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Friday Fun Thread for April 28, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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https://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead

For the last decade, mass culture has been nerd culture, and a nerd is someone who likes things that aren’t good. This is not to say that everyone who likes things that aren’t good is a nerd. Fast food is bad food: cheap, tasteless, unhealthy, and unsatisfying. But if you grew up eating frozen burgers as an occasional treat, and you still find it nice to sometimes stumble drunk into a McDonald’s late at night and wolf down a Big Mac—because it reminds you of something, because it’s the sign for a certain vanished pleasure—then you are not necessarily a nerd. But imagine a person who collects the boxes from every McDonald’s order he’s ever made, who’s yapping with excitement about the new McDonald’s partially hydrogenated soybean-canola oil blend, who can’t wait for them to release the McBento in Japan so he can watch video reviews all day, and who acts incredibly smug every time McDonald’s posts its quarterly earnings and they’re growing faster than Burger King’s. You know exactly what this person looks like. A total failure of an adult human being. Fat clammy hands; eyes popping in innocent wonder at every new disc of machine-extruded beef derivatives. An unbearable, ungodly enthusiasm. Does he actually like eating the stuff? Maybe not. It hardly matters. His enjoyment is perverse, abstracted far beyond any ordinary pleasure. It signifies nothing. This person is a nerd.

I found this essay on hipster culture and nerd culture to be interesting and enjoyable to read. I'm linking it because it seems relevant to some of the topics discussed here. It raises questions about what effect AI will have on art and cultural production.

The only thing I take away from that essay is the overwhelming desire to do bodily harm on the person whom wrote it.

Why I would take anything in good faith from someone whom hates me and mine and gleefully spends hours of his time writing about how much he hates me and mine is baffling to consider. This doesn't belong in the friday fun thread - this is pure rage bait and culture warring.

Well, you’re here, aren’t you? The motte is full of people writing wordswordswords about people and groups they despise.

Yeah. And if this had been in the main thread(or even it's own thread), I'd probably just minimize and go about my way.

Here, though? I don't mind pointing out how tone-deaf posting this comes across for where it's at.

Maybe I'm tone-deaf, or maybe we just have different taste. I enjoyed the essay because of the author's colorful prose, and I thought it raised interesting questions about art and culture. I didn't think the purpose of the essay was to attack any specific group of people, despite the fact that it is written in the style of an attack. I'm sort of a Quokka in that I perceive these sorts of essays charitably as being directed against abstract ideals rather than being targeted against specific people.