aiislove
11mo ago
I empathize with your sentiment but I think it's a little bit uncharitable, I mean people had a valid right to be afraid of the virus as well. My father was high risk and ended up dying from it, so to paint everyone who freaked out about the virus as a sheeple is slightly insulting, though I realize that for the majority of people they didn't have nearly as much reason to worry. I also wonder if you're living in a blue tribe setting or somewhere outside the US as the response from where I was in a more rural area wasn't nearly as sheeple-y as your post seems to indicate, plenty of people were rolling their eyes the entire time in the small town I was living in
aiislove
1yr ago
What advice do people here have for living among people they can't stand or see as ideological enemies? I'm very contrarian. I have foolishly bought into the narratives from both the right and the left about why their opposing parties are bad but neither of the narratives from either party about why their own party is good. I have a very low opinion of nearly all fellow Americans. I have been traveling outside of the US for the better part of the year and it has been fantastic being able to meet people who barely know who Donald Trump is, but I'm absolutely dreading going back to the US and being pulled back into the muck and the entirely degrading discourse of the political environment. To make matters worse, I am self employed and can work from anywhere so any return to the US would be by my own will and it will absolutely make me feel like an idiot to be back in the culture I'm so happy to be away from. Though I will be happy to see my family again and experience the big beautiful open empty spaces and long straight roads that lead nowhere. (Those are the things I miss the most.)
So, yeah, any advice? Do I just need to get over myself and practice acceptance and just meet people where they're at? I had a really (to me) innocuous vaguely centrist comment get downvoted into oblivion tonight on reddit and it's triggering the same irritation that I felt every day while I was in the US so I just wanted to get some help from people who might be able to relate to being a contrarian in a world where everyone seems so invested in things you'd rather ignore. I wish I could go back to before 2016 when I didn't care at all about politics and was able to ignore the news. Should I quit reading the news and places like themotte cold turkey? I just find this place really intellectually stimulating in a way that I don't experience elsewhere so it would be such a loss to me if I didn't keep lurking here, but at the same time it's not helping me think more kindly of my fellow man
aiislove
8mo ago
What do you guys do when you feel stuck in a rut? It feels like all I think about is food, sex and money and it's really irritating. I'm constantly preoccupied with what I'm going to eat for my next meal, how I'm next going to get laid and how I'm going to make more money. I don't like spending time on activities that are nonproductive so I try to avoid video games. I spend a few hours every day on my computer but it's kind of a half work half mindless visual processing thing. I make money passively so I don't have to really work more than an hour or two a week but I usually end up spending a few hours more developing ideas and doing work that's not really necessary. I have a lot of free time but I spend a lot of it organizing stuff in my house and cooking. I am dating a bit but I don't really like any of the guys I'm talking to for anything long term so it feels like a dead end there. I also don't really generally like people and would rather spend time alone, I feel like these convos always go to "go to church" or "join a community" but it just sounds irritating to me.
When I used to feel this way I would just take walks outside or drive around or do chores around the house but I have done all of those to death. I have walked every path within an hour of my house, driven everywhere in my state and done many chores. I traveled for over a year and it was great but now that I'm stuck at home again the inanity of daily life is driving me crazy.
aiislove
1yr ago
the only remaining alternative to punishing social transgression is mob rule, [...] even a purely-black community that does not police or imprison its members will eventually turn to lynching or exile.
Yes, exactly, that's why I find the concept of police abolition/defunding the police so frightening. It doesn't mean that suddenly there are no cops, it means that suddenly everyone is a cop.
aiislove
1yr ago
Test question shows a French peasant and a priest riding on a rich guy. Implication is that he is supporting them. Correct answer is “this image depicts France after the revolution.” I show up and point out that the nobility was destroyed (not esoteric knowledge) and largely the clergy too, and therefore this image cannot depict France after the revolution.
Was it this image I just found on the wikipedia entry for the French Revolution? If so, that would be (according to the caption on the entry) "the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back."
Actually, I suspect there probably is another version that depicts the Second Estate carrying the other two on its back ("a French peasant and a priest riding on a rich guy" as you describe) that is supposed to show the apparent situation after the revolution which you were shown, parodying the image I've linked to above
But either way, even after the French Revolution, France still had many rich people, right? Certainly the monarchy was abolished, and maybe the nobles were stripped of their titles or shunned from society or something, but somebody was still owning all those chateaux and vineyards and 18th century jewels, right?
Can someone who has worked in customer service please explain to me how to be less irritating to service workers? I am socially anxious and awkward and am repeatedly finding myself in situations where I feel like I'm making service workers uneasy and it makes me feel terrible. I have never worked a public facing job before so I don't know what to do or avoid doing to help make their jobs easier and I can tell that they get irritated with me when I do things that I have no idea are going to be irritating to them. It seems to be getting worse the older I am as well, when I was in my teens and 20s people were much more patient with me but now in my 30s I seem to be more intimidating to people and they're less forgiving toward me. Growing up I always admired my dad and grandfather for being able to talk to anyone and make them feel comfortable but this is a skill I never learned. Does anyone have advice on how to develop this skill?
Alternately, can someone give advice on how to stop ruminating about recent socially awkward situations? I can try to improve my behaviors but at the same time I can't change how other people perceive me so even if I did everything 100% right there would probably still be times where I was seen as irritating to people. I'd like to just forget these situations once they happen, if I can't stop them from happening altogether.
aiislove
7mo ago
Is anyone else considering leaving the US or moving to a secluded area for the 2024 election season? The 2020 and 2016 election seasons had such a negative impact on my mental health that I don't want to stay where I am for the election next year and since I can afford to avoid it I think I will. I will probably also block myself from reading the news and themotte and most social media as well when I'm away. But I can't remember when things really start to amp up where politics becomes unavoidable- the election is held in November, but what time of the year do things start to get ridiculous? I'd like to be gone for all of September through the beginning of November at least but I can't remember if the entire summer in an election year is bad or not. Maybe I'll just wait it out and leave as soon as it gets unavoidable but I fear by then it'll be too late and I'll be too annoyed and I'll chicken out and stay longer than I need to.
aiislove
1yr 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
1yr ago
I used to be into gadgets and cool tech stuff growing up. I collected ipods and mp3 players and game systems and stuff like that but I kinda fell off around the time that the PSP came out. Now I have the budget to invest in cool stuff but all I have is a macbook pro and an iphone so I feel pretty boring. What are you guys into these days? I haven't been impressed or wowed by anything new in a long time. It just seems like electronics companies are putting out slight improvements to existing products and there's nothing cool coming out anymore. Are any of you into electronics? What have you seen lately that you're into or looking forward to coming out soon? Are there any good blogs or news sites to follow interesting tech? (especially stuff like indie development, I own Apple products but they're really rather boring and I see them more as nicely functional things than anything that excites me and mainstream Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo gaming has been pretty disappointing all around post-PS2 era imo)
Just want the excitement I used to feel when I would look at a new mp3 player back in 2003 again, haha.
aiislove
1yr ago
Did you read my post? I have been out of the US for the better part of the year now, I am having a great time not being near any Americans, but I don't want to live outside of the US long term. I essentially see everyone in the US as someone I can't stand or as an ideological enemy to some degree, but find the infrastructure of the US as the most hospitable place for me to live, long term, for practical reasons. Your reply isn't particularly helpful since I'm inclined to make peace with my neighbors at some point rather than run away from them like I have for most of my life.
aiislove
1yr ago
Is anyone here knowledgable about food safety? I really hate getting food poisoning. I've been in Asia for a few months and I'm surprised to see prepared foods including seafood and meat being left at room temperature at grocery stores and food markets all day long. I've seen this in Thailand, South Korea and Japan. In the US prepared foods are required to be refrigerated or heated at all times for food safety reasons.
I did some googling but didn't find any satisfying answers as to whether I personally (as an American) can safely eat food that's been left at room temperature for hours in grocery stores in Asia or not. One forum I read said that food producers (i.e. farmers) have much more strict regulations in East Asia than the rest of the world so it's not a concern. (They also said that in the US and other countries, food safety falls more on the end seller rather than the producer as in East Asia.) Another forum said that Asians are just more used to the contagions that would be present than foreigners so they don't get sick. Another forum mentioned something called "fried rice syndrome" which is a common food poisoning from leftover rice that hasn't been stored properly. If either of the latter two cases are true I think I should avoid eating food that's been sitting out but I'd like to get some advice here.
aiislove
7mo ago
I used to want to be part of the blue tribe but after seeing how they treated the red tribe since around 2008 I just don't anymore. The condescension and classism is so hideous. How can you see people who you feel culturally superior to and have contempt toward them rather than compassion and empathy for their condition? Yes, walmart is a hideous place, but god so is Baltimore. The red tribe likes big trucks and guns because they're tiny scared people in a big scary country. If you're taking the bait and seeing them as some Jan 6 insurrectionist threat rather than people with decades of subpar education under a semi hostile cultural millieu that confuses them and your response is "ew, no thanks" then I think that view is morally repugnant and I don't want to take part.
aiislove
10mo ago
Do you think that tik tok's particularly strong boosting of local content, especially compared with other social media platforms, is possibly tied to a desire by the platform to deepen partisan and regional divides across the US?
There is also something dark in the way the algorithm is great at boosting content that shows us exactly what we desire in the most degrading way. For example I'm socially anxious and insecure about my masculinity so my feed was overrun with hypermasculine extremely affable men to a ridiculous degree. I have never had that experience with any other social media platform. I haven't used the app in over a year but there was something about it that always struck me as more toxic than any other. It is almost like the mirror of Erised, the magic device that shows us our deepest desires but never gives them to us. I found it completely maddening.
aiislove
1yr 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
1yr 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.
aiislove
8mo ago
I don't really see a better proxy for judging a sense of duty to others than blood/nobility. Anecdotally, the people in my family who have inherited their wealth generationally have significantly more sense of responsibility to the community and those around them than the ones on the other side of my family who believe they've earned their wealth and refuse to take care of their homes and barely invest their resources to help themselves, let alone the people in their families or the broader community. I suspect this stems from the sense of fear that those born into no money feel toward money, whereas the family members who always had money were much less fearful about it and happier to spread the wealth around. Frankly I want to be ruled by people who are secure in their wealth and are willing to spend it to improve their lives and the lives of those around them rather than by people who want to hoard their resources out of learned apprehension and fear. Family history of wealth tracks the former better than any other metric I can imagine.
aiislove
10mo 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
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
7mo ago
Do you think that painting people as obese walmart shoppers who dislike the things that you like is a good display of empathy and compassion? Can you see how I might interpret your opinions as being rooted in condescension and classism?
aiislove
9mo ago
your average modern day HBD-informed racist's idea that White people are superior on account of their cognitive capacity and affinity for civilized behavior; that they basically deserve higher status for some contingent merits.
I don't think this is what HBD racists are saying. And if they are saying this, it is because they are trying to distract themselves from the underlying issue, which is that smaller weaker people are afraid on a physical material level of bigger stronger people who are more prone to aggression and violence. Whites and Asians don't "deserve" higher status on contingent merits because they're smarter, whites and Asians "deserve" higher status in society because when you get in the woods the strongest man wins. It's better to try to live in a world where we can have nicer things than simply a brute force competition, all the time, because then you don't have society, you just have the horror of nature which is the very thing society is trying to protect us from to begin with.
aiislove
7mo ago
You really don't think you own a big truck and a gun because it makes you feel less small and scared? I don't buy it, I can't imagine a situation where I'd own things that project power and security for any other reason than it being rooted in fear. My father hoarded guns and ammunition before he died because he was a small man in a violent city and didn't have the skills or interest to move out of the only place he'd lived his whole life. I'm unconvinced that most red tribe people are attracted to guns because they are fun rather than because they are afraid of the government and the collapse of society and a host of other things that they have a right to be afraid of. How is it condescending to point out the horrors that people are facing? I'm just as likely to say the blue tribe are also small scared people in a big scary country but they are more prosocial and are throwing their bets in conformity and the safety of the crowd rather than the safety of self defense as the red tribe does.
Also pinging @The_Nybbler
aiislove
1yr ago
But the other possible reaction is to say: what the fuck are you so proud of? Shouldn’t your standards be a little higher?
Have you ever been confronted with seeing true poverty in your life? This paragraph reads like pure horror to me. I have seen people who live in tents at the edge of the sea, people with massive tumors on their legs, people with horrible facial skin discolorations living in cardboard under bridges, people living more terrible lives than I can imagine and it would absolutely break my heart if I had to live near them or have them in my family. If people from poor countries find solace in patriotism, and your response is "maybe you should want more for your life," your response is gut wrenchingly immature and morally repulsive, in my opinion. I'm not trying to attack you but your comment makes me feel dread.
My heart absolutely breaks every time I see someone struggling with poverty, I feel so guilty that I have so much and they have so little. Your comment reads like someone who has so much privilege and has no perspective on how much they have to lose that their only response is to beg for more. It is the epitome of entitlement and immaturity and really reveals a lack of self respect. You believe that asking for more makes you look like you're deserving of more, but it really makes you look like you aren't happy with what you've been given and people will be hesitant to help you out when you're so ungrateful for what you have.
why should I feel “patriotic” towards it? Because I could have it worse? Because at least America is a better place to live than Senegal? Isn’t it okay for me to set my sights a bit higher than “not maximally terrible”?
You can set your sights higher but you will have such little sympathy from people who have less than you have if you show such little acknowledgment of what you do have. It is really to your detriment at the end of the day.
Sorry if this post is harsh, your posts rub me the wrong way to such a degree because I used to share so many of your rather haughty views ten years ago but have realized how maladaptive they are in the past few years and it kind of hurts my brain to see them repeated like this.
It seems like lots of artists and creatives are going right wing lately. I suspect it's due to their (or our, speaking as one of them) predisposition to stand against mainstream culture, as it's impossible to miss the mainstream/capitalist adoption of left wing ideology lately. There's just no excitement or energy in trying to champion leftwing causes when every leftwing cause has been coopted by mass media and tech giants (which are also criminally censorious to creatives currently) and wall street corporations. The artists and creatives who continue to work within the spaces of leftism are increasingly boring and uninteresting and creating work that parrots the capital line more than any genuine transgressive feelings within the artists' vision.
Anyway, my point in making this post is to ask if there has ever been a situation like this in the past? I am interested in history but it's not my strongest subject. It feels like perhaps there are parallels with the French Revolution: wherein the masses were increasingly disgusted with the nobles and quickly defected. I remember reading that even Louis XVI was criticized as being out of touch by vaccinating his family against smallpox, as an aside.
Looking at figures like the Red Scare girls and their whole scene, (which has spiraled out to include Kanye and tons of other millennial thinkers from MIA to David Rudnick) it looks like the disillusionment with leftism is huge. I wonder how much of this is actually an interesting signal that 20th century leftism is dead, or if millennials are simply getting too old for the naivety of that ideology and we're seeing a generation go more conservative which happens with every generation.
I fully empathize with people who are sick of the leftist chokehold on discourse and culture over the past few decades (culminating in the Trump presidency) but I wonder what it leads to. Optimistically, it seems like a "back to basics" situation where people are seeing the contradictions of the recent past and trying to correct them for a new, more coherent ideology, but I also feel like it's a bit of a bizarre situation when a class of people who basically banked their entire social capital for decades on progressive ideology and LGBT/racial inclusivity are starting to tear it down. I applaud it but when has this happened before? In a way it reminds me of the shift in European art from being purely religious in nature, funded by the church, to suddenly having wealthy private clients in the Dutch merchants of the late 1500s.
Sorry for the rambling tone of my post, I just like to read the things posted here and I wanted to kind of post this as a prompt to have some discussion to expand on some thoughts I've been having lately. As an aside, no one in the artist or creative scenes I frequent seem to be able to articulate this shift, as most are still afraid of cancelation or being put out of work or shunned by social media or deplatformed or the many other situations one can get into when defecting from mainstream opinion. Or alternatively creative people are not as invested in the specifics of politics as much as people here are and would rather not engage with the situation from a political lens but rather from their personal/creative artistic angle.
aiislove
10mo ago
That's funny, when I was in Japan recently I was thinking there seemed to be way more than 2.3% of the population non-Japanese as officially claimed. I always thought racial statistics in the US seemed pretty accurate though, how do you think they might be different?
I have seen this take many times but I have never taken the take from the other side: someone who admits openly that they just want a video game checklist for their own morality. It is so far away from anything I would ever want that it's impossible for me to imagine that real people would reach that conclusion. Do the people who want to live that way know that's what they want? Would they be turned off if they heard their views described the way you've described it?
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