The feel of the 2010's

[craner]

Actually what could the most important fahsion development of the 10's was men dressing like this View attachment 16177
View attachment 16178
View attachment 16179


And I know that this look is an an algamation of much older fashion choices, but theres something about the simplification of frat and prep aesthetics, 'dad vibes,' and its adoption as a style outside of universities that feels signifigant and unique to the 10's. Maybe this was uniqie to the south, but i remember it came like the wind. Suddenly a summer had passed and everyone now dressed this way. The boys in the neighborhood, the kids at school. Something changed.

Is this related to the subcultural rise of the Tuckersphere?

 

[maxi]

2010s was a decade of hedonic nihilism.

 

[maxi]

2010s was a decade of hedonic nihilism.

[Verse 1]
Double cups and molly, codeine molly cyrus
I'm twisted and I'm faded, I'm po'ing up and I'm driving

"But by 2016, YOLO was out and chill was in: “Chill pop is the new music trend that isn’t going anywhere,” read one headline in August 2016.

 

[craner]

I keep coming back to the idea that the 2010s was nothing more than the 2020s emerging out of the debris of the Noughties.

 

[craner]

[Verse 1]
Double cups and molly, codeine molly cyrus
I'm twisted and I'm faded, I'm po'ing up and I'm driving

"But by 2016, YOLO was out and chill was in: “Chill pop is the new music trend that isn’t going anywhere,” read one headline in August 2016.

 

[maxi]

realising now 2010s were sick actually I loved it

 

[craner]

Reality TV shows matured in the 2010s and the reality soaps were the decade's true contribution to the art. But even these were training grounds for the 2020s: what seemed like weird and laughable outliers turned out to be a premonition and a model for how we would begin to see ourselves and how we would interact with and mediate reality.

 

[maxi]

 

[craner]

Beyond Alienation

A minor Made in Chelsea squadron has been dispatched to the shores of Croatia for limpid summer romance, a rather dilapidated and dilatory expedition, the underlying shabbiness of which is somewhat disguised by the soft haze and bleached colours deployed by the post-production team.

The endless drifting episodes of this social drama since 2011 have produced diminishing and yet oddly rewarding returns: new generations are drafted in to mingle with seasoned veterans, and the newer and younger they are, the less distinguishing features they present: the blondes multiply, get goofier, gently plumier; the venal lads lesser snakes than their forbears, little adders slithering around in the wake of that old Boa Constrictor Spencer Matthews. The big chief in Croatia is Jamie Lang, the village idiot who peddles boiled sweets on the back of his family biscuit fortune. Somehow, the effects of these meaningless, recycling personal schisms and couplings are compounded over time; it becomes richer and more interesting by blank default.

It is still as gripping as it ever was, as it gets even emptier and even more vague and pointless. That's the logic of the thing: a hollow drift of non-events that simulate the motion of emotions, seem to suggest forward momentum, things happening that you cannot actually recall happening one minute after switching over to the rolling disaster that is the Ten 'O Clock News. The traumas add up to nothing even though they break like atmospheric ruptures in the weird psychic meteorology of these fabricated, yet existing, cliques. The dwarf stars that glide through the show now exist in a pretty strange place, acting out their lives like we all do but in a more extreme way, but without anything extreme (like unemployment or illness) actually happening to any of them. Being on TV is not even a big thing for them, simply another component in their surface self-actualization.

Sophie "Habbs" Habboo has just ditched perpetual goon Sam Thompson, but it's hard to even determine what effect this had on her if any: it was just a plot point in her summer, which happened to coincide with the filming of the Croatia junket, for which it was scheduled neatly in the first place. This is a complicated way to live. Habbs is self-employed, an entrepreneur; her job is that new thing, the CV staple that is The Social Media Influencer, a role she crafted on the back of a degree in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, surely a legitimate way to use such a qualification. Her zone of influence is her Instagram account, upon which she reclines in expensive bikinis, skirts and drapes, gripping niche beauty products and fellow Made in Chelsea cast members, and friends. In her friction-less negotiation of tangled layers of reality and fiction -- emotional murmurs at the service of self-presentation/self-fashioning -- she is the latest exemplar of the Made in Chelsea condition that was once given the definitive model by the legendary Oliver Proudlock.

Proudlock -- HIMSELF! -- perfected the semi-detached exploitation of the reality soap platform, as he was quietly and proudly exploited by it, to pimp his own entrepreneurial ambitions that found their ultimate locus on his multi-platform ego-site, pushing his art and fashion label, and presenting the infamous "What is Proudlock wearing today?" blog that was an unintentionally comic take on the i-D straight up format. This was all achieved with some easy and even admirable aplomb. Proudlock was so self-conscious that he lacked any and all sense of self-awareness, let alone irony. Who can forget the episode when he turned up in a bespoke, skinny three piece tartan suit, personally dictated to his long-suffering tailor; part Helmut Berger in The Damned, part Rupert the Bear. Nobody could match the innovative chutzpah; he was a mere sideman on the show, but distilled its pure essence.

Maybe there is nothing wrong with this at such innocent, extreme points, like Proudlock. There was no crisis in this, none of the existential angst displayed by Donald Trump in his psychotic Twitter war with the forces of the Mainstream Media, a fight to the death to wrest control of his self-image. Proudlock and Habbs can do this without any internal turbulence whatsoever; they don't even seem to be surprised, let alone confused, by the spectral, multi-layered lives they now lead. They cannot be said to be unreal, even as they shed huge chunks of their identity to whatever notion of reality can be said to be left to navigate. But then, almost everybody does that now, to a greater or lesser extent, outside of war zones or rain forests or remote peasant tundra.

Made in Chelsea is a long way beyond alienation: Antonioni minus Marx. It began like this in 2011, when things were even less strange and displaced than they are now, although we do not seem to have moved on many mental inches, even though it feels and looks like a new paradigm of unreality. In some ways it is not even that far from the society dynamics, egotistical gymnastics and forced coincidences of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time novel cycle, but way more condensed and missing the political and historical context. The principal, invariable mise en scene of Made in Chelsea is the chance meeting by some lovely Edwardian railings on an elegant Chelsea or Pimlico street, in the New London where you would never see a Quentin Crisp parading blind with mascara and dumb with lipstick. What a surprise! Fancy meeting you here, of all people at this time is this Megalopolis. Otherwise, events occur in specially selected and advertised eateries, boutiques and bars around town, a hi-gloss/glazy backdrop to engineered encounters, couplings and traumas that spill onto the gossip pages and Daily Mail online and actually overlap with lives conducted in a liminal fashion that are not at all radical or even postmodern as they might have seemed, or even been, in 1982, when this was a future, theoretical fantasy.

 

[maxi]

in my opinion the best artist of the 2010s (2008-16) and the one who was most effective at capturing the time

 

[craner]

This might sound a bit callous to say, but perhaps the most important thing about ISIS turned out to be how they presented themselves, how they used a highly developed aesthetics of violence to attract recruits and how they exploited the media platforms powered by 4G networks to promote their apocalyptic vision.

 

[craner]

This might sound a bit callous to say, but perhaps the most important thing about ISIS turned out to be how they presented themselves, how they used a highly developed aesthetics of violence to attract recruits and how they exploited the media platforms powered by 4G networks to promote their apocalyptic vision.

Compare that to Osama's crappy home video filmed in a cave.

 

[craner]

2010s was the moment the public image was democratised. Vanity became a value.

 

[craner]

The vindication of Narcissus.

 

[pattycakes_]

This might sound a bit callous to say, but perhaps the most important thing about ISIS turned out to be how they presented themselves, how they used a highly developed aesthetics of violence to attract recruits and how they exploited the media platforms powered by 4G networks to promote their apocalyptic vision.

Big budget production value.

 

[craner]

Big budget production value.

High defintion gloss, exotic locations, John Woo slow motion, handsome jihadis brandishing hardware like Atlanta rap videos, martial music ramping up the dramaturgy, the romance of blades, the glamour of militancy. The aim was to seduce and inspire, and they did it very well. The overlap between revolution and aspiration, violence and fandom, was underappreciated.

 

[craner]

Fred and Judy Vermorel could have written a whole book on the mercurial allure of Jihadi John.

 

[luka]

The 2010s did not take place.

bartys guna cry when he reads this cos he wrote a whole book about the revolutionary, paradgim shifty music of the 2010s

 

[craner]

bartys guna cry when he reads this cos he wrote a whole book about the revolutionary, paradgim shifty music of the 2010s

He should come and defend his thesis.

 

[pattycakes_]

High defintion gloss, exotic locations, John Woo slow motion, handsome jihadis brandishing hardware like Atlanta rap videos, martial music ramping up the dramaturgy, the romance of blades, the glamour of militancy. The aim was to seduce and inspire, and they did it very well. The overlap between revolution and aspiration, violence and fandom, was underappreciated.

As a kid who grew up playing with GI Joes the aesthetic appeal was undeniable

Like something out of Hollywood. All very high tech, organized, slick. Don't think I'd seen anything like that from guerilla forces before. It was almost like they'd studied Mr. Tea's favorite 20th-century villain's PR department. A masterstroke in marketing.

There's a lot of aesthetic appeal to military design in general. The vehicles. Playing Top Trumps as a kid loving all the crazy aircraft designs.