Do aesthetics map to politics?

[version]

Is the 'gammon' thing an example of aesthetics mapping to politics?

[luka]

Not exactly. As I say, personalities come as package deals, right off the shelf and so any one aspect can stand in for the whole.

[luka]

With gammon it's the carvery as spiritual home, but it's also the big ham faces, red cheeks, broken veins and flinty eyes

[version]

The people who complain about "SJWs" online always seem to characterise them as having blue or purple hair and a nose ring.

[luka]

Lol yeah exactly. Or soy boys (another ugly phrase) which like gammon matches a food to an identity.

[pattycakes_]

Everyone wore baggy trousers in the early 90s. Even if your brain was able to conceive of tight trousers you'd have to get them handmade for you by a tailor cos shops didn't sell them. Things got more fitted a little later on in the garage era. Round your way everyone wore goatskin pantaloons handed down by their grandad and a scuffed Barbour jacket. Different world.

Don't forget the wellies

[luka]

Tweed flat cap with some fly fishing lures pinned to the side of it

[DannyL]

There's a chapter in one of the post-Reich books (Man in the Trap - Elsworth Baker) about political identities and how that maps onto character types and bodies. I don't think it's the strongest chapter but there's something in it. There's something often very familiar when you meet a certain class of person (class as in ideological affiliation) - like they're another iteration of the same design you've met before. Tall, gangly, angry socialists for instance.

[luka]

When you've worked in public facing roles for a long time the whole world looks like tiny variations on a handful of basic templates. You also feel like you've met everyone before.

[luka]

"There are twelve people in the world, the rest are paste."

[version]

Perhaps that's why history seems to repeat itself.

[version]

The idea of the universe being a video game or simulation makes more sense when you think of people like that. There's a set number of character models and scenarios so they inevitably get reused.

[version]

The alt-right lot like to refer to people as "NPCs".

[luka]

yeah the NPC one is sort of funny. I like the NPCs in existenz... The heads going slack and shoulders drooping until you talk to them

[luka]