not sure if i still feel the same way as i did when i posted here last year, maybe because i feel more aware of neat games people are making and good youtube vids that only work in the context of youtube in general and other cool creative shit that probably couldn't exist at any other time and that i feel is legit interesting. there's still a kind of unpleasant sense of an ever-widening gap between this interesting stuff and Wider Culture As A Whole, though. there's always been a break between them but for me right now at least it feels like there's a sense that it's absolutely taken for granted that big new films will be awful, that new big popmusic stuff with at most be good for what it is, that there is really nothing going on at these levels and that you will actively need to FORAGE to gain any kind of sustainance at all. i don't think this has always been the case and i don't think it's a particularly good thing either: or at least not in that it leads to some sense that UGH.. MAINSTREAM WILL ALWAYS BE GARBAGE, DON'T EVEN THINK OTHERWISE which i definitely think is bad news. i saw some video trying to dissuade people from entering Big Games Biz where one of the comments was that people in walmart don't care about interesting or original stuff, that you have to frontload it with spacemarine garbage to hook the 'plebes', and i felt pretty irritated!! what is this stupid selfserving industry hack shit, you can't just airbrush decades of popular experimentation out of the picture, grr... that kind of self-perpetuating bullshit is what's really dangerous about the idea of conceding the 'mainstream' to awful trash, it's an attitude that spreads down to infect all areas with smug & insular toad thinking...

maybe that's just me! there's always some level of self-serving garbage in any attempt to define the creative merit of an age though and i'm definitely not exempt but idk. all the bands playing here are leftover 80s stadium garbage like Journey and Def Lepperd and Chris De Burgh and whoever else, and all the films playing are really fucking abysmal to the point where even listing their names feels like really cheap and obvious parody (YOGI BEAR 3D), and it is increasingly difficult to shake off the feeling of a cultural wasteland. but there is a lot of cool shit that seems to be springing up on the margins in response to this, though, like these guys are new and putting on a lot of good stuff and they're not the only ones. also uh it seems fanboyish to say it or whatever but the one exception i can think of for the interesting/massculture divide is in videogames like minecraft and journey and whatever else (also i guess tv shows in the OP but i don't watch much these days so i don't know)
 
so overall i guess my "stance" on the last decade is that of a vague dissatisfaction and my "stance" on the new one is guarded optimism at what seems like in some quarters at least a renewed sense of focus and engagement??  t i m e  w i l l  t e l l . . .

I agree with Catamites on the FORAGING thing I seriously do not understand how someone can just TV Radio superhero movies 3d cartoons movies spacebook and remain a sane human being. I do try to be like, erm this is probably like the ultimate time in history to be a kid right now with like 5000 3D superhero flicks per month and they will probably FORGE their own nostalgic memories of it being totally awesome and um I lost my train of thought. Like Chronicles of Narnia movies are just the culmination of random musty muppet fantasy movies from the 80's 90's. And erm that's it I can't even fathom how REAL it must seem if you're like 5 right now and watching a Chronicles of Narnia, if like The Princess Bride etc. seemed IMMERSIVE etc. (although I don't think all these 3D CG armies of monsters splashed across the screen in epic CG war movies are immersive at all). And I don't have any delusions that the 80's/90's were incredible but they were more human/flawed etc.? I think someone said every movie TV show made right now like completely understands their target audience in this creepy way like movie explosions made specifically to conform to a fractal grid golden ratio like even stuff that is ok like The Office has like [zoom ][/zoom] just a glorified visual version of laugh track.  And erm sometimes when looking up stuff from the 90's I get this moment of existential terror because Jerry's apartment wasn't shot with perfect HD lighting and I think I see some shadow of something moving. Oh erm maybe we will completely rework our paradigms of what's funny/exciting/fun now that we have the technology that we made the perfect Hollywood chase scene and there is nowhere to go and we feel kind of weird and creepy for being so obsessed

we're in a cartoon golden age right now. this generation of kids will be creative geniuses just like us.

I kind of think like the whole Somethingawful culture of GW was kind of the IMPETUS for me making music in the first place. Like horrible internet weirdos doing their marriage proposal on Minecraft etc. and spending 5000 hours making a turing machine in Little Big Planet, like how far the loserness goes, and beyond just mere speculation, having it laid out like that, and anxiety that there is something toxic about the things I like, and making something new I find meaning in. CREATE A SUBCULTURE OR FACE BLOODSHED. No but seriously I am pretty jaded and I want to fill the internet with this terrifying uncanny music than spend a second pretending to have 'fun'

joy has been outsourced. computers, sports franchises and people in advertisements now have the fun. we watch and wonder what it might be like to be picked out by the invisible hand.

just kidding. i drink shitloads of coffee and freestyle in the shower. this week, my flatmates and i solved the mystery of self and played a lot of tennis. culture isn't a bunch of movies and books and shit. it's also brushing your teeth and going to school and breakfast and initiation and failure and weeks and keyboards and paperclips and sweeping the floor and the self and the idea of a mind and almost everything else we ever talk about. it never declines or improves. we thrive and drown in it. decades and high culture are a scam. eat sleep think fight fuck paint walk die. products and identity were tangled up less than one hundred years ago. escape while you have the chance.

don't get me wrong I love doing my own thing and the internet really facilitates that. I've barely even paid attention to TV since like 2007 you mean it's still going on?? I also don't have cable though maybe cable still has some stuff worth caring about. I still need SOMETHING that's this surge of random ideas like TV is and internet does that now so I don't really care about TV

it is really weird actually internet seems like this weird twilight version of watching TV. Like I discover all these funny video clips and new music that exists seemingly nowhere else. Picture of a record against black background while music plays. Totally not caring about dodgy quality or authorship or anything. Youtube/Internet is the revival of that tape I watched as a kid with all the weird commercial parodies and I just thought it came from nowhere while it was actually clips from Saturday Night Live. In my waking life I am a total graphics/cinematography whore but suddenly with the internet I will listen to the fuzziest low bitrate music and a clip of some guy doing something funny that has the video quality of a snuff movie, as long as it's on youtube and I don't have to play it in Windows Media Player or something that says "Buffering..." and the music/movie clips can totally suck but I don't care because at least I chose to do it. I judge the quality of it by some completely different standard from the rest of life and I can't even really tell if I had 'a better time' or not it's just so separated from normal existence

but yeah I think decades are kind of over in a way everybody will hopefully be doing their own thing again within a few years

but yeah I get a certain excitement from things not being available in this fractally perfect form once again like the 90's, not exactly knowing how something was intended to come across and maybe some menace existing in a song/video that wasn't meant to be there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlDpAMyq43k

I could go at a topic like this at length if I wanted to.

But it's all really capitalism's fault. You can try to make people want things that are more enlightening or more cultural and artistic, but it all boils down to being part of an age where because people can be exposed to pretty much anything, they will always, unanimously, and unfailingly choose to the thing that they want, and there is no level of social intervention or cultural revolution that will control what people want.

I mean it has always been like this, but the only reason that it worked out in the past was because the only times in history were people actually got stuff they needed, were the times where they weren't already getting stuff they want. At the moment though, it is entirely possible to get things you want with practically all the time you as an individual have left on this world. The simple fact of the matter is that this is the one thing that has changed about civilized society, and everything we as a society experience now is because of this.

Anything I say beyond that much is really just me ranting.

watch the century of the self. It's a great documentary series about how culture has shifted from what we need towards what we want, and how that outlook's being used to control the population.

i don't think that the way television has changed over the past ten years is all that you really need to proclaim this era of artistic accomplishment as a golden period. really all television has done is fill the same function radio did roughly around the 40s to the 60s, and to a significantly poorer degree. NOBODY is doing with television what people like orson welles and spike milligan and countless others did with radio. i wouldn't even argue that television has necessarily reached some apex right now. i'm not familiar with a television show made within the last ten years that is as strong as serling's the twilight zone.

you also have the problem that film is going through its DARK AGES at the moment. the past ten years have been an exceptionally bad period for film. i could only name like two or three people honestly doing significant and/or interesting work out there. more than any other era, film has been completely industrialized, leaving virtually no room for legitimate artistic endeavor. i'd be completely at a loss for words if someone challenged me to name the best film of the past ten years. i'd probably say something like revolver or children of men, which is completely absurd as neither are particularly great movies.

another problem is that a significant chunk of the cultural spotlight is being hogged by the artistic black hole of videogames, which is a medium i don't really think anybody could HONESTLY tell me is of any real significance or merit at this point.

yeah, i just don't see it. every decade has had these cornerstone creative accomplishments that you could point to as the best of that time period, and we've gone ten years without anything really like that. if there HAS been stuff like that, i'd be overjoyed if someone could point it out to me, because i'm not familiar with anything like that.

I'd say both music and film culture in general is living in a sort of a strange phase of no real canon or inherent messages or individuals and i guess a lot of the problem with current musical canons and likewise critique stems from the culmination...... ... well, some kind of elevated focus on DESIGN in all creative outlets than messages or motives. You know, results versus process of the art. Would you find a person making music these days without caring if the results WOULDN'T fit into the sensibilities of the supposed audience? Every artist has an invicible audience he makes his art for and these days the sensibilities and the audience is automaticly assumed to be the larger audience of eg pitchfork or whatever. think about this with James Blake and if you think it's real good then think of the lyrics he fucking sings about contrasted to the sounds and music he makes. who cares about the motives of the artist / for the greater audience and capital / barf barf bad poem. ~~ postmodern man. 
If someone said to me that the surplus of choices has ruined the decade or medium i'd propably stab him in his kidney like a true gypsy but i would agree on the dissonance between effort (something that worked in the 80's to some extent with DIY and actual exploration of popular culture) vs design. Medialization and capital getting into creativity results to design i guess. Who DOESN'T like design but there is a huge difference between art and design and these days you are hellbent to find individuals who wouldn't give a shit on ongoing social media canons and trends formed.

I'm pretty sure you'll see... well, CITIZEN KANE'S of the games in the future IF and ONLY IF!!!! some gifted individual(s) take the medium as their form of expression. Arthur Russell's of games and so forth.

whenever I can't figure out the philosophy/message of a band/movie these days I just assume it's about the illuminati/reptilians/ron paul/legalizing weed

The worst thing humanity ever did was invent agriculture - disease and populations beyond what was ever feasibly 'natural' for us came with it, and perhaps the most dreaded thing of all: The death of egalitarianism.


We're better off than we were the last couple thousand years, but ARE we in fact better and happier as a people now we've traded our small, tribal nomadic and incredibly sustainable existences in the name of competition, self-aggrandizement, etc?


Not saying that's how I feel, just food for thought. Gettin' Jared Diamond up in this shit.

it's unfair to equate pastoralism with a lack of technological 'advancement'. as far as i know, there's little evidence to suggest that agriculture lead to the nice bits of technology we take for granted. certainly, not having agriculture would vastly change the kinds of technology people develop, but whether it would be less effective is an entirely different question. it seems like a lot of people's ideas about this question are coloured by their views of commercial products as positive and life-enhancing. products as The Exciting New Thing only really arose about halfway through last century as a strategy for coping with excess production. some people think they were a terrible invention, whereas others argue that utility is utility whether or not the initial want comes from the TV.

i mean personally i'm very attached to farms and the idea of farms. my mother grew up on a farm, i spent a lot of time on my grandparents' one as a kid, and i like the imagery associated with them. it would be irrational to assume that farms are therefore happiness production centres for #1 humanity advancement. the more i think about it, the more i feel like my ideas about farms are are constructed based on nostalgia and picture books about how the cow goes moo and not much else. it's "duh mum, meat comes from the supermarket" all over again.

it's unfair to equate pastoralism with a lack of technological 'advancement'. as far as i know, there's little evidence to suggest that agriculture lead to the nice bits of technology we take for granted. certainly, not having agriculture would vastly change the kinds of technology people develop, but whether it would be less effective is an entirely different question. it seems like a lot of people's ideas about this question are coloured by their views of commercial products as positive and life-enhancing. products as The Exciting New Thing only really arose about halfway through last century as a strategy for coping with excess production. some people think they were a terrible invention, whereas others argue that utility is utility whether or not the initial want comes from the TV.

i mean personally i'm very attached to farms and the idea of farms. my mother grew up on a farm, i spent a lot of time on my grandparents' one as a kid, and i like the imagery associated with them. it would be irrational to assume that farms are therefore happiness production centres for #1 humanity advancement. the more i think about it, the more i feel like my ideas about farms are are constructed based on nostalgia and picture books about how the cow goes moo and not much else. it's "duh mum, meat comes from the supermarket" all over again.

I say agriculture because agriculture is the moment humanity left its nomadic roots behind it - it's also the moment we started managing and controlling crops, and maintaining pools of water and what not to maintain the crops. The large numbers of people that began to live together, all situated in one place which was something that hadn't happened before, we began to develop new diseases from things like mosquitos living in the small ponds that would emerge in our crop fields, get in the crops, etc. etc.

Basically, settling down and tending to crops meant that others could attend to things they hadn't concerned themselves with before due to lack of time, AND they the crops needed protection. If we're all staying in one place, there's things to be done. Houses to be built (builders), storage to keep those crops and other collected items (potters), protection for those crops (first versions of armies). What this led to is something that ALSO never really existed much beforehand, caste systems.

The argument is that if we had never settled down, we may have remained in small, nomadic tribes of people that, while in their own right "savage" in ways (not any different than modern ways really, they killed to protect their tribes just as we do, etc.), did have a certain respect that was essential for a small group of people living together, understanding that to survive they all needed each other and had to work together.

There is tons of evidence to support claims like that, and dozens of books written on the subject (A great one of which is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond which is where I lifted the core functions of this idea in the first place, and where he goes into the concept that settling down created diseases which we never faced when travelling in small tribes and have slowly been chipping away at us for thousands of years now in LARGE numbers). I'm not going into it EXACTLY perfect, but I figured this sort of outlook is important to consider when you're discussing matters such as this.

Again, not really my opinion. I'm a 20th century product just like the rest of us, I grew up with and love technology - and I weep for a cage, just like you.

Who would listen to anything someone called Jared Diamond has to say

zander diamond

and I weep for a cage, just like you.

stop it

stop it

But it's a good quote! Not like I just made it up, nor is it like it doesn't describe the human condition.

I post like once a month these days, every time I do you quote me basically just to make some dumb one or two-word statement that literally just suggests I shouldn't post here on the site I've been posting at for the last 9 years.




stop it ​((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

I don't really see the point in arguing what human nature would be like if we hadn't started farming.  It's not like we're going to go back to being nomadic and there's nothing we can do about what happened that long ago.  Not that it's not interesting reading how agriculture affected us but it's the bit where you actually feel a little mad at humanity for it that is totally nonsense.


edit: when I say YOU I don't mean you specifically gloomy djinni just I see this come up every now and then and I don't get it


I mean with something so vital to how our world is shaped, how can you even try to predict how things would be now if we hadn't started farming.  There's no telling what bad things could have happened as a result of it, but all we have are the bad (and good) things that happened as a result of the path we did choose.  It's not worth speculating over.

I don't really see the point in arguing what human nature would be like if we hadn't started farming.  It's not like we're going to go back to being nomadic and there's nothing we can do about what happened that long ago.  Not that it's not interesting reading how agriculture affected us but it's the bit where you actually feel a little mad at humanity for it that is totally nonsense.


edit: when I say YOU I don't mean you specifically gloomy djinni just I see this come up every now and then and I don't get it


I mean with something so vital to how our world is shaped, how can you even try to predict how things would be now if we hadn't started farming.  There's no telling what bad things could have happened as a result of it, but all we have are the bad (and good) things that happened as a result of the path we did choose.  It's not worth speculating over.

I agree, actually. That's why I didn't bring my own opinions into it, I just brought that up for sake of argument since this topic's question is heavily based around that concept. I'm not mad at agriculture/the shifts that came with it whatsoever. I just try to keep a level-headed view on my existence, where I/we are currently in the human timeline and how we got here (which is a fascinating subject).

At the end of the day, who knows if we'd be better off or worse off? The ball that is society has been rolling for so long now that to distinguish particular stages of how 'good' life is (or especially how life was BEFORE it) at the time is impossible. It's always based on perspective and understanding of one's own standing in the world - it's easy to love a world when it's the only world I've ever lived in (For example, a lot of 'primitive' tribes never knew they were primitive until 'developed' people came over and told them all the things they were missing). I really just brought all that up because it gets to the heart of the question that's being asked here: How good are things now, and I felt like it was a perspective that wasn't really being explored here. Where we are now, AND how 'good' things are is directly related to the existence of agriculture, so I felt it was worth throwing that in there if you REALLY want to get analytical on that sort of question.

MY actual opinion on this? I love this world and I think we live in one of the most exciting times in history to yet come. But just the same, I get that I WOULD feel that way considering it's the time I live in. But I've got absolutely no problem with that, that's life and I'm a fan of the ride.