Leo

Well-known member
I can totally see that, lots of celebs are insecure and entirely transactional: if you're not on their level (in the Ring), then what do you have to offer them? What's it it for them to acknowledge your existence?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
CS Lewis was famously part of the Inklings group of course, probably the Oxford Social Mafia of its day. I wonder if that was the ring he had in mind - probably pissed off cos Tolkien was lord.
 

woops

is not like other people
//Who said that?
if you mean the stuff about aftershave then mark rae said it to vice magazine. if you mean "lots of celebs are insecure and entirely transactional" then i dunno.

mark rae details his experiences of being in rooms full of bouncers, police and gangsters before homing in on the A-list like that.
 

sus

Moderator
Freddie DeBoer on NYC media Twitter:
I used to watch the naked social climbing going on, and it was the source of my disgusted fascination with Media Twitter. The fundamental thing that you need to understand about media Twitter is that it is a somewhat grosser, more explicit version of what media socializing is in real life: an endless, white-knuckled effort in pure careerism and influence trading. You ever see someone in the media announce that they're changing jobs on Twitter? It is the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen. I guess I understand the need to announce your career changes, but why do people always respond with absurd hyperbole on Twitter? "You are the greatest and best person in the world!" You don't have their email address? You can't text your congratulations? If you aren't close enough to the person to do that, why are you congratulating them at all? And don't even get me started on launching an independent tweet of your own (being sure to tag them, of course). DM them with your sincere happiness for them! I guarantee it'll mean more. Do people who work at Geico do this shit?

REBECCA: I'd like to announce that I'm transferring to the motorcycle division.

JENNIFER: (standing up, loudly) REBECCA IS THE MOST AMAZING HUMAN I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. OUR LOSS IS THE MOTORCYCLE DIVISION'S GAIN.

It's a culture that's full of bizarre rituals that only make sense if you understand that none of it is sincere, that all of it is motivated by the desire for social and professional gain.
 

sus

Moderator
CS Lewis was famously part of the Inklings group of course, probably the Oxford Social Mafia of its day. I wonder if that was the ring he had in mind - probably pissed off cos Tolkien was lord.
He says:
And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
Could be cope, could be true
 

Leo

Well-known member
The Brooklyn Culture Mafia/Why Conspiracy Theory thread crossover jackpot:

Dasha Nekrasova Channels Conspiracy Fascination and Knack for Provocation Into The Scary of Sixty-First

This one's for spendy, wherever he may be now (photo by Richard Kern, of course):

dasha-nekrasova-windowsill-scaled.jpg
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
i was at xian famous foods on bayard street tonight evesdropping on some other people and all i could think of was this thread (they were talking about the gay life, escaping the winter, flying to LA like its a casual thing, and they had nice clothes on)
 

sus

Moderator
I remember going to see the Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s stinking corpse flower that summer, amorphophallus titanum, which produces its rotting-meat smell to attract flesh flies and other carrion insects. Afterward I took the train to the Lower East Side, got dumplings at Dim Sum Go Go, the delicately folded dough floral, all pinks and greens. Ended up on a Chinatown roof with Ballantine 40s looking down at New York Media, migrating from watering hole to watering hole. Spotted: two girls and a gay in leopard print tracksuit; rumor has it one's a bluecheck with 30k followers—guess which!

Someone below shouts “accelerationism!”; someone else shouts “degrowth!”; up top Antonio is explaining one of his Type of Guy theories: “The type of guys these gals like, they never have Instagrams or even smart phones; they’re like, 45 and like, Gen-X and like, wear their out-of-touch’ness as a badge. They go on rants about how celebrity culture is vain and trivial. They change their flip phone every six months because they’re worried the government is listening in, and they have some weirdly private art practice like developing black'n'white photos in a dark room or playing drums in a band that’s never released any recordings. It’s kinda like how gals w/ anxiety fetishize guys who drive on broken transmissions or think nothing of smuggling pills across an international border. It’s a reprieve from the value system of their work worlds, where living is public and the public is performative.

Which of course ends up, necessarily, being their own value system so long as that’s the ecosystem they’re trying to win at. You can’t succeed without drinking some kool-aid, because it’s the kool-aid that justifies all the striving and the effort.
 

Ibadan

Member
I'm going to be posting interesting things that you guys post on r/redscare pod. Just wanted the zoo animals to know their being observed.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
I'm going to be posting interesting things that you guys post on r/redscare pod. Just wanted the zoo animals to know their being observed.
i sort of like that sub because i'm drawn to internet communities that aren't totally homogeneous, that have disparate demos living together in a chaotic manner. parts of 4chan used to be like that. the main groups on r/redscarepod, as far as i can tell, are:

a) people who are irl "cool" and live in the world this thread is about (probably only about 5 of them in total)
b) vaguely artistic people
c) incel cum town fans
d) 1st year college students who think they're smarter/better than their peers because they know about the culture of narcissism (none of them have actually read it)
e) middle aged, depressed, jaded former 2000s indie kids who come out of the woodwork to offer misguided life advice to the previous three groups
f) people who actually listen to the podcast (most of them seem to hate it)

...i did have a nice conversation about francois bayle and morton feldman with someone once.
 
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