The Weird and the Banal
Indeed, many of us have found ourselves in some way in the business of creating content, messaging, ideas, designs, identities. Even our leisure time somehow seems bound up in producing or consuming free content for the platforms of the attention economy. All that was solid has melted into air.
Samuel W. Franklin • The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History
“I suggest that the death drive has something to do with it,” the piece reads. “Our aesthetic and behavior are certainly shaped by a sense of doom. There’s a nihilism to the way people dress and party; our heels get higher the closer we inch to death. It’s why people are smoking again, so says the New York Times.”
rayne fisher-quann • The cult of the dissociative pout
Mainstream culture and commodity goods present a problem for people who believe in authenticity.
“reactionary distancing—aestheticizing, ironizing.” Viewing the junk products of pop culture “ironically or anthropologically….from internally afar” allowed hipsters to see them as something not part of themselves
Ironic consumption of commodities is one ... See more
“reactionary distancing—aestheticizing, ironizing.” Viewing the junk products of pop culture “ironically or anthropologically….from internally afar” allowed hipsters to see them as something not part of themselves
Ironic consumption of commodities is one ... See more
subpixel space • After Authenticity
We crave the weird—the quirky, the eccentric, the peculiar, the freaky, the far-out—because it estranges us from our normal habits of thought and perception, nullifies old conceptual maps, and so propels us into uncharted regions, outlandish and bracing, where we must create, if we are to thrive, coordinates more capacious than the ones we already
... See more