At first glimpse, the video clip looked like my kind of music: a young bearded guy up in the woods of Appalachia, playing a resonator guitar. As soon as he started singing, I was on board. “I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay.” Preach, brother! When Anthony sang of “rich men north of Richmond, they want to have total control” I had in my mind corporate America, the tech bro billionaires whose companies monitor their workers all the way to the bathroom and back. I was still with him when he highlighted “folks on the street with nothing to eat” but was brought up sharp when he followed it with “and the obese milkin’ welfare”. Whoa! What is he saying here? Homeless hungry people need help, but not if they’re overweight? When the next line attacked short, fat people who receive welfare only to spend it on chocolate biscuits, I figured the song was a parody. Why didn’t he rhyme “tax” with “snacks”, the songwriter in me thought. But it isn’t a parody. Anthony really does punch down on the poor. The lives of ordinary working people are being torn apart by the rich, he laments, but we can fix it if we cut welfare – and taxes too. Listening to the lyrics in that context, I came to understand why the song had gone viral among rightwing figures in the US. It’s a classic example of the divisive narrative that bosses have used to pit worker against worker since the days of Joe Hill. If the poor are fighting one another over racial hierarchy or cultural grievance, their anger will be directed away from the people responsible for their plight – the rich who exploit those in work and abandon those in need.

Hellions Holi fic

As promised, on March 28, Krakoa celebrated Holi. Haven was one of the organizers, but far from the only. After all, India had the second largest population in the world; it followed that there was proportionally a great many mutants from there, as well as from surrounding South Asian countries and the worldwide diaspora of immigrants. And it was more than they who were invited; Holi, while Hindu in origin, was also celebrated by Jains, Buddhists, and even some Muslims. People of all backgrounds, all castes, all creeds who would come. The point of it was unity in diversity, and it was a national holiday. Therefore, not only were people of other cultures allowed to join in, but encouraged. And where better to encourage unity in diversity but Krakoa?  Today, mutants from around the world played together in a flurry of brightly colored powders and dyed waters. Young and old, those who were tiny and those the size of giants, those with wings and those with fins, those with scales and those with fur, people with tree branches for arms and people whose bodies were constructed more like bicycles than a human body, phasers and firebugs and shapeshifters and mentats, all coated in bright pink, brilliant saffron, blazing azure, intense emerald, and lustrous vermillion tumeric. Among them, the Hellions. Haroun laughed as he swooped through the air, divebombing his comrades with the powder balloons from overhead. Catseye, her furform dotted with colorful blotches already, leaped in the air to try to catch them in her mouth, and visibly regretted it when she succeeded, retching comically in the grass while her fellows giggled at her mistake and each other. Jennifer had great aim due to the practice she had with throwing her luck discs, and Bevatron likewise had it due to aiming with his electricity so much, but poor Beef was nothing but a big target---he’d never needed to throw things, he had his fists. Normally, he would have been pissed, but today, the usually aggressive oversized teen was taking it in stride, cracking up as he was hit and even shielding his fellow Hellions, dramatically acting as though he’d been shot whenever he took a hit for them. And even Tarot was coming out of her shell, timidly tossing the balloons and getting more daring as she went, her shrieks mostly affected when one came her way. “I don’t need luck to get YOU, Marie-Ange!” Jenny teased as she hucked a magenta one the redhead’s way that hit at her heels. Yet, her tone lacked its usual maliciousness, replaced with a sense of true unadulterated fun. “And I don’t need to tell the future to see this in YOURS!” Tarot returned in the same tone as she returned fire with a green balloon. It burst right against Jenny’s nose, and for a moment, the blonde looked, in a word, pissed, and Marie-Ange tensed.  Then, Jenny giggled, “Good one! Who knew you had it in you?!”

“She’s a killer! She got me! I’m down!” Beef cried out in faux-agony as he dropped to his meaty knees, having been beaned by Tarot as well.  “I challenge the champion!” Haroun hollered, pelting down his remaining ammo at Tarot, who dived for cover futilely in the grass as she pretend-begged him for mercy. Catseye, meanwhile, was licking the grass to try to get the taste of powder out of her mouth. Haroun landed beside her and led her to the snack station, where he tried to help her by giving her some gulab jamun, a ball of dough soaked in sugary syrup. Catseye didn’t care for sweets---she was a carnivore to her core--but Haroun loved them---they reminded him of Moroccan sfenj.  The other Hellions soon joined them. Beef slurped down cream thandai, Marie-Ange nibbled on malpua, Bevatron spooned himself some badam phirni, and Jenny munched crispy coconut milk murukku, wishing her uniform had pockets so she could take some home for later.  Then, they returned to frolicking. As the sun went down, the bonfires began, and they sat around one together, not speaking, just watching the light flicker on one another’s faces as they fell asleep against each other’s shoulders. Catseye with her furry head on Jetstream’s knee as he alone stayed awake to keep vigil over the others, Beef snoring his head back, Bevatron trying to pull covers around himself that weren’t there, and even bullying Jenny putting an arm around her usual victim Marie Ange’s skinny shoulders.  As for Haroun, he looked up at the sky. He spent so much time flying up there, he’d almost forgotten what it was to gaze at it longingly from down below and just. . . think. Years ago, as a herder’s son in the mountains of the Moroccan Rif, before his mutation had ever emerged, he’d never have dreamed he would wind up here. Not ‘here’ as in ‘on a living mutant island’ but as in. . .surrounded by such strange people as his friends, having seen death and returned, and now. . . well, living on a living mutant island. He had regrets. Not being able to protect them. Disappointing Miss Frost. And. . . what must his family be going through? He had been dead for years. . . had Miss Frost told them? Could he find them again? He couldn’t go back to them, he knew. Not because they wouldn’t take him back---they loved him, before and after they’d known he was a mutant---but because he had another family, gathered around him right here. And they were the ones who needed him. 

Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Altarpiece, c. 1476, oil on wood, 274 x 652 cm when open (Uffizi)Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Altarpiece, c. 1476, oil on wood, 274 x 652 cm when open (Uffizi) 

Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Altarpiece

Created by Smarthistory. By Dr. Rebecca Howard Artworks are powerful things. Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece caused quite a stir when it arrived in Florence—the city that was to become its permanent home. Van der Goes, master of light and minute descriptive details, is considered one of the greatest Netherlandish painters of the second half of the fifteenth century. The Portinari Altarpiece is a large triptych that was commissioned by an Italian named Tommaso Portinari, who was living in the Netherlands.

An Italian family in the North

Just as today, people in the renaissance often traveled extensively or even moved permanently for work. Portinari, his wife Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, and their children were living in Bruges at the time of this painting’s creation. Tommaso worked as a high-ranking agent of the Medici banking industry, helping to run a branch of the bank in Bruges. The Medici were one of the most powerful families in western Europe, and their lineage had developed an extremely wealthy banking, mercantile, and political family. Agents throughout Europe managed branches of their banking empire.

The Portinari family and Florence’s Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova While Tommaso had made a name for himself in Bruges, his family remained important to the history of Florence. In 1288, Tommaso’s ancestor, Folco Portinari, founded the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, today the oldest functioning hospital in Florence. In the 1420s, the Portinari family supported further renovations to the hospital, which, by the fifteenth century had around 200 beds (up from 12). As with many hospitals today, Santa Maria Nuova had a connected church, Sant’Egidio.

The Portinari Altarpiece was commissioned for the main altar of this church, and was simultaneously a way for Tommaso to perpetuate his family’s name and importance in conjunction with the city of Florence and the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.

The Portinari Altarpiece stands as a highlight of Tommaso’s career and the public image he hoped for his family name to retain. Unfortunately, the Portinari family fell on difficult financial times not long after this painting’s creation, as Tommaso lost the Medici family a great deal of money through loans to Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, which were never paid back in full. Hugo van der Goes and north-south exchange

Portinari’s choice of a Netherlandish artist to complete this great altarpiece to be sent back to Florence helped to effectively change aspects of Italian art. The latter half of the fifteenth century was characterized by increased artistic exchange between northern European and Italian artists. Italian artists were enthralled by Northern artists’ careful attention to individual details and still-life minutiae incorporated in architectural settings and landscapes. Hugo van der Goes was considered a master of such careful, minute details and his talent was often compared to that of Jan van Eyck, considered one of the greatest painters of the early fifteenth century. Look closely, for example, at van der Goes’s rendering of the foreground angels’ garments. It appears as though we can physically touch the gold brocade of the fabric. And the clear vessel in the foreground also flawlessly seems to capture, reflect, and refract light.

Such tiny details are found throughout the Portinari Altarpiece, and nearly all of them hold some iconographic meaning. When this painting finally arrived in Florence in 1483 for its installation in the church of Sant’Egidio, it had a direct, visible effect on artistic production in Italy. A particularly famous painting that clearly recalls the Portinari Altarpiece is Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Shepherds, painted in 1485—only two years after the Portinari Altarpiece arrived in Florence. In Ghirlandaio’s painting, one can see that the shepherds adoring the Christ child are rendered with such individualized detail that they feel like portraits, as in the Portinari Altarpiece. The group also takes the exact same formation as the three shepherds pictured in van der Goes’s work.

Layered iconography

Iconography, commonly used in the field of art history, is the study of the symbolic meaning of things found in works of art. In northern renaissance art, artists frequently used certain figures, objects, and even depictions of biblical or historical events to symbolize something more to period viewers than what was seen on the surface. The iconography throughout the Portinari Altarpiece is extensive and quite complex.

Triptych altarpieces like the Portinari Altarpiece would have been kept closed, except on holidays and special feast days. Therefore, the exterior of the folding side wings of such artworks were typically painted. The Portinari Altarpiece’s exterior is decorated with a depiction of the Annunciation, the biblical event when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she had been chosen to carry the son of God. This moment is understood in the Christian faith as the beginning of mankind’s salvation. Here, we see it essentially frozen in time, as the artist has chosen to paint these figures in grisaille. These faux sculptural figures are located in shallow architectural niches and reveal van der Goes’s incredible artistic talent in their believable naturalism.

Upon seeing the Portinari Altarpiece opened, one can imagine that any period viewer would have been stunned by the elaborate details and bright colors contained on the three panels within. In the center panel, we are privy to the quiet, magical moment just after Christ’s birth, the Nativity. Angels surround the kneeling Virgin Mary and newborn Christ child, and the three shepherds have rushed in from the countryside to bear witness to the miracle. This scene would have been instantly recognizable to any period viewer, and most would have noticed the iconographic details—certain objects and scenes that held multiple meanings.

Far in the distance, behind the heads of the shepherds, we see those very same shepherds attending to their flock on the hillside. These tiny figures make gestures of surprise as an angel appears above them. This is the moment of the Annunciation of the Shepherds, when they were told that Christ had been born. In the repetition of these shepherds in the background and again in the foreground, the artist has used what is called continuous narrative, wherein figures are repeated within the same frame of an artwork to show more than one moment of a story.

In the center are the most important figures in the scene, the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ. It may seem strange that Christ is laying naked on the bare, hard ground, and that rays of light appear to emit directly from his body. However, this imagery is drawn from the writings of a medieval visionary named St. Bridget of Sweden. By the fifteenth century St. Bridget’s vision of the Nativity had become the inspiration for many depictions of this moment. Mary kneels beside Christ on the ground, a position meant to emphasize her humility, and bends over in somber adoration of her child. And her solemn nature, in this case, is meant to foretell what is to come—that she will have to sacrifice her son for the salvation of humanity.Perhaps the most striking detail in the central panel is the group of objects in the foreground. Imagine this altarpiece in its original location, just above the altar of Sant’Egidio. The two vases would appear almost as though they were sitting on the altar itself. Notice, too, that the sheaf of wheat behind them is quite similar in color to and situated directly parallel with Christ’s body. At Mass, a priest would consecrate the Eucharist—the bread and wine—thereby turning it into the body and blood of Christ (according to Catholic tradition), which would be consumed in remembrance of his sacrifice. The hem of the red and gold brocaded vestment worn by the angel foregrounded on the right is embroidered with the repeated word “sanctus,” or holy, referencing the moment of the consecration of the Eucharist. The positioning of Christ’s body parallel to the sheaf of wheat, which in turn would be parallel to the physical bread on the altar, functioned as a stark reminder of what really took place at communion. The image masterfully creates a visual equation between the bread, the wheat, and Christ’s body.

The vases and flowers just in front of the wheat are carefully studied depictions of recognizable flowers that each held symbolic meaning for period viewers. The Spanish albarello vase on the left is a type of vessel that traditionally held herbs and ointments used by apothecaries, an artistic choice which was almost certainly meant to comment on the altarpiece’s location in a hospital’s church. The albarello vase holds two white and one purple iris, along with a scarlet lily. These flowers represent the purity (white), royalty (purple), and Passion, or tortures, (red) of Christ. This vessel is also decorated with an ivy leaf motif that resembles a grape vine, alluding to wine, and therefore, to the blood of Christ, consumed with His body during Mass. The presence of this vase also reminds us that Valencia (in Spain), Italy, and northern Europe were engaged in extensive trade during this time, and expanding their trade across the globe. Spanish lusterware, like this vase, was a popular luxury trade item in the fifteenth century, admired for its reflective surface. The luster technique derives from Islamic pottery, and it is important to keep in mind that the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) had a large Muslim population.

The clear vessel to the right holds three red carnations and seven blue columbines. The seven columbines are symbolic of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, while the three red carnations make reference to the three bloodied nails at Christ’s Crucifixion. As you can see, many of these flowers were meant to remind viewers of what was to come for Christ.The story grows, and so does the Portinari family

Having discussed the details of the central panel, let’s take a look at the two side panels. In the backgrounds of each of the side panels, we find scenes that occurred before, after, and during the primary scene of the Nativity in the center. And just as the story is expanded in the side panels, we see that Tommaso and Maria have expanded their lineage, as well. Van der Goes, a master of detailed portraiture, depicted Tommaso Portinari in the left panel, kneeling in prayer as he faces the miraculous scene in the center. Because he paid for this elaborate gift, his family’s inclusion in the altarpiece essentially guarantees that they will forever be included in the daily prayers carried out in the church. Tommaso is accompanied by their two sons (as of the creation of this painting c. 1476), Antonio and Pigello, who kneel behind him. Note that, even if Tommaso were standing, he would still be noticeably smaller than the two figures who stand behind him. This is known as hierarchy of scale, where a visible difference in size between figures indicates that larger figures are of higher status. In this case, the larger figures are saints. St. Thomas, the name saint of Tommaso, works as his intercessor, effectively “introducing” him to the scene in the center and helping to convey his prayers to heaven. Behind St. Thomas is St. Anthony, the name saint of Antonio, as well as a “plague saint” who was frequently invoked by the sick, suffering, and dying. His presence makes yet another connection to the altarpiece’s original hospital location.

In the right panel, Maria Maddalena Baroncelli kneels in a position that mirrors her husband’s, accompanied by their daughter Margarita. These two figures are joined by their name saints, Mary Magdalene and St. Margaret. Interestingly, however, it is St. Margaret who stands behind Maria, not her name saint Mary Magdalene. St. Margaret is the patron saint of childbirth, and is evoked by pregnant women and those in labor in hopes of a successful process and outcome. St. Margaret is typically depicted as emerging from the mouth of or standing atop a dragon, as seen here (her legend explains that she survived being consumed by Satan, disguised as a dragon, whose stomach then rejected her and she emerged unharmed). As such, it is speculated that this may have been a deliberate choice, as Maria’s primary role as a wife in the fifteenth century was to bear children and continue the Portinari lineage, so she felt a stronger connection to St. Margaret at this point in her life.

Just as in the central panel, the side panels also include small scenes in the background. In fact, the left panel continues the theme of childbirth already indicated by the Nativity in the center and the presence of St. Margaret in the right panel. Far in the distance behind St. Anthony’s head, we see Joseph attending to a pregnant Virgin Mary who has decided to walk rather than ride her donkey. This is a precursor to the miraculous birth that will soon occur, the Nativity. In the right panel, the landscape is populated by scenes of the three kings, the Magi, on their journey from far parts of the world to visit the newborn Christ.

What the northern painters did best

Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece encompasses the numerous aspects of northern renaissance painting that enthralled those in other parts of the world. This particular artwork perfectly embodies all the things that northern European painters were thought to do best—the rendering of complex landscapes that stretch far into the distance, skies that seem to capture light at different times of the day or under different circumstances, faces that appear highly individualized, even when they are not intended to be recognizable portraits, and carefully rendered, incredibly minute details throughout. Considering this triumph of artistic virtuosity, along with the work’s fascinating layers of symbolism, the direct and immediate impact of the Portinari Altarpiece on the art world of late-fifteenth-century Florence comes as no surprise. It is after this moment that we see, in particular, increased individualism in Italian faces and, perhaps even more importantly, a swift rise in the use of oil paint in Italian city-states.

Read about this painting on the Uffizi website

https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/adoration-of-the-shepherds-with-angels-and-saint-thomas-saint-anthony-saint-margaret-mary-magdalen-and-the-portinari-family-recto-annunciation-verso 

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/northern-renaissance1/xa6688040:hugo-van-der-goes/a/hugo-van-der-goes-portinari-altarpiece

According to a narrative that’s currently popular in the mainstream media and the more lowbrow end of academia, the recent surge in popularity of the American nationalist right was caused by the radicalization of nerds. Dweeby white manchildren, so the story goes, retreated into video games, the science fiction fandom, and anonymous online forums like 4chan, and formed misogynistic, resentment-fueled subcultures within them. These neckbearded neo-Nazis gradually coalesced into the ‘alt-right,’ an internet hate machine that contributed greatly to Toupee Hitler’s otherwise inexplicable rise.

There are many versions of this narrative. The common feature is the ascription of Trump’s electoral victory — and, in some cases, the surge in right-populism all across the Western world — to the vile machinations of movements of fascistic, internet-based nerds; but the details vary. One version, laid down in a popular Tumblr post (at the time of writing, it has over 22,000 notes), ascribes the rise of the alt-right to a successful campaign by Stormfront to turn 4chan Nazi. Another version blames it on Gamergate, allegedly a hate campaign born out of a misogynist’s attempt to “punish his ex-girlfriend” that served as a breeding ground for far-right extremism, and as the petri dish that they organized in before taking over America. The Z-list Youtube celebrity Zinnia Jones has described Gamergate as “one of the worst things ever to happen” because it “enabled Trump” — apparently, a piece of fandom drama ranks up there with the Spanish flu pandemic, the Mongol conquests, the Black Death, the invention of the nuclear bomb, the post-Columbian plagues that depopulated the Americas, and the unfortunate events of the 1940s.

Deployments of the narrative abound. A popular Medium “32-minute read” bears the headline, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump.” Politico insists that “the Trump campaign … paid rapt attention to meme culture from the start.” CNET helpfully explains that “what began as a backlash to a debate about how video games portray women led to an internet culture that ultimately helped sweep Donald Trump into office.” Chris Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, complains that “the overlap between Gamergate and Trump(ism) is astounding. GG was like the trial run for this whole mess.” The Independent, a British paper, speaks out against the “very geeky” Trump supporters of the alt-right, and claims that “The uncomfortable truth, that should worry anyone praying for a Trump defeat, is that the Alt-right following he has tapped into are more numerous and unpredictable than traditional political commentators understand.” And so on. And for every article that explicitly draws a connection between internet-based youth countercultures and Trump, there are a dozen more that simply make a point of mentioning them in the same breath, and let the reader work out the connection for himself. Trump… Gamergate… Trump… neckbeards… Trump… 4chan… Trump!

At this point, it’s worth taking a step back from the phenomenon of heavy internet users failing for the first time to line up in lockstep behind the Democrats, and looking at the bigger picture. Trump’s electoral success was not driven by the alt-right; it was driven by the usual factors. To make a long story short, Trump won because Clinton ran a bad campaign and took unpopular positions on the issues. Insofar as the election was unusual, it wasn’t because Trump posted a picture of a cartoon frog — Clinton made her own bids for pop-cultural relevance, as did her husband when he took out his saxophone on Arsenio Hall’s show in 1992 — but because Clinton, in violation of a long-standing norm, directly insulted large swathes of the voting population with her “basket of deplorables” line.

Trump’s success is also not unusual in a global context. In recent years, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz won a supermajority in Hungary and proceeded to rewrite the Hungarian constitution to declare Hungary a Christian nation and ensure the electoral dominance of Fidesz for the foreseeable future. Britain voted to leave the European Union, and politicians like Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and Andrzej Duda became household names among the set that pays attention to international politics. Trump is not a uniquely American phenomenon; if anything, he’ll likely prove to be a more moderate parallel to the trends sweeping Europe, just as FDR paralleled the European extremists of the Depression years. Of course, these trends are not just sweeping Europe, as is proven by the victories in Asia of politicians like Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte.

This global trend simply could not have been caused by an obscure piece of American fandom drama. Gamergate and 4chan cannot have contributed to the rise of the right, because the rise of the right happened to approximately the same extent in countries outside the Anglosphere and outside the cultural reach of Anglosphere nerd culture. Even Vox, which once described Trump as “the first Republican nominee whose ethos owes more to 4chan and Gamergate than it does the Bible,” has found that “polarization is accelerating fastest among those using the internet the least.”

Nor could Trump’s rise to power have been substantially helped along by pictures of cartoon frogs. A full analysis of Trump’s victory is beyond the scope of this article, but it borders on delusion to believe that Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were flipped by 4chan trolls, rather than by such ordinary factors as Trump’s more popular positions on the key issues of immigration and trade and Clinton’s failure to run a functional campaign.

The internet has, however, reshaped American politics; just not in the way pundits say it has. The main effects have been on the left, not the right.

The most obvious effect is that leftists, especially those in the fields that shape and promulgate leftist doctrine, spend a lot of time online. Journalists spend less time cultivating networks of sources and more time ‘building their brand’ and interacting with other journalists; academics network on Twitter; and so on. Connection matters more than ever, and the internet has weakened local scenes and replaced them with placeless ones. Indie game developers from all over the world, for example, can compete for the attention of the largely U.S.-coastal ‘mainstream’ games journalism industry, whose writers are of course all on the same mailing lists, not to mention following each other on Twitter. Journalists, academics, political advisors and the like disappear into their own world — a world where it’s acceptable to wage war on large parts of one’s own audience, or to lead a mainstream presidential candidate to insult a large part of the voting population. And the scenes that are best able to capture the attention of this world will gain power, influence, and the propagation of their norms.

One scene that has been markedly successful in capturing the attention of the journalistic world is the one that developed from the pay-to-post forum Something Awful. Originally a humor site, it became one of the most influential sites on the internet — you probably know that 4chan was created by a Something Awful regular, and that its initial userbase drew heavily from SA. Its influence on politics, however, extends far beyond 4chan. Buckle up, folks: you’re in for a long, confusing, and terrible ride.

In the essay “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” Mark Fisher, who was roundly condemned for writing it and killed himself three years later, attacked not only the identitarianism that has metastasized in academia since the ’60s, an identitarianism in which “the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender,” but also the “paralysing feeling of guilt and suspicion which hangs over left-wing twitter like an acrid, stifling fog” and the “kangaroo courts and character assassinations” that are, as anyone who has observed the state of the left today, overwhelmingly common. This guilt and suspicion, these kangaroo courts and character assassinations, need not have anything to do with politics; in one memorable instance, a once-popular Tumblr communist blogger with the sadly real URL of “fuckyeahmarxismleninism” was dogpiled and laughed into irrelevance for admitting to watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with his daughters. This was seen as a far worse faux pas than even his support of North Korea. I am, unfortunately, not making this up; I saw it all happen firsthand.

These aren’t the kangaroo courts of Stalin. What they are is the schoolyard courts of Helldump, a Something Awful subforum created for the strange purpose of being a schoolyard court. The Something Awful wiki speaks for itself here: “The official birth of Helldump 2000 spawned a new creative outlet for pedophiles, racists, bigots, Ron Paul supporters, gun zealots, defenders of anime and otherwise crap posters to be outed in a thorough, convincing manner by an astute civilian task force. Essentially, it checks and balances the stupidity that seeps its way into the forums as a whole, although (unfortunately) it does not function as a preventive treatment (shit posters still propagate at an alarming rate). Rather, the modus operandi of Helldump is to profile and insult the (assumed) poor goon for his questionable views, and in turn function as a virtual tourniquet in an attempt to stop the bleeding, as well as force said shit poster into online anonymity and/or reclusiveness.” In practice, most of what Helldump did was dogpile furries.

As a side note, internet lore has it that the population of Helldump regulars itself skewed furry. This is not terribly out of the norm for Something Awful, the admin of which employed Shmorky for ten years before firing him on the sensible grounds that he was “secretly into pedophilia incest diaper shitting roleplay” and allegedly “would get way too excited over [SA admin Lowtax’s kids] coming to the office.” (Shmorky has also been reported to at least have once been friends with Rebecca Sugar, the creator of the TV show Steven Universe, which has a remarkably Shmorky-like art style and has as its target demographic the same Tumblr crowd that Shmorky fell in with.)

Zoe Quinn herself was a SA member under the username Eris, and participated in at least one Helldump dogpile. It’s often believed that Gamergate began when her ex-boyfriend posted a ‘callout’ of her abusive behaviors, cheating, and so on — the “Zoe Post” — on 4chan, but he actually joined Something Awful to post it there first. He was quickly banned for it, and the ban message reads: “Thank you for joining the Something Awful Forums in order to post a giant loving psychopathic helldump about your ex-girlfriend in the forum about video games.” (The original phrasing was “giant fucking psychopathic helldump,” but SA has wordfilters.) The belief in a connection between Helldump and ‘callout culture’ is held by the SA moderators themselves.

Helldump was closed after two years, and many of its regulars migrated to a different subforum, Laissez’s Fair, “the original Dirtbag Left.” The SA wiki entry for LF helpfully explains that it was “opened up to put all the Ron Paul shit” and became a “refugee holding bay” for Helldump after the latter was closed. “Over time people started making effort posts about such things the nightmare that is our criminal justice system, social justice in general, as well as the ideas of Karl Marx. The lack of moderation was made up for by basically shouting people out of the forum who were stupid MRAs and concern trolls. Gradually the complexion of the forum shifted from liberal to socialist.” Eventually, LF was closed, because “LF posters went internet detective on mods and posted death threats,” including several to then-President Obama.

At least two regulars on Helldump and LF went on to get careers in journalism. Jeb Lund, who wrote a vague and rambling essay about his posting career for Gawker, went by “Boniface” and “Mobutu Sese Seko” on Something Awful. Under the former pseudonym, he threatened a Helldump victim: “how about you promise never to post here again on pain of being permabanned, otherwise there’s no reason for all the posters here with lexis-nexis to stop at just your email addresses and not go straight for driver’s license photos and info, tax records… the list goes on and on.” Sam Kriss was (or at least was widely believed to be) Dead Ken, as well as Red Ken, Dub Mapocho, Agenbite Inwit, Dead Skeng, and presumably other accounts. After LF was removed from SA, its regulars established and migrated to explicitly Communist forums offsite; he was a regular on one such forum, “tHE rHizzonE”, which was later given some sort of contest by the leftist magazine The Baffler, whose editor was “a fan” of said forum. (Sam Kriss has written for the Baffler.)

Many people from the more leftist parts of SA went on to become “Weird Twitter,” which was puffed by outlets like Buzzfeed. John Herrman and Katie Notopoulos, the authors of the linked piece, gravitated toward LF superstars on Twitter and tried to replicate their style. Some of them, such as Lund, Kriss, David Thorpe (who had a regular column on SA and is now a music journalist), Virgil Texas, Jon Hendren (who was, as docevil, once an admin of the “Fuck You And Die” (FYAD) subforum, but was shamed off the site after a bizarre incident involving a charity event featuring Smash Mouth and Guy Fieri), and Alex Nichols, parlayed those connections into posting careers.

Herrman also profiled a Weird Twitter poster, @CelestialBeard, whose claim to fame was tweeting a lot, and being followed by Herrman on Twitter. @CelestialBeard has since become a transgender brony.

From Weird Twitter, which attracted and assimilated people who weren’t active in SA’s leftist cliques (such as Felix Biederman and Virgil Texas, who just lurked), came Chapo Trap House, darling of every obscure Slate clone from Brooklyn to Queens. Chapo has featured several SA regulars, including Alex Nichols (@Lowenaffchen), who was active on LF as Golden Lion Tamarin (his Twitter username used to be @GLDNLNTMRN), and Dan O’Sullivan (@Bro_Pair), a now-banned former SA moderator whose username is now Fat Curtain Dweller. It’s interesting that a podcast heralded for ‘actually giving a shit’ comes from a subculture that began as pure trolling.

Providing a precise accounting of the impact of Something Awful on the Anglosphere left is difficult, as it would be with any subculture. The history is oral, largely lost, deliberately obfuscated, and shrouded in irony. It is likely that nothing will come of it, and that, in the end, it will be the farce mirroring the tragedy of neoconservatism: an insane political movement that developed out of a bizarre and insular clique in a world where having the right connections matters above all else, writing things that very few people care about but doing a great deal of damage along the way. It seems that the norms of Helldump have become callout culture, SA users’ trolling of the libertarians corralled in LF have become the dirtbag left, and some of those responsible have written for not only Gawker and Buzzfeed, but also The New York Times.

At the very least, the overlap in population is clear and suggestive. Someone can go from being repeatedly banned from a pay-to-post forum for something involving the word “nigger” to writing for the Guardian, the Atlantic and the New York Times, largely on the dubious strength of his Twitter account and forum fame. There are few lessons that can be drawn from this; the obvious one is that perhaps the media rewards expertise less than connectedness.

I’m told that this is what Gamergate was about. But there are many things I’ve been told Gamergate was about. The internet is something awful indeed. And it’s only going to get worse.

Hyperallergic: Tripping Through an Artist’s Fabrications, from a Faux Art Movement to a Looney Tunes World

Installation view of Matt Freedman: SLAP-STICK at Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia (all images by courtesy Fjord Gallery)

PHILADELPHIA — Matt Freedman’s SLAP-STICK at Fjord Gallery is a sort of ersatz retrospective. It spans much of his work from 2000–2017, but rather than discuss it as a “retrospective,” which Freedman says is “too grand a word, and too dispassionate,” he describes it instead as a “storeroom,” in which artworks are perched on thin stilts, leaning against walls, and strung from the ceiling. Projects jumble together with no discernable chronology. A village of lumpy, mismatched characters greets you at the door, while strange, jewel-toned monsters and creatures lurk beyond. A group of disembodied gray heads is stacked on a precariously teetering rack on top of a bunch of alien-animal hybrid creatures with long, protruding teeth, dressed in baby clothes; a pile of broken black umbrellas sits sullenly in a corner.

Freedman is at heart a storyteller, working for years as a writer and cartoonist. Stringing together obtuse veins of thought, he creates new meanings from familiar cultural narratives. He is unabashedly an “artist’s artist,” employing whatever medium seems to best suit the project at hand, from drawing and painting to rendered putty sculptures, to found object assemblages and performance. He approaches his work with a spirit of Dadaism, exploring chance, humor, cultural assumptions, and ridiculousness as a means of exposing truths. He describes the aim of the show as “a demonstration of our need to identify and privilege explanations in the face of ample evidence of the chaotic incoherence of our larger circumstances.”

A panoramic mural, titled “Acme Acme,” converts the gallery walls into a desert scene plucked from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoons. This piece sets the tone for the show, transforming the space into the suspended reality of the Looney Tunes universe. Past its cheerful colors and wackily exaggerated shapes, there is an implied anticipation of ham-fisted disaster, comedic violence, or at the very least, a benign chaos. Leave your expectations at the door, the mural silently proclaims, the reality constructed here is entirely subjective, a winding Sisyphean maze of convoluted ideas. Freedman routinely tests the limits of subjectivity, just as he is testing the limits of the flimsy physical structures his sculptures rest on.

Installation detail of Matt Freedman: SLAP-STICK at Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia

To accompany this work, Freedman choreographed a “drawing performance,” where he wears a large pad of paper around his neck and continuously draws loose images, while a drummer, artist Tim Spelios, improvises beats. In his performance for SLAP-STICK, Freedman shared the origins of the “Acme Acme” mural he made in 2001 by telling a tale about the early life of Chuck Jones, famed animator and creator of Looney Tunes. In Freedman’s story, Jones took up with a Marxist theater troupe in his youth and traveled to the Southwest performing with them. Through a series of hilariously detailed anecdotes that included a chihuahua in a top hat riding on roller skates, among other absurdities, Jones was inspired to create the adventures of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. This tale, Freedman informed the rapt, giggling audience, was complete bullshit. His version of the story was, however, picked up at the time as a news story by a network of right-wing blogs as evidence of Hollywood’s long-standing communist sympathies (in a moment of pre-Trump “alternative facts”).

This fabricated alternate reality makes for a fantastic story, a theme that continued in Freedman’s project Clumpism in 2009: a series of clumpy, fantastical sculptures that came with a manifesto positing a false history of a nonexistent 20-century art movement of the same name. It spawned an ovular, turquoise creature with the word “LOW” written on its back, and a red “carpet monster” with a long, pink tongue and bulging eyes sticking out from under its fringe; both can be found lurking in Slapstick.

Installation detail of Matt Freedman: SLAP-STICK at Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia

The play of fact and fiction also manifests in his sprawling Golem of Ridgewood project from 2012. In that work, Freedman purportedly “discovered” a film made by a congregant of a former synagogue in Ridgewood, Queens that is now Freedman’s home with sculptor Jude Tallichet. Presented as found footage, the film shows a young man covertly filming the congregation of the synagogue summoning a Golem, a mythical clay monster of Jewish folklore, to stave off the anti-Semites in their Queens neighborhood. The film also inspired a dizzying array of sculpted characters tenuously connected through a timeline which spans from the creation of man, to Leni Riefenstahl filming Tilly Fleischer at the 1936 Olympics, to Freedman’s discovery of the film and subsequent project. Many of those characters populate corners of the show at Fjord, lumpy and cartoonishly rendered, including the canary yellow, fantastically rendered Golem head, which looms some seven feet high, and stares out blankly with a slightly quizzical expression against the backdrop of a painted cactus.

Much of Freedman’s work from after 2012 deals in some form with his diagnosis of Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma, a rare but stubborn form of slow-growing and only partially treatable cancer with no known cause. He chronicled his excruciating treatment in a sketchbook that he then turned into an artist book titled Relatively Indolent But Relentless, a phrase his doctor had used to describe the cancer, but which Freedman felt was also an accurate description for himself. Shortly after completing treatments, he opened a solo show called The Devil Tricked Me at Studio 10 in Bushwick. The show dealt with notions of superstition, luck, and fate, pieced together in a deskilled, ad hoc manner that reflected his view of his circumstance with characteristic humor, through a lens of reimagined cultural mythologies. In SLAP-STICK, traces of that exhibition are found in the ludicrously slender, multicolored ladder reaching up into the ceiling, the pile of broken black umbrellas huddled in a corner, a dark cloud with a lightning bolt lingering in the rear of the gallery, and a mat covered in tails-up pennies in front of a gaudy, broken mirror.

Installation view of Matt Freedman: SLAP-STICK at Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia

Alongside invented fantasies of alternate cultural histories, there is a humble quality to Freedman’s work, which is perceptive and humorous, like his series of 3,000 risograph prints of 201 drawings that he made for a film project, spanning from images of characters from antiquity to quotidian objects like a clothespin or a can of soup. His work is keenly aware of the mixed-up, broken-down, rearranged ways we each view the world, and the truths and untruths we either question or swallow. In this world, Freedman is simultaneously both the trickster Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, blithely speeding away from untimely death and into the embrace of uncertainty.

Matt Freedman: SLAP-STICK continues at Fjord Gallery (1400 N. American St., Suite 105, Philadelphia) through February 25.

The post Tripping Through an Artist’s Fabrications, from a Faux Art Movement to a Looney Tunes World appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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