Speaking of "authenticity," I wanted to say some words of soft caution about it re our discussion upthread. The moment has passed, so I'll just say that authenticity is a shell game, esp. regarding art and culture. I'm deeply sympathetic to this feeling of there being barbarian hordes on our digital shores, and to any wariness that you all might have towards capitalism and consumerism and towards the commodification of something you love, but I also believe that truly addressing and even fighting these problems means acknowledging and accepting our culpability and complicity, inasmuch as this is the truly ironical and humanitarian pose/attitude. That is, this is really the most salty way of doing things.
I dunno. I am kind of automatically weary of cries to abandon "authenticity" in much the same way as I am at derisive snorts at "originality". They aren't holy cows to sit there biting your nails over, that's a trap, and can be counter productive, but it should be understood that to roll the wheel against them is to become a champion of pop art, which is fine if that's your bag, but it's a constricting jacket to rhetorically exhort people to wear.
At some point in the past (before MTV started moving back in) I had a theory regarding this whole post-corporate aesthetic, that corporate culture had inadvertently created a new aesthetic deformation through it's combination of huge amount's of cash, systematisation of the production of what could be termed "creative" output and lack of taste. This reached it's most exquisite form in the 80's (in part because by this point the apparatus of capitalism had become extremely efficient at turning nascent subcultures/counter-cultures into avenues for consumerism).
It took the internet to really disrupt this, especially the havoc wrought on the music industry, music being the primary philosophical driver of any post 1950's subculture. Suddenly the capitalist apparatus, rather than being directly plugged in to what is trending (once it evolves past being distributed on dubbed tapes at any rate), is in the same position as the rest of us, reading the tea leafs of the internet to guess what is trending.
Even this effort is frustrated though, by the emergence of the hipster. The subculture at the end of history. A subculture that watches other subcultures, both mature and emergent, and falls upon anything "cool", unique or interesting produced and exploits it's cachet as a marker of their advanced taste. What this means is you can't look at anything that pops it's head above the surface and assume it signals a future audience.
This, combined with a inevitable cynicism toward the things we think of as markers of the corporate culture of the 80's, has lead corporations to abandon the aesthetic deformation they created, leaving it as a playground for artists, who can advance and deploy it in ways that it's creators never could have. It's a machine of powerful signifiers, lying abandoned, if you want to play in it, that is to be encouraged, if you want to identify with it I don't want to stop you, probably better to be aware of what you are doing though, rather than sleepwalking into it.
Anyway, now that artists are making the deformation "cool", corporate recapitulation is to be expected. It's not the same as the original creation though. It's not "theirs" any more and they are on the same playing field as everyone else in their activities there, but due to their preoccupations they can only move along it's surface. The artist has the freedom to dive deep, find it's hidden currents and manipulate them or bring them to the surface.
Like all technologies the corporate deformation has occult potentials, and any mercenary interloper is constrained by his own remit.
Gaming World Forums
Dump topic for stuff thecatamites/bonzi_buddy/etc. might like