Tales of The Agora Road - E-Zine 2nd Edition OUT NOW!

[IlluminatiPirate]

This is a discussion thread on your favorite pieces on the E-Zine and future improvements. A lot of travelers worked really hard on this so give it a read.

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Tales of The Agora Road - E-Zine 2nd Edition

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Dropbox version

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[RIG]

hell yeah happy belated new year !!

 

[Orlando Smooth]

Really love Hauntology of the early 2010's: notes from a programmed ex-youth by @Thermite. It captures my own experience very well, using language and descriptors that I wouldn't have been able to come up with on my own. Being old enough to see the divergence of people who have taken control and people who have ceded control of themselves is itself frightening, as it shows just how susceptible all of us are to falling off the path at any given point in time. I hope that certain younger users around here are able to get it together in that sense; as annoying and dramatic as the "I'm internet addicted" posts can be, I do not wish that fate on anyone. I suppose all we can do is show people the tools and tell them the benefits of change.

---

As a side note, Portlandia is one of my all time favorite shows and I rewatch portions of it regularly. It's almost hard to believe that it was considered PC back then, because it doesn't feel like that long ago. I think very large portions of that show simply would not be made in the first place today, and if they were made it would be the subject of constant criticism and online bickering about appropriate portrayal. It's proof that the Overton window has shifted quite a lot in the 12 years since it first aired, because you really cannot make the case that Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein are anything other than supporters of progressive ideas.

 

[Still a Youth]

The problem I think is that their progressivism is steeped in the 20th century. Particularly towards the end of the series they seemed to kinda fall out of tune with the zeitgeist. Not really sure why, perhaps they were just taking inspiration from antiquated sources.

I do remember seeing Fred Armisen post on Instagram around when Portland was going through political turmoil
View: https://www.instagram.com/p/B24ch9DjRXV/?igshid=OGQ2MjdiOTE=

They kinda mock the radicals so I'm not sure what people would think nowadays

 

[Orlando Smooth]

The problem I think is that their progressivism is steeped in the 20th century. Particularly towards the end of the series they seemed to kinda fall out of tune with the zeitgeist.

Well sure, they are both firmly in Gen X and as such I assume they kind of didn't know what to do with millennial SJW culture that emerged throughout the course of the series. A LOT happened/changed from 2011 to 2018, trying to keep up with it while simultaneously making comedy about it that also wasn't going to get them in trouble was quite the task, I'm sure. I agree that it kind of fell off in the later seasons, but I always attributed that to the fact that hipster culture (which is what the show was originally meant to parody) had basically died off by that point.* Hard to parody something once it stops being relevant, so they basically just coasted on the existing characters by giving them actual storylines instead of skits. Not nearly as funny that way.


*I saw Foals on tour this year (surprisingly good, though the frontman has a total dadbod which was weirdly comforting and funny) and I don't think I've seen that many man buns, skinny jeans, graphic tees, and ray bans since the pre-Trump era. The fact that I realized that look is now the exception, not the rule, of what you see at concerts made me realize just how far behind us hipster culture is.

 

[ZinRicky]

Incredible job everyone!

Dropbox version

Can you please change the final '0' in the link with a 1? In that way, the download starts directly.

 

[Still a Youth]

Well sure, they are both firmly in Gen X and as such I assume they kind of didn't know what to do with millennial SJW culture that emerged throughout the course of the series. A LOT happened/changed from 2011 to 2018, trying to keep up with it while simultaneously making comedy about it that also wasn't going to get them in trouble was quite the task, I'm sure. I agree that it kind of fell off in the later seasons, but I always attributed that to the fact that hipster culture (which is what the show was originally meant to parody) had basically died off by that point.* Hard to parody something once it stops being relevant, so they basically just coasted on the existing characters by giving them actual storylines instead of skits. Not nearly as funny that way.


*I saw Foals on tour this year (surprisingly good, though the frontman has a total dadbod which was weirdly comforting and funny) and I don't think I've seen that many man buns, skinny jeans, graphic tees, and ray bans since the pre-Trump era. The fact that I realized that look is now the exception, not the rule, of what you see at concerts made me realize just how far behind us hipster culture is.

Or is it that US hipster culture is just so far ahead?

 

[Math Equal Angelic Mantra]

Well sure, they are both firmly in Gen X and as such I assume they kind of didn't know what to do with millennial SJW culture that emerged throughout the course of the series. A LOT happened/changed from 2011 to 2018, trying to keep up with it while simultaneously making comedy about it that also wasn't going to get them in trouble was quite the task, I'm sure. I agree that it kind of fell off in the later seasons, but I always attributed that to the fact that hipster culture (which is what the show was originally meant to parody) had basically died off by that point.* Hard to parody something once it stops being relevant, so they basically just coasted on the existing characters by giving them actual storylines instead of skits. Not nearly as funny that way.


*I saw Foals on tour this year (surprisingly good, though the frontman has a total dadbod which was weirdly comforting and funny) and I don't think I've seen that many man buns, skinny jeans, graphic tees, and ray bans since the pre-Trump era. The fact that I realized that look is now the exception, not the rule, of what you see at concerts made me realize just how far behind us hipster culture is.

Do hipsters even exist, or did COVID finally put the nail in that coffin? Feels like there has been no major regional scene since 00's Williamsburg.

 

[Still a Youth]

Do hipsters even exist, or did COVID finally put the nail in that coffin? Feels like there has been no major regional scene since 00's Williamsburg.

Honestly I think the entire culture was commodified by Instagram. TikTok is probably the nail in the coffin, comodifiying y2k culture. There was a good movie a while ago called Last Black Man in San Francisco, which seems hipster ish. Been meaning to watch it

 

[Orlando Smooth]

Honestly I think the entire culture was commodified by Instagram. TikTok is probably the nail in the coffin, comodifiying y2k culture. There was a good movie a while ago called Last Black Man in San Francisco, which seems hipster ish. Been meaning to watch it

Yeah this is also my opinion. I had the thought a while ago that once hipster culture was consumed by social media and peddled by its influencers, it may have marked the death of the last true counterculture movement. Costanza react all you want to referring to hipsters as "true counterculture," but there was a time when that was true. There are no organic movements anymore because everything exists first, foremost, and primarily online; not to mention that the life expectancy of trends has absolutely plummeted since the aforementioned Williamsburg scene. May be worth a post of its own since we've deviated so far from the original purpose of this one, but I don't know how much else there is to say.

 

[Still a Youth]

Yeah this is also my opinion. I had the thought a while ago that once hipster culture was consumed by social media and peddled by its influencers, it may have marked the death of the last true counterculture movement. Costanza react all you want to referring to hipsters as "true counterculture," but there was a time when that was true. There are no organic movements anymore because everything exists first, foremost, and primarily online; not to mention that the life expectancy of trends has absolutely plummeted since the aforementioned Williamsburg scene. May be worth a post of its own since we've deviated so far from the original purpose of this one, but I don't know how much else there is to say.

Well what people like to forget is that "hipster" originally referred to the hip white crowd who hung out in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. The term comes from them injecting heroin into their hips to get maximum high. Beatniks and hippies were inspired by hipster culture which was counter cultural because they hung out at black clubs playing jazz and smoking weed instead of saloons or whatever was happening in the early 20th century. Hipsters were always the counter culture, and the modern iteration was 100% the continuation.