The end of internet art is for it to take a life of its own, and then die.

SomaSpice

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Apparently people (zoomers) call Jared Pike's dream pools "the poolrooms", and have added it into the backrooms mythos.

AEA9AA40-0AE8-4C85-9AE2-F6247EDAEA27.jpeg


I feel like they took something beautiful and cool and turned into lame creepypasta fodder. This got me thinking.

I guess that's the endgame of all art born online is having the collective take it from the hands of its creator, morph it, and finally run it to the ground when the work's vitality has emptied out.

Internet art seems to be exceptionally prone to spawn transformative works. Its easy to see this happen when you take a look at the fandoms of digital native works, like homestuck and undertale. In a sense, the works seem like organisms. They are born full of vital energy, and as their popularity and strength rises they reproduce by sowing their seeds on the minds of its consumers. Finally they die off when the creative spark dissipates and they become relegated to lameness.

Its strikes me quite odd, since I don't see these processes happening in such a scale and intensity in other forms and genres of art. Sure, there's loads of fanfics of say, novels and anime, but there's not multiverses and multimedia projects and the iteration upon iteration that happens with what is born online.

What do you guys think?
 
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gwen

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Apparently people (zoomers) call Jared Pike's dream pools "the poolrooms", and have added it into the backrooms mythos.

View attachment 31652

I feel like they took something beautiful and cool and turned into lame creepypasta fodder. This got me thinking.

I guess that's the endgame of all art born online is having the collective take it from the hands of its creator, morph it, and finally run it to the ground when the work's vitality has emptied out.

Internet art seems to be exceptionally prone to spawn transformative works. Its easy to see this happen when you take a look at the fandoms of digital native works, like homestuck and undertale. In a sense, the works seem like organisms. They are born full of vital energy, and as their popularity and strength rises they reproduce by sowing their seeds on the minds of its consumers. Finally they die off when the creative spark dissipates and they become relegated to lameness.

Its strikes me quite odd, since I don't see these processes happening in such a scale and intensity in other forms and genres of art. Sure, there's loads of fanfics of say, novels and anime, but there's not multiverses and multimedia projects and the iteration upon iteration that happens with what is born online.

What do you guys think?
Optimistically i wonder if the internet (or something like it) could provide a medium where art literally becomes a new form of life
 
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bendersteed

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I think it's important to think about how internet art dies: does it develop into mediocrity when it's vitality is already depleted or it gets depleted because its vitality is expended into mediocrity.

I feel somehow that both these things happen at times. I think it's good to have constantly developing art, in the absence of folk culture, internet culture is playing a similar lore nowadays. I'm not convinced that its powerful enough and surely it is very easily hijacked, at least by spreading dissonance and at worst as a calculated psy-op, but still it's the only thing most people have left as a substitute for "public" art.

In accordance to this, its also interesting that we in tradition/folk culture I can observe similar patterns to this dissolution. For example in my country there is a tradition to fly kites in a specific day as a celebration. In the start a handful of people that liked making and flying kites would do so, producing techniques that can be considered art. Then everyone wanted to fly a kite but was too bored to make one or research more into, they wanted just to be part of the tradition. They started buying ready made kites and so on. The people who were creative became bored or less prominent in the culture of kite-flyers and so the vitality of the tradition got depleted and nowadays most people don't fly a kite.

So in a way it is somehow normal, but on the wired it's more prominent since the central control is of higer level than the control on the meatspace.
 
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Its human nature to want to classify things and arrange similar things next to eachother.
Does it being referred to as "the poolrooms" make it creepy-pasta? I don't think so. The *rooms can be generally be an abstract/liminal space that is vaguely familiar but unreal.
Music genres and sub-genres are similar. Very often an artists otherwise unique sound gets lumped next to the nearest genre with a funky prefix. This is not a bad thing in of itself.

On your second point, it's natural for us to want to emulate, imitate, reinvent, or rebel against the art or mannerisms around us. We're a reactionary species. The only reason you see it happening in such a scale and intensity compared to other genres of art is because the internet (and the globally connected noosphere) just moves that much faster. New and cool things get injected into the global psyche, and once the novelty wears off people move onto whatever is next. Nothing stays in the global psyche for long, but the things that have value outside their novelty usually live on (in a much smaller way) or are later revived. (Renaissance-period, romanticism, and this website right here are good examples)
 
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SomaSpice

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Does it being referred to as "the poolrooms" make it creepy-pasta? I don't think so.
I don't mean that they just changed the name, they changed the concept of the work. It went from being about dreamlike landscapes to found footage horror.


View: https://youtu.be/5Ey23IouApM

Though recently the original author seems to have accepted, or maybe just partaken a bit in this change. Probably because of its popularity. (The original concept was published in early 2021, this video was published a bit more than a year later)


View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jjB9I8j01Ko

On your second point, it's natural for us to want to emulate, imitate, reinvent, or rebel against the art or mannerisms around us. We're a reactionary species. The only reason you see it happening in such a scale and intensity compared to other genres of art is because the internet (and the globally connected noosphere) just moves that much faster. New and cool things get injected into the global psyche, and once the novelty wears off people move onto whatever is next. Nothing stays in the global psyche for long, but the things that have value outside their novelty usually live on (in a much smaller way) or are later revived. (Renaissance-period, romanticism, and this website right here are good examples)

I understand what you mean with your second point and generally agree with it. My point, however, was that the degree of transformative work that is birthed goes beyond what is simply a result of the interconnectedness of the internet age. Internet native works, as a result of fandom (or the birth of a new culture), have a huge volume of derivative works which mutate its media in a way completely detached from the original author. It gets to the point where I feel that the recognizable characteristics and the agreed upon interpretation of the work seems to be more a result of a mechanism akin to natural selection than mere artistic intent.
 
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Content online is considered public domain regardless of whether this is technically true or not, and is always taking new forms, sometimes cool, sometimes lame. The wired decides how a piece of art should be viewed - it claimed that a sculpture by a Japanese artist was the image of a monstrous creature held captive in a lab, and now everyone recognizes it as SCP-173.
It's nice how people who don't have any artistic skills can still take part in producing culture by creating a collage of other existing works and defining them in a new way.
One great thing about online permanence is it's almost always possible to trace a piece of art back to its source if you are interested.
 
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Howdy, at first, i want to add that, i still do not understand why people feel creeped out or scared regarding the subject of liminal places, i saw these kind of places and i feel nothing but peace, perhaps i'm not a peoples person, but when i was in highschool i used to go to a lot of abandoned places, or go to somewhere very late at night, like the supermarket at 1 am, there is no one and there is a strong aura of peace, sometimes it even hypes me for living in one of those places.

And second, internet likes to recycle a lot of elements previously seen and giving a new life, just look at memes, the meta irony of the new comedy makes possible the revival of any old meme like it was brand new, look at doge and troll face, look at so many nostalgic stuff incorporated in the new style of humor, i think my complaint is the lack of originality, we have taken so much from the past is kinda hard to find something new in architecture and spirit (because the only thing that changes is the way stuff is executed, but the results are the same, let's just say is the "Internet commutative property") thus resulting in a creative stagnation, i do think is good that we have a way to revive old memories in new formats to mantain it fresh, but sometimes, leaving the things as they are is for the best, look at the musical distortion Jack The Knife suffer throught the years.


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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c4_b5PHWg8
 
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I don't really think that the "reimagining" of a work ruins its original beauty, unless if its creator, for example, decides to get heavily influenced by it due to its popularity. I mean, the original work is right there, surviving beneath the rubble, the core that gives life to them all. People can always look at the original without paying attention to the fan-made stuff and admire it's originality in its full glory, and, as for the fan-made stuff themselves, I don't think they're necessarily bad. I mean yes, they are, mostly, inferior to the original work and more often than not uncreative and just a cheap recycling of hollow concepts that borrow stuff from the source, but they're nonetheless a way of the fandom to express itself and I believe that it actually enhances the experience, mostly due to strengthening the community (which might be an awful community in the first place, but oh well). Undertale didn't stop being Undertale because of all the fanfics. It's just the fanfics and the memes and all that gave it a new face to the public. But those who are willing to enjoy a work of art unprejudiced, they really won't be disappointed. So, in general, I don't think anything is "ruined". It's just being given another facade.
 

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But it surely got a bad rep.
Yea well, a "bad rep" isn't exactly what I'd call it. I mean, a lot of people see weird memes n stuff of it everywhere on the internet, and they are mostly cringe, so some of them create a cringe image of the game in their heads, but I think that on their majority they aren't people that would give the game a shot anyway. As I said, those willing to enjoy the media unprejudiced are just not affected. Plus, even if it is "bad advertisement" it still is somewhat of an advertisement and it gives the chance for more people to get curious about the source as it is constantly getting more and more out there on the internet. So it's not exactly a win, but it ain't exactly a lose.
 

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Yea well, a "bad rep" isn't exactly what I'd call it. I mean, a lot of people see weird memes n stuff of it everywhere on the internet, and they are mostly cringe, so some of them create a cringe image of the game in their heads, but I think that on their majority they aren't people that would give the game a shot anyway. As I said, those willing to enjoy the media unprejudiced are just not affected. Plus, even if it is "bad advertisement" it still is somewhat of an advertisement and it gives the chance for more people to get curious about the source as it is constantly getting more and more out there on the internet. So it's not exactly a win, but it ain't exactly a lose.
You're completely right that you can enjoy the original work unaffected if you come in non-judgmentally.

In my OP, I'm talking more the overall perception of a work, not just the experience of consuming it. Also its lifespan accounted as interest over time.

There's generally a lifespan for popularity and trends. When the initial response dies out, the activity that remains is what fans derive from the original, be it new works or just discussion. This then becomes over time what most people generally evaluate as the "soul" of the work, because its the effect its had on people.

Funny that you mention undertale, here's an excerpt from chat earlier today:
B0C1D2B9-64BD-468D-A6D0-1B102E635649.jpeg

B5D143EE-82D9-48CB-A753-6896EA6FB39F.jpeg

The work and its community can't really be separated.

Undertale is not about porn, and has no porn. Everyone knows that. But everybody knows undertale is heavily related to porn thanks to its fans.
 
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I guess that's the endgame of all art born online is having the collective take it from the hands of its creator, morph it, and finally run it to the ground when the work's vitality has emptied out.
Its strikes me quite odd, since I don't see these processes happening in such a scale and intensity in other forms and genres of art.
You're describing the fate of every form/genre of art since the dawn of recorded history, it's just more obvious on the internet because everything happens faster here. The history of art is full of avant-garde edgelords who became critically-acclaimed and "safe" once enough people started copying them. Monet and Beethoven are obvious examples.
 
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SomaSpice

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You're describing the fate of every form/genre of art since the dawn of recorded history, it's just more obvious on the internet because everything happens faster here. The history of art is full of avant-garde edgelords who became critically-acclaimed and "safe" once enough people started copying them. Monet and Beethoven are obvious examples.
You're probably quite right. I guess my discomfort lies more on that I see the original getting lost or ignored quite often.
 
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god_is_bread

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You're completely right that you can enjoy the original work unaffected if you come in non-judgmentally.

In my OP, I'm talking more the overall perception of a work, not just the experience of consuming it. Also its lifespan accounted as interest over time.

There's generally a lifespan for popularity and trends. When the initial response dies out, the activity that remains is what fans derive from the original, be it new works or just discussion. This then becomes over time what most people generally evaluate as the "soul" of the work, because its the effect its had on people.

Funny that you mention undertale, here's an excerpt from chat earlier today:
View attachment 33459
View attachment 33460
The work and its community can't really be separated.

Undertale is not about porn, and has no porn. Everyone knows that. But everybody knows undertale is heavily related to porn thanks to its fans.
Well yea, now that you mention it, as the overall work of the community of sth is inevitably heavily associated with the thing itself, it does contribute a lot to forming its "culture" and thus shapes the "face" of the thing overall, the fanwork inevitably becomes part of the work's broader experience, and so, yes, in that sense I do agree that an original work of fiction can be "ruined" by a bad fandom (at least to the eyes of the majority)
 

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You're completely right that you can enjoy the original work unaffected if you come in non-judgmentally.

In my OP, I'm talking more the overall perception of a work, not just the experience of consuming it. Also its lifespan accounted as interest over time.

There's generally a lifespan for popularity and trends. When the initial response dies out, the activity that remains is what fans derive from the original, be it new works or just discussion. This then becomes over time what most people generally evaluate as the "soul" of the work, because its the effect its had on people.

Funny that you mention undertale, here's an excerpt from chat earlier today:
View attachment 33459
View attachment 33460
The work and its community can't really be separated.

Undertale is not about porn, and has no porn. Everyone knows that. But everybody knows undertale is heavily related to porn thanks to its fans.
Yeah, I think that you have to actively avoid biases in order to just let the original shine for anything and most people won't, so whatever good/retarded shit the community does usually becomes important with peoples' opinions which means 90% of the time the opinion of something will go to shit overtime.
I'm not sure how much someone should actually care about this though because it wouldn't be worth trying to only enjoy media with Good Communities, it just kind of doesn't matter for anyone who's actually a fan of the thing.

When it comes to imitation or new takes like the poolrooms I don't know what to think. It should be something you accept because they're just having some fun right? But it's a little weird when you hear some kid say shit like "Hey it's Kratos! The skin from Fortnite!". This is just apart of growing up I guess and probably why boomers are so annoying, think of all the gay shit we made with their media.
Just say things like "I was into the poolrooms before it was cool..." and you'll never have to worry about a thing.
 
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Just say things like "I was into the poolrooms before it was cool..." and you'll never have to worry about a thing.
I completely agree with your sentiment but ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to say that phrase. In the end, its a bit frustrating to see people disregard the original work's values. However, its also interesting to see how when art gets influential, it escapes contaiment and mutates like a virus from Wuhan.
 
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But it surely got a bad rep.

Yeah I'll say that after seeing the thousandth iteration of Sans bondage fetsh art my love for the game diminished immensely. The fandom made it embarrassing to say you like the game, at least in my circles. I watched a girl I knew descend into a coomer abyss after she played the game and got into Undertale fetish RP on Tumblr. Last I heard she's in some kind of bizarro poly relationship and her family doesn't want anything to do with her. I'm not saying it's a slippery slope (that girl is nuts) but I'm definitely saying the game's fandom is rotten.
 
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Reading the OP reminds me of what happened to Everywhere at the End of Time, an album that people here likely already know. I liked its concept, but people memed the shit out of it kind of driving its message into the ground. I do feel like for a lot of art that gets famous for its deep messages like that album suffer the same fate, but it's just a cycle that ultimately is doomed to repeat itself.
 
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god_is_bread

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Reading the OP reminds me of what happened to Everywhere at the End of Time, an album that people here likely already know. I liked its concept, but people memed the shit out of it kind of driving its message into the ground. I do feel like for a lot of art that gets famous for its deep messages like that album suffer the same fate, but it's just a cycle that ultimately is doomed to repeat itself.
Well whatever gets popular can't escape the hands of the masses. I feel like in this specific instance though, the original work didn't get so much "ruined" by the public as it wasn't so much reimagined as it was referenced. Like, how it is with the SW prequels for example, where there's a shitton of memes using films' scenes as templates, but the original glory of them remains intact. I feel like it was mostly advertised through the memes.