The feel of the 2010's

[shakahislop]

bits of it are stupid and annoying etc but the surge of feminism feels like a major achievement of the 2010s. there are approximately one billion good criticisms that you can make of it. overall it seemed unthinkable in about 2012 that any form of feminism would become part of the mainstream structure of feeling.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Am I witnessing a 28-year-old doing a "Tssk, kids these days, eh?" act about 23-year-olds?

If the cultural churn is getting quicker then we should expect cultural decades to be getting shorter. Maybe this shows that the last decade was at most 5 years long (28-23).

 

[shakahislop]

2010s were start to finish a period of economic decline in the UK. that's part of how things feel. the sense of the basics getting worse. its unarguable that that happened i think. the combination of several economic shocks (financial crisis into brexit into covid) within 12 years or so. plus and probably more importantly all of the grim austerity. plus the turning of the screws on housing for a lot of people, the same for social care for other people.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Irony-rooted detachment is the default stance. But it's so long ingrained at this point that people have forgotten what they were being ironic about. It's baked in.

If the liberal moral system taps what they consider eternal truths then the lightweight ironising may reflect an unstated belief that human beings themselves are comparatively worthless ephemera, as they either fall short of these adamantine ethical ideals by being flesh and blood or when meeting the moral challenge can only do so fleetingly for the same reason.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

In terms of "leftist cancel culture" though you're talking about an institutional response that enforces political philosophies rooted in relativism.

Relativism might be the seed of some of this but the conclusions that are being drawn are claimed to be universally applicable and 'the last word' rather than some whimsical local divagation.

 

[shakahislop]

a cross-class mainstreaming of food as entertainment. half the population getting into nutrition as the food-industrial complex makes it impossible to ignore what you're eating

 

[craner]

Relativism might be the seed of some of this but the conclusions that are being drawn are claimed to be universally applicable and 'the last word' rather than some whimsical local divagation.

It denies universal human values in favour of theories of power. It's applied historicism.

 

[version]

a cross-class mainstreaming of food as entertainment.

Deliveroo doing to food what Netflix did to TV.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

It denies universal human values in favour of theories of power. It's applied historicism.

What is the 'it'?

 

[version]

Lots of mask off stuff thanks to the net. Whistleblowing, Wikileaks, Snowden, Assange. General corruption and skullduggery getting exposed more than ever and then all too often not much coming of it. Adam Curtis' international events never resolving themselves the way they used to in the good old days.

A clip just went up of Eric Weinstein on one of those irritating manosphere podcasts where he talks about his meeting with Jeffrey Epstein and how he feels Epstein was constructed as some sort of pre-internet blackmail / intelligence structure that shouldn't and couldn't have survived into the internet era.

 

[pattycakes_]

Deliveroo doing to food what Netflix did to TV.

Oh yeah everything on demand delivered fast as possible

 

[craner]

What is the 'it'?

The 'leftist cancel culture' we were just talking about.

 

[pattycakes_]

A clip just went up of Eric Weinstein on one of those irritating manosphere podcasts where he talks about his meeting with Jeffrey Epstein and how he feels Epstein was constructed as some sort of pre-internet blackmail / intelligence structure that shouldn't and couldn't have survived into the internet era.

Saw a similar one where he was talking about questions re: Epstein that are still not being asked. Like how he got his money. How did he manage to infiltrate such high echelons while appearing to have relatively shallow understandings of worlds he was supposed to be a big player in. Not being a convincing billionaire etc. Made some good points. He's a Thiel affiliate?

 

[version]

the shift to autofictionification happened in the 2010s. in books obviously but in everything else as well, from insta to tunes.

personally i'm all for it.

That's older than the 2010s, Deleuze said people writing autofiction "can go fuck themselves" in the late 80s and Baudrillard went after them in one of his Cool Memories.

"All these novels in which the authors try desperately to dramatize their own histories, their experiences, to recount their own psychological dramas - this is not literature. It is secretion, just like bile, sweat or tears - and, sometimes, even excretion. It is the literary transcription of 'reality television'. It is all the product of a vulgar unconscious, not unlike a small intestine, around which roam the phantasms and affects of those who, now they've been persuaded they have an inner life, don't know what to do with it."

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The 'leftist cancel culture' we were just talking about.

It's only time-relative in a limited sense. What it considers misuses of power it considers immoral independent of context. It doesn't cut people any slack for having just because 'that's the way things were done back then' for instance. In this way it implies that it has 'solved' morality.

 

[linebaugh]

That's older than the 2010s, Deleuze said people writing autofiction "can go fuck themselves" in the late 80s and Baudrillard went after them in one of his Cool Memories.

"All these novels in which the authors try desperately to dramatize their own histories, their experiences, to recount their own psychological dramas - this is not literature. It is secretion, just like bile, sweat or tears - and, sometimes, even excretion. It is the literary transcription of 'reality television'. It is all the product of a vulgar unconscious, not unlike a small intestine, around which roam the phantasms and affects of those who, now they've been persuaded they have an inner life, don't know what to do with it."

I think theres a difference between the autofiction of now and then. The current brand is relatable, aspirational. Its misanthropic because the culture is but its a shared misanthropy. Older 'autofiction' starting with maybe picaresque novels feels more antisocial. Case studies of interesting individuals. Unique internal lives.

 

[shakahislop]

On my phone so can't write much but yeah the auto- has been a part of artforms for a long time, it's just that it's quite dominent across all kinds of form in the 2010s (and now). Insta people are autofictioning. Insta is almost best thought of as an autofictional platform.

 

[version]

I think theres a difference between the autofiction of now and then. The current brand is relatable, aspirational. Its misanthropic because the culture is but its a shared misanthropy. Older 'autofiction' starting with maybe picaresque novels feels more antisocial. Case studies of interesting individuals. Unique internal lives.

Is that what you get from that Baudrillard quote? Reads more like a description of the 'newer' stuff to me. He's not talking about case studies of interesting individuals. He's talking about the opposite.

 

[version]

He's a Thiel affiliate?

Weinstein? Not sure.

 

[pattycakes_]

He was the joint managing director for Thiel Capital from 2013 until 2022