Voices of (Lost) Generations

May 29, 2024 5:55 AM

nothing, except everything. - "filmed throughout my last year of high school — to nothing and everything we feel."[1,2]

via Screentime [ungated]: "Have you heard of Wesley Wang? The 19-year-old filmmaker is adapting his viral video into a movie for Darren Aronofsky and Sony. YouTube stars Colin & Samir broke down this story (with a little help from me)."

also btw...

• Master of Make-Believe [archive] - "Zach Horwitz thrived in Los Angeles—where, as one acquaintance said, 'the more you fake it, the more people actually buy it.'"

In Horwitz’s fantasies, you hear echoes of the long tradition of American artifice: of Napoleon Hill, who wrote in “Think and Grow Rich” that “whatever the mind of men can conceive and believe, it can achieve,” and of the clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, who declared, “As you act and persevere in acting, so you tend to become”—a principle impressed on a young real-estate scion named Donald Trump when his family attended Peale’s sermons. At times, this tendency still seems strong enough to overwhelm the systems that we’ve developed to punish it. Even after Elizabeth Holmes was convicted, she voiced a belief that lies are just a stop on the way to truth. Asked what she thought would’ve happened if she had not courted so much attention, she told an interviewer, “We would’ve seen through our vision.”

• Movie Monologues That Changed My Entire Worldview - "The famous monologue at the end of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator for example, which was released well over 80 years ago in 1940, may as well have been written yesterday."[3]

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost… The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

• The Great Flattening - "In short, the analog world was defined by scarcity, which meant distribution of scarce goods was the locus of power; the digital world is defined by abundance, which means discovery of what you actually want to see is the locus of power. The result is that consumers have access to anything, which is to say that nothing is special; everything has been flattened."

All of Hollywood, convinced that content was what mattered, jointly killed the linear TV model to ensure that all professionally-produced content was available on-demand, even as YouTube became the biggest streamer of all with user-generated content that is delivered through the exact same distribution channel (apps on a smart device) as the biggest blockbusters.

• What "Follow Your Dreams" Misses | Harvey Mudd Commencement Speech 2024 - "For those in the audience who don't know who I am, I focus on making videos about mathematics with an emphasis on visualizations. It's a weird job. I do love it though, and it's no exaggeration to describe it as a dream job. And a common cliché is for someone who is lucky enough to land in a dream job, to stand confidently in front of a group of fledgling graduates, and to compel them to follow their dreams. Frankly, on its own, I don't think this is very good advice."[4]

I don't know if you felt it yet, but today marks a day in your life when a fundamental goal changes. When you're a student, the fundamental goal is to grow, to learn, to become better. So many institutions and structures around you are there to support you in growing and learning and getting better and to reward you for doing so. In life after college, the goal changes a little, and success hinges on how effectively you're able to add value to others.

posted by kliuless (5 comments total)

Hey, it was totally time for a kliuless special. Thanks, I'll be looking at several of these.
posted by humbug at 6:24 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

consumers have access to anything, which is to say that nothing is special

True only for those who mistake rarity for quality and hence price for value.
posted by flabdablet at 6:50 AM on May 29 [5 favorites]

w.r.t. . nothing, except everything; In her newish podcast Young Again, Kirsty "Desert Island Discs" Young takes her guests back to meet their younger selves and asks the question: if you knew then, what you know now... what would you tell yourself?

I have only dim memories of 18 y.o. me; it is so so long ago. But I could have been less risk-averse and had more fun. Ho hum, it all worked out fine, so no regrets.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:01 AM on May 29

consumers have access to anything, which is to say that nothing is special

This depends strongly on how you define "special". Finding things that I genuinely like and that matter to me in the current ocean of available books, music, movies, etc. is challenging, and there are very few genuinely useful wayfinding tools (and, for me, none of the reliable ones have much or any 'power' in the capitalist / market sense). When it happens, it's important to me.

My feelings about the material are the same as they were in the analog era, and my reliance on people who deeply know what I like just as heavy - it's just the nature of the discovery problem that has changed: less, widely dispersed and hard to find vs. mindbogglingly huge amounts being fired in a largely unsorted mass at my head 24-7.

The article seems to only understand the importance of cultural content as commodities whose value is defined by their relative availability vs. artworks making an actual connection with an individual person? Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, though.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:01 AM on May 29

And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

Once upon a time I felt bad we'd probably never cure cancer, as it was fractally-complicated.

Looking around at the current crop of global gerontocracies, I'm starting to worry maybe we will cure cancer, and thereby doom our children and their children, forever.
posted by aramaic at 1:38 PM on May 29