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dead_battery · 03.24.2014, 04:51 PM

exactly. it's pathetic.

what should have happened was all the rage, frustration, exhaustion, depression brought about by post industrial consumer society would have culminated in a fatalistic desire to abandon all vitalist energies and bring about a kind of apocalypse. there was a sense in the 90's that people were sick of all ideologies and wanted to abandon these structures for a technologically enhanced post humanism.

this is the impression i got - people really were sick of history and didn't want to get fooled by the lies and false promises that any kind of human authority would inevitably make.

mark fisher seems to say something like this at when he talks about the short lived accelerationist movement and the philosophy of nick land, where they talked about jungle and drum and bass "making the extinction accessible as a dancefloor" or whatever it was. this was going on in the 90's, and the aesthetic of the likes of metalheadz was similar to industrial.

you had piercings and that kind of dark techno fashion, some nu metal was like this at the very start. the fashion was straight lines, blocks, squares, robot like stuff, and then you had bright fluorescent colours and hair dyes.

i mean, back then the kind of add campaigns we have now would not have worked. they would have been ridiculed. there was a sense that people wanted darkness, seriousness, intensity, technology. all that 90's cynicism and exhilarated bleakness - all that is gone now.

there was a counter cultural attitude that you could just about detect at the fringes that was dismissive and mocking, and from a negative perspective. it was one where we expected power to lure us with promises of a happy life and we mocked it rather than desperately trying to go along with it with a kind of ironic sincerity like we do now.

i know that i am totally embellishing and exaggerating this but whatever.

i think there was a concerted campaign that took off in the 00's to enforce this hyper positivity. and i think this was a form of torture in which the masses were subjected to a kind of psychological warfare that relied on taunting them about their nihilism, forcing them to disavow death and making culture into this narcissistic, personalized space where you can't possible be pissed off about anything because what's the point? so we had twee and kitsch and the revival of hippie aesthetics, and now EVERY SINGLE ADD ON TV is banjo or ukulele music and cooing voices talking to you like an infant.

lastpsychiatrist pointed out how nowadays you don't sell say a pc or a smartphone on its specs, you sell it as like a mirror enhancing the narcissism of the consumer. it's all child like and interactive and the world it's depicting is one of bright colours, cleanliness, plainness and nature. happy sunshine shit.

03.24.2014, 04:51 PM	#78
dead_battery expwy. to yr skull Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1,928	exactly. it's pathetic. what should have happened was all the rage, frustration, exhaustion, depression brought about by post industrial consumer society would have culminated in a fatalistic desire to abandon all vitalist energies and bring about a kind of apocalypse. there was a sense in the 90's that people were sick of all ideologies and wanted to abandon these structures for a technologically enhanced post humanism. this is the impression i got - people really were sick of history and didn't want to get fooled by the lies and false promises that any kind of human authority would inevitably make. mark fisher seems to say something like this at when he talks about the short lived accelerationist movement and the philosophy of nick land, where they talked about jungle and drum and bass "making the extinction accessible as a dancefloor" or whatever it was. this was going on in the 90's, and the aesthetic of the likes of metalheadz was similar to industrial. you had piercings and that kind of dark techno fashion, some nu metal was like this at the very start. the fashion was straight lines, blocks, squares, robot like stuff, and then you had bright fluorescent colours and hair dyes. i mean, back then the kind of add campaigns we have now would not have worked. they would have been ridiculed. there was a sense that people wanted darkness, seriousness, intensity, technology. all that 90's cynicism and exhilarated bleakness - all that is gone now. there was a counter cultural attitude that you could just about detect at the fringes that was dismissive and mocking, and from a negative perspective. it was one where we expected power to lure us with promises of a happy life and we mocked it rather than desperately trying to go along with it with a kind of ironic sincerity like we do now. i know that i am totally embellishing and exaggerating this but whatever. i think there was a concerted campaign that took off in the 00's to enforce this hyper positivity. and i think this was a form of torture in which the masses were subjected to a kind of psychological warfare that relied on taunting them about their nihilism, forcing them to disavow death and making culture into this narcissistic, personalized space where you can't possible be pissed off about anything because what's the point? so we had twee and kitsch and the revival of hippie aesthetics, and now EVERY SINGLE ADD ON TV is banjo or ukulele music and cooing voices talking to you like an infant. lastpsychiatrist pointed out how nowadays you don't sell say a pc or a smartphone on its specs, you sell it as like a mirror enhancing the narcissism of the consumer. it's all child like and interactive and the world it's depicting is one of bright colours, cleanliness, plainness and nature. happy sunshine shit.
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