Screaming Hysterical Nothingness

[Cramulus]

 

the Situationists proposed that life has become a big spectacle, in which our lives have been subverted by nonliving things.

"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience." -Larry Law



How many of your early impressions of the world were formed by TV?


how to act in a relationship


all the expectations of what sex would be like


what people from other countries are like


how to be cool




TV sets the defaults

[Kai]

I'm so fucking glad I don't watch TV.

Also, OP (Cram), . I've totally been craving that sort of experience all day long today. Unfortunatly no one is around this week.

Maybe next week.

[Sepia]

mmmm

Perfect to read in the morning, thanks Cram.

[Richter]

Great story / rant!  We all need to get back to this kind of unselfcoscious joyfull playing to shake off the blah. 

the Situationists proposed that life has become a big spectacle, in which our lives have been subverted by nonliving things.

"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience." -Larry Law



How many of your early impressions of the world were formed by TV?


how to act in a relationship


all the expectations of what sex would be like


what people from other countries are like


how to be cool




TV sets the defaults

I got chatting with Suu about something similar yesterday: How many characters in our childhood reading material / other media were gender neutral or gender unspecified?

[LMNO]

I read a lot of books as a child; I figure I based a lot of my impressions of the world on some of my favorite characters.


Is there a difference?

[Richter]

Fucked if I know for certain, but the next time I hear someone talking trash about trangendered / transexual folk, I plan to have fun telling them how it's in children's books. 
I get the feeling there's potential to get them to shut up AND damage their sanity.

[Honey]

I liked this.  A lot.  Life is a Spectacular Spectacle!  Like an antidote to "Life is short, brutish & nasty."  Sometimes it's just so much bullshit, sometimes you're acting it out & sometimes you're part of the audience.  Either way ... living it.  "Approach love & cooking with reckless abandon." 

Bravo Cram!     YaY!

[Cramulus]

I read a lot of books as a child; I figure I based a lot of my impressions of the world on some of my favorite characters.


Is there a difference?

you probably read different books than other kids.

Whereas kids that watch a lot of Nickelodeon (or CSPAN or whatever) are homogenized towards that kind of sense of humor.

There's a part in Culture Jam where the author references how if you grew up during a certain range of years, your image of "cool" includes wearing sunglasses. When you go out to buy sunglasses, you'll be predisposed towards the ones Tom Cruise was wearing in a movie you saw as an early teenager.

It's part of that nefarious "top down" generation of cool. In olden times before multimillion dollar marketing campaigns, the top 40 songs on the radio were popular because people heard the song, bought the record, told their friends. Good music got spread that way. These days the top 40 "sound" is discussed and agreed upon in advance, and musicians are plugged in like a mechanic replaces a part of an engine. Yeah if the music sucks nobody's gonna buy it, but if you've got a multimillion dollar budget, you can fight a lot of that. My (occasional moron) buddy says "I listen to top 40 because it's the best music on the radio. It wouldn't be in the top 40 unless it was good, right?"    (alright maybe my pop prejudice is showing through)

I was also thinking about how the first time I was in love, and I wanted to tell my girlfriend how I felt, my only reference for how to say it was the zillion times I've seen it done in movies and on TV. How many TV shows have you seen which are about telling someone you love them? Uncle Jesse and Aunt Beckie were in my head at the time.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

One thing I've (mostly) learned is that every time, for fun to be truly fulfilling, it must be a new experience. It can be a new experience doing the same thing you've done before, but if you try to go back to previous fun and try to re-experience it, you're dabbling in nostalgia and your fun will lack the depth of joy you're trying to relive. Two sayings come to mind: you can never go home again, and each enlightenment is only good for one person, one time. It took me a long time to really understand the meaning of the first one, and the second one was the key to it.

You can never re-use fun, you have to make new fun each time. Sometimes you're not done with the first fun for weeks and weeks, even years, but once that fun is over, the next fun has to be a new experience and a new energy.

[hunter s.durden]

You can never re-use fun, you have to make new fun each time. Sometimes you're not done with the first fun for weeks and weeks, even years, but once that fun is over, the next fun has to be a new experience and a new energy.

Feeling a bit bossy today?

[Kai]

Maybe shes just sure of herself from her perspective and feels strong enough about what shes saying not to litter her phrases with meaningless e-prime.

[hunter s.durden]

Maybe shes just sure of herself from her perspective and feels strong enough about what shes saying not to litter her phrases with meaningless e-prime.

I don't doubt that.

But maybe she's wrong.

You of all people should know not to tell people how to be happy.

[Kai]

Maybe shes just sure of herself from her perspective and feels strong enough about what shes saying not to litter her phrases with meaningless e-prime.

I don't doubt that.

But maybe she's wrong.

You of all people should know not to tell people how to be happy.

the word "you" is often used in place of the classical "one", as in "one must do this". When 'you' replaces 'one',  more often than not its a very subjective general pronoun, in this case an allusion to one's self, i.e. "I". It was a personal statement of affirmation.

Whats telling is that you (not in the classical one sense) were bothered by it. Whats it about that statement that bothers you so much? Just people talkin on the internet. Afaik, wasn't directed at you, Hunter.

[hunter s.durden]

Because I think it's generally bad advice for you, me, one, two, whoever.

Aside from the phrasing I take issue with the message.

Three or four years ago I noticed a phenomenon that occurs in about a quarter of the people I spend more than a couple of hours with. Looking back it's always happened, but I just happened to finally notice it. It was the the ability of people to not be where they were. Physically they are there, but they are always looking for the next thing. People invite me over to drink and watch movies, and within an hours they're on their cell phone calling the other friends they have. Is it the poor quality of my company? No, because no matter where we go or who we meet it's always the next big thing. Go to the bar. Now go to the party. We need girls. Now we need different girls. On and on, never contented with their moment.

I just think that this is one piece of advice that desperately needs to filter out the "must" and "always". Those words aren't helping the guy that swears he'll be happy once he leaves this job for that, the one that in six months will be saying the same thing. The post had a "grass is greener" air to it that didn't sit right. I don't feel it should have been directed at any one. Happiness is tricky in this era, and that advice was just too concrete and misguided for my tastes.

[AFK]

Because I think it's generally bad advice for you, me, one, two, whoever.

Aside from the phrasing I take issue with the message.

Three or four years ago I noticed a phenomenon that occurs in about a quarter of the people I spend more than a couple of hours with. Looking back it's always happened, but I just happened to finally notice it. It was the the ability of people to not be where they were. Physically they are there, but they are always looking for the next thing. People invite me over to drink and watch movies, and within an hours they're on their cell phone calling the other friends they have. Is it the poor quality of my company? No, because no matter where we go or who we meet it's always the next big thing. Go to the bar. Now go to the party. We need girls. Now we need different girls. On and on, never contented with their moment.

I just think that this is one piece of advice that desperately needs to filter out the "must" and "always". Those words aren't helping the guy that swears he'll be happy once he leaves this job for that, the one that in six months will be saying the same thing. The post had a "grass is greener" air to it that didn't sit right. I don't feel it should have been directed at any one. Happiness is tricky in this era, and that advice was just too concrete and misguided for my tastes.

I have to say I agree with Hunter on this.  When I was writing up the "Two Thousand and Nein" goof, I started thinking about that mantra you hear a lot of people say, "Live life to the fullest."  I think a trap that many fall into is taking it too literally, trying to literally fill up their life with stuff.  Sometimes I think maybe we need a little in the other direction, emptying some stuff out so you can still live a fulfilled life, but, one where there is more breathing room between the things you are filling it with.  It's the quality vs quantity argument.