>The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal”. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.Do you agree?
>>24710509>Ignore critics. They are like fleas.
I guess, I mean it is possible that might happen.
>>24710509It's not a bad idea but the problem is getting any metamodernists/anti-rebels to actually organize.
>>24710509All of this is bullshit and a recipe for boredom. An artist is just an enchanter like Nabokov said. You can be a serial rapist and still write a children classic book. Just make good shit without caring about "current thing" and this generational dogshit. An artist is a lone wolf. >rebels I don't care and I don't want to rebel. Renunciation is my jam.
>>24710543The problem is the general revulsion most people have to true sincerity and honesty, in practice it either becomes delusional everything is all rainbows and kitten or asks people to confront things about themselves and the world that they really don't want to confront.
kindness is the real punk rock
>>24710557funny how this board turned on dfw and now posters get filtered even by his simpler sentiments
>>24712335The board has turned on all great works as of late. I think the userbase has experienced a +90% turnover in the last year, it's the only way to explain this rampant contrarianism.
>>24712335Is that funny or just really depressing? I don't think they even give themselves a chance to be filtered, just reduce it to memes and then suly themselves.
>>24710509We've just about perfected the craft of hacking the human mind. It used to be an art, like playing chess, to develop new flourishes of technique. A clever rhetorical device here, a gotcha there. Maybe some gobbledygook in the middle to boost credibility. Like chess, however, artistry gave way to analysis. As a species, we've gotten very good at manipulating the baseline emotions that make most of our decisions, developing the kind of tools that you see everywhere these days. Satire is one of those tools, a way to disparage and dismiss. You can use it to paint anyone as a liar, a hypocrite, a hysteric, a sociopath. And I'd imagine that's the point, essentially closing off an enemy opinion at the source by utilizing Pavlovian conditioning to associate the person that has said opinion with some sort of negative attribute. And the best part? The satirist can pretend to be neutral, a fencesitter who's above it all. There's only really one reliable defense against satire, and that's irony. If you're already "joking", then anyone making fun of you is opening themselves up to easily get made fun of themselves. Their tactics can be represented as "falling for it", you can dismiss them as "just not getting it", just throw in a chuckle and you've perfectly defended yourself against criticism. So that's the current strategy; satire for offensive attacks, irony to paint the enemy as foolish and insincere.I mean, so much of the content on the internet seems to boil down to "please associate [bad thing] with derisive laughter". Streamers beefing, late-night TV, etc. Words are weapons, and the widespread use of irony to shield from them has made everything not using it feel...off. Vulnerable. Genuine. Cringe. There's a discomfort within the human mind these days in seeing something like that, like seeing someone walk out onto a busy highway.Maybe like chess, computers will eventually overtake humans as champions, and all opinions anyone has will have been put there by an AI that breaks all thoughts and emotions down into a series of numbers, then generates text in what it calculates to be the best, most influential, most "human", way possible.
>>24713138>with science you can do anything!
>>24712359zoomers desperately want to seem well read for tiktok cred but throw a tantrum when books are longer than 150 pages.
>>24713145More like "everything's gone formulaic, and irony is the formula". And yeah, the kind of dumb shit both of us see online every day can probably be computerized.It sucks, but unless there's some cultural shift that comes out of nowhere one day and everyone decides to reject the animal instincts that modern art and rhetoric aims for, writing is gonna feel like a science, because to the people thinking tactically about their words it had might as well be.
>>24712359Political radicalization has men finding symbolic enemies in every historical period and its associated work.
>>24713159I was satirizing your weird disconnect with your topic. No one is going to stop playing chess because computers are better at it, it is not the point, and it doesn't matter if computers get better at art than humans, won't change anything, it has no bearing on why people do it. Even the supposed "hacking" of the human mind will not affect anything when it comes to art. I am not completely sure where you were going with this aspect of your post. The real problem with things like irony—the problem DFW was getting at—is that it is a very effective way to lie to ourselves and other people will reinforce those lies to be nice or in hopes you will return the favor. This is the problem of Gately, Hal, Rand, Fogle, etc and they all do what everyone does, they seek ways to reinforce those lies the tell themselves and a good friend is one who is very good at reinforcing those lies. The shitfingling and drama is just a side effect and to a point is part of life which is very difficult to imagine us moving past, humans love drama, we turned it into an art. >>24713200Politics was just picking up the slack, religion stopped pulling its weight.
>>24713206Alright, I'll do my best to clear things up then.For starters, my point was never meant to describe the emotions artists feel when they create. Rather, I was illustrating the kind of cynical, almost mathematical setups and playoffs you see when it comes to people pushing an argument for or against something. "All art is political", and all that. As so many creatives, especially those in the mainstream, seem so driven by their desire to convince others of one thing or another, and especially as the data scientists behind the media decision-making process push for whatever tracks the best in terms of engagement, the "shitflinging", as you put it, becomes increasingly less a side affect and more the main attraction. Popular media is a great example of this. In an age where artistic industries are in as rough a shape as ever, the industry built around commentary, satire, politically-moticated hype or aggressive hype-killing is flourishing. Streamers with more peak viewers than entire networks beef over internet drama. And when they do, or when the youtubers make bank taking about some movie or book or show that no one is going to experience for themselves, or some late-night funnyman talks about the hip new thing with that plastic half-cocked grin, they use the same tired formula. That's what I was referring to. Not the motives behind the artists, but the winning formula that makes the content that eclipses whatever artists these days create.And to your point about chess: yes, humans still play. They even play competitively. But it's never more than a moment until accusations of cheating start being thrown around, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. Make no mistake, computers have changed chess forever, from the bored kids asking chatgpt to tell them what openings are best to the top players getting caught using mundfish in the bathroom to give themselves the best next move.And then they beef, and then the Twitch streamers talk about it, and then the drama circulates, which is all that matters from a consumer's perspective, because it's that drama that we're going to be bombarded with for the next few weeks. Humans love drama, which is why we made it into an art, and then we realized there were enough underlying psychological patterns to turn that art into a science. Blame Barnays, I guess.When I was referencing "art" in my original post, I was referring to the kind of media with mass appeal that art traditionally filled. You can call the kind of cookie-cutter misrepresentations, accusations, fake laughter and algorithm-friendly humor that gets clicks and views something other than art, and I'd probably agree, but just know that that's what I was getting at. Real artists are somewhere off in the aether, trying to sell more than twenty copies of a book that's probably really good but lives buried under titles like The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck and some scam book with good SEO on Amazon.
>>24713276So, your idea of art is ephemeral trends? I really have no idea what you are trying to say and have no idea how to respond.
>>24713291Again, I wasn't referring to art at all. I was referring to the widespread use of irony as a way of shielding from criticism. It's not inherently artistic, it's just an effective tactic, which is why you see it so often. No artistry necessary.
>>24713296But that is not how people actual use irony, the shitflinging does not matter, it is the lies we tell ourselves that is the problem, irony is only a small portion of that and it is easy to slough off criticism because of those lies and everything else they enable like friends who will feed the lies and drugs, distraction, etc. Why do you keep bringing up art if it has nothing to do with what you are trying to say? What does all the previous computer shit have to do with anything? Before your response, do an outline, figure out what you are trying to say before you say it.
>>24713322>But that is not how people actual use ironyHow so? Do content creators, malicious "comedians", etc. not use irony?>the shitflinging does not matter, it is the lies we tell ourselves that is the problemIt's both, actually. You'd be surprised how much human psychology is geared towards social pressure. Shitflinging can do a lot to damage a person, thing, or idea.>is easy to slough off criticism because of those lies and everything else they enable like friends who will feed the lies and drugs, distraction, etc. No idea what you were going for here. Could I get a second draft of this?>Why do you keep bringing up art if it has nothing to do with what you are trying to say?Because that's exactly my point, it doesn't. Unless you made a typo, you might finally be starting to see what I was getting at. If you need further clarification, I can add this: your statement regarding irony was made from the perspective of an artist. Mine was made from the perspective of a consumer. A lot of our differences in opinion likely come from that.>What does all the previous computer shit have to do with anything? That was more or less just a hypothetical I added for shits and giggles. The reasoning is that, considering that common uses of irony feel so manufactured and reliant on essentially a list of tropes, they could be churned out by a machine. Sorry if it was distracting or felt unnecessary, I just added it as a way to call irony unoriginal.>Before your response, do an outli-Nah.
>>24713344>It's both, actually. You'd be surprised how much human psychology is geared towards social pressure. Shitflinging can do a lot to damage a person, thing, or idea.That is just playing the victim, another lie we tell ourselves. I am never surprised by the arrogance of people and the assumptions they make about other people and the knowledge they have vs the knowledge the person they are talking to has, lie people commonly tell themselves. >No idea what you were going for here. Could I get a second draft of this?You will need to offer something more than just "try again," at least show some effort to understand and form a question. >Because that's exactly my point, it doesn't. Unless you made a typo, you might finally be starting to see what I was getting at. If you need further clarification, I can add this: your statement regarding irony was made from the perspective of an artist. Mine was made from the perspective of a consumer. A lot of our differences in opinion likely come from that.That is a very long winded way to state such simple assumptions. >That was more or less just a hypothetical I added for shits and giggles. The reasoning is that, considering that common uses of irony feel so manufactured and reliant on essentially a list of tropes, they could be churned out by a machine. Sorry if it was distracting or felt unnecessary, I just added it as a way to call irony unoriginal.Waffle and don't pretend its not. You are just winging all this, aren't you?>Nah.Did not expect you would, probably could have some interesting discussion if you put a little effort in.
>>24713350>That is just playing the victim, another lie we tell ourselvesHuh? Moralize our existence as social creatures as much as you'd like, it won't change the simple fact that peer pressure and group dynamics are integral to human nature. And, of course, that nature can be, and often is, manipulated.>You will need to offer something more than just "try again,"I wish I could. I just didn't really understand what you were posting grammatically, and if you could just explain in another way what that part of your post was getting at it could be a real help for us both. On a related note: do you happen to be using some sort of translation software? If so, our communication mishap might be at least partially a result of that.>That is a very long winded way to state such simple assumptions. I stand by it, simple as it is. From what I've read, it seems to hold true.>You are just winging all this, aren't you? I'd certainly hope so. If I'd planned this out, I'd be the exact kind of insincere plasic person I rail against.Also, outlines are for booktok novels. Not 4chan posts made in the dead of night. Or working hours, depending on where you are.
>>24710509Seems a nice way to describe Knausgard among other such contemporary writers. I think it's difficult to judge the value of each rebellion based on the filter that is traditional publishing, which considers both the shocking and the banal to be unmarketable. But I do like both of these.
