Trends - Topic of the day 3/27/24
What do you think about trends and the people that follow them? Is trend chasing good? Bad? Not that simple? Discuss
282 Replies
Trends cool
Trends Bad
Trends Good
Trends both cool and Bad
Trends Bad unless I personally enjoy them
Following trends I like is good. Following trends I don't is bad
trends are cool
following trends are cool provided you aren't hurting anyone
not following trends is cool provided you aren't hurting anyonr
life is too short y'all
Trends provide variety, noone is forcing you to follow them obviously, and if you don't like a trend you don't have to follow it. But they are fun and an integral part of fashion to some extent. Variety is the spice of life.
serious answer - i like trends as an easy on-ramp into finding items/styles that suit me but part of that comes with the ability to get off the ramp easily (reselling, donation, giving to other people, etc)
I hate trends, thank god my formative fashion years were when Timeless™ Slim Fit™ was in style so now I dont have to worry about trends.
Only half joking because this is accurate for me
Seriously though, at the moment I do find it challenging to incorporate small trends into my larger wardrobe without overhauling the entire thing. Without a strong stylistic center yet its hard to know what I want to take vs discard. But it feels good to be mindful of what I'm doing
I think this is when trends work best imo. I have a fairly strong sense if personal style so when i incorporate trendy stuff it allows it to be unique to me while still being able to participate in the trend
Trends are bad and look bad until I get stockholme syndromed into buying in and then the trend is played out and it's time to move on
absolutely, in theory I know this, but what it means in practice is the next step (for me)
In my opinion thinking about trends as a thing you are looking at from the outside, whether you participate in them or not, is misunderstanding the reality
Trends are data analysis
They’re always there, they aren’t something you participate in
No one is above or outside trends unless they have no contact with any other decision making species
Looking down on them is silly, living your life by them is silly
Embrace the things you like, incorporate new things you see and like in the way digs was talking about, don’t think about trends they aren’t for you to think about
They’re for wgsn to scam designers with
also hot take i think by being aware of and open to participating in trends i've become a better dresser
I think participation is fun
I think it’s not specific to “trends” I think attention and focus on what’s around you -literally and online- that makes you improve
and 'better' is such a subjective term so in my eyes - i'm more aware of different brands, there's a greater number of sample points as to what i would consider a 'good' or 'bad' fit and they help embolden some of the universal qualities i deal with in clothes (liking low profile shoes, for instance)
It sort of inherently means you notice trends because that’s all trends are, noticing the stuff that’s commonly around
i agree with this, though I specifically think it can be easy to turn clothing trends into a tribal experience where one is unwilling to pay attention or give merit to things around them that don't fit their preexisting world view
aka sl*m f*t
+1, I treat trends as inspiration
Yeah I think the framing of it as trends or the baggage of the word trendy gives people the room to feel superior for not engaging
But if you want to generate creative output you need to have some input, what you choose that to be is up to you and what you do with it is up to you
i don't ride waves i make them
incidentally i'm reminded of one of my favorite insults care of john maclean, "trends are for the anxious"
and while he can get away with it because his aesthetic and lifestyle are so incredibly curated as to be anti-trend, i think some of the criticism of trends come from the opposite place, where people are on a less sturdy foundation of style, which can be resolved ironically by embracing trends or really any different ideas
The aspect of trends that I like are that they give you permission to try something different, which might be considered a little too out there in another context, giving you a safety net of sorts. You could call these positive trends. The flip side of that, which I don’t like—the negative trends—tell us that it’s embarrassing to wear something that was popular 10 years ago, taking away wire as well as the net. I feel like you can really feel the hand of marketing and capitalism here. Anything that broadens the range of expression is good, imo.
One aspect that people mention, the fun part of participating in trends, is really interesting to me, because most of the trends in this discord, for me, exist primarily online. I don’t really ever see people actually wearing the popular stuff here because I don’t live in a large city. So the communal aspect of it doesn’t really exist the majority of the time for me.
Been thinking of buying chunky NB sneakers lately. Please kill me
long term, widely embraced trends are fun bc i really enjoy looking back at old photos, movies etc and seeing clothes that look goofy/different/fresh to me now
I love looking back at shit and being like “oh yeah I remember the deep v era”
idk if any pants you've got would look that good with them
summary of 10 years into fashion
discourse
Keep telling me that
You should get some fatigues they look great with em
Yeah, and I just got some OG107s
Where is that graph of trends vs MFA popularity?
Oh see you need some NBs then now
trends are so cool, I think it's neat that culture is dynamic
550s are on the way from Japan!!
i'd doff my hat to anyone who attempt to make that chart and mung some wonky data
I can never tell if you’re being sincere or taking the piss 😂
to be fair to @Yurt , from an anthropological standpoint his comment is very important: it captures the current zeitgeist, a fragment of cultural currents and the materialization of how people are building their identities contemporarily.
this is sincere
Oh okay well I do agree with you
Trends are fun I think we should all embrace fun
That said, I think it’s okay if not every trend strikes your fancy. Hating trends just because you hate what’s popular though is so 2011 and I feel we should have moved past the trend of hating trends
Yeah, but skinny pants were never fun. they were a terrible idea
Skinny pants were fun, just not necessarily comfortable
I think they caused a lot of people a lot of pointless anxiety
not to mention testicular torsion and urinary problems
on yurts comment I think trends are cool in that respect especially in that you can look at old pictures and pretty accurately know which decade it was taken in
not going to comment on anything else because bishop already said it better than I could hope to
has the indie sleaze revival already come and gone?
I live near PDX so I feel like it never left
true, it is perpetually sleazy there I imagine
I mean like gen z and alpha picking it back up quasi-ironically on tiktok or whatever they were doing for a while
it seems that the microtrend cycle is so compressed that I imagine they have already moved on to like neocrunkcore or something by now
Information definitely travels much quicker these days than the myspace days
God remember when you had to take fit pics with a camera and then upload them to a computer and then to MySpace
No
My first fit pic was less than a year ago.
Remember when film wasn't a quirky side project?
Remember when vinyl was dumb because CDs were so much better?
in my day, you had to download 128kbps from Napster and you were grateful
Hell yeah
I'm going all in on normcore Pagliacci this summer
Don’t let me stop you, my thoughts are just thoughts like everyone else’s, I’m sure yours are worth voicing as well
At risk of repeating things that were said already, trends are just trends. I like what Diggs said about having personal style and choosing to incorporate new things you see because they are trending in the moment.
I think for that reason trends are actually a good thing because they will expose you to things and ideas you may not have been exposed to or thought about otherwise.
If I hadn't joined this discord when I did I probably wouldn't have been exposed the big pants trend
I haven't kept up with r/mfa, but is the difference between here and there really that wide?
I always thought vinyl was cool tbh
I don't know I barely use reddit anymore, I joined here last summer when I was looking for the subreddit and it was closed due to the API changes. I haven't looked at the sub since it reopened. I don't think I would find anything of value in the sub that I don't get here
More on this is that, trends are good because it gives an opportunity for people new to experimenting an easy way to try something new that they like the look of without the stereotypical worry of being asked "why are you wearing that?". If "that" is the current trend then people are already going to be used to seeing it
since all the regulars left r/MFA it has no delineation from any other outfit subs because they all trend towards the average
And the medium of discord and reddit means that people are more engaged on average and that's why people comment that MFAD feels more diverse
It's been eight months and people still post text WAYWTs..
I'm wearing pants, shirt, and a sweater today. Rate my fit!
Trying to keep up with trends erodes my self esteem
Not trying to keep up with trends and having a dated fashion sense erodes my self esteem
There is no escape
The shirt is blue, of course.
I think how "accessible" trends are is interesting bc it means I can think of some niche shit and actually find inspo by slapping -core at the end of it lmao
bruh lmao
don't think it was the pants please see a doctor
that was mostly a reference to some of the articles written then about supposed issues people were actually having at the time, not my own medical history
apparently there was a sharp increase in UTIs
I think it had more to do with people squeezing into the wrong size
that... doesn't sound real
skinny jeans wrecked the housing market
although i guess lack of airflow?
ok, actually this might be a thing, interesting
On this topic, I think this partially has to do with the different ways we engage with clothing and fashion, often clothing is used to attain the comfort/joy of fitting in or avoid the anxiety of not fitting in, but that is a very different type of engagement than creative self expression and experimentation. Which understandably means that your engagement with trends is very different
I think people were just wearing pant that were too small. I had 511s and never got a UTI, but then again, I do think there might be health benefits of breathing room down there in general
I'm sure someone has done a study on it and will be appearing on Huberman soon
if 511s were giving you a UTI, they were probably way too small. i get that they're a slim pant but they really shouldnt be THAT tight?
My 28" waist APC PNS aren't too tight you take that back
I think men just have to wash their hands more than anything
I was saying that I never went skinnier than a 511 back then and didn't get a UTI or really experience any discomfort aside from limited mobility
They get washed in the shower wym sal
but yeah, people were probably just buying the wrong size, and I'm sure that happens with all pants as people don't want to admit they're bigger than they are
trickle down water and economics do not work
clean yo self
but when skinny's were on trend, more people probably also sized down and had problems as a result
I honestly cannot believe there was a time I “fit” into size 30 PNS 😭
but it wasn't the fault of the pants had they bought the correct size they would have been fine
eh doubt "most" people had health problems cause of it
small outlier amount
i do remember some of the guys at my college buying womens jeans to go even skinnier
this just sounds like dumb newspaper rag articles latching onto bad scientic studies
for headlines
absolutely, and this is a lot of consideration for what was in essence a joke, but I do remember reading those articles, and they were probably from like the dailymail, so you're likely right
I did this. In 8th grade
Yea sometime after like 2008 they started actually making mens skinnies so it wasn't necessary anymore
this whole topic is interesting though, and pretty cool to see everyone's perspectives on this
What’s wild is that at the same time I was wearing women’s skinnies, oversized Dickie pants and shorts were also super popular but I always wore both with the tiniest t-shirt imaginable. Fun times
oh i feel like the small top thing was pretty popular with people here too
who are u calling a small top
hit enter too early :xd:
Getting back to the topic message some of the ongoing trends that I like are wide pants, vintage, and embroidery/crochet. I'm curious to see how MFA reacts (and how I react) as these trends cycle out over the next few years, whether I'm gonna go with it or feel like I have to hang on to my current wardrobe
i don’t trend chase because i’ve been of the mind that it’s stupid to begin with for a long time. but far be it from me to stop people who’re having fun with it ^^
ironically though, i think part of my hang-ups about chasing trends might be tied into the fact that i’m used to being shoved and shoehorned into doing things i don’t like doing with my wardrobe because of family. gone are the days of being forced to keep a sundress in my closet because my grandma says i should always have one. i’ve always been a pants person; the only skirt i’m liable to wear is a miniskirt.
not too be all devil wears prada about it but is it even possible to "opt out" of trends
i think people mean they don't dress like what's currently considered cool when they say that but you're probably just dressing like a different older trend
like how being timeless isn't real
i think the basis of a trend being considered one is that its relevant in the moment. so that cyclically whatever youre wearing will probably be a trend again.
i usually like to view from a distance and adopt specific things from a trend if i see that i like it, helps when i see so many examples. so p much a late adopter and not really following a trend but using it as an example.
The ai Obama in jncos for today
in my defense I'm new here and I also didn't know it was AI
you thought obama was rockign that
?
It’s the natural progression from tan suit
trends don't repeat but rhyme yada yada yada
but I feel like no it is impossible to opt out of trends, because making a decision to not follow a trend is still a decision made based on the trend anyway
the fact its mostly people not wanting to change their style is somewhat irrelevant to the broader topic anyway
I thought it was an old-fashioned photoshop
but zooming in on that face I get it now
in my defense I have a phone with a small screen
I just assume any weird image with that kind of fuzziness is ai
We don’t need to do our anti AI discourse in here
We’ve probably checked that box this week already
I’ll load it up for tomorrow’s totd
I'm curious about this too. Its interesting what gets phased out and what endures past trend cycles... I remember one summer when everyone was wearing tie dye and the next year it was gone. I thought camp collar shirts would be the same way but they're still around years later even among people who don't pay attention to fashion
would it be fair to say: be aware of the trend, but still be your own person and do whatever you like. take some/all/none of what is currently trendy and incorporate it in your own personal style. if you like it, great. if you don't like it, great. rinse and repeat as other trends come and go
i feel like sometimes everyone as a whole realizes, yeah this is sick and just continues doing it. and then you get trends for that specific item. like the whole cut-out embroidered camp collars taking off rn
i very very much prefer camp collars over normal short sleeve button ups so im happy
definitely
read this on tomandlorenzo https://tomandlorenzo.com/2024/03/shakira-in-balmain-on-the-tonight-show-sarring-jimmy-fallon-tv-style-fashion/
i find i agree with this take
me too
lot of variety everywhere you look but then when you look to the future it feels like the only questions left to ask is "where to next" for R2W
is this specific to fashion, or is this where culture has arrived more generally? it reminds me of Mark FIsher's ideas around the cancellation of the future:
Rather than the old recoiling from the ‘new’ in fear and incomprehension, those whose expectations were formed in an earlier era are more likely to be startled by the sheer persistence of recognisable forms. Nowhere is this clearer than in popular music culture. It was through the mutations of popular music that many of those of us who grew up in the 1960s, 70s and 80s learned to measure the passage of cultural time. But faced with 21st Century music, it is the very sense of future shock which has disappeared. This is quickly established by performing a simple thought experiment. Imagine any record released in the past couple of years being beamed back in time to, say, 1995 and played on the radio. It’s hard to think that it will produce any jolt in the listeners. On the contrary, what would be likely to shock our 1995 audience would be the very recognisability of the sounds: would music really have changed so little in the next seventeen years? Contrast this with the rapid turnover of styles between the 1960s and the 90s: play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be. While 20th Century experimental culture was seized by a recombinatorial delirium, which made it feel as if newness was infinitely available, the 21st Century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion. It doesn’t feel like the future. Or, alternatively, it doesn’t feel as if the 21st Century has started yet. We remain trapped in the 20th century
The Quietus
The Quietus | Features | Books | An Extract From Mark Fisher's Ghos...
We're very pleased to have an early extract from Mark Fisher's new title for Zero Books published later in the year...
If the music you listen to sounds like the 20th century all I have to say is skill issue
it might sound different, but there is very little music (or other culture) that you could show to an audience from 2000 that would cause them to react like the 1950s kids did to Marty McFly playing a style of music from just a few decades later
even more experimental stuff if largely recombining other elements from those eras
We using hollywood as fact now? I also disagree regardless, think trap, electronic, pop, and a bunch of synth based electronic genres are almost completely unrecognizable compared to 20 years ago. Also feels like this is basically just "music before electronic instruments and music after electronic instruments is different" super crazy point dude.
Besides the original argument was the 60s/70s/80s which like, beside hip hop kinda falls flat on its face.
are they though? can you really imagine turning on the radio in 2005 if you're that old and hearing anything from the charts today and finding it shocking?
not making an argument that those decades were uniquely good btw, just that we're not necessarily moving forward
what specific music or fashion from today do you think would shock someone from 2005?
100gecs
that was going to be my first example
100gecs is the low hanging fruit
Death grips
no one who had heard the original brostep etc would find gecs challenginng
I like Brady, but he's doing pastiche
all hyperpop is just 90s pop, eurodance, hardstyle, trance, etc in a blender, there isn't much new there as much as I like it
death grips are also doing something good, but would they shock someone listeing to throbbing gristle in the 70s?
I feel like I should ban you for saying ‘throbbing gristle’
would any of those artists shock people from a decade before?
I mean, they're in the same vein as death grips, mostly focused on being abrasive
not trying to start an argument as I don't have strog feelings about either
i feel like the base argument is cap
i don't think music from the 80s is any more mind blowing to someone from the 60s or 70s than music from today would be to someone a decade or 2 ago
like the main delinator was when they invented amplified instruments which is like
not comparable
hip hop would absolutely have been shocking to any 60s listener even if there were some similar forms that existed
thats just cause they were scared of minorities
you could have said that about jazz in its time, that's always a factor
but what is as radically different today as those both were from what came a quarter century befor/
that is literally what happened with jazz
there was major moral panic
and then it was assimilated, and then there was a new thing that was challenging
that's my point
what is that thing now? you can't point to it
it's clearly no longer hip hop, it's definitely not punk
damn you got me with the "predict the future"
I mean what is currently doing that
yeah I mean I think u can make the argument that the way we interact w culture has changed by becoming more accessible overall but this whole "the future never happened" argument is just sloppy tbh
I think that touches on part of the cause, it's because we suddenly have access to everything
i don't think hyperpop is more revolutionary than hip hop was if thats what you are claiming, theres elements of hip hop from various music prior to its invention
not just connecting people to each other but to anything from the past with no friction, so the space for something new is gone
since you just claim its a mix of older music
I never said hyperpop was revolutionary
but you said hip hop was
yes
i think they are the same level
I think hyperpop is sonically interesting but could never have been a cultural force in the way hip hop was
i also just think this argument is basically unarguable since the base argument is basically "wow i bet this would blow someones mind from 20 years ago"
What does this has to do with stuffed Cornish pastries
which is unprovable
also hyperpop is arguably a cultural force right now lol
hyperpop ends with the death of PC Music for me, but I guess you could say that, but whatever influence it had or continues to have is nothing like the tectonic shift that took place with hip hop
and while hip hop was using sampling, it was also introducing entirely new forms while hyperpop is more content to work with rearranging and polishing prior forms
:fantano:
I think making this exclusively about music, even though that was Fisher's background, and getting into specific genres kind of misses the point, as this is basically everything now
would the pants you're wearing right now (or anything else in your closet) shock someone from 20 years ago?
no because all my pants are 20+ years old
i could get called homophobic slurs really easy with a lace shirt or skinny jeans
so yes
even though i don't own any skinny jeans
smiles is like the last person you want to ask this question to lmao
the 80s were loud, not as shocking :(, but yes I'm sure I could find things to annoy people with, though my hair and nails would be getting the biggest reactions
probably some sneakers
i got a real weird pair
The 80s were a little more than 20 years ago unfortunately
oh true
i mean skinny jeans unfortunately would be the most shocking thing
lol
the fact that by default we're talking about going back 20 years and initially imagining the 80s proves that history ended in 2000
What's the comparison though? Would pants from 2000 shock someone from the 80s? I doubt it
thats my point, the 80s had super loud clothes so i don't think my closet would be that shocking to someone from 2000
not that i was talking about the 80s
pants from right now stunlock everyone from 2016 based on how many slim vs wide arguments we have here
cyclical change isn't innovation though
My deepest secret is most of my pants are still actually fairly slim
it is when I do it
i think the easiest way to shock someone from 20 years ago would be some of the textiles i own, and using clothes that were far less socially acceptable for men to wear
which i don't think would be that difficult
ngl
no it's to tell them how much you spent on the vest
that's a fair point, but I think it has more to do with political progress than aesthetics
thats just dodging you getting proven wrong more like
you literally cannot decontextualize the two
I think most decades fashion changes have more to do with political and social shifts than pure aesthetic decisions
betting that history is over is a losing game
it keeps happening!
Aesthetics is heavily influenced by sociopolitical and economic shifts and vice versa to try and disentangle that is to understand none of it
it's exactly why the "hip hop was brand new" argument also falls flat on its face. It was brand new to white people, but the techniques, styles, and practices of hip hop are rooted in cultural practices just as old (older, even) as fucken hyperpop
also fair, but any of the more femme styles that might be shocking in a different context today are still likely based on fashion from previous eras, not an entirely new thing, also Prince existed
for example the 60s would be shockign to the 40s not cause of the clothes, but because they are walking around in clothes people from the 40s would consider to be underwear (the tee shirt)
what
I like Fisher alright but this thinking is just a spiral into death
we're by definition talking about things that shock and change the mainstream culture, not whether they had any predecessors
I've turned much more against him recently
I don't like fisher and would like to fist fight him tbqh
my main reservation has always been 'where did that take him?' which was apparently to a very dark place, same with Debord
he did enough of that to himself 😔
but I do think he's right here
not that we've reached the end of culture in a fukuyama sense, but that with access to everything there is nowhere to go
that's just lack of imagination
tbh I've turned a lot against the idea of a strict connection between art and politics
I guess it's kind of just nearly all western fashion from the early through mid 1900's were escaping from like Edwardian English rigid rules of formal dress and iterating from there as society changed through the decades
it isn't just that as there are material forces at work which contribute, arguably much more significantly
I think viewing aesthetics in the context of revolution often takes a lot more out of aesthetics than anything else
you to anything proving you wrong
but it's also not just 'neoliberalism bad' either, there is a fundamental difference in the way we interact with art due to technology
It's only slowing down in the same way that technological advances are 'slowing down', cause we're not starting from such a basic level now
define basic
when do you guys think my levis 510s will be back on trend
showing levis 510s to fuckin merc a kid from 1832
when revolution is itself treated like aesthetics, it only makes sense I guess, but I tend to agree
how else would you frame it if not through 'shock'?
are clothes making people now happier?
Lol
i mean it would be easy to shock someone with clothing from today
cmon man
as we have mentioned
you just don't wanna accept that
they're making me happier!
that's not based on the progression of fashion over time though, that's just going outside of one ingroup into another
failure to understand dialectics, read Hegel.
a fashionable/avant-garde person from now wouldn't seem as shocking to someone who was fashionable/avant-garde in the past, not could you go into a biker bar in Birmingham and get beat up or not
Wearing kiss heels when I time travel so they make me their king
(only half shitposting)
if you want some alternative marxist ideas on aestheitcs there's a great volume that uh....Verso? I forget tbh put out
why'd you have to post one of my bricks 😦
It's a shocking jacket and shocking pants
true
scary!
yeah it was Verso, Aesthetics and Politics
I think I have a pdf lying around somewhere but I might've deleted it because I picked up a copy on remainder
thanks, I'll check that out
what is interpassivity's thesis here i was afk getting takeout
it's a good view into the debates
the only time of major advancement was in the 20th century
no worries, it's on libgen, but it does look interesting
everything from the 21st century is actually not major advancement
because he knows about the mid 20th century, and doesn't know about the stuff that was driving those things, so they feel more unique
this channel is libgen (liberal genchat)
I initially posted an interview with Mark Fisher about the end of future shock
that's not a thesis. what's your point
um, that he's probably right and it applies to fashion also, I wasn't developing it much beyond that since the basic premise was rejected
I think it's more than 'capitalist realism' though, and more due to access to information
what's the premise of that interview. i'm not followin ya. Is it what smiles was saying?
it's actually an excerpt from his book, but basically that we are unable to imagine new futures, and that nothing from today would shock people from a few decades ago in the same way they would have been shocking to those a few decades before them, which is where a lot of the arguing came from
he also gets into it here (the interview I was thinking of):
Andrew Broaks
Crack Magazine
Do you miss the future? Mark Fisher interviewed | Crack Magazine
No future: Mark Fisher expounds on our capitalist reality
what does shocking mean in this context
I think just would mainstream culture seem especially challenging or provocative, and especially new
how do we define challenging, provactive, or new? who is doing that defining?
idk man you show people nowadays trans people and their heads explode lol
love to be a living counterexample
that one doesn't even require time travel, that's the ingroup selection I was talking about
my favorite trend is yappin online
it's been a week, "yap" is dead
ok but if people nowadays have an aneurysm over trans people existing, how are people going to react a decade ago, two decades ago
I dunno, ask wendy carlos maybe? I think it's worse now in some ways
so again, we could show some clothes that were not socially acceptable for a man to wear 10-20 years ago and that would be actively shocking for a variety of reasons
deleted, cw needed
girl no
I don't know who wendy carlos is but I'm not going to find out either
the reactionary outrage machine didn't exist, I don't mean it was ever easy
fuckign what
please replace the inner passivity in your head with some inner activity
lol the aids crisis never happened
pack it up
Red Scare never was a thing actually
the right is currently laser focused on making life worse for trans people is my point
McCarthy? Who is that?
that does seem to be getting worse, unfortunately
so you're saying there's a group of people that are continually shocked and outraged? perhaps they'd have the same view of clothes? perhaps they'd be perpetually challenged?
you've probably heard her already
a lot of that is a reaction to genuine progress which is happening!
like there's a lot of bad news but genuinely I think things are better than 10 years ago
Interestingly in that article from 2014 he mentions Glastonbury as an example, and the festival acts seeming like an unchanging thing that could go on forever in a brit-poppy bubble. I bet he'd be shocked watching Skepta headline just a few years later
true, and I'm not discounting the progress
maybe not 3 years ago though...
that was what I was getting at
it's hard to specifically define "progress" though
culture isn't monolithic and it's a lot larger and more complicated than a lot of us give credit for
but we're getting extremely tangential atp
so to return to the topic (wow it's like I'm back in seminar) I'd just have to say like, skill issue?
if you aren't seeing fashion that shocks you start seeking it out
or art, or music
I gues there's a larger debate of what can be made in the first place though and how it's delivered
to which you could just say 'make your own clothes, make your own music' which I guess a lot of people in the past decided to do
but where did it get them?
I think it may have made them happy
I've been reading The Savage Detectives lately and I think you'd also do well to check it out
maybe not all of the deadheads and yippies became VC guys, but enough of them did that I don't think they all found happiness
the boomer project largely failed
a deadhead taught me Nietzsche and got me into modernist literature
proof that they aren't happy
no he's very happy
fair enough
it's about the death of a sort of fake underground literature movement, generally speaking
I'm downloading it now, definitely let me know if you have any other recommendations around any of this
uhhhh
my prof recommended Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension but I haven't given it a read yet
not necessarily 'any of this' in the broadest sense, but more focused on aesthetics and culture, even more accessible stuff, I enjoyed Klosterman's book on the 90s, and also anything related to technology (currently reading Postman's Technopoly
I liked what I read on one-dimensional man, so I'll look into that too
it seems like Marcuse was kind of the template for a lot of what I called failed boomerism though
From a quick read of the synopsis this sounds a lot like a book I read recently called Memorial Device which was about the death of a sort of fake underground post-punk movement in Airdrie, Scotland in the 80s
ooh
Sounds like it's written in kind of the same way as well, as a bunch of fragmented pieces from various narrators who were in and around the scene?
sounds sick ty
also going to have to grab that one, but by 'fake underground movement' do you mean it's entirely fake in the context of the book?
it's vaguely based on a movement Bolano himself was involved in and within the context of the story is also debatably real or not
so basically a lot 49 kind of deal?
idk I haven't read Pynchon
that's essentially the plot of crying of lot 49, investigating this possible underground society that may or may not exist
oh no not like that
it's not about the investigation at all really though, it's pretty fun
totally without context, this might be my favorite MFA comment ever
it's much closer to what tunnocks rec'd
that's what I was initially asking about actually
underground not in the sense that it's secretive, just unpopular and unsuccessful lol
Oh yeah so in Memorial Device, the band never existed so it's like a fake memoir
gotcha