unapologetic gay filth

November 10, 2021 11:54 AM

Dobes Crusher writes about the memetic decontextualization of "weird art", with a guided (and attributed!) tour through some classics of the genre. (cw: sex, nudity, gore, generally freaky shit)
posted by theodolite (8 comments total)

This seemed like it would be right up my alley, but after clicking through and encountering what seems to be mostly a verbose catalog of gripes I had to nope right out. It feels like every piece of actual info about the pieces at hand is counter-balanced by at least twice as much info about why the author doesn’t like [x].
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:39 PM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

It feels like every piece of actual info about the pieces at hand is counter-balanced by at least twice as much info about why the author doesn’t like [x].

The essay isn't about weird art itself, it's about the way the work of artists who create weird art is used/misused online in support of memes, creepypasta legends, gross out humor, and the like and why that can be a problem.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:24 PM on November 10, 2021 [6 favorites]

I understand what it’s ostensibly about, I just think it was badly marred by the author’s very personal framing. This is all from the very first paragraph, and kind of sets the stage for the later gems like “I'm very put off by the way that people, especially teenagers […]”:

“There's something I really resent about […]”
“[…] but it's also kind of maddening”
“I especially dislike when something […]”
“I also dislike the trend of […]”
“The trend of YouTube explained videos is also pretty dire”
“just people making stupid faces and overreacting to any given thing”
“which is its own genre of "content".
“you can find plenty of people summarizing the content as if you yourself couldn't watch the source material to begin with (or couldn't read a review or a synopsis somewhere either).”

It’s like a cross between a bad Seinfeld routine and a college freshman trying to hit their word count.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:00 PM on November 10, 2021 [6 favorites]

I mean, it's someone's personal blog about something they're passionate about. If you don't like it, move on (or better yet, create your own version of the same concept). I think the web would be a better place with more content like this than carefully curated short content designed for optimal likes and shares on social media. If you push on beyond the beginning, there's a lot less personal framing.
posted by Candleman at 4:47 PM on November 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

i loved the essay. thanks for posting it!
posted by glonous keming at 5:02 PM on November 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

This was really interesting, and I share the author's POV so I enjoyed the framing. I think I'd only seen one of these "in the wild" before (Xue Jiye's Face Off) but it was interesting to see the author's perspective on these kind of evergreen things (teens sending scary/gross stuff to each other, urban legends about artists that are wildly off base) combined with trends that I've also noticed, like the trend towards literal interpretations of art and over-explanation. I think the world would be a better place with more thoughtful posts like this that celebrate weirdness and the people who make weird art without going into a moral panic about it.

Also there's a lot of really cool art at the link.
posted by subdee at 7:54 PM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

I understand what it’s ostensibly about, I just think it was badly marred by the author’s very personal framing.

I can understand being put off by the specific and personal framing of the take, but the argument isn't just those things are bad because I don't like them as can be noted from the connecting bits left out from your highlighted selections of the essay.

There's this ever-expanding economy of clickbait that self perpetuates and thrives on further decontextualization of everything, which has happened in part due to YouTube's own algorithms and the ongoing struggle that video creators have to be seen and get paid for their work.

The demand to be spoonfed over-explanations or "lore" about pieces robs us of that by telling us how to feel. I suppose the fact that schools don't really teach Americans much in the way of media analysis anymore doesn't help, but it also feels like a broader problem with the way the internet and social media operates. Lack of context seems to be a virtue in terms of things going wildly viral to a huge audience and there's scores of accounts online that profit off of aggregating and redistributing all manner of things without attribution, so is it any wonder that compelling things end up in front of us with a new context from those eager to fill in the blanks?

There is some rhetorical conflict in the way the essay starts off for putting it in personal terms that seem to echo the kinds of things being argued against, like reaction videos, but the body of the argument isn't anti-personal response, it's saying the way the kinds of videos being described decontextualize or over-explain art are in fact eroding the ability of a potential audience to respond to the art in a fuller sense by those works being hijacked by "explainers" offering blandly reductive thoughts about plot points or subject matter and appropriators who force the works into narrow "lore" contexts for which they were never intended. The problem, in that sense, isn't the personal nature of the response, but the artifice surrounding the context the works are placed in, constraining the response, not freeing it.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:26 PM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

Having read through to the end twice now, I can appreciate the author’s intent. I still have a hard time giving them the full benefit of the doubt regarding their overall thesis, which seems to boil down to “some people are interacting with culture wrong and I don’t like it (because I’m doing it right)” while displaying a pretty impressive lack of self-awareness about their own tendencies to engage in the same context-flattening simplifications and literal readings.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 8:19 AM on November 11, 2021 [1 favorite]