I'm not joking
Even the curtains in your own house didn't materialize there. Someone made them, someone bought them, someone decided to put them up in that particular way in that particular window. That says something about society, and the person who put them up, and if that isn't you then it also says something about you for not replacing them and choosing to live there!
And on top of all of those real world things, the author decided to specifically mention them! I guess they just like having carpal tunnel from writing completely meaningless information
of course, it's only correct that the dictatorial, masculine, objective authorial intent should unilaterially penetrate the consciousness of the effete, subjective reader
— the mind of someone who is incapable of seeing anyone as a peer
My brain bending over and getting fucked by the authorial intent.
I feel like that a lot when reading. I'm too scatterbrained to piece together the bigger, more abstract picture that I know is lurking under the surface
I love any art that gives this feeling. "There is definitely something more going on here, but I can't figure out what it is"
The curtains were blue. The chair was green. The carpet was white. The rug was a slightly darker green than the chair. Next to the chair was a small table. Brown. On the table was a lamp. There's a few colors here just on the lamp so best to sit down, this may take a while...
I remember American Psycho doing it pretty well, vomiting list of product upon product
the table had a few shades of brown from the grain of the wood I had better list those shades. The wood for the table by the way came from an oak tree that started growing in Nottingham forrest in 1712
The incredible lack of literary or artistic understanding that this fucking meme causes and expresses makes me so angry. I've been fuming about it for years. First off, I strongly encourage anyone to check out Folding Ideas' 20 ish minute video about Annihilation. Watching that back in the day was a catalyst for self-examination on how I interpret art and media. Good stories are rarely about their literal events. Media literacy in this culture is genuinely on life support. Cinema Sins and Your Movie Sucks and countless knockoff channels make their living "denying art its capacity for meaning... and approach plot as a goddamn puzzle box to be unpacked and solved".
Stories are becoming so sterile, in part because that's what audiences want. No meaning, only lore. "Signs" sucked because lul why wouldn't aliens know that Earth is covered in water when water is bad for them? Ignore the almost shriekingly obvious subtext that the aliens are actually demons and it's a spiritual story. "Inside" (Defoe, not Burnham) was bad because it was slow. A story about a man learning to survive in the most harsh and basic elemental conditions while undergoing an almost alchemical process of transformation and ascension (he builds a fucking altar and finds a hidden tome of esoteric knowledge how much more obvious could this shit be)? Pass, it was bad because idk it took too long to get to the climax. Annihilation isn't about the beautiful terror of intimate relationships or the self-destruction caused by pain, it's about scientists being unsafe when examining weird mold.
I could go on and on and on and on. I want to make effort posts and videos and ramble and complain about the quantification of art. One day I will. Seriously, go watch that video. Sit with it and digest it. It's not too long and even if you haven't seen the movie it's really good at helping you examine art (or at least stories) under the surface.
It's weird. They want lore, but they aren't interested in studying history (ie real life lore). They want to study fictional lore that has no use or application in their lives. They want to consume something that's both sterile and useless. There are things that are sterile but are useful (instruction videos, many boring academic subjects), things that have emotional depth but are useless (many art), and things that are both (most great art, life-affirming activities like gardening).
I dunno, it's a strange phenomenon. It's like, what do you call someone who would rather read the starship specs on Wookiepedia than read a book on medieval warfare? They're basically reading an instructional manual of a thing that doesn't exist. At bare minimum, that time and energy could be spend on reading the instructional manual of their microwave or something. It's this bizarre space where they're reading something that's neither meaningfully fictional nor real. It's meaninglessly fictional, only a step higher than reading a fictional grocery list.
It's like, what do you call someone who would rather read the starship specs on Wookiepedia than read a book on medieval warfare?
An escapist, I suppose. I read an account from a POW kept for years in solitary confinement who said he kept himself sane by creating an entire fictional baseball league in his head and tracking the players stats and imagining their games. Prisoners retreat into worlds of imagination because those are the only ones where their interaction has any sort of meaning or relevance. Someone who spends their days in drudgery chipping away at the walls that hinder more powerful peoples dreams may want to spend their off time inhabiting and learning about a world that seems no less far fetched to them than being able to tell their boss to go fuck themselves and a good deal less soaked in vitriol.
To a slave being unproductive is rebellion, maybe the only kind of rebellion they consider realistic
They're basically reading an instructional manual of a thing that doesn't exist
Exactly! That or like a fictional encyclopedia. Literally in some cases. You can drill down into detailed family histories or muh hard magic systems
or intricate details on some dude's sword handle engravings and it's all fictional. And more importantly, pointless to the overall story. It's actually bafflingProbably a weird reaction to seeing your comment but you've made me realize I was using "soft magic" as a term for when the author sees magic as nothing but a tool to make things look cool with no meaning behind it. I was trying to figure out what made magic hard/soft and why so many things I liked looked suspiciously like what people called "soft magic" and you finally made me realize it's bullshit and my gripe was something else. Thank you.
I wonder about this too.
Could it be simply a safe environment to practice and perform specific human thought capacities? Makes me think of how some sports fans can get into serious deep debates with stats and shit. Maybe humans just like working and utilizing their innate functions to think and whatever.
Could it be that learning a fictional universe is actually "possible"? You can nail it down, put everything in it's right place, unlike actual reality, with all it's bias and ambiguity.
Or... just escapism maybe? I like to escape, too.
History doesn't perfectly conform to their bourgeois-defined tastes and is thus distasteful compared to their distilled make-believe lore-history. Might also just be an association with the unreal and fantastic with pleasurable leisure and not stressful/boring school or work.
I want to make effort posts and videos and ramble and complain about the quantification of art.
Do it!
" Ignore the almost shriekingly obvious subtext that the aliens are actually demons and it's a spiritual story."
I am switching teams. That is so stupid I am now team blue curtain. The subtext is that the plot is stupider than we realized and we are better off without it.
Great video! I could feel his pain when referencing the lore heavy, plot is a puzzle to be solved-type videos lol
If someone is ever upset at an ambiguous ending they are telling on themselves hard
A little off-topic, but I'm listening to Folding Ideas videos right now as background noise.
I really love Dan's video essays
The commies want to send me back to school to learn critical analysis
I started doing a critical analysis of "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" but had to stop when it turned into critical race theory.
I'm sorry, the answer we were looking for was "Belle and Sebastian inspirations"
Quickest way to derail every discussion about this into a complete and total shitshow is to bring the bible into it.
I’ve been told that the Bible doesn’t contain errors, and that instances of scribes editing words, contexts, or straight up removing or adding entirely new sections to a book is irrelevant to its correct nature.
So both versions of the Ten Commandments and both creation stories are true at the same time?
This shit is so annoying. I rather be around someone who over analyzes a piece of art or media instead of someone who insists that there is no meaning beyond the surface level. Everyone is influenced by someone or something. I mean, if you’re able to pick up language and grammar as a child without thinking about it, what makes people think they can’t do the same for the various other beliefs and interests and inspirations?
It’s why I find the Breaking Bad “bravo Vince” meme kind of funny. It’s said unironically and ironically by people who don’t understand that large production media involve hundreds or thousands of writers and staff who go through various versions of a product and inspired by different things. They all have different interpretations of the story and characters. Vince Gilligan didn’t produce everything, and he has no way of tracking every little motive or reason he does something. People in costume design or sound might interpret a scene a certain way, and the directors whose focus and specialties lie elsewhere might sign off on it because it simply looks good to them. One man’s blue curtains is another man’s subtle portrayal of deep and complex emotions
If something objective and final like math and science can be challenged after it’s been established and used forever, I don’t see why something as inherently subjective and varied like art is excepted.
I saw this meme posted in a normie server and called it out, server sided me overall but OP defended it by pointing out that what they were actually criticizing was the fact that English teachers often teach only ONE correct interpretation and thats a bad way to teach.
Which is true but, meme doesnt say that though?
might have come from american protestantism as a style of literary interpretation
People who took not wanting to do school work as a sign of intelligence and carry that all their lives are the worst.
"They're not cranks! They're super intelligent anti-Establishment anti-Woke warriors fighting for the reclamation of Western Society™ from the radical communist left that controls all of Academia, the government and the media!"
"They don't need academia verifying their competence or assigning them worthless degrees! They just need to post pictures of bleached statues to prove their importance!"
Out of all the recurring UlyssesT rant topics, "self-described autodidacts" is one I've never actually encountered in the wild. In what circles is that a thing?
It's a west coast California Ideology thing. You'll find it by name at SlateStarCodex, part of the LessWrong brand "rationalist" cultists. They're not hard to find but I can link them to you if I must. That's where you will find self-described luminaries like Eliezer Yudkowsky that do call themselves autodidacts, their word choice. The gimmick is that their grand high cult leader never completed high school and states that all academia is bunk because it doesn't agree with his ideas, which come from a bad interpretation of Harry Potter movies and then he made a massive fanfiction out of them (he admitted once that he didn't bother reading the fucking books all the while) and somehow that made him a self-described "AI expert" among other things to the billionaire-subsidized cult that he started, later telling computer scientists how computers work (and neurologists how the human brain works too, because why not).
You'll also find other examples of self-described autodidacts here. https://hexbear.net/c/sneerclub@awful.systems
Warning: this is a painful viewing. The host is very patient. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxsAuxswOvM
Not necessarily by name, but Jordan Peterson does the "expert on communism without actually fucking reading anything from communists" thing, which is the same deal.
Same with Ben "facts don't care about your feelings" Shapiro, who isn't really qualified to speak on much at all, but speaks as an authority to rubes.
Can you feel the AI expertise from someone too smart to get any certifications or degrees that also says people with such things are by definition limited in their thinking compared to his Harry Potter fanfic power fantasies?
My English teacher who did not suck told me something along the lines of, "Do you look at a painting and think precisely what the artist thought? No, probably not, but good art makes you feel something. Great artists are great for a reason and part of it is that they understand symbolism."
She was a cool lady who was more patient with teenage me than I deserved
Communism seeks to eliminate such thinking by simply making everything RED
These same people: What do you mean that Bitcoin is a scam, it's money the government can't touch!
BRB gonna go fight commodity fetishism
damn this shit hard
