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queernuck · 3 years

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The Cleveland Browns made the playoffs. The Islanders made the Eastern Conference Finals.

And that’s enough for me.

So long, so long I have been living like this, pretending that I want to keep on living, that life feels worthwhile, that I don’t want to kill myself. Suicide is for cowards but ive been chickening out for a whole decade, to the point where getting on the subway was itself something that involved convincing myself not to jump in front of it. I remember once while working in the city, I watched and waited as two trains came in and left, trying to get the energy to jump in front of them. I had decided, if I couldn’t do it by the time a second train came and went, I would go to work and save it for another day. I came very close, my legs tense like a linebacker on 4th & Goal, but I didn’t do it. Maybe it would be better if I had, I would have saved not only myself but a lot of other people a lot of pain and suffering. I’ve been dealing with feeling suicidal for a decade, an entire ten years, and made it through. And for what? I lost a retail job at minimum wage, I’ve seen the Giants go from two-time Super Bowl kingslayers to a team that relied on the Eagles for a playoff berth, I got to see Evangelion only for the final Rebuild film to be infinitely delayed, I have a useless non-degree that allows me to eloquently describe how the Democrats and Republicans alike are driving this stolen land to Fascism while sycophants tell me Vote Blue No Matter Who. I’m so tired, I’m not even the person people think me to be, since if I were, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

My paychecks, as hard-earned as they were, never seemed to be mine in any real sense, and it made me so frustrated that something in me broke at the beginning of this year. I made some mistakes, some very stupid ones, and got myself fired. I took money from and distorted the inventory of my store to get what amounted to pocket money, less than two paychecks. I was tempted because I feel so powerless, so much like nothing I could ever say or do matters, and so I decided to lash out against a place that mattered to me, against people I cared about deeply. Chain stores, corporations, all of those things are not really high on my list of things to care about. Barnes & Noble pushed out local booksellers years ago, an irony not lost on me whenever our own competition with Amazon was made apparent. We were reaping what we had sown. But what always interested on top of this irony was how symbolic these things could be to people, how much we figured into so may memories for so many. The Manga Aisle at Barnes & Noble is a staple of 2006 scene culture, a way that kids without the pocket money to afford the newest volume of Bleach it Naruto could keep up before scams became widely available. How the store was a place where people studying for standardized tests could use the test prep guides to try and get ready for the eugenic ritual of the standardized test. And just how much a chain bookstore became a substitute, socially, for the now-absent local bookstore. We bear the guilt for that, but at the same time we were still selling books, giving people a place to get coffee and sit and read and talk, in ways that libraries may not be able to. We certainly can never replace a library, given just what a library does for people. But we did do a lot of good all the same. Before it closed, some of my fondest memories came when I was the exact sort of annoying teenage customer I grew to hate, hanging out at the Columbus Circle Borders. Working at Barnes & Noble was tiring, dehumanizing, difficult, made me feel like I would never measure up to the authors we sold, the people books were written about, that I was a failure. And I am, as my death shows. But it also made me a part of something I was proud of. And that Above & Beyond pin I earned is in my jacket still, a reminder of something.

That something was shown in so many of the coworkers I had, who were incredible in so many ways. I feel awful for what I did, I genuinely do, because of how it may have hurt people who thought so kindly of me, people who deserve so much good. I wish I had the ability to address each of them individually but this decision was hastily made, and i have a feeling it will show in the things I miss in this note. Audra, your help in finding me a way to use the company policies to my advantage as a worker was something that gave me faith even after having seen the despicable firings and cuts the company went through. Linda, I can’t quite square the circle here given my actions, but I want to say your disappointment broke my heart and that while I will not be the one who shows it, your reassurance that everyone makes mistakes was welcome.

To my (former) fellow booksellers at Store 2216, all of my love and my sincerest apologies. You all have so much good in you, your willingness to listen to my ADHD-fueled rants and to discuss so many things with an incredible frankness was always impressive, in addition to part of what I loved about all of you. I want you all to be happy, and the kinship I felt with you was a vital part of what kept me going. It was tough, as you all know. But at times, it almost felt worth it.

The same is true of my CTY friends: it was a weird, magical place that frankly, a lot of us idealized for far too long and which sk many of us eventually outgrew without being able to let go of. And that was tough, that was something we had a great deal of difficulty understanding, that what helped us once was not always going to be helping us, was not always what we needed. But in eventually finding that, we found solace, we realized how life as a whole functions and just what it is that we can take from places like it.

To my other family, my Cleo family, I know I haven’t been terribly active lately, but I can never, ever thank you enough for the belonging you gave me. I have never felt anywhere as welcoming as Cleo. As warm as Cleo (even as we struggled to pay for the oil bill) was. As kind and understanding. As tolerant. As questioning and inquisitive into what that tolerance meant to us. I am thankful, eternally, for what you all did for me. The incredible experiences I had as a Cleo make me proud of what the organization can represent, and one of my dying wishes is that the organization continues to reach out to marginalized communities on Trinity’s campus. There is much work to be done in making sure abusers cannot hide in our family, but I trust you all to do that work. Tucker Carlson is a Trinity grad and we must embody the opposite of what he stands for, no matter how difficult it may be. I could go on about how this means opposing liberals and Liberalism/Neo—Liberalism due to the truth of tolerance resulting in a Popper-esque Paradox of Tolerance that implies Popper is a worthwhile philosopher, but that’s another issue.

To my friends on that Blue Hellsite, tumblr, you made a continual presence worth it, even with all of the bullshit this place brings. It’s the reason I read so much Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Guattari, read Žižek against himself, and so on and so on, and the value of that to me can never be overstated. I learned so much from the ways in which I learned to analyze the world, and that in turn became a huge inspiration for why I should try to do what I could to make the world closer to a place of revolution, one where we could perhaps eke out a living for one another. I loved how much I could be an unrepentant nerd and still love hockey on there, and while the

NHL fans on tumblr are incredibly annoying,

I can deal with that compared to the racism of most hockey fans.

Mom, Dad? I just couldn’t live with you any longer. I’m so sorry.

Grandma, I love you.

And the things I leave behind? Donate what can be donated. Hats, please auction, or at least offer to other HatHeads at a reasonable price. I had some nice ones. As for assorted albums, clothing, and other things, sell them and donate to a Harm Reduction organization, or organizations that advocate for PWUD in a radical fashion. WE DESERVE AUTONOMY!

I am a victim of the War on Drugs. Sobriety was always hellish to me, and I could never take it. I want people to be able to live how they want, to see sobriety and being on drugs as equally valuable states, to see the two as no different from one another.

Abolish all gun laws

End the War on Terror

Decriminalize and legalize all drugs, sobriety is what killed me.

I love all of you.

LET’S GO ISLANDERS!

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queernuck · 3 years

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to address one critique that may arise in looking at the original post, the alienation that leads one to take up more extreme, fringe aesthetics is in many ways one which can result from a kind of bourgeoisie adventurism, but additionally the way in which alienation from mainstream culture, as well as the dialectic of “cringe culture” as a paradigm of enjoyment, as the way in which one expresses genuine emotion despite the ironic distance being necessary for that earnest return. instances of, say, camp as a kind of indulgence is well-known but the contemporary means by which “cringe posting” is more generally understood, received, and embodied in certain parts of the internet. additionally, looking at certain paradigms defined by the sort of disgust or at least distaste you mention and their embodiment within, say, fetish communities leads to the means by which fascist embodiments and expressions that seem to run counter to fascist values because accepted, at least for a time, before an eventual act of turning-away, becoming-degeneracy is performed upon these expressions in the fashion that degenerate art was once categorized, the category that much ugliness and experimentalism in art falls under.

mentioning genres such as vaporwave, which appropriate the aesthetics of easy listening and smooth jazz via the influence of Chopped & Screwed rap production techniques implemented on classic rock and contemporary pop tracks alike by Daniel Lopatin working under the pseudonym Chuck Person sees a reference to the song “Africa” before it reached the status of a somewhat ironic Frat Classic in the late 2010s put his work at the forefront of cringe culture and the ironic or earnest reappropriation and reterritorialization that defined vaporwave. meanwhile, a genre like Witch House, one which had similar influences, aesthetics, and tendencies regarding audience and engagement was often criticized because of how in its ironic appreciation, it often seemed to be intentionally demeaning the source material, acting in that sense of “better than” the earnest engagement, even if not all artists were in this vein. PBR&B, the name given to artists like How to Dress Well or early work from the Weeknd, was often recieved more earnestly and this was because of how it displayed its earnest intent, even if strangely and in an alienating aesthetic like HtDW’s early, sparse production necessitated.

all of these different genres function as displays of these dialectical processes in action, and to some degree can be seen in the leftist (or at least self-styled leftist) critique of ideals present in certain scenes that, while underground, are also influential to some sense in the mainstream: one example is 100 Gecs and 3OH!3 collaborating. it signifies a reference to the mainstream impact of 3OH!3, who themselves have a sort of gleeful ignorance in their music that was emblematic of edginess as an accoutrement of mid-2000s culture in numerous ways. a facebook friend talking about listening to their music and the ignorance that permeates the lyrics implied that not only was the ignorance of the lyrics from the same aesthetic root as the music, but that the ignorance in question complimented and was a vital part of the music as a whole. the ignorance is not merely an accessory, a secondary consideration or unfortunate artifact as with other artists, but part of the appeal. Not only is there a trust fund kid present as with the experimental music mentioned, but in fact the trust fund is part of what makes the possibility of such music thinkable, is part of the potentiality.

Another example related to this phenomena is the popularity, rejection, and rediscovery of Skrillex as an artist: he began as an electro-and-dubstep influenced artist who was working in the nascent American dubstep field, his work perfectly suited to the sort of Americanism that many artists in the country seemed to add, intentionally or not, to their dubstep tracks due in part to a disconnect from the origins of the genre as well as the influences most common in electronic for Americans at that time. both dubstep and drum & bass were somewhat novel, and this phenomena lead to the way in which Skrillex’s own music was a novelty, was taking his past in a somewhat extreme genre and using it to further develop the electronic music he sought to make. this was matched by and developed in the work of artists like Rusko, who began his career as part of the “old-school” dubstep scene, and kept working within it until it became “brostep” in the American context, a development which was not nearly as well-liked in the UK. In fact, even in the US, those who had enough investment in UK Bass to remember the rise of Dubstep moved on right through this phase to Post-Dubstep, which eventually gave rise to artists mimicking trap beats like those used by Zaytoven on an album like Flockaveli, which in turn lead to a new genre that became played out, ubiquitous, and eventually, uncool enough for artists like 100 Gecs and Food House to use in their own music. the way in which these processes of disgust and rediscovery happen within genres as well as within the personal experiences of alienation from art and beauty felt by those engaging with it, the reactionary experience of turning away from or equally compellingly into exploration of degeneracy.

Artists such as Death In June, a supposedly-apolitical artist with heavily fascist themes and numerous references to fascism and Naziism specifically, are often enjoyed to some degree by those who either excuse the involvement by pointing out the way it explores life as a gay man (insisted on as a vital part of it by Douglas Pearce) in the way Yukio Mishima did, one sees a kind of process whereby the “degenerate” is matched with the political-apolitical in order to heighten certain contradictions and act in a dialectical fashion without a clear synthesis at its end, except for horror and revulsion. this confusion is part of what Pearce revels in, the Nazi symbolism implying a somewhat cryptic message to be worked out through study of these fascist symbols, tendencies, and the influences drawn from as well as those passed on in the larger neofolk scene, the combination of a gay identity with fascism is meant as a kind of knowing double transgression, one wherein both the fascist ideology and the gay desire flow through the same desiring-machines, where gay identity and homosexuality as a taboo is matched with those against fascist desire, akin to how tom of finland cites Nazi uniforms as his first inspiration. the extremeness of this music is hardly an accident, and it is through this that urges toward fascism and identification with gayness are part of the same structure, one of violent desire. Peter Sotos is known for exploring such urges, looking at them in a kind of fascinated fashion, putting together one of the first zines exploring the serial killer in the fashion well known now to those who have seen the true crime community on tumblr, a kind of engagement with the idea of the to the point where a magazine of taboo material he collected and published landed him in prison for possession of child pornography. While many fascists would call this degenerate art, the exact sort that would be eliminated by a fascist revolution, musicians related to Sotos and other projects of members of Whitehouse (such as Sutcliffe Jugend, a band name combining a serial killer with the German word for “Youth” as a direct reference to the Hitler Youth) makes clear that shocking content is absolutely the point of such art, and moreover that rejection of it is in some sense evidence of its effectiveness, that indeed, these are shocking things that can be used to in some way or another weed out those unable to handle it. this continues on the tradition of bikers, punks, and of course, the fetish scene. while many online seem to say that what they describe as sexual degeneracy is strictly a right-wing phenomena, given the proliferation of fascist femboys and minarchist hentai lovers, it frankly is more a sign of just how the function of these acts is to drive away those who are afraid of digression, of specific and calculated tastelessness, of the ennui and desensitization necessary to enter into fascist spaces of discourse. these act as tests, much in the way that the “apolitical” spaces of Martial and Power Electronics have a kind of shock value one must initially overcome in order to realize the actual, genuine fascist content at their core, discuss it, reach the point where one can insist that one’s rather earnest and well-directed nihilism and suspiciously specific misanthropy is not hateful in a particular fashion. And of course, the boomers never seem to understand it, like most sorts of fine art.

fine art itself, as a whole, is another space where we find multiple levels of understanding, aproach, process metaphysics and entanglements or assemblages of irony at work such that the actual enjoyment of art is questionable as a way of enjoying art: is unironic enjoyment even possible anymore? given how conceptual art, modern art, postmodern art, neo-modernist works, and other sorts of approach become mixed and repurposed and recategorized based on acts of curation much like those seen in aspirational blogging (my own being a particularly artful, worthwhile, and refined example) makes it such that the artist’s statement is its own form of art. not “getting it” until one sees the artist’s statement is common, and the way in which works to give two asynchronous clocks or a pile of candy in a corner weight that can make someone break down in tears is a vital part of creating art that does not lend itself to a simple, surface interpretation or exhibit beauty in a sense that is immediately apparent.

the way that the fine art world is often described as money laundering is a target for both reactionary and revolutionary discussions of art as a commodity, and in many ways supposedly-revolutionary discussions of its consumption as a bourgeoisie activity is one in which this very same dynamic of working-class identification is replicated by those who posit their own art as holding some sort of greater authenticity due to its proximity to the working class, no matter what kind of inaccessibility it may have. Insistence on “Socialist Realism” as a singular, unifying aesthetic is one which fails not only because of limitations of it as a movement but additionally because its enshrinement as a static, singular paradigm makes it so the consumption of it is is limited in the same fashion as bourgeoisie art. Ironically, the particular hallmarks of Socialist Realism lead to a point at which an average reactionary American may praise it over the work of Pollock, completely unaware of the Cold War juxtaposition of the two.

One of the most prevalent ideas around art of many sorts, visual especially but experimental music, literature, theatre, and dance as well as conceptual art and performance art is the insistence that the audience member could create it themselves, create something better, or position it in relation to an entirely different sort of art (as seen in the initial liberal insistence on the unrelatabiity of avant-garde art from the original discussion) is common specifically because of how it is often ironic in a sense, joking, meant to elicit a similarly amused response and an agreement about the degenerate or lacking character of such art, usually with some sort of racist, homophobic, or sexist addendum. Use of ugliness in art in order to gain some sort of effect, or even creating beauty in a fashion outside of the expected “nice painting of a landscape or portrait” invites such revulsion from so many that it is perplexing. there is a kind of act of reverse pretentiousness that itself upholds the pretentious ideology at hand wherein a pride at “not getting” art and instead referring to “simpler” or more conventional narratives and structures of aesthetic preference describes a stronger moral fibre, a common relatability that often is not terribly relatable.

to offer one example, the way in which the Stuckists seem to critique Damien Hirst is frankly far more interesting if one looks at it from the perspective of an equally conceptual response that goes directly against their insistence on what art must and cannot be, the declaration of a Dead Shark not being Art one of importance because of how not-art, art-objects and either anti-or-un-art commodities or experiences are then evaluated in a kind of consumption-production. Perhaps one can think Jeff Koons is an awful hack while also enjoying large balloon dogs. the power of Jenny Holzer’s truisms and word art can exist alongside a disappointment at her actual class position. love for Barbra Kruger alongside love for Supreme, a brand that generated clothing items like the Piss Christ Sweatshirt, as well as the confusion created by a conservative figure tweeting about seeing one and the unsurprising disbelief in one response made even funnier by the possibility of it being a genuine encounter. an act of acknowledgement toward consumer culture and its impact on and references from fine art are continually repeating, as artists like Murakami blend lines between fine art and accessible “low” art, doing things like creating art for an MRI room at a Children’s Hospital while working for some of the largest galleries in the world.

clothing, culture, and how these collide is on display in moments like the NBA’s City Series jerseys, specifically my adopted Brooklyn Nets’ homage to Basquiat in their City Series uniforms for this year. All at once, it is an acknowledgement of Basquiat’s massive influence and a reflection of how much of a brand Basquiat has become, both outside and an ever-present reminder within an art world that may as well have killed him personally despite the incredible value he created for it. the tensions within his work are very much on display when, not knowing of Basquiat’s work, or with a vague understanding of it, a middle-aged facebook commenter says their child could have done the same and that as a result, the Nets have failed to represent Brooklyn. Given the young, college-educated, largely Black makeup of the NBA, there is a good chance that a number of NBA players are familiar with Basquiat’s work, at least in passing, especially given his reference in relatively popular rap lyrics as well as his presence at formative moments in hip-hop and larger New York popular culture. His work as SAMO as well as the difficulty in balancing the enormous income his fame generated with a sense of inadequacy and the way that his earnestness lead to moments like paint-splattered Issey Miyake clothing in a photoshoot is very much mixing the avant-garde and underground art of the working class along with the way in which it is recaptured by the bourgeoisie.

Basquiat’s role in early hip-hop culture is tied to his appearance on one of the earliest battle rap releases of all time, as well as producing the cover art for it. Cover art as a whole has been an enormously important part of culture, and mixtape culture especially. Pen and Pixel, a studio known for its outlandish and maximalist approach to mixtape covers, was prolific in part because it was one of the first studios to offer Photoshop-based digital art to rappers at an affordable rate, and a hallmark of these covers was aspiration, use of grandeur effectively impossible in real life, a means by which the grandeur of rap lifestyle could be matched in visual aesthetics for those looking at and consuming the mixtape. the studio had a twofold reason for conforming to a similar style for most covers: this allowed them to work relatively quickly and create far more covers, making it so they could take more commissions for more money while offering low prices, and second because it created a coherent visual language, because it became a hallmark of the aesthetic the studio offered, it was an experiment in repetition creating differentiation, the way in which repetion itself is an act of difference (and differance). of course, by far the most interesting part of this is the way in which many deride the covers in question without realizing what they represent: historically, they were at the forefront of digital collage in popular recognition, were offering their art to artists who would go on to influence rap as a genre for years to come, were just beginning to realize what the internet could offer, just how good the production quality of new more affordable digital setups could be, and providing a look into the sort of ethos seen later among the incredibly prolific artists who defined “Soundcloud Rap” for a time. artists like Lil B would later reference them, as have many mixtape artists since as well as clothing brands, and indeed, fine artists of many sorts. crossover between cultures is inevitable.

Crossover between outsider aesthetics can be seen in the frequent convergence of fans of genres such as hardcore punk or black metal and drill-influenced rap, given that both have transgressive lyrical themes and varying production qualities that often turn limitations into aesthetic hallmarks, that use either maximalist or minimalist posturing as a means of communicating an aggressive aesthetic, and how the interaction between the two is seen in places such as tumblr posts for one or the other: hardcore songs often have gifs of rappers pointing guns added to them, while rap songs will have violent mosh pits. it demonstrates how much the two come together online: because of how the cultures have converged in artists like xxxtentacion, lil peep, JuiceWRLD, and numerous others as well as the rediscovery of Linkin Park, KORN, and others, the intensity and tenacity that both genres show is appreciated in a very mutual sense beyond cultural divides that once seemed impenetrable.

tumblr is a phenomenal place to demonstrate this, in that it is at once caught in so many eras of internet consciousness, the way in which more than a decade of cultural dialectic exchange exists all at once, in a singular moment, for consumption is part of the appeal of tumblr as well as what makes it such a unique platform. the way that reblogging, as one of the basic acts of the site, has changed over time along with the etiquette around it makes it such that there are always artifacts of this or that era on a given blog, even if only existing as links or references to other posts that rely on certain disused or outdated features, trends, ideas. that something as basic as reblogging has changed over time in the ways that it has while posts still circulate has been shown in forms such as “the ultimate blogging” or in posts whose antiquated formatting is intentionally decontextualized for effect, usually implying both the original joke and its deconstruction through the dissolving of the form necessary for it. at one point, the addition of Supernatural gifs to posts was not only standard, but a kind of point of pride, the indication that a post had “made it” to a wide enough audience to warrant such a response, although as ettiquite around adding unsolicited additions to posts changed, this became more cringeworthy, until SuperWhoLock as a fandom became widely detested. In turn, however, adding ironic additions mimicking the original unironic ones became a way for bloggers “in the know” to either interact with one another, or to state-without-stating the embarrassment of reading another user’s post.

the way that “cringe” operates in this dialectical fashion, both in looking at original posts and the ways in which responses to them are formed, is heightened by how the platform’s structuring of reblogging allows for direct integration of a “cringe” response into a post, and the act of cringing through mocking or simply presenting said response to be offered as an antithetical counterpart leading to the synthesis of a new post which itself uses the cringeworthy to heighten the original. the way in which various tumblr personalities have developed based off of this process, as well as the means by which combinations of ironic and unironic engagement have generated famous posts (three weed smoking girlfriends being one of the most famous examples) has lead to a general discursive format whereby a knowledge of the site, its trends, its history and the ways that breaking rules can be acceptable, unacceptable, or acceptable specifically in mimicking the unacceptable so closely that few can tell the two apart is an artform of sorts, a kind of metacommentary that is far more intricate than most means of ironic response and repurposing on other websites.

All of it is ironic, on several layers, through seven proxies, we have no idea just who is being honest about what anymore, and for that matter, which artists are trust fund kids pretending to express alienation and which ones are alienated youth who direct their frustration into creating violence not through bombs or baseball bats, but through sonic assaults on established order. And at times, perhaps there is little difference.

Aesthetics, Dialectics, And Cringe

the concept of Cringe is a pretty ubiquitous, but rarely defined- but if we are to define it, the definition which matches most closely to how it is used would be that it is a negative reaction to an aesthetic experience. it’s lately become fashionable to claim to be above that, but i think if you were to take the people who claim to be too woke and kindhearted to cringe at anything, and sit them down and show them, say, late era Family Guy, i think those people would quickly reveal themselves to be just as capable of cringing as every other person on earth.

now, there is a real negative phenomenon that people are talking about when they talk about “cringe culture”- namely when people vocally express aesthetic disgust outside of contexts where that is appropriate. it’s okay to openly express aesthetic repulsion toward a bad blockbuster movie you wasted money on, both because it has the social power to take the hit and has been presented in a context to be judged in that way, whereas if you openly express aesthetic repulsion toward the fashion choices of a senile elderly person, you’re an asshole.

and obviously this is subjective- what people are aesthetically repulsed by- what makes them cringe- differs from person to person, and what an individual person feels aesthetically repulsed by changes over time, especially in response to over-exposure to something. people cringe in response to an overused joke, even if they might have found it funny the first time. people get sick of a song they once loved the millionth time they hear it used in an ad. etc.

hence why art and aesthetics evolve, and why they evolve in the patterns they do. people get sick of complex art, which sparks off a trend of simple art, people get sick of simple art, sparking off a trend of complex art, and so forth along every possible axis- harshness and softness, neatness and messiness, etc.

there’s this dumb debate that keeps cropping up between reactionaries and liberals, where the reactionaries will claim that beautiful art has been lost to the past and modernity is defined by deliberate ugliness, then they’ll use a renaissance art piece and a modern avant-garde art piece to demonstrate this claim, then the liberals will go “but ohoho, very few people consume avant garde art! and the mainstream art most people consume is very conventionally beautiful, and the only reason anyone consumes avant garde art is as a status-seeking signalling game for rich people. checkmate reactionaries :^)”

this debate drives me up the wall every time, since both participants seem completely uninterested in actually examining the social forces which drive the creation of so-called “ugly” art, and also even more glaringly neither side of the debate even briefly entertains the notion that beauty might be even a little subjective.

the claim that avant garde art embraces “ugliness” simply as an expensive signaling game for the wealthy falls apart when it’s immediately observable that similar patterns exist outside of anything even remotely high-status- surreal fried memes, noise music,extreme metal, etc all follow similar patterns of willfully embracing “ugliness”, but don’t serve the same kind of status-signalling purpose that avant garde fine art does, so it’s clear that status signalling, while certainly in play with regard to certain types of avant garde art, isn’t the driving factor in the embrace of so-called “ugliness”. rather, it’s driven by people becoming tired of more conventional forms of memes/music and seeking something new. bringing it back to the subject of cringe, the pop music fan and the noise music fan would both mutually find each other’s taste in music cringeworthy- but notably, the while the pop music fan’s explanation of why they felt that way would likely begin and end with “it sounds like shit”, the noise music fans explanation of why they felt that way would likely involve some allusion to the ubiquity of pop music- a hint that perhaps their love for noise music is in some way a result of social context, and that if they weren’t so over-exposed to those conventional pop song cliches they might enjoy pop music more, which conversely hints that it might be possible, with sufficient over-exposure to pop music, for the pop music fan might find themselves sick of those cliches and desperate for a little merzbow to mix things up. further, if the noise fan spends enough time avoiding pop music and immersing themselves in the noise scene, they might get bored of the noise scene and desire Conventionally Appealing Chord Progressions once again, re-developing an interest in pop music. which gets back to the central point, which is that whether something is “ugly” or “beautiful” is both subjective and shaped by social context, namely “how overexposed to this thing is this person”

the prevailing aesthetic trends serve as the thesis, the people sick of those prevailing aesthetic trends serve as the pocket of dissatisfaction, which gives birth to an anti-thesis in the form of a trend that exists in opposition to that prevailing trend, then synthesis can occur in various forms, with the anti-thesis either being subsumed into the thesis or overtaking it, or any number of possibilities in between.

the thing is, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that reactionaries do about the supposed cultural trend toward ugliness, anti-thesises which unapologetically embrace ugliness inevitably find themselves devoured almost whole when synthesis occurs, almost all the edges sanded off for mainstream consumption. harsh noise music is never going to top the charts. you might get an alt-pop musician throwing a little noise flourish into the intro, maybe. they might name-drop some noise band in an interview. but the prevailing hegemonic aesthetic will always by definition be the one which most people find appealing on average, only able to become ugly through it’s constant repetition. far from artistic development moving too fast toward ugliness, the more significant threat is art not evolving fast enough to avoid becoming ugly through tedium precisely because it’s afraid of deviating from a narrowly defined beauty.

that said, while anti-thesises against the prevailing aesthetic status quo are necessary for art to be able to evolve, it’s clear that this doesn’t correspond neatly to political progress, and indeed, that’s one of the largest plot holes in the reactionary narrative- for all the talk of how reactionary ideology will supposedly save humanity from ugly art, it seems a mysteriously large percentage of the people making deliberately ugly art are reactionaries. the harsh noise and especially black metal scenes are fucking infested with reactionaries. and sure, there are leftists too- “red/anarchist black metal” is a thing- but with black metal especially reactionaries definitely outnumber them.

i honestly don’t know quite what to make of that- i wonder how they reconcile making art that the vast majority of people find ugly and unpleasant with their embrace of an ideology which advocates the destruction of artwork deemed insufficiently beautiful?

of course, it’s worth reiterating that ugliness is subjective, and it’s entirely possible that black metal and harsh noise nazi edgelords are fully convinced that a movement to destroy ugly art would get rid of mainstream dance pop and would hold up their lo-fi trve kvlt nsbm album as the pinnacle of art. which brings up the hilarious possibility that reactionaries are all nodding along with each other about how degenerate. “ugly” art must be eradicated, while all of them have different ideas of what “ugly” art is, and indeed are often planning to repress and destroy each other’s favorite art. and because they’re so convinced that beauty is objectively measurable, it won’t even occur to them that this might be a problem they’d run into.

that said, what is it about deliberately abrasive art that attracts reactionaries?

for one, the context can act as a smokescreen- hiding behind the pretext that they only explore reactionary politics as a neutral observer, as part of a clinical examination of the ugliness and evil of society, when in reality they’re hardline reactionaries themselves. artist charles krafft hid behind exactly this kind of ambiguity while dealing frequently with fascist subject matter, only to be later revealed as a fascist and a holocaust denier.

also, for someone to be recruited into a reactionary ideology it’s often a prerequisite that they be in some way unhappy with the current prevailing status quo- they can’t desire a return to a romanticized past unless they view the present negatively. there’s obviously a parallel here between how reactionaries engage with avant garde art- both condemning it and engaging with it- and how they position themselves in relation to content viewed as “cringe”- fascists are both frequently the ones making cringe compilations and the ones being placed in those compilations. perhaps there is a sense that by becoming the arbiter of what is and isn’t considered cringe, they can escape being on the wrong end of that construct, and reactionary ideologies present them the opportunity to place themselves in the role of being the one who determines what is cringe, even if the reactionary narrative is obviously at odds with their actual goals here, since the neonazi guro mlp hentai noise music fan will go on constant rants about how pop music and normies are Fucking Cringe and will be eliminated when society Rejects Modernity and Embraces Tradition, but said brony nazi noise music fan would obviously not be served by a scenario in which society actually did Embrace Tradition and return to the Medieval European Ways, because traditionally, in medieval europe, they didn’t make any harsh noise music or my little pony guro porn.

so a major factor is simply that the people in question are out of sync with the prevailing hegemonic aesthetic, and have convinced themselves that a fascist dictatorship would put the world in sync with their own sense of aesthetics by returning to an idealized past, without considering that since there isn’t any past period where their sense of aesthetics was the norm, that any return to the past would only put the world further out of sync with their own aesthetics.

furthermore, exploration of ugliness as an aesthetic, as previously mentioned, is largely something explored by people who have consumed enough conventionally beautiful art to become sick of it, and most people who have the kind of funds to drop on consuming art to that degree are usually people who are fairly well off. now, as previously stated different people have different tastes, and different thresholds for when they’ll get sick of more conventionally pleasing stimuli and go on to seek more extreme or unusual stimuli, and for some people that threshold is very low, so yes, someone of any class background can develop a love for noise music. but there’s a reason so many noise musicians are also record collecting trust fund hipsters, and why similar aesthetically gluttonous bourgeoisie seem to be the primary content creators across ostensibly counter-cultural aesthetic communities, from underground music to avant garde art to fringe fetish porn on deviantart.

this helps to explain both why there’s a presence of reactionaries in edgy loud music scenes and avant-garde art, as well as why ostensibly leftist/revolutionary avant garde music and art is often so lacking in real revolutionary character. most of the people dedicating substantial portions of their time making music which by it’s very nature most people don’t like and will never become popular are bored rich kids seeking underground clout and operating at a financial loss to do so. or, in the case of fringe fetish art, instead of it being a small group of wealthy people creating the art at a loss, instead a small clique of wealthy people are the ones commissioning the art rather than the ones making it.

either way though, it’s a clear demonstration that far from art which is aesthetically counter-hegemonic being intrinsically also politically counter-hegemonic, in reality the ruling class has a near stranglehold on both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic art, thus allowing the capitalist ruling class to have near total control of the dialectic of art, controlling both the present and the future of aesthetics. it’s tempting to think then that by fighting for control over counter-hegemonic art scenes, the left can seize control of the aesthetic dialectic away from the ruling class- but without addressing the base first, by only addressing the superstructure, all this does is create exciting new examples of wealthy people pretending to be working class and/or woke for clout. not that pretending to be working class is exclusive to leftist underground musicians- a lot of skinhead nazi punk bands secretly had a wealthy background, see Nick Solares of Youth Defense League, who was of a bourgeoisie background but lied extensively about being working class. today he works as a food reviewer focusing especially on the fancier and more unusual cuisine, supporting my thesis that interest in extreme aesthetics is often driven by having the resources to become bored of more conventional stimuli. far from being at odds with one another, his career as a far-right hardcore singer and his career as a snobby fine dining food critic are of a piece with one another, both symptoms of his bourgeoisie background allowing him the privilege of becoming bored with more accessible sensory experiences.

at any rate, faux-proletarian bourgeoisie right-wingers being supplanted in the punks scene by faux-proletarian bourgeoisie left-wingers does little, if anything, to create a genuinely proletarian culture. to do that, it is necessary to address the base first before the superstructure, to create networks of mutual aid and dual power to support the working class first, then let aesthetic movements spring up out of that, rather than hoping that underground music scenes which wealthy people exert undue influence over will somehow generate genuinely revolutionary movements if the lyrics are woke enough. none of those lyrics will matter when the singer ends up growing up to be a landlord anyways.

of course, i’ve already gone on probably too many rants about how underground music scenes aren’t going to spark off the revolution, so there’s no need to go any deeper into that subject. so lets move on to more interesting topics.

when it comes to the way the evolution of aesthetics and the dialectics of cringe are shaped by material conditions, it’s worth once again noting the significance that advertising holds in driving this. it’s a truism that a meme is dead the moment it’s used by a corporate account in an advertisement, at that exact instant, the meme becomes cringe.

it’s connection to the horrible system of commerce that enslaves us all is part of what drives this cringe response toward advertisement and all it touches, yes, but more importantly it’s involuntary nature is a major part of that as well- we become repulsed by memes/music/art we encounter in advertising because advertising is forced upon us, making the process of getting sick of it, and finding it cringe, occur much faster.

but even in a non-capitalist society, this factor can still be an issue, and indeed, this was an issue for the soviet union- the phrase “communism is kitsch” being a joking reference specifically with the repetitiveness of the Socialist Realist aesthetic, and it’s unavoidable omnipresence in agit-prop. the problem of beauty becoming cringe through over-exposure is not strictly caused by capitalism, nor strictly an affliction of the bourgeoisie (an assumption that indeed was the impetus behind the promotion of the socialist realist aesthetic) and inevitably boredom with the socialist realist aesthetic soon ensued, and abstraction and surrealism made a comeback soon after.

the general pattern seen in the soviet union would likely be seen in any revolutionary movement- it would begin by associated with aesthetically counter-hegemonic aesthetics, see the connection between the russian constructivist aesthetic and the russian revolution, then an embrace conventionally “beautiful” aesthetics occurs as the revolutionary movement becomes the new hegenomy, then a new avant garde emerges in response to this when that becomes boring, and from there ensues a more even back and forth between the artistic mainstream and underground. the attempt to promote Socialist Realism as a official art style was misguided not because there’s anything wrong with realism or beauty, but rather because it attempted to freeze the dialectic between conventional “beauty” and experimental “ugliness”, and in doing so caused a period of stagnation and repetition during the Socialist Realist era. the problem isn’t that there was a trend toward realism in art- that’s to be expected in the wake of a successful revolution- the problem is by enshrining that art style as the official art style, it made it harder to move past that stage when it was time to.

however despite the narrative presented by anti-communists, after the Socialist Realist style fell out of favor, the dialectic between the aesthetic mainstream and underground functioned pretty well, with soviet art, including in the mainstream, having a healthy sense of experimentation and creativity, easily out-doing the american hegemonic culture- see this soviet animated short from 1979:

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which has a free-jazz soundtrack and stylized art style which manages to be both more experimental and more pleasing than what was going on in american animation at the time:

and even during the Socialist Realist era, aspects of abstraction and impressionism did still exist even if it wasn’t the prevailing norm, see the work of Anatoli Kaplan [link] (mind you, that doesn’t change my earlier point that the promotion of Socialist Realism was a misstep that delayed the formation of a healthy aesthetic dialectic)

those who attempted to promote socialist realism as the official art style did have a point that a responsibility of art is to serve the people, but in order for art to serve the people, it must be able to evolve- when the meme becomes overused and cringe, when the socialist realist aesthetic becomes kitsch, it must have a direction to evolve in, an antithesis to synthesize with, and for that to occur it is important for their to be art which was created purely for the purpose of pioneering new ideas rather than being directly aesthetically pleasing to the general populace- this art serves the people not directly, but through influencing other, more accessible art. the watered-down accessible imitation of experimental art isn’t a corruption of it, as much as the purists may convince themselves of this, but rather is the very thing that gives the avant-garde a reason to exist.

one curious side-effect of the reality that aesthetic stimuli formerly found pleasing can become unpleasing through over-use, thus inspiring the exploration of formerly unpleasing aesthetics for the sake of novelty, is that then, in turn, these formerly pleasing aesthetics rendered unpleasing through over-use can themselves later be explored in the context of experimental exploration of unpleasing aesthetic stimuli, of “ugliness”- vaporwave being a well-known example. smooth jazz and new-age music was engineered to be aesthetically pleasing and nonthreatening, then due to this it becomes over-used as on-hold music or in commercials, and other instances where we are exposed to it unwillingly, thus becomes unpleasing, and then vaporwave samples it as an avant-garde statement. however, it’s only once it fell out of favor as on-hold music and commercial music that it was able to become ripe for this kind of revival- there’s a pattern to these cycles. similarly, the Sots art movement in the USSR referenced the aesthetic of Socialist Realism with a sense of ironic kitsch- the Sots art movement could only possibly have emerged after the Socialist Realist aesthetic had fallen out of favor, and would have been incoherent if it was contemporaneous with it, much as vaporwave would have been incoherent if someone had tried to make it in the 80′s.

both Sots art and vaporwave attempted to use the theme of exploring conventionally pleasing imagery which had at one point been rendered unpleasing through overuse as a way to explore the economic and political systems in play which caused it to be over-used in the first place- soviet socialism and capitalism, respectively. these same aesthetics can- and have- been explored without focusing on that aspect of their history, for example synthwave deals with much of the same aesthetics as vaporwave but in a more straightforwardly nostalgic and celebratory way, without acknowledging or addressing the way that in the past, overuse of that aesthetic had at one point rendered it cringe-inducing.

as a result of being driven by the profit margins of the ruling class rather than serving the people, capitalism often manages to be the worst of both worlds in terms of the dialectics of aesthetics- aesthetics doesn’t change substantially enough to actually keep people who are tired of the status quo engaged, but also punishes people for not being bored of the old aesthetic in order to force them to spend money on the new aesthetic. the New Trend will be so similar to the Old Trend that if you hated the Old Trend you’ll probably still hate the New Trend, but also, if you did like the Old Trend, you’ll be socially punished for it and Added To The Cringe Compilation to get you to spend money on the New Trend. this pattern is especially noticeable in fashion, which stays broadly the same for decades on end (people still be wearing t-shirts), but manages to punish people enough over mild variations in hemming and fit to keep people wastefully throwing out old clothes and buying new clothes, only for the discarded clothes to come back in fashion after they’ve been thrown out, of course.

however as previously stated even without there being a profit motive for an older aesthetic to be seen as unfashionable, this phenomenon still occurs- outdated memes will still elicit groans and cringes even though Meme Incorporated isn’t trying to get your to throw out your old memes to buy the new fall line or whatever. not that profit motive doesn’t play a role in the process- as previously mentioned, use in advertisements almost instantly renders a meme dead and cringe- but here the intention of the profiteer is against the meme becoming unfashionable/cringe. the person who put that rageface in their advertisement doesn’t want you to have a visceral negative reaction to that meme because of how tired you are of seeing it, especially in advertisements- what they want is for you to think that’s the dopest thing ever and buy their product.

the dialectic processes which render formerly beloved aesthetics cringe-inducing is affected by profit motive in numerous often negative ways, but removal of the profit motive alone doesn’t immediately solve all issues, and it’s still necessary to foster the development of an artistic mainstream, an artistic underground, and a dialectic between them, which is dynamic enough to not become stagnant and boring, while also not administering unnecessary social disincentive toward people who engage with no longer fashionable aesthetics- with the socialist realist era demonstrating how both these problems can occur even in the absence of profit motive.

i don’t really know how to end this so here’s the annoying orange cover of gangnam style:

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i invite you to watch it, and while you watch it, please meditate on the dialectics of cringe, and then look at the upvotes (349,000) and reflect on the subjective nature of beauty. thank you.

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