This is a communication I saw on the 'Letterbox' textboard, which I believe is a very cool perspective. Letterbox can be found at:
The thread was titled 'Moving On From the Culture War' and read as such:
Here is something I tend to ponder on, and I wonder about your perspective on it:
I think part of healing the Web after a decade of so of stagnation involves making a break from the current stagnant culture. I tend to tour the 'small web', (for lack of a better term; I hate it when people call it the 'small web or 'indie web', makes it sound like some poncey art movement.), and whenever I do I notice certain reliably recurring themes. Complaining about Big Tech, Bad New Movies, Awful new TV Shows, going on about russia this, US-political-party-I-don't-like that, incel this, nazi that, discord this, etc. Although many of us have moved on from social media, (Or never used it in the first place), we still seem to be circling around the same culture-war carcasses.
The other day I was watching 'Revenge Of The Nerds' with one of my friends. It's a college sex-comedy from 1984. Perhaps you're not a fan of sex comedies, but the point is that it was one of those films that 'would never get made' today. There were lots of outrageously funny, lurid moments, and each time the laughter subsided, my friend would mumble some variation of 'couldn't get that past the censors these days...' If our object was escapism, that is, escapism from stifling modern culture, at least, I think it was rather hampered by this sort of aimlessly defiant anal intrusion of 'Real Life'. I mean, I doubt the makers of that film, back in 1984, were making it with the mindset of, 'yeah, we are SO going to OWN the libs!!!'
People have spoken at length about the various ways Social Media has watered down the Internet and seemingly made everyone at least a little bit dimmer, but I think one less talked about aspect is how it has sort of trained us towards a narrowly-focused, all encompassing hypersensitivity, which leads us, without realizing, to continuously tread the same old ground. The same hot button topics that always coax a reaction. Always fighting the 'culture war'. They may not go 'viral' for it, or see any 'likes', but still they are compelled to write about 'hating coomers' or how 'woke' whatever that new movie is, or 'modern degeneracy'. Fair play to you if these are important topics to you, but at some point I think there is need to shut up about that sort of thing and instead start posting the sort of thing you wish WAS on the internet. I think it's a shame that many people make themselves places where they can do anything, practically anything, and then devote much server space to closely observing the bowel movements and tectonic shifts of the social media world. It is a sort of 'shadow conformity' where we are defined by our defiance to the mainstream, rather than making a clean break from it and actually doing our won thing. I saw the problem summarized well on a certain forum I browse:
"Ultimately the idea is quite simple: why can't you write about a topic without inserting all kinds of special snowflake delusions on one end and "scandal du jour" on the other? By all means go blog about your day. If you want to talk about how seeing zigzag patterns gives you seizures, be my guest. But don't disguise it as an interesting discussion"
"And this applies in the most general way possible because everything is like that, now. I can't checkout a Neocities site about 16-bit computers because it won't actually be about 16-bit computers, it will be about which hair color best matches the Commodore 64's replacement keyboard that came in the mail along with a dragon dildo or something. If it's not about that, it will be all about how much the author hates people who write articles like that, instead of just writing about goddamned 16-bit computers."
I think a good example of how I wish things could be, at random, is something like this article, 'The Dream That Died: The Late 1980s Television Show Reunion Movies' : www.kevinmccorrytv.ca/reunion.html
This article has a lot which I think is refreshing:
-It is about a very niche topic, explained in great detail, such that it becomes a generalized cultural review. The topic is the sort of very specific thing thing you only think to put up once you stop thinking about bending things towards 'the algorithm'. I think a lot of people on the 'indie web' are merely in a phase where they are extending the sort of faux-revolutionary mindset inculcated in them by social media social engineering onto their own personal websites. In fact some of them are exactly refugees with an axe to grind, who set up their own websites as 'outposts', after being banned from numerous social media. This article the sort of thing that basically absent, or very rarely seen, on social media, since it's not hooked to any 'current trend'. It's rarely seen on the 'small web' too, since many people dedicate time to peeking through their blinds at the Social Median's movements.
-It follows no current trends in cultural reviewing (I think because it's an old article). Despite being an article about older series, it does not sink into maudlin nostalgia, or else overexaggerated condemnation of the entertainment under discussion. There are no annoying sort of parenthetical asides, just so that the author can shove their opinion down your throat. Whenever I read a movie review from a site like Vox, for example, there are inevitably all sorts of opinionated, snide marginalia about how this or that celebrity is verboten, or this or that handling of the subject matter is not to the author's liking, which serves no purpose in the review, but serves the purpose of scoring the writer further points with their in-crowd, and pissing off members of the out-crowd.
-It is well researched. Reading thru it you get the impression that the author has seen all the shows under discussion, and has a good grasp of the culture he is making review of. In fact he probably grew up then. I think this also contributes to the impartialty, a lack of familiarity with the subject matter, or proper historical knowledge leads to snide opinion-making and other lazy habits used to fill up a word-count
-It is well-focused and unemotional. It is strange how personal discursive writing can get these days, especially on the internet. Even talk about movies can get very snippy. This article avoids that. The author introduces you to a left-field topic, and walks you through it in great depth, so that you can understand the topic. Its emphasis is on the information with no detour into, as the forum poster said, 'inserting all kinds of special snowflake delusions on one end and "scandal du jour" on the other.'
It's an old article, so of course it wouldn't have the flaws of today, but I this is basically the level of quality I wish Internet writing would return to.
The thread was titled 'Moving On From the Culture War' and read as such:
Here is something I tend to ponder on, and I wonder about your perspective on it:
I think part of healing the Web after a decade of so of stagnation involves making a break from the current stagnant culture. I tend to tour the 'small web', (for lack of a better term; I hate it when people call it the 'small web or 'indie web', makes it sound like some poncey art movement.), and whenever I do I notice certain reliably recurring themes. Complaining about Big Tech, Bad New Movies, Awful new TV Shows, going on about russia this, US-political-party-I-don't-like that, incel this, nazi that, discord this, etc. Although many of us have moved on from social media, (Or never used it in the first place), we still seem to be circling around the same culture-war carcasses.
The other day I was watching 'Revenge Of The Nerds' with one of my friends. It's a college sex-comedy from 1984. Perhaps you're not a fan of sex comedies, but the point is that it was one of those films that 'would never get made' today. There were lots of outrageously funny, lurid moments, and each time the laughter subsided, my friend would mumble some variation of 'couldn't get that past the censors these days...' If our object was escapism, that is, escapism from stifling modern culture, at least, I think it was rather hampered by this sort of aimlessly defiant anal intrusion of 'Real Life'. I mean, I doubt the makers of that film, back in 1984, were making it with the mindset of, 'yeah, we are SO going to OWN the libs!!!'
People have spoken at length about the various ways Social Media has watered down the Internet and seemingly made everyone at least a little bit dimmer, but I think one less talked about aspect is how it has sort of trained us towards a narrowly-focused, all encompassing hypersensitivity, which leads us, without realizing, to continuously tread the same old ground. The same hot button topics that always coax a reaction. Always fighting the 'culture war'. They may not go 'viral' for it, or see any 'likes', but still they are compelled to write about 'hating coomers' or how 'woke' whatever that new movie is, or 'modern degeneracy'. Fair play to you if these are important topics to you, but at some point I think there is need to shut up about that sort of thing and instead start posting the sort of thing you wish WAS on the internet. I think it's a shame that many people make themselves places where they can do anything, practically anything, and then devote much server space to closely observing the bowel movements and tectonic shifts of the social media world. It is a sort of 'shadow conformity' where we are defined by our defiance to the mainstream, rather than making a clean break from it and actually doing our won thing. I saw the problem summarized well on a certain forum I browse:
"Ultimately the idea is quite simple: why can't you write about a topic without inserting all kinds of special snowflake delusions on one end and "scandal du jour" on the other? By all means go blog about your day. If you want to talk about how seeing zigzag patterns gives you seizures, be my guest. But don't disguise it as an interesting discussion"
"And this applies in the most general way possible because everything is like that, now. I can't checkout a Neocities site about 16-bit computers because it won't actually be about 16-bit computers, it will be about which hair color best matches the Commodore 64's replacement keyboard that came in the mail along with a dragon dildo or something. If it's not about that, it will be all about how much the author hates people who write articles like that, instead of just writing about goddamned 16-bit computers."
I think a good example of how I wish things could be, at random, is something like this article, 'The Dream That Died: The Late 1980s Television Show Reunion Movies' : www.kevinmccorrytv.ca/reunion.html
This article has a lot which I think is refreshing:
-It is about a very niche topic, explained in great detail, such that it becomes a generalized cultural review. The topic is the sort of very specific thing thing you only think to put up once you stop thinking about bending things towards 'the algorithm'. I think a lot of people on the 'indie web' are merely in a phase where they are extending the sort of faux-revolutionary mindset inculcated in them by social media social engineering onto their own personal websites. In fact some of them are exactly refugees with an axe to grind, who set up their own websites as 'outposts', after being banned from numerous social media. This article the sort of thing that basically absent, or very rarely seen, on social media, since it's not hooked to any 'current trend'. It's rarely seen on the 'small web' too, since many people dedicate time to peeking through their blinds at the Social Median's movements.
-It follows no current trends in cultural reviewing (I think because it's an old article). Despite being an article about older series, it does not sink into maudlin nostalgia, or else overexaggerated condemnation of the entertainment under discussion. There are no annoying sort of parenthetical asides, just so that the author can shove their opinion down your throat. Whenever I read a movie review from a site like Vox, for example, there are inevitably all sorts of opinionated, snide marginalia about how this or that celebrity is verboten, or this or that handling of the subject matter is not to the author's liking, which serves no purpose in the review, but serves the purpose of scoring the writer further points with their in-crowd, and pissing off members of the out-crowd.
-It is well researched. Reading thru it you get the impression that the author has seen all the shows under discussion, and has a good grasp of the culture he is making review of. In fact he probably grew up then. I think this also contributes to the impartialty, a lack of familiarity with the subject matter, or proper historical knowledge leads to snide opinion-making and other lazy habits used to fill up a word-count
-It is well-focused and unemotional. It is strange how personal discursive writing can get these days, especially on the internet. Even talk about movies can get very snippy. This article avoids that. The author introduces you to a left-field topic, and walks you through it in great depth, so that you can understand the topic. Its emphasis is on the information with no detour into, as the forum poster said, 'inserting all kinds of special snowflake delusions on one end and "scandal du jour" on the other.'
It's an old article, so of course it wouldn't have the flaws of today, but I this is basically the level of quality I wish Internet writing would return to.
