The Right to Be Cool
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sus
Moderator
"I should be able to make shlock deliberately optimized for pleasing 5 year olds, and also be recognized as fine art"
Kanye's problem is slightly separate because is in fact one of the rare people to straddle commercial popularity and critical claim, even in the pre-poptimist era. But again, why are you asking for respect from the fucking middlebrow Grammys. It betrays this fundamental misunderstanding, this naivete, about how the world works.
I find it very very annoying when artists and writers bitch about how they haven't been critically recognized or appreciated by X people. I fall prey to this sort of navel gazing myself but it's fundamentally absurd. Either you're bad at making things X people like, which is your own fault and failing. Or you weren't trying to make things X people liked, in which case, why are you upset and confused? Or else, finally, you think it's unfair that X people don't like different things than they do like—which is just bizarreoland
Kanye's problem is slightly separate because is in fact one of the rare people to straddle commercial popularity and critical claim, even in the pre-poptimist era. But again, why are you asking for respect from the fucking middlebrow Grammys. It betrays this fundamental misunderstanding, this naivete, about how the world works.
I find it very very annoying when artists and writers bitch about how they haven't been critically recognized or appreciated by X people. I fall prey to this sort of navel gazing myself but it's fundamentally absurd. Either you're bad at making things X people like, which is your own fault and failing. Or you weren't trying to make things X people liked, in which case, why are you upset and confused? Or else, finally, you think it's unfair that X people don't like different things than they do like—which is just bizarreoland
sus
Moderator
I have exactly understood the premise of the thread. Kanye is a red herring and not what this thread is about.
This thread is about the way that some tech millionaire bro wants to also be seen as cool by Dimes Square kids, and my point is that Dimes Square kids are playing a game designed to punish the tech bro. Because he's not optimizing for the things they reward. And then he's mad about losing their game, even though he's never put any effort into winning their game, and has in fact put all his effort into doing exactly the thiings they despise and mark you down for
wild greens
Well-known member
Paying for a blue tick so people can see your replies first on x
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Everyone in our house is already cool, even the italian maids, we don’t need anyone’s approval.
Craner did this.
mixed_biscuits
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mixed_biscuits
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Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Like putting a bumper sticker on a Ferrari.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Or, more pertinently, a BMW.
ghost
Well-known member
some of these tech bros actually do okay, they love the crypto bros. just make sure to bring some good drugs to the function, wear some vintage Miu Miu, whatever else.
I do think that people appealing to a sense that the games should be fair is a novel phenomena, and I don't want to compare it to the realm of dating, because it seems clear that's not the place where the phenomena is originating. It feels much more like it comes out of poptimism and the 2010s-fixation on things being recognized as "great art"—think every navel-gazing piece about whether videogames are art.
the Youtube Moment—some of the most interesting art of the 2000s and early-10s was just this cambrian force of people with cameras on their computers, and I think people felt like they were looked down on in comparison to the "real arts". Since then, of course, most of those kids with cameras have professionalized, so the indignation doesn't look real anymore. And lots of people imagined that it was their own crappy home videos that belonged in the Louvre.
To return to my favorite hobby though, let's try to explain something everyone intuitively understands with something that almost nobody understands—clique dynamics are really about the exchange of status currency between subcultures. Every subculture gets to choose two of "independent status policy" (you get to decide how people in your scene are deemed cool), "fixed status exchange rate" (you decide the rate of how much someone's status in another scene translates to coolness in your scene) and "free status movement" (everyone is able to move between scenes freely without grudges.)
Historically, in both economics and status games, the mainstream choice has been to keep free movement and independent policy, and rely on the market to decide which scenes are cooler. If you're, say, China, or a small Latin American country, or a group of musicians that are opposed to the dominant order, the traditional move has been to abandon free movement, and adopt fixed exchange rates, which means that you're somewhat isolated, but you maintain more control over your internal ecosystem.
Lately though, it's been more common for even dominant groups to adopt fixed status exchange rates, and increasingly punitive ones. In this case, Marvel fans are crunching status exchanges down with the Dimes Square scene down towards zero because they're imposing costs that are exorbitant—it's structurally not worthwhile to engage with people on terms that they find to be losing ones, because exit is more attractive. The most extreme case of this is MGTOW, who have essentially decided that the terms they're willing to engage with women on are so harsh that they're going to end up simply not talking to them.
Nick Land banging on about exit:
(1) Exit is a scale-free concept. It can be applied rigorously to extreme cases of sociopolitical separation, from secession to extraterrestrial escapes. Yet these radical examples do not define it. It’s essence is the commercial relation, which necessarily involves a non-transaction option. Exit means: Take it or leave it (but don’t haggle). It is thus, at whatever scale of expression, the concrete social implementation of freedom as an operational principle.
(2) As a philosophical stance, Exit is anti-dialectical. That is to say, it is the insistence of an option against argument, especially refusing the idea of necessary political discussion (a notion which, if accepted, guarantees progression to the left). Let’s spatialize our disagreement is an alternative to resolution in time. Conversations can be prisons. No one is owed a hearing.
Exit notes (#1)
Some notable attempts to dial back the NRx commitment to exit over voice, as inherited from Moldbug, have been seen recently. (I think NBS was crucial in advancing this argument, but I couldn’…
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WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
see crusties, now extinct
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