized culture than Germany, or that the people of Japan were inferior to the German people by such a degree that they were characterized as 12 year olds compared with Europeans?
aiislove
11mo ago
centraco
What does centraco mean? Central American? I just tried googling it and couldn't find anything, was it a typo?
aiislove
1yr ago
Dude you are doing this all wrong. You don't need to be super hot or perfect or whatever you're trying to do. You need to be nice to yourself, accept yourself with all the flaws you have, understand that you're doing your best and nobody's perfect, stop comparing yourself to others. Just be happy with who you are. Otherwise you are playing an impossible game that leads only to misery.
Do whatever you have to do to change your mindset, don't do whatever you have to do to chase perfection or charisma or whatever. You sound insufferable because you can't accept the good parts of yourself so if someone admired any of your qualities, you're so hard on yourself that you'll repulse anyone who wants to show affection toward you. This is a horrible way to live, for yourself and for the people around you, so you owe it to yourself and others to get your shit together, show kindness and gratefulness toward yourself and those around you and stop comparing yourself to anyone you think is better off than you. They're probably going through all sorts of horrors that you can't see, just like you are.
aiislove
1yr ago
I teach at a big progressive university and "cancelling" is basically made up and not something that actually happens, and when it does, the administration clamps down on it hard and the cancellers shut up.
Can you please expand on this because I find it hard to believe but maybe I'm just too online.
aiislove
1yr ago
Thanks for your post. I have been curious about taking adderall in the past but reading your experience makes me not want to take it. I have a close friend who takes it and his behaviors are often obnoxious and selfish like the ones you described doing. I'm also prone to depression and anxiety so I'm glad to know that I should avoid it on those grounds as well.
aiislove
1yr 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
1yr ago
Does the volunteer comment moderation feature show the comments completely out of context? I can imagine that there are situations where a comment could look like a bad comment out of context, but in context the comment is perfectly fine. I would worry that people or comments could get flagged as being bad but that are fine in context. Hopefully the human reviewing the volunteer judgment of the comment would look at the comment in context before taking action on it, but that seems like it would result in extra work, depending on how the whole thing is implemented.
Speaking as a gay man this is extremely accurate. Once you start noticing that most gay guys are competing for whoever they all think is the hottest guy around you can't stop noticing it. I've noticed if I'm with another guy who likes me, but isn't hotter than me, I get way more attention from other guys than when I'm out by myself. Alternately, when I'm out with a guy hotter than me, he gets all the attention and I get none. This is basically Rene Girard's concept of memetic desire in play.
aiislove
1yr ago
Populism will prevail, and the world will burn while the Americans prosper off the chaos.
Why do you think Americans will prosper off the chaos? American hegemony can't last forever and China seems much more ready and willing to fight for the gains than anyone in the west these days from my view. I agree with the rest of your post but I don't see things working out as well for the US.
aiislove
8mo ago
I spent over a year traveling outside the US and it was great, I completely ignored local politics and didn't have to worry about US politics at all except for what I saw online. Almost no one talked to me about American politics or if they did they had such a different perspective than the people who irritate me in the US that I was able to hear them out and listen to them with a more critical distance than I do when people in America do the same. I like spending time in places where I don't know the local language because I don't have to get irritated by the political implications of everything and can just operate at a more basic level like a child does, sort of feeling what is going on around me rather than being bombarded with social and cultural messaging at every second like it is in the US
aiislove
8mo ago
short questions that don't get answered
This drives me crazy, I usually make an effort to upvote people who ask good questions because no one else ever seems to, here or on reddit. I think asking the right question to the right post is extremely useful for coaxing out relevant information in discussions and the fact that people downvote or ignore well placed questions always irritates me.
aiislove
9mo ago
The point of Barbie being "sexually harassed" five minutes after arriving in the real world is to illustrate that her luxury beliefs and wokeism is delusional. The Barbie dream world represents everyone who lives in a woke simulacra of the real world where the horrors of reality are shielded from their view. The point of the harassment isn't to portray the dangers of sexual assault, it is to illustrate the dangers of living in a fantasy world when other people are exposed to real horrors every day. Barbie brought the sexual harassment onto herself by dressing in a sexualized way and not anticipating the realities of interacting with people who aren't in on the luxury beliefs that Barbie got to hold previously.
aiislove
11mo ago
As someone who used to listen to Coast to Coast AM all night every summer in my, er, late youth, I'm curious to know if there are any interesting developments in cryptozoology or paranormal activity over the past few years. I kinda lost the plot on the UFO stuff, the conversation always feels so masturbatory ("The government says [something exciting]!" but the [something exciting] always seems to be something, um, not exciting, to me...)
aiislove
11mo ago
Have been to Mykonos and stayed in Athens about a month. The cab drivers in Athens are 100% insane as is all the traffic in the area so just be ready for that I guess. Look for restaurants with mean looking old Greek men sitting outside them all day long- the waitresses might not speak english and it might be awkward but the food will be so, so good. I recommend anything with feta and any and all roast meats- roast chicken with potatoes in Greece can be insanely good, roast pork, fava bean dip, of course try spanikopita from bakeries... now I miss Greece!
The Acropolis in Athens is cool but going to have tourists, the Acropolis Museum nearby is pretty good too. The city can be quite grimy but doesn't really feel unsafe so it can be charming but I personally stayed in a suburb which was a bit more comfortable. The beaches near Athens are odd, they're mostly a few yards wide a the largest so I wouldn't really recommend them unless you're just really in the mood for the beach while you're in Athens though I imagine you'll just do the beaches in Corfu instead
But have fun, Greek people can be super super nice if you're friendly and laid back. Also just general advice as someone who travels a ton: Do a bit of research on places that interest you personally and have them starred on a map (I just use google maps.) Then when you're in an area you can pull up your map and see a handful of places that looked interesting to you beforehand and you can just go. It's good to have a variety of things, like some restaurants, snack places, museums, shops, whatever you're into so you can always have an idea for something to stop by when you need something or want to kill some time and don't know the area well already. If there's something that interests you, look into it, don't do tourist stuff just because everyone else does it.
aiislove
11mo ago
You're not exactly wrong but I would sort of add that being "attractive" also involves projecting "confidence" and "power." You can be super hot but if you look like you hate yourself it won't matter, and if you look powerless you also won't be attractive. Lots of confidence can more than make up for lack of physical attractiveness.
aiislove
11mo ago
You're right that there are so many conflicting opinions about dating out there. I think it's because lots of people want different things and have different experiences with dating so what works in one situation doesn't work in another. I have been single forever so have lots of experience dating and I can tell you that the most important thing is to be honest, be realistic with yourself about what you want. If you aren't really into someone, don't string them along, and don't pursue someone you think is really out of your league either because you won't be confident and secure enough in the relationship to make it work. Really think about what you want out of a relationship, no matter what that is, and then pursue people who can give you that, because then you'll be acting in accordance with what you really want. For example I used to spend a lot of time with men that I was attracted to in theory and enjoyed being with them but they weren't really what I was looking for in a partner so the relationships never went anywhere. Don't be afraid to pursue the people you actually want, I used to avoid this because I didn't want them to reject me, but more often than not now I'm not rejected by the guys I like and if they reject me then I can simply move on and look for someone else I who fits what I'm looking for.
Also working on self improvement and increasing self esteem is huge, dating was the worst when I hated myself because I also hated anyone who liked me, so do everything you can to fix your issues and treat yourself kindly and remember that you don't have to be perfect, just kind to your partner and yourself
France is so globohomo that gay men told me when I was there, that there are no gay bars anymore (outside of Paris) because it's depassé so all the gays go to straight bars. I assume that means they're so integrated into mainstream society that the distinction between gay and straight bars just doesn't exist. As a gay man this sounds horrible because I don't want to be rejected by 90% of the men at a straight bar and I don't want to just hit on the obviously homosexual ones.
And regarding Japan, have you watched the NHK lately? Their news is more globohomo than NPR half the time (though I suspect it's more reflective of an attempt at fawning to the international media/pleasing Americans as propaganda than any actual reflection of the beliefs of the people of Japan). Their traditional culture does seem like a strong defense against globohomo however, I would broadly say that South Korea feels more globohomo than Japan though it's hard to say how much of that is due to SK's much more recent modernization than Japan's. Japan feels more mid-20th century while SK feels more 21st century, so SK has more globohomo while Japan has more of a mid 20th century hippie Beatles energy (still!).
Germany has gone so globohomo because of a very German obsession with not appearing to align with Nazism and don't seem to have the desire to dream up anything other than the American globohomo enterprise. The UK actually feels less globohomo to me as the culture is so pessimistic that they don't take globohomo very seriously and just seem to put up with whatever's going on in a passive way. I haven't been to Australia at all or Canada very much so I can't comment on the globohomo invasion of these places.
Edit: After re-reading your comment I do actually agree with what you said, I formulated my response as a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that France and Japan aren't globohomo at all (which isn't what you said.) So excuse me. I do agree that strong local cultures are a bulwark against globohomo.
aiislove
11mo ago
I did take that into consideration as well, I was in Japan for three months and lived in a random Tokyo suburb but traveled to small towns while I was there and I've been to Japan two other times before covid also and generally avoid touristy places like the plague and I'm basing my observations on all that, not as a random tourist who flew to tokyo for 2 weeks and took the shinkansen to Kyoto and back
aiislove
11mo ago
Makeup and skincare products age your face and give you acne and bad skin to make you buy more makeup and skincare products.
I mean, if they don't, the industry is leaving money on the table.
aiislove
1yr ago
two layers of washable, microfiber blankets.
No no no no no no no. I hate polyester bedding so much that I refuse to travel without two 100% cotton sheets in my suitcase at all times in case I run into anything with more than 0% polyester. I sweat heavily, polyester against my skin feels like sleeping in a wet ziplock bag to me.
The best bedding I ever encountered was an airbnb in Thailand, where the mattress was very big and solid, with a very taut 100% cotton chambray bedspread and a very taut but high loft duvet with the same fabric as the bedspread on top and that was it. It was incredibly comfortable in the humid climate and hot weather there. The tautness of the whole thing made it very comfortable because it's all the extra wrinkles of fabric that trap heat and moisture and make beds miserable. I'm going to buy myself a bed and bedspread and duvet just like what I slept on once I buy a house.
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.
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