there's our catastrophe

gamma-ray-capybara:

ourcatastrophe:

I have a huge soft spot for earnestness and my absolute favourite thing is when people are interested in and passionate about lots of different things even if I think the things they’re interested in are fucking stupid

everything is flawed I guess but you’re not therefore more radical because you hate everything, that’s just stupid purity politics, the politics of “I do not endorse this, I am not involved, I am not complicit”, the politics of passive guiltlessness, of safety, of ressentiment

look, my natural inclination is cynicism, I’m notorious for hating on weird and seemingly innocuous things, so I get it, I do, I’m guilty of it, absolutely, but it doesn’t impress me

loving things can make you vulnerable and some people can’t risk being any more vulnerable

but if you can risk it you should because it makes you strong too

Definitely this, “ceux qui aiment ont raison”. Also I totally see why you hate yarn-bombing, but in a way something like yarn-bombing is a form of hate rather than a passion. I mean once something’s done for “subversion” or as an “alternative” or for “radical” purposes it’s kind of a critique of everything else, so…

That’s why I feel so disheartened by all the “radical critique of pop culture” stuff, because it’s being distant and passionless and simultaneously possessive of stuff that it’s not involved in that thousands of people are actually involved in. Well that and it tends to be hugely revisionist and just, the shit you read about women in punk rock for instance, they might as well yell YARRHARRRRGH MATEY before they sit down to write it.

…

really good points!!

kill yr “radical critiques of pop culture”

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adorno hated astrology.  I mean, if you’re waiting for adorno to like what you’re doing and see hope in it you’ll be waiting a long time.  I have to say though that he was Not Wrong, at least about astrology in the culture industries.   he attributed its popularity to the fact that “the semi-erudite vaguely wants to understand and is also driven by the narcissistic wish to prove superior to the plain people but he is not in a position to carry through complicated and detached intellectual operations”, which is snotty as fuck and kind of unfair but like, not entirely unfair?  it occupies your mind but doesn’t necessarily challenge it.  to me, reading about astrology does indeed feel really really similar to reading tvtropes or a similar kind of pop culture analysis website, or doing five million “which hunger games character are you?” quizzes*, which lets me feel like an “expert” in something without really ever thinking too hard.  I’m pretty sure doing much of that kind of thing is bad for you. 

Adorno also talks about the reliance of the astrological cold reading on people’s narcissism and consequent ability to make literally anything applicable to ourselves.  ouch.  but I am, actually, repelled by modern Western astrology’s endless categorisation and recategorisation of the self even as I find it seductive, for the same reasons that I find it seductive.  it’s fundamentally individualist, thus useless and deadening, and that’s why it’s so marketable, so consumable, such a narcotic. 

but on the other hand, one of the main reasons a lot of people are mad about astrology is that it’s about how you are irrevocably shaped by the astronomical (historical) conditions in operation at the time of your birth, and that’s really threatening b/c what about free will.  but isn’t the insistence that the individual is shaped by historical forces central to leftist thought? 

and this is all kind of a recent development, astrological predictions used to be less about the individual and more about events, broad historical trends; less about psychology and self-help and more about actual fortune-telling. 

modern Western newspaper horoscopes are focused on your sun sign; the sun rules the individual and the personality, and changes rapidly.  but the outer planets move through the zodiac slowly, with entire generations under the influence of the same position of neptune (which rules fantasy and idealism), pluto (sex, death, and transformation), saturn (work, limits, hardship) and uranus (revolution). 

solar astrology is totally individualist but what would a Uranian or Plutonic astrology look like?  it’d be more structural, surely.  astrological cold readings of a generation’s attitude to sex and death?  sign me up

I mean I agree that astrology often promotes of a sense of powerlessness in the face of an inhuman world, I just think it’s possible to work with that

also, and I really need to stress this: please do not apply an “appreciating problematic pieces of pop culture” lens to that Gillard speech.  the application of this shallow everything-is-about-the-consumption-of-images Feminist Pop Culture Analysis lens to every fucking thing is a goddamn plague.  it’s not a gifset from a movie which has a cool tough female protagonist but incorporates some reactionary race and class tropes.  it’s a real speech in a real parliament that can and does produce laws that destroy lives.  ugh I would rather deal with a Young Labor hack than you people, get off the internet

on young adult women’s interest in teen girl culture

speaking as someone with a Team Peeta/Team Gale life-size reversible poster from Dolly Magazine on my bathroom door right now —

the vital feminist concern of recognising and validating the value of teen girls, showing interest in things that are important to teen girls rather than dismissing them as frivolous, yes, absolutely, but:

a) Are we recognising teen experience on its own terms?  Are we acknowledging that what is important for teens is not being the archetypal teen, but being successful on their own terms? (This often means mimicking the tastes and activities of people in their early twenties — I spent my own teen years reading Kafka and listening to Pitchfork Best New Music.) When we talk about teens, who are we speaking to, and for?

b) re: the desire to redo your own recent past, to participate in all the aspects of youth culture you couldn’t participate in the first time around because you lived in a shithole town, or were too poor, or were not free to because of your guardians, or didn’t have any friends, or were just too embarrassed and self-conscious to pursue.  related: the desire to repair your own past perception of yourself, to stand up for your past self, to tell yourself now that your teen preoccupations were not just dumb girl stuff, but powerful and significant.  are we entirely self-aware about these desires?  are we fully aware that these are different goals than showing solidarity with and interest in teen girls today?  to what extent are we distinguishing between the desire to heal our own wounded teen girl selves, and the desire to stand up for actual real live current teen girls? 

c) In short: to what extent is it possible, as a non-teen living in a youth-obsessed culture, to have a fascination with teen girls and teen culture without simply reproducing their commodification and objectification?  

re: neo-pagans whining about the avengers

buttsetcetera:

CAN I JUST SAY that as an authentic norwegian not only do i not care about comic book characters based on the ~gods of my ancestors~, but that if there is one thing regarding norse mythology that’s likely to get me to raise a bit of an eyebrow and put on my true norwegian grumpyface, it’s fucking american neo-pagans who ~practice asatru~ and bang on and on about the norse gods like it’s not just fucking embarrassing for them to claim some kind of connection with a religion that’s been dead for nearly a thousand years.

i mean listen, i won’t pretend these people don’t exist in scandinavia, because they do, and trust me, i am embarrassed, it is embarrassing, but jesus christ, can you people just not? 

because all i see whenever people who are not scandinavian - that is, from actual scandinavia as opposed to ~scandinavian-americans~ - get super into some aspect or other of their ~scandinavian heritage~ - and especially åsatru - is a bunch of creepy white people revelling in their particular brand of super extreme whiteness because they’re convinced it makes them super special. and it creeps me the fuck out. stop trying to base your identity on your own misunderstood ideas about your ~viking heritage~! it’s embarrassing! no one cares! go away!

and i mean, it really doesn’t help that white supremacists are all over åsatru like a goddamn rash, and while i’m sure it sucks to have your particular kind of neo-paganism be so strongly associated with neo nazis when you’re not a neo nazi or white supremacist yourself, i would be a lot more sympathetic towards the plight of misunderstood åsatru neo-pagans if their very existence didn’t creep me out as much as it does. 

IN SUMMARY i literally cannot believe that there are apparently people on tumblr crying cultural appropriation and misrepresentation of their religion because of the goddamn avengers, and also åsatru is a ludicrous excuse for a religion and if you consider yourself to be of this faith then you probably suck. 

I have thought long and hard about this issue and have come to the conclusion that white people who are super into their scandinavian heritage are, on average, about two drinks away from outright neo-nazism

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I can’t decide if “Hunger Games Ryan Gosling” is just another ridiculous crossover for the media oversaturated or the most genius metacommentary on memes ever

so: nerds and how I hate them (or at least hate Nerd Culture) and why. I hate recounting specific events in my personal life, but I hate being pass-ag and vague worse, and the thing I hate the most is not blurting out what I’m thinking to the entire internet, so let’s roll out some necessary context. 

you know Teen Movie Script 3B where the teen girl realises the cool people are dickheads, stops trying to fit in with them, and accepts her true home with the geeks and her new geek boyfriend who’s loved her all along?  ditching the plastics for the mathletes and then HAPPINESS, ACCEPTANCE. 

can we make the opposite movie?  because my high school life got so much better when I got frozen out by my douchey misogynist male nerdy friends (after I started dating someone in their social network and standing up for “vacuous sluts”, i.e. became impossible to parse as an honorary dude) and began prioritising my (already present) friendships with a bunch of popular, pretty, fashionable girls, most of whom went on to go to some form of art school and become well connected in various hip social networks.  these friendships were really supportive and good for me in a time when I was pretty fucked up (not because of social drama but for other reasons).  the interesting thing is that these girls were whip-smart as well as anything else, and also hung out with nerds to start off with in our early teens, but got sick of being constantly harassed and objectified and patronised by nerd boys.  later, when I was eighteen and nineteen, they came with me to feminist events that I wanted to go to and told me they were proud of me when I started organising that shit and supported me in a million other ways, instead of, say, challenging me to give valid, current, and rigorously documented examples of “real” sexism.  I still see these women sometimes.  some I’m still friends with and some I’ve grown apart from, but they’re all awesome. 

girls can be awful to each other but I eventually made peace with almost all the girls in my year, even girls who were very different to me.  and I didn’t consider myself a feminist per se, it wasn’t some kind of big project, it just happened.  this thing that all girls are always involved in complex psychological status anxiety warfare with one another and boys are bewildered on the sidelines is arrant nonsense.

if you were to say “ourcatastrophe is it possible you only felt comfortable in this social circle because you were at that time thin, fashionable, and basically conventionally attractive?” I would have to concede that I don’t know but I’d add that there was more body diversity and general acceptance of difference than you might think.  but if you were to say “ourcatastrophe you are conflating issues, it’s not that you ditched the nerds, it’s that you started learning to prioritise friendships with women” then I would respond: you miss the point, which is that nerd culture is bro-centric as hell, and even if this was not your personal experience you have to admit it is certainly not inherently pro-lady.

what I’m trying to say here is that I am an inherently nerdy (i.e. obsessive, withdrawn, arrogant, science-fiction-loving) girl who found liberation not through embracing that but through expanding my interests and being amenable to changing myself and learning to respect people with different priorities and lifestyles and personal style.  to not condemn cool things as vacuous or not my concern but to withhold judgement and give it a go.   I think that’s actually, fortunately, a very common experience, just one that’s rarely represented well.  I didn’t lose any part of myself through relaxing my intellectual superiority complex and rigidly puritanical sense of authenticity and I doubt that anyone ever will.