XKCD is a not just a web comic.
It is an almost vaguely autobiographic work by a guy who feels very much like he should be my best friend. He has a crude art style, but the fact that he is one of the few other people who were scared for the rest of the lives because of Jurassic Park means something to me. It also can tug at the heart sometimes. Math jokes are always funny.
Everyone should be able to find simple enjoyment in this comic three mornings a week.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The New Sincerity
Jesse Thorn the host of The Sound of Young America has proposed something called the "New Sincerity." This is the best description of where we are post-irony.
What a blatant acknowledgement of the nature of what coolness was. Hedonism at its finest, but can our love of the "awesome" really save us?
He mentions Evel Knievel, but I can't help but to think of every love interest in every shitty indie movie.* These girls are always quirky with an acidic tongues, ever-changing hair color, anxiety disorders, and families who just don't get them. They listen to music that "will change your life" and get you to run around nude at the abandoned amusement park in their home town. In short, she will make you live la vida loca, only with moody guitar music replacing the Latin beats.
Needless to say, I love them all.
How could I not? In every movie that these girls are in they take a square loser, who lives a fairly bland life popping Xanax and staring blankly into the future, and turn his life into a happy-go-lucky time in which he probably still has his old job (or one just as bland), but now he gets to go home and unapologetically enjoyed Mac&Cheese with weenies cut up into it while watching a DVD of his favorite bad movie from his childhood (Top Gun) before he has what must be mind-blowing sex.
The only person who can't enjoy this girl is Rob of High Fidelity, who sees cool as fatalism. But he has a point. You may be able to have simultaneous orgasms with someone, but you will always describe her as a "pain-in-the-arse." Four "bonks" are really more than enough with this type of girl. This is not hidden from any of the boys who fall for them. There are always lies, too much drinking, the realities of mental illness, and the practicalities of living. So why is it that they always go back to them?
The New Sincerity is why. We used to do things (like them or not) because we had to, but that is the root of irony. Irony is a reaction to the necessary. NS is an action of excess and love. Irony saw a 2-d world and caused us to become even flatter. Now, thanks to that irony we now live in a rich world filled options to go beyond the 2-d world of yesteryear. NS rejects this for the iconic though. NS sees an icon and takes it as fun at face-value. NS wants to praise the icon and make it real.
This totally defeats everything that irony was made for. NS causes us to celebrate only a piece of our life. A piece that is pretty fun, but ignores anything else. Rob has a point again. You can't ignore everything else, at least not all the time. You can make your top 5 songs about fruit with your friends to kill time, but that doesn't give you a fulfilling life.
At least the sex is good though...
*I thank HannahMo for pointing this pattern out to me. It has caused me much enlightenment.
What a blatant acknowledgement of the nature of what coolness was. Hedonism at its finest, but can our love of the "awesome" really save us?
He mentions Evel Knievel, but I can't help but to think of every love interest in every shitty indie movie.* These girls are always quirky with an acidic tongues, ever-changing hair color, anxiety disorders, and families who just don't get them. They listen to music that "will change your life" and get you to run around nude at the abandoned amusement park in their home town. In short, she will make you live la vida loca, only with moody guitar music replacing the Latin beats.
Needless to say, I love them all.
How could I not? In every movie that these girls are in they take a square loser, who lives a fairly bland life popping Xanax and staring blankly into the future, and turn his life into a happy-go-lucky time in which he probably still has his old job (or one just as bland), but now he gets to go home and unapologetically enjoyed Mac&Cheese with weenies cut up into it while watching a DVD of his favorite bad movie from his childhood (Top Gun) before he has what must be mind-blowing sex.
The only person who can't enjoy this girl is Rob of High Fidelity, who sees cool as fatalism. But he has a point. You may be able to have simultaneous orgasms with someone, but you will always describe her as a "pain-in-the-arse." Four "bonks" are really more than enough with this type of girl. This is not hidden from any of the boys who fall for them. There are always lies, too much drinking, the realities of mental illness, and the practicalities of living. So why is it that they always go back to them?
The New Sincerity is why. We used to do things (like them or not) because we had to, but that is the root of irony. Irony is a reaction to the necessary. NS is an action of excess and love. Irony saw a 2-d world and caused us to become even flatter. Now, thanks to that irony we now live in a rich world filled options to go beyond the 2-d world of yesteryear. NS rejects this for the iconic though. NS sees an icon and takes it as fun at face-value. NS wants to praise the icon and make it real.
This totally defeats everything that irony was made for. NS causes us to celebrate only a piece of our life. A piece that is pretty fun, but ignores anything else. Rob has a point again. You can't ignore everything else, at least not all the time. You can make your top 5 songs about fruit with your friends to kill time, but that doesn't give you a fulfilling life.
At least the sex is good though...
*I thank HannahMo for pointing this pattern out to me. It has caused me much enlightenment.
Self-consciousness
As I was making up some notes for the book Teenage by Jon Savage I came across this idea: “The Bright Young People's style was a fusion of modernity and Oedipal obnoxiousness organized around what looked like meaningless pleasure” (246). “The problem with outrage, however, is that it always needs to be trumped. The Bright Young People began to hit the law of diminishing returns. What had begun spontaneously became self-conscious rather than joyous.”
Now the Bright Young People were a group of partiers primarily in the 1920s it, but they made a lasting impact. There were hedons with a purpose. They saw enjoying life and all it had as a way of not only bucking authority, but also as a way of expressing their own youth. One of their best creations in this area was the themed party. From Russian parties to murder parties they came up with wild ideas to give each night's merriment a certain twist.
The above quote describes what happen as the BYP began to have too many parties with too many in attendance. Fun was once the only goal of a party, but when trying to top the last party is the goal it stops being fun. There is actually a point at which massive drunken orgies are just not fun. I know! Shocking!
Does this over saturation happen to all social movements though? Indie-Rock Pete would probably say that it does before you have even heard about the movement, but we all know that we can't find the lower limit of quality because it doesn't exist according to the Theory of Hipster Relativity. This means that there should be a range of popularity at which something is cool. My first reaction is to see cool as looking something like this (sorry for the poor quality chart, also note that a high quality graph would not have the movement at 0 on the x-axis):
This is clearly what happen to the BYP. They were a small group of cool seekers who found something that was not only rebellious it was also something that was fun (a necessary combination for something cool as I will explain in another post).
I wonder though a few things. What are the parts of popularity that make something cease being cool? The number of people willing to participate seems important. Whether or not something is still rebellious or not does not seem to matter. What matters is that there is a mass of people that want to be part of something. The kind of people matter too. Here I mean the specific clique of people and if more other cliques connect to cool movement. The graphical representation of this would be something like a single circle being the clique that contained the cool movement to begin with, but as time goes on the image begins to look more and more like an impossibly complex vin diagram. As this happens the movement is less cool.
However, the movement can become cool again I think. The first is not a true cool. It is around the point at which the movement becomes as uncool as possible. When this happens the cool kids can now enjoy the thing with the irony that makes modern popular cool run.
There is a genuine cool out there. This cool is something appreciated by many but the movement is now not appreciated for its novelty so much as its technique. Here it is no longer good to simply do something, one must do it with a flare that makes the moment seem almost artful.
For an example of this cool cycle let's assume that picnicing is a cool activity. People will go picnicing and with each visit to the park they will begin to gain attention. At the same time the things they did at the last picnic will seem less exciting because they will have done them already. This will force more extreme picnicing (maybe people will start cooking and eating turkey instead of enjoying a cold chicken leg from the night before). As this happens the people within the movement will become tired from the need to constantly improve because of the expectations of others. Soon there will be so many in the park picnicing that people will begin deciding that the activity is square. Before long the only people really picnicing are those who do it because no one does it. The might even use sporks and eat KFC, but only because irony dictates that it is cool to mock-picnic. Eventually, the idea of picnicing will become cool again but will be practiced by a smaller set of people who will set out to elevate it to an art. Sporks might be kept, but now metal sporks are seen and the food is prepared beforehand specially for the picnic. So we get a chart that looks like this when it comes to the actual practice of cool movements:
This is the cool cycle as I see it right now. I am sure that last graph needs a bit of work, but it is close for the time being. The biggest question is not about the theory then but about operationalizing these variables. Any suggestions?
Now the Bright Young People were a group of partiers primarily in the 1920s it, but they made a lasting impact. There were hedons with a purpose. They saw enjoying life and all it had as a way of not only bucking authority, but also as a way of expressing their own youth. One of their best creations in this area was the themed party. From Russian parties to murder parties they came up with wild ideas to give each night's merriment a certain twist.
The above quote describes what happen as the BYP began to have too many parties with too many in attendance. Fun was once the only goal of a party, but when trying to top the last party is the goal it stops being fun. There is actually a point at which massive drunken orgies are just not fun. I know! Shocking!
Does this over saturation happen to all social movements though? Indie-Rock Pete would probably say that it does before you have even heard about the movement, but we all know that we can't find the lower limit of quality because it doesn't exist according to the Theory of Hipster Relativity. This means that there should be a range of popularity at which something is cool. My first reaction is to see cool as looking something like this (sorry for the poor quality chart, also note that a high quality graph would not have the movement at 0 on the x-axis):
This is clearly what happen to the BYP. They were a small group of cool seekers who found something that was not only rebellious it was also something that was fun (a necessary combination for something cool as I will explain in another post).
I wonder though a few things. What are the parts of popularity that make something cease being cool? The number of people willing to participate seems important. Whether or not something is still rebellious or not does not seem to matter. What matters is that there is a mass of people that want to be part of something. The kind of people matter too. Here I mean the specific clique of people and if more other cliques connect to cool movement. The graphical representation of this would be something like a single circle being the clique that contained the cool movement to begin with, but as time goes on the image begins to look more and more like an impossibly complex vin diagram. As this happens the movement is less cool.
However, the movement can become cool again I think. The first is not a true cool. It is around the point at which the movement becomes as uncool as possible. When this happens the cool kids can now enjoy the thing with the irony that makes modern popular cool run.
There is a genuine cool out there. This cool is something appreciated by many but the movement is now not appreciated for its novelty so much as its technique. Here it is no longer good to simply do something, one must do it with a flare that makes the moment seem almost artful.
For an example of this cool cycle let's assume that picnicing is a cool activity. People will go picnicing and with each visit to the park they will begin to gain attention. At the same time the things they did at the last picnic will seem less exciting because they will have done them already. This will force more extreme picnicing (maybe people will start cooking and eating turkey instead of enjoying a cold chicken leg from the night before). As this happens the people within the movement will become tired from the need to constantly improve because of the expectations of others. Soon there will be so many in the park picnicing that people will begin deciding that the activity is square. Before long the only people really picnicing are those who do it because no one does it. The might even use sporks and eat KFC, but only because irony dictates that it is cool to mock-picnic. Eventually, the idea of picnicing will become cool again but will be practiced by a smaller set of people who will set out to elevate it to an art. Sporks might be kept, but now metal sporks are seen and the food is prepared beforehand specially for the picnic. So we get a chart that looks like this when it comes to the actual practice of cool movements:
This is the cool cycle as I see it right now. I am sure that last graph needs a bit of work, but it is close for the time being. The biggest question is not about the theory then but about operationalizing these variables. Any suggestions?
Warning
I am trying to merge some of my blogs together. After thinking about it I decided that it is just silly for me to have three different sites at which I post anything.
This means I will be putting some older posts here over the course of the next hours.
I will try to update with a good fresh post here as soon as I can though.
-One Love
This means I will be putting some older posts here over the course of the next hours.
I will try to update with a good fresh post here as soon as I can though.
-One Love
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Obama's formula
It would seem that Obama has won the primary. I have long been a Hillary supporter if only for what I saw as more long term hopes and goals for the left, but in doing so I clearly neglected the one thing that I have been very concerned about for the past year, what it takes to be cool.
No one will doubt that Obama is way cooler than Hillary. From his smoking to being young and black Obama has always had that advantage. But he takes it a step further by being a person of the people. Back in 1992 he held a voter registration drive in Chicago in which he registered more than 150000 people! While in a city of millions this might not be too big of a deal, yet here reflects what I see as Obama's way of winning this election. He understands how to flatten a campaign.
The only efficient way to achieve such success with something like that campaign drive is to get everyone involved continually. It is sort of like a pyramid scheme. The only difference is that each person only needs to get two people and they are done in that sort of scam. In this flat campaigning each person works for as long as they can. This way new members to the campaign are accepted as new, but not as lower on the pyramid.
This does something Hillary never could do. It makes everyone gathered together to support Obama feel like they are all part of something equally. This is what my generation wants. We all want to change the world. Obama told us that we can.
No one will doubt that Obama is way cooler than Hillary. From his smoking to being young and black Obama has always had that advantage. But he takes it a step further by being a person of the people. Back in 1992 he held a voter registration drive in Chicago in which he registered more than 150000 people! While in a city of millions this might not be too big of a deal, yet here reflects what I see as Obama's way of winning this election. He understands how to flatten a campaign.
The only efficient way to achieve such success with something like that campaign drive is to get everyone involved continually. It is sort of like a pyramid scheme. The only difference is that each person only needs to get two people and they are done in that sort of scam. In this flat campaigning each person works for as long as they can. This way new members to the campaign are accepted as new, but not as lower on the pyramid.
This does something Hillary never could do. It makes everyone gathered together to support Obama feel like they are all part of something equally. This is what my generation wants. We all want to change the world. Obama told us that we can.
Friday, May 9, 2008
One Week of Relaxing My Brain
For the last week I have barely left the house. My days have been spent watching TV, surfing the Internet, and playing GTAIV. My only thoughts of school-related things were of my grades, which turned out about like I expected. Books to read have been put aside as has writing of any kind while my brain was allowed to do what it could not do in any way during school. That is to say, I shut down. I feel a bit sleepy still and my body is a bit stiff from the lack of movement, but no longer do I feel like my hair is about to fall out like a chinchilla's.
I like these times though. I wake up whenever I want, do most anything during the day, then go to sleep when I just start to be tired. I could never live like this all the time, but for a week or two at a time I could certainly get into it. A life of mindless enjoyment in which the days flow without any concern is a good life. While a bit of wine would make the entire experience much more enjoyable.
The party, or lack there of, is going to be over starting tomorrow though. The next few weeks are going to be busy getting ready to go out to LA, reading up on a few books I don't want to take with me out there, and taking care of a few loose ends that need to be tied when I get back from LA.
As the laundry list of things to do starts to be made again I may not feel excited about it at first, but that is because it is hard to start moving again sometimes. It hurts to get going again. Being out of breath is no fun, but soon you don't need as many breaths. While you may have to stop eventually for a while it gets to the point where running feels goods. And thankfully this summer will only be a bit of a jog.
I like these times though. I wake up whenever I want, do most anything during the day, then go to sleep when I just start to be tired. I could never live like this all the time, but for a week or two at a time I could certainly get into it. A life of mindless enjoyment in which the days flow without any concern is a good life. While a bit of wine would make the entire experience much more enjoyable.
The party, or lack there of, is going to be over starting tomorrow though. The next few weeks are going to be busy getting ready to go out to LA, reading up on a few books I don't want to take with me out there, and taking care of a few loose ends that need to be tied when I get back from LA.
As the laundry list of things to do starts to be made again I may not feel excited about it at first, but that is because it is hard to start moving again sometimes. It hurts to get going again. Being out of breath is no fun, but soon you don't need as many breaths. While you may have to stop eventually for a while it gets to the point where running feels goods. And thankfully this summer will only be a bit of a jog.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
I was once (and only once) the coolest 5th grader
The stormy weather tonight got me to thinking about ghosts, and I can't help but to think of the first time I ever held an entire room of strangers captive by a story.
Now this isn't the first time this sort of thing was allowed to happen. When I was a small child my older siblings would let me tell them stories during the commercials of Letterman (back when he was on NBC). These stories have all been lost to the abyss of time, but I am sure they were funny and full of adventure, suspense, and sex. At any rate, my brother and sister loved them. I never ran out either. Since then standing in front of people and talking has been something I have always enjoyed, as long as I am not acting.
The strange thing is that no one in public really seemed to find my stories that interesting. This blew my mind for many years, but in 5th grade something happen. I was at this nerdy Saturday school thing at a local college when the subject of ghosts came up with my lab partners. As we cut and glued balsa wood for our model rockets my new friends were having a proper and civilized chat on the realities of poltergeists. Having no experience with such things I began to tell them about the time I moved into a house haunted by one.
"I had the room up in the attic. I chose this one not because it was biggest (it was actually probably smaller than my little sister's) nor for the ease in getting in it (the stairs were really narrow and we could barely get my bed up them), but for the awesome stained glass windows on even point of the compass."
I had no idea where I was going with this. I had just started talking, but they had stopped what they were discussing and listening to me.
"The house was pretty old, but not like civil war old or something just pre-WWII old, you know, so it had some problems, but nothing that didn't seem fixable. I made sure that my room was very well insulated before we put up some good walls and posters, but then something started happening."
At this point I knew they couldn't believe me. They even said so, "Wow, what are you going to tell us the attic was haunted or something? Ha!"
"No, it was the whole house. Sometimes we would find whole drawers in the kitchen switched around and can labels were always wrong... unless we thought they were wrong."
"But then stuff started happening that was even more strange. At one point my sister woke up and felt like her room was too small. My parents even woke up and felt like someone had been watching them. I on the other hand knew when we finally had to leave."
Oh boy, did I have them.
"One night I was about to go to sleep, but as I started to go up to my room the mattress stated sliding down the stairs. I tried pushing it back up, but it wouldn't budge. I even got my dad to help, but no dice. the matress just wouldn't budge. Finally I just walk up to get some rest on the floor, but suddenly the mattress slides back up the stairs with that loud fabric rubbing sound. I saw it but I just though that my dad with my mom got it up th stairs, but hafter a few minutes the mattress just sort of goes back down. At this point I realized that my parents were no where near my room."
"I started to scream but couldn't. I was held back by some cold force. I was soon able to escape but not before watching an old man go to each of my colored windows and touching them. I was not sure what he was doing, but by the time I was freed it was morning and the light reveled that there were only clear pains of glass!"
They were so into it, "What happen?" I was just spouting things off of my head.
"Well my parents were mad at me at first, but then then even when I got sent to my room some strange stuff started happening around the rest of the house. It was pretty scary, but apparently stuff was flying around and hitting them in the head and stuff."
"We had to move out the very next day. Man, I miss that room."
By the time I was done with this story these dorks were entranced. I don't know why they believed me, but for some reason they felt I was an authority on this. Most of their questions were answered with an "I don't know," but only because they didn't jive with my story. By the end of class I didn't just have a story I had a continuity, full of interesting insights into a life I most certainly did not have.
Since then I often try to repeat this with varying degrees of success. I find the truth works better now, but often times there are little things you can do to tweak the truth and make it more interesting. In doing this the story becomes less of a "here's what happen" kind of thing to more of a "this one time" kind of thing.
And, of course, repeat stories are only for reruns and new friends.
Now this isn't the first time this sort of thing was allowed to happen. When I was a small child my older siblings would let me tell them stories during the commercials of Letterman (back when he was on NBC). These stories have all been lost to the abyss of time, but I am sure they were funny and full of adventure, suspense, and sex. At any rate, my brother and sister loved them. I never ran out either. Since then standing in front of people and talking has been something I have always enjoyed, as long as I am not acting.
The strange thing is that no one in public really seemed to find my stories that interesting. This blew my mind for many years, but in 5th grade something happen. I was at this nerdy Saturday school thing at a local college when the subject of ghosts came up with my lab partners. As we cut and glued balsa wood for our model rockets my new friends were having a proper and civilized chat on the realities of poltergeists. Having no experience with such things I began to tell them about the time I moved into a house haunted by one.
"I had the room up in the attic. I chose this one not because it was biggest (it was actually probably smaller than my little sister's) nor for the ease in getting in it (the stairs were really narrow and we could barely get my bed up them), but for the awesome stained glass windows on even point of the compass."
I had no idea where I was going with this. I had just started talking, but they had stopped what they were discussing and listening to me.
"The house was pretty old, but not like civil war old or something just pre-WWII old, you know, so it had some problems, but nothing that didn't seem fixable. I made sure that my room was very well insulated before we put up some good walls and posters, but then something started happening."
At this point I knew they couldn't believe me. They even said so, "Wow, what are you going to tell us the attic was haunted or something? Ha!"
"No, it was the whole house. Sometimes we would find whole drawers in the kitchen switched around and can labels were always wrong... unless we thought they were wrong."
"But then stuff started happening that was even more strange. At one point my sister woke up and felt like her room was too small. My parents even woke up and felt like someone had been watching them. I on the other hand knew when we finally had to leave."
Oh boy, did I have them.
"One night I was about to go to sleep, but as I started to go up to my room the mattress stated sliding down the stairs. I tried pushing it back up, but it wouldn't budge. I even got my dad to help, but no dice. the matress just wouldn't budge. Finally I just walk up to get some rest on the floor, but suddenly the mattress slides back up the stairs with that loud fabric rubbing sound. I saw it but I just though that my dad with my mom got it up th stairs, but hafter a few minutes the mattress just sort of goes back down. At this point I realized that my parents were no where near my room."
"I started to scream but couldn't. I was held back by some cold force. I was soon able to escape but not before watching an old man go to each of my colored windows and touching them. I was not sure what he was doing, but by the time I was freed it was morning and the light reveled that there were only clear pains of glass!"
They were so into it, "What happen?" I was just spouting things off of my head.
"Well my parents were mad at me at first, but then then even when I got sent to my room some strange stuff started happening around the rest of the house. It was pretty scary, but apparently stuff was flying around and hitting them in the head and stuff."
"We had to move out the very next day. Man, I miss that room."
By the time I was done with this story these dorks were entranced. I don't know why they believed me, but for some reason they felt I was an authority on this. Most of their questions were answered with an "I don't know," but only because they didn't jive with my story. By the end of class I didn't just have a story I had a continuity, full of interesting insights into a life I most certainly did not have.
Since then I often try to repeat this with varying degrees of success. I find the truth works better now, but often times there are little things you can do to tweak the truth and make it more interesting. In doing this the story becomes less of a "here's what happen" kind of thing to more of a "this one time" kind of thing.
And, of course, repeat stories are only for reruns and new friends.
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