"it was ok i suppose" : a non reaction to "polarazing" things

[craner]

imagine letting yourself be led around by designated talking points day by day, like you have to have a opinion on the cats movie

It’s the Ian Dunt paradigm.

What makes it worse is that you can’t even respond in an exciting or original way, because you have to protect your market value.

 

[craner]

This is why Twitter is by far the most corrosive and depressing social media platform, far worse than Instagram.

 

[shakahislop]

The only true sex guys on the forum are barty, woops and Sufi.

zhao would bum them all to smithereens, you can't leave him out of this

 

[william kent]

What makes it worse is that you can’t even respond in an exciting or original way, because you have to protect your market value.

Any response you could come up with has probably been done already anyway.

 

[Clinamenic]

It's been happening with the new Adam McKay film, 'Don't Look Up'.

I'd say things like this film, which largely function to prompt conversation, are having a positive impact insofar as people genuinely engage with it. But when so much of the conversation isn't concerned with engagement so much as its preoccupied with theory and peddling brands of discourse, I think we end up with a lot of junk, junk that doesn't even serve to supplement or qualify some central point.

 

[luka]

Any response you could come up with has probably been done already anyway.

its all mapped out before the answers come in. the answers are little marbles that fall down a designated number of chutes into a designated number of boxes

 

[william kent]

I was thinking this reading the stuff about performing emotions in one of the other threads. DeLillo explicitly talks about that in the one I'm reading at the moment, a book published in 1977.

 

[craner]

Any response you could come up with has probably been done already anyway.

Not necessarily, I mean I bet Nietzsche would’ve been amazing on Twitter

 

[Clinamenic]

Any response you could come up with has probably been done already anyway.

And this makes me ask: what are one's motivations for engaging with something? What are one's motivations for exchanging words with others?

If the motivation is solely to say something that hasn't been said, what ends up being said may not be that meaningful to most people. Experimentation, I think, is almost always warranted, but it often becomes vacuous and pretentious when there isn't a more refined motivation driving it.

 

[luka]

And this makes me ask: what are one's motivations for engaging with something? What are one's motivations for exchanging words with others?

If the motivation is solely to say something that hasn't been said, what ends up being said may not be that meaningful to most people. Experimentation, I think, is almost always warranted, but it often becomes vacuous and pretentious when there isn't a more refined motivation driving it.

well this is what i see with some of the younger people, where they are trying to contort themselves into impossible positions just to avoid the obvious, becasue who wants to be another drone?

 

[Clinamenic]

I think the potential for new material and new ideas is virtually infinite. That said, you can still argue that the potential for paradigm-shifts across new ideas has reached a sort of ultimatum with postmodernism.

 

[william kent]

... preoccupied with theory and peddling brands of discourse, I think we end up with a lot of junk, junk that doesn't even serve to supplement or qualify some central point.

I recently read an interview with Paul Schrader where he talked about this. He was talking about the first film he directed, 'Blue Collar', and how it ended up being a leftist thing, but that he never intend it as such. That's just where the story went. And that the problem with a lot of leftist cinema is that it knows the thesis before it knows the characters and the characters never live up to the thesis.

 

[Clinamenic]

well this is what i see with some of the younger people, where they are trying to contort themselves into impossible positions just to avoid the obvious, becasue who wants to be another drone?

Totally, and I still do it frequently.

Fear Of Being Ordinary, academy-edition intellectually speaking

 

[shakahislop]

And this makes me ask: what are one's motivations for engaging with something? What are one's motivations for exchanging words with others?

If the motivation is solely to say something that hasn't been said, what ends up being said may not be that meaningful to most people. Experimentation, I think, is almost always warranted, but it often becomes vacuous and pretentious when there isn't a more refined motivation driving it.

i'm not saying that this is the only reason to engage with anything, its complicated, but there is one really nice thing that happens with human beings when one of them is able to describe or show something in an accurate, precise, accurate way that isn't commonplace, and this description helps other people understand something. its rare but its glorious to see or to experience yourself.

 

[craner]

I recently read an interview with Paul Schrader where he talked about this. He was talking about the first film he directed, 'Blue Collar', and how it ended up being a leftist thing, but that he never intend it as such. That's just where the story went. And that the problem with a lot of leftist cinema is that it knows the thesis before it knows the characters and the characters never live up to the thesis.

Blue Collar is a fucking fantastic film.

 

[Clinamenic]

I recently read an interview with Paul Schrader where he talked about this. He was talking about the first film he directed, 'Blue Collar', and how it ended up being a leftist thing, but that he never intend it as such. That's just where the story went. And that the problem with a lot of leftist cinema is that it knows the thesis before it knows the characters and the characters never live up to the thesis.

Interesting point, and then the story and characters are forced into these molds which are subordinated to the thesis. I'm sure this can be pulled off in some creative cases, but in general it seems pretty hollow.

 

[william kent]

Blue Collar is a fucking fantastic film.

Yeah, it is. Finally watched it the other night and absolutely loved it.

That interview's here, if you're interested. It's from a 1978 issue of Cinéaste.

 

[Clinamenic]

Speaking from experience, which may shed a light on this as a wider phenomenon, when I was more deeply under the influence of continental philosophy and professionalized theory, it was as if I was in a more or less constant state of intellectual neurosis, compelled to identify reality in terms of ideas. This state was highly productive in some cases, but it also lifted me way off the ground into even more of an academic aloofness than I currently experience.

Not sure how much to generalize this in regards to other young philosophic intellectuals, but it doesn't seem entirely idiosyncratic or exceptional.

 

[Clinamenic]

Also, much of it, in my case, was and is about the desire to be at and advance the cutting edge of theory, in terms of the metanarrative.

 

[william kent]

well this is what i see with some of the younger people, where they are trying to contort themselves into impossible positions just to avoid the obvious, becasue who wants to be another drone?

That's because they're trying to think their way out of a problem which requires feeling. It's like what Craner says about French cinema.