Twees're Good (except they're not)

[slowtrain]

There could be something in this, I reckon. The cozy, jam-sale-and-harvest-festival CoE kind of Christianity presumably, as opposed to fire'n'brimstone Baptist mentalism or heavy gothic Passion-Of-The-Christ Catholicism...

More broadly, do you ever look at what's popular in our culture and have what I call one of my 'maybe al-Qa'eda has a point?' moments? Not to make light of demented religious intolerance, or anything, but...you know.

Yes when I was at the airport the other day and they had day time american talk shows coming from the front, and commercial radio ads coming from the back.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yes when I was at the airport the other day and they had day time american talk shows coming from the front, and commercial radio ads coming from the back.

Once you've noticed it, you'll notice it more and more often. Worrying.

 

[computer_rock]

yakult is also twee if that counts as food. And yogurts which used the word bio somewhere. And also kellogs corn flakes have been twee for around 7 years or so now

'friendly bacteria'

maybe attributing human qualities to non-human things is twee

 

[SecondLine]

maybe attributing human qualities to non-human things is twee

It depends on what the qualities are. For example, when Thomas Hardy projects the turbulent emotions of thwarted love onto the desolate moors in return of the native I don't think he is being twee.

But if somebody where to do a song about that on, say, a ukulele.

 

[slowtrain]

I think it must be something rather ineffable, something in the realm of 'attitude' and 'atmosphere' because I was listening to this song which is very very bitter:

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But I was thinking you could do an almost exact cover of it, not changing instrumentation or anything, but just by changing the 'atmosphere' of it, you could make it unbearably twee and saccharine and ironic, maybe just by dropping some of the reverb and the bottom end.

 

[Mr. Tea]

This is like a perfect storm of obnoxiousness: the sandwiches sold on Ryanair flights are produced by a company called 'melikey' (note use of different colours, rather than a space, to distinguish the two words - the fact that it's lower-case almost goes without saying).

I think this is up there with W.H.Smith's 'foo-go' range.

 

[bassbeyondreason]

My view is that 'vaguely steampunk-y neo-Victorianism' is not the same as twee - doesn't quite have the same emphasis on the fey and the infantile, surely..? - but is shit in its own way

Behold the horrors of the twee/steampunk crossover:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MJ8AFpCV60g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Trillhouse]

Happy New Years Dissensus

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[Mr. Tea]

Behold the horrors of the twee/steampunk crossover:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MJ8AFpCV60g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Ugh, fuck me - that makes Wallace and Gromit look like the sodding Terminator.

 

[Corpsey]

Tweewatch

Charlie Brooker writes:

''Of all the irritating "Keep Calm" bastardisations, the most irritating of all is the one that reads "Keep Calm and Eat a Cupcake". Cupcakes used to be known as fairy cakes, until something happened a few years ago. I don't know what the thing was, because I wasn't paying attention. All I know is that suddenly middle-class tosspoles everywhere were holding artisan cupcakes aloft and looking at them and pointing and making cooing sounds and going on and bloody on about how much they loved them. I wouldn't mind, but cupcakes are bullshit. And everyone knows it. A cupcake is just a muffin with clown puke topping. And once you've got through the clown puke there's nothing but a fistful of quotidian sponge nestling in a depressing, soggy "cup" that feels like a pair of paper knickers a fat man has been sitting in throughout a long, hot coach journey between two disappointing market towns. Actual slices of cake are infinitely superior, as are moist chocolate brownies, warm chocolate-chip cookies and virtually any other dessert you can think of. Cupcakes are for people who can't handle reality.''

Also saw Zomby on Twitter the other day saying: ''Bruv your so twee u should live in a treehouse and play only uk hip hop''.

 

[Corpsey]

This is like a perfect storm of obnoxiousness: the sandwiches sold on Ryanair flights are produced by a company called 'melikey

 

[mistersloane]

lol innit. 'perfect storm of obnoxiousness' is great, should be a Trent Reznor song.

 

[Slothrop]

yakult is also twee if that counts as food. And yogurts which used the word bio somewhere.

That's not twee it's just retarded.

Innocent smoothies are kind of twee, although there it's the marketing material rather than the actual drink that conveys the tweeness.

Little multicoloured cupcakes and suchlike are definitely twee.

 

[Corpsey]

Speaking of, and having quotes from a Charlie Brooker article, I'd like to chuck in the idea that there's a counter-twee culture at the moment in the mainstream which is more to do with fashionable cynicism. This is a badly thought out argument but I'd say that films like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Dark Knight, with their chic blue/gray filtered HD miserabilism would represent part of this. Perhaps a different form of response to general misery/apathy in the world? Anyhoo, books and films which are about how everybody is fundamentally selfish and evil are rife in popular culture at the moment (says the badly thought out idea) - superheroes, for example, can no longer be fun and cartoonish, but are REQUIRED BY LAW to have neuroses and be basically as evil as the guy who's blowing up a schoolbus (in HD). It's a sort of flip-side to Twee-ism, in its own way just as naive and juvenile (which is why it involves attaching ''issues'' to fundamentally childish/adolescent material i.e. Batman). Just realised that Brooker slags off the Dark Knight in that article.

OTOH could be a reasonable/natural response to our increasing awareness of just how fucked the world is and how corrupt we are as a species.

 

[Mr. Tea]

lol innit. 'perfect storm of obnoxiousness' is great, should be a Trent Reznor song.

Haha, that would possibly be more appropriate than he might realise....

Innocent Smoothies are the definitive twee food, surely. Quite apart from the packaging and advertising it's basically fruit mashed up for alleged grown-ups who are infantilised to the point of being unable to peel and masticate actual pieces of solid fruit, isn't it?

 

[luka]

Anyhoo,

i hate to tell you this corpsey but anyhoo is a bit twee.

 

[Slothrop]

Innocent Smoothies are the definitive twee food, surely. Quite apart from the packaging and advertising it's basically fruit mashed up for grown-ups who are infantilised to the point of being unable to peel and masticate actual pieces of solid fruit, isn't it?

It's a drink. Do you apply the same logic to eg mashed potato or mince?

 

[Corpsey]

i hate to tell you this corpsey but anyhoo is a bit twee.

OH CHRIST, YOU'RE RIGHT

IT'S GOT ME

 

[Mr. Tea]

It's a drink. Do you apply the same logic to eg mashed potato or mince?

Products like that are typically marketed as 'your easy way to 5 a day', as if eating fruit is an inherently taxing process. It's a drink that's meant to be a stand-in for food.

Of course I eat mashed spuds and mince but I wouldn't want to drink them.

(Actually, maybe the mince...but just for novelty value.)

 

[luka]

well to be fair fruit is really annoying. its so unpredictable.