Down There   -   Mattias Härenstam, 2011.

Swedish, b. 1971-

Woodcut ,   98.5 x 60.2 cm

I've had enough!!!

would you woohoo me on sims yes or no

im literally so i just i literally i actually just okay so this is i mean alright so

really truly genuinely literally me

Peace and love but I want to kill

ya being kafkaesque isn’t about turning into a bug it’s about how if you turned into a bug your boss would still be like “ok but we’re short staffed can u still come in”

all jokes aside, it makes me very sad how literally the entire internet, especially social media, has just become more and more unapologetic in trying to wring as much money out of you as possible. can’t go on youtube without being bombarded by youtube red ads promising that if you just give them money, they’ll block the pesky ads who are also begging for your money. can’t stream a movie without searching for it on each of the dozens and dozens of streaming platforms. all demanding individual subscriptions for their tiny share of the world’s movies that used to just all be on netflix. every news site counting down your free three articles, all the while begging you to turn your adblock off. click off instagram’s stupid shopping tab, and the first post on your timeline is with #ad. and of course, now, tumblr’s adding post plus. i hate it!! hate getting advertised at everywhere i go. hate that social media’s not even supposed to be social anymore, just another thing to monetize. i’m so sick of it!!! can’t escape it ever!!! give us 9.99 per month for exclusive fucking content!! fuck!!

Super 8 film box for The Deadly Mantis (1957)

so i decided to look more into Tumblr’s latest bad idea, the +Post subscription service, and I’d like to share with you my favorite bit of bad decision making:

absolutely incredible. we can steal the entire content of the post just by copy-pasting the post itself in a reblog. both original and stolen content in one entity. post-modernism. absurdist. ceci n'est pas une original content.

Creepy #19 (1967), cover by Vic Prezio

i’m thinking tonight about masterpieces. michelangelo looked at the sixtine chapel and saw; nothing to preserve. virgil wanted his aenid burned and forgotten; only to be saved at the behest of an emperor who thought it flattery. kafka instructed his friend to burn everything he’d ever written - too personal was it, too unfinished.

they were ignored.

instead, their work was taken and held and published and thrown to be gawked at. instead, an emperor, a pope, a friend, took from within the cavities of them their choices; their art.

tumblr rolls out post+. twitter rolls out tip jars. youtube takes half of what creators earn. on social media, there is a ko-fi or a patreon and a polished face in every bio. i show my poems to my mother and she asks if I will publish them before she says anything else. emily dickinson instructed her sister to burn her poetry.

her sister did not listen.

we are a community, says tumblr, we should give back to creators. my last poem had 50 notes. six of those were reblogs that weren’t mine. i lie in bed at 2am and stare at my bright phone screen and the way netflix’s library grows thinner and thinner. the first ad on tumblr that i can reblog is for amazon. amazon takes more than half of what authors earn.

kafka’s friend took barely finished work and hammered it into structure. he is the only reason we know of him.

my father wrote a book and a play when I was barely big enough to reach his knees. when i try to talk to him about writing, he shrugs.

no one wanted to publish it, he says. so i don’t write anymore.

i am filled with poems I have never published, books I haven’t written. There are little snippets of them scattered throughout my life. I link to my ko-fi on my tumblr.

-

asked capitalism of the artist: what is art, if not for consumption? who does art benefit, if it is not consumed? why create at all if you do not market it? who are you, frothing at the mouth about someone publishing someone else’s poems? who are you to hate your magnum opus? what is art, if not in relation to its reception? if no one sees it, how is it art?

said the artist, baring their teeth: it’s mine.

oh u got the metnal illnes?

july 23rd, 2002

if youre getting queerbaited by marvel thats on you

reblog if you hate the current interior design trend of painting everything white with hints of grey or black. ignore if you have no taste