So, I made the mistake of picking a performing arts degree, so I spend most of my days pondering how pointless of a degree it is. I did manage to pick a module about performance protest, and while some of it gets a bit bullshitty, there's been other parts like looking at native American performance/protest at the Dakota pipeline and stuff, which have been interesting and useful.
Yesterday there was some group work. It was a bit of a brainstorming exercise but as a group we settled on the idea of spamming the illegal immigrant report line/letterbox with shit so that new reports wont go through. Ok, it's nothing amazing, but it served the purpose of the exercise we were given.
Then this girl speaks up. Previously her contribution to class has been telling everyone about how she culturally enriched herself by going on holiday in places where poor people exist.
On our idea, she says that it might be illegal to do, so we should create a fake website and have people fill that in as a symbolic message.
A FAKE WEBSITE FILLED IN AS A SYMBOLIC MESSAGE
At that moment I realised why the arts seem so useless at changing things. It's jam packed with trust fund kiddies.
that is complete insanity. what could possibly drive someone to have that thought at my young age? To remove all potency from the tiniest little act. Seriously ghoulish.
I know a lot of people who are like this, and met most of them while studying law at university. Tried to join a local org that ostensibly wanted to use volunteers to help some marginalized communities, and like 90% just wanted to turn the place into a book-club that occassionally held seminars for trans people about their rights. All I could think of while listening to them was "if I was 15% more charismatic, I could coup this place in a month". Because the desire to do good was definitely there, but people were incredibly afraid of doing anything that might get them in trouble, and I think the same is true for the trust fund baby you had an encounter with.