It’s really creepy how the sarcastic cynicism that became hip for our generation (scripted by Generation “Heroin Chic” X and very much fostered by how outrageously jaded most baby boomers are these days) has left so many people open to anti-life right wing BS.
Harper can issue a press release and the next day its coming out of all these random people’s mouths as if they thought it up themselves, even though the ideas are loaded with logical fallacies and clearly haven’t even been doublechecked between their ears and vocal chords… (Here’s a tip kids, when you don’t bother to reword the sentence, it’s obvious that it’s plagiarism!)
And then with the current strike at York U, almost every single undergrad is going on about how unions should shut up and just accept that no one has job security.
Well thank god the original labour movement didnt buy that kind of crap. What ever happened to optimism? What, is our high-tech 21st century life really that bad? Or are we numbed to the core by a total lack of the suffering that inspired people to actually stand up for themselves and each other at the start of the 20th century?
I’m not sure CUPE 3903 is accomplishing much with this strike, but it’s really grossing me out how people are just like LIFE IZ BAD DEAL WID IT FOOL LOLOLOL.
Like, okay, you know what, if you wanna believe that, I’ve got a job cleaning my house in exchange for whippings you can apply for.
Many openings available!
One-day weekends allowed off every other week!
Only a $50 fee per job application submitted!
Non-submission punishable by police brutality and water cannon, so get ‘em in before the deadline.
I’m an equal-opportunity enslaver - women and people of colour especially encouraged to get in line and shut their mouths!
(Preference will be giving to those parents also willing to commit their children and grandchildren to lives of bondage and servitude.)
This is an essay on post-irony that I wrote, with my peers as intended audience, in November of 2005. I was just rereading old stuff and decided to repost it since the link to the oldest archive is now gone. This predates this blog and most of what I’ve observed/understood/thought/said about post-irony, so deal with that. I may have made a few very slight changes to update it.
November 14, 2005
keep quips quiet no dissent unless commodified irony’s
Chris Orbz - [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
im getting really sick of irony
everything is a joke to everyone
including everyone else dying and themselves dying
they dismiss everything with a wisecrack with no humour value and immense horror value, and then everyone laughs and waits for the next joke
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
i think this is the point we’ve gotten to yes
a tv show
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
yeah
like i was in the king david at york today and heard half a conversation
guy: how unhealthy?
girl: pretty unhealthy
guy: compared to diet pepsi
girl: okay, not THAT unhealthy
guy: jeez, that sure doesn’t make me feel good about the diet pepsi. but i got a bottle the size of the ones in the machines for a dollar, so at least im getting a discount in exchange for my health, hahahahaha
i wanted to smack him and yell don’t you see how moronic that is? are you really that fucking stupid?
and that’s everyone’s reaction to everything
i love when people use the ‘clever’ retort of ‘well, everything gives you cancer’
i’ve gotta say i think television has outdone the nuclear bomb as the worst invention of all time
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
is it the invention itself, or the way it’s used
because the nuclear bomb can only be used for mass destruction
television could have been used for anything
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
i dont buy this crap about tv being potentially good
i guess it could’ve been used for education
but i dont know about that
a computer does everything good a tv could much better
tv is continuous and one-way
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
not anymore with rogers digital cable
now you own your tv
and you can bring it on to the subway and stuff
and in your car
i think not all irony is a negative thing
although maybe it goes beyond irony what i’m thinking of
i guess it’s a positive thing if it provokes positive change
not just tells people EVERYTHING’S FUCKED!
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
it doesnt do that any more though
people find it satisfying in itself
they go huhuhuhuhuh
and they’re done
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
sort of the fact that they know it satisfies i guess
makes people think they’re on the winning side because they get it
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
liking supersize me while having the mcdeals memorized
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
yah that happens a lot
and now mcdonalds is putting health information on the boxes
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
ha ha ha look my lungs look like this picture
im gonna die ha ha hacking cough
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
do you believe that maybe for every 100 people who do see it even a few of them change?
because like Will quit cigarettes because of that sort of thing
and however innaffective it might be if it gets to some people it might be worthwhile. The same way as the negative is true.
For example like sprite releases an ad right and everyone talks about how crappy and gimicky the product is, and they feel they win because they haven’t bought into it. But this is missing the point of the ad. Because that one time or those one or two times that you do buy it is directly because of the ad because you now recognize the brand.
but you think you’ve won because you’re conscious of it
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
thats on every cigarette package though, that doesnt work for most things
that’s an issue of 100% meme saturation
if 99 cigarette packs say MMMM DELICIOUS and 1 says cancer, no one will notice the cancer one
although the ratio when you’re dealing with issues and things is way beyond that
if you can’t afford to wrap an entire subway station in ads its barely worth it to even try to advertise
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
yah true i suppose
in the past, i’ve already tried to outline the post-irony bit in the following way:
- modernism is writing something clever and subversive on a billboard.
- postmodernism is writing the text “something clever and subversive” on a billboard.
…what’s the next step beyond that?
it’s hard to put clearly into thoughts and words, since what has
developed of postirony is only becoming clear over time, and much of it
has not even developed yet. this is still far from the popular state of
mind at this point. do you still find ‘internet humour’ funny? or are
you one of us who think that maybe there’s only so much stuff that can
be cranked out on automatic, and that it’s getting rather boring?
i no longer find comedic pieces of culture funny - but i find the whole culture unbelievably hilarious… i can barely stand to be in the room when other people are watching television, but i could spend an hour flipping through 5 cropped seconds of everything and wish i had it recorded afterwards.
the stuff online that is intended to be funny, i don’t really find all that funny. but a google image search for any random word can have me rolling on the floor from the results.
i can maybe convey, if not explain, a facet of postirony through art. this won’t be a comprehensive philosophical outline, but perhaps this will help extend one part of your mind into it so that you can begin trying to feel your way around it that way i’m trying to do.
first and foremost, although moving away from the as-weird-as-possible, “weird for weird’s sake” nature of postmodernism must inherently be a move towards some sort of normalcy (alex shakar might not necessarily agree), this can’t simply be a reversion to previous modes of thought. it has to come out of extending postmodernism until you reach the point of breaking away from it significantly enough that it is something classifiable different.
^ i would describe this video as a piece of postirony art (in fact,
i’d apply that to much of the here’s my card records library, such as
bodybreakcore)
it seems postmodern in that it comes off as “weird for the sake of
weird,” but (and maybe this is as much perspective as it is the
subject) to me it isn’t really that. for one thing, i submerged myself
so deeply in postmodernism that this doesn’t even seem weird to me any
more, in the same way that breakcore now just sounds like drums to me.
this uses culture in a way that is both similar to and different
from the typical postmodern approach. the difference being the irony.
when postmodernism uses a piece of culture, it chooses a specific piece
of culture which, placed in a new context, creates a specific message
out of the sum total of the original piece of culture and the new
context. if you aren’t familiar with the original piece of culture, you
won’t “get it.” you are required to be familiar with it in order to
understand and appreciate it properly.
postirony use of culture, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily
require that you be familiar with it in order to appreciate it. in the
case of the get crackin’ video, it is jam-packed with snippets of
culture, however they aren’t quite cultural references. rather than
being specific references with which you must be familiar, they are
simply a collage of late 20th century mainstream culture. the impact
that it manages to pull off isn’t based on the viewer being familiar
with the specific video clips that are used and “getting” the
connection, “getting” the irony of the juxtaposition -
instead, it relies on the viewer having spent their life
being overinundated with the medium of television. not simply
the content, but the perception of the medium through life. those of us
who have at least as many hours of television memory as real-life
memory have minds that are very carefully honed to television, along
with all of its patterns and idiosyncracies. far from being a random
collage of television images, these television images are put together
based on how the specific aesthetics of each will instantly and subconsciously impact the overinundated.
do you see how that is a step beyond postmodernism, as it is based
entirely on being exposed and overexposed and hyperoverexposed to
postmodern culture? rather than using wit and irony to appeal to our
conscious minds, nwodtleM realizes that a lifetime of wit and irony
presented to us in repeated patterns have burned certain responses into
our brains, responses that are highly predictable due to the consistent
homogeny of media presentation and the overwhelming way in which it has
surrounded us our entire lives. he then simply pokes and prods at that
subconscious programming and is able to elicit consistent responses in
his viewers.
that’s why it all goes by so quickly. you’ll probably notice missy
elliott and madonna, and hey is that bruce willis? it doesn’t _matter_
if it’s bruce willis, except that when you see that image you have an
immediate reaction. there’s nothing special about madonna except that
when you see those images of madonna you react in a specific way
subconsciously, contributing to your whole reaction to the whole piece.
that’s why some things can be included for only a single frame -
it doesn’t matter if you see it long enough to know what it is, all you
have to do is see it long enough to see it and the necessary reaction
will be produced.
this video accomplishes two things:
one, it is interesting art in a novel contemporary way.
two, when you think as deeply about it as i do, it speaks volumes about the state of the human being at the turn of millennium.
another, much shorter way i can describe that:
i can’t stand watching any tv show whatsoever,
but i could flip channels all day long and never cease to be amused by four random seconds of everything.
it’s not the content of the subject matter, it’s simply the subject matter itself.
perhaps it’s something like this: “if there’s an explanation, i don’t want to hear it.” i’m sick of the endless whys - can we have some real whats again?
just give me the painting and keep the damn preamble to yourself.
sadly, i’m still postmodern enough to feel the need to overanalyze
and thoroughly explain all of this, to be too self-aware, but i’ve got
my reasons for doing that here and by and large it’s become something i
no longer do. i do prefer to have something accomplish whatever it will
on its own, and leave it at that. talk is cheap (and everything else is
ignored). i could comment deeply on every single advertisement (britney
spears - the perfume) but i realize that if i truly care, it’s time to
move beyond that.
if you’ve gone so far into the deep end of postmodernism that
you’ve reached the bottom and are growing disinterested, or if you’ve
even gone a little further, i hope that those ideas about postirony can
help to draw your mind forward and give you a framework within which to
begin figuring your way around a new headspace… and maybe you’ll reach that point where you can stop framing your whole life as though it takes place within your “headspace”.
the postirony mindset is what comes of having spent your whole life
watching tv, but no longer currently watching it. (that’s kind of a
metonymy for the whole of mainstream, corporate produced “culture.” )
if you’re still able to actually sit and watch tv, you’re not
really there yet. but odds are you’re deep enough that you could be.
try disconnecting from mainstream media for a while - a month, ideally
a few months, a television season would be best. i’ll bet that once
you’ve broken out of the habit of wanting to watch tv in general, you
won’t even be able to watch it. if you find or feel that you need
motivation to or assistance with pulling the plug on your set, i’ll
refer you to www.turnoffyourtv.com
doing this will be a success first in that it’ll help pull you out
of being susceptible to most marketing, which will be a very healthy
move for your subconscious mind. our media culture is like radiation,
and thoughtful exposure to hours of repeated messages will burn them
into your brain just as much as brainless exposure to them would. this
includes self-image, world view, and addiction to and reliance on an
entirely consumption-based lifestyle. they know how to get inside your
head. you can’t outwit them because they’re not relying on outwitting
you in the first place. as well, you will escape the through-a-camera-”wow-this-is-crazy-its-like-a-movie-or-something!” way of seeing life. it will be the crucial first step towards reconnecting with reality and connecting with the future.
Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology.
Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?
To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice when serious discourse dissolves into giggles?
America’s consuming love affair with television…
It serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse – news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion – and turns them into entertainment packages.
i say it’s time for a REAL, contemporary perspective on the issues
we’re faced with. the issues we’re all hyperaware of, some brand new,
some several decades old, ones modernism seriously made an attempt at,
but failed because those kind of straightforward, conventional tactics
may have accomplished something in the 60s, but that stopped being true
in progressive steps. first, it stopped being effective in creating a
solution to the problem at hand, and then second, it stopped being an
effective way of reaching people (due initially to their
disillusionment from failures and defeat, and then due to the whole
brainwashing thing i’m trying to call attention to).
so then people got cynical about that, but the truths still
remained true. unfortunately, people could only be reached through
irony… what amounts to the most successful political pieces as far as
our generation is concerned?
adbusters-style “subversion,” basically parody, wherein a marlboro cowboy may have a flaccid cigarette (the effectiveness can be noted in that health canada even copied that one) or an overhead view of an a.a. meeting is pictured with the chairs arranged to form the outline of a bottle of absolut vodka.
if you’ve picked up an adbusters recently, however, you may have
noticed that they now use real discussion about real history, real
issues, real tactics, and real modern lifestyles.
they’ve moved beyond irony. it’s time you do too.
it’s time to put an end to this mass disconnection from real life, and it must start within each one of us.
every single one of you is among the smartest and most
well-informed beings that have ever lived on this planet.
unfortunately, you were also born into a culture where you’ve been
raised by television, newspapers and advertising, no matter how good
your parents were, and the result is that your phenomenal intelligence,
your record-setting IQ, is diverted to appreciating and
producing creative humour/entertainment while setting aside the most
vital things in the world as “boring.”
it’s time for you to start taking what you know seriously and start
making serious efforts to actually apply that knowledge in everything
that you do.
I’ll pose the question to you: What is the newspaper window accomplishing in Chris Jackson’s photo above?
Nothing, right? You can barely see the front page, and what you can see is absolutely meaningless. It may as well say “News!” or “Topic!” In short, it is irrelevant and worthless.
The Toronto Sun is usually irrelevant and worthless, but in this case it actually wasn’t their fault. They were trying to tell people about the weather and the weather happened to get itself between the front page and any potential readers.
But something that has been an increasingly common occurrence in this city is newspapers blowing off their own feet and actively working to make themselves this irrelevant and worse.
The Toronto Star started running front-page-covering adflaps a while ago, and I assumed they’d realize it was moronic and stop soon enough, but they’re actually still at it and seem to be doing it more and more frequently.
These adflaps cover the left 50% of the front page, leaving headlines (the part of the newspaper which determines whether or not a potential reader actually buys the thing) chopped down to such brilliant things as “…history” and “…factory” - headlines which would actually serve them and their readers better if they DID just say “News!”
Now, that’s stupid, but it actually doesn’t come anywhere close to being as stupid as the Globe and Mail’s website.
I mean, you don’t have to buy the ink-soaked Toronto Star print version to find out what the headline was.
You can just pop by their website - ideally with an adblocker on your browser - and find out what the writers were trying to communicate before the publishers and advertisers strangled them.
I followed a link to a back issue copy of a Globe and Mail article and was amazed to find this totally ridiculous “offer” to purchase it:
$4.95 for temporary access to a 593 word digital article? Are you shitting me? That’s one hell of a high price for a temporary digital copy of nothing, especially considering a full newspaper edition is $1 most days (such as the Wednesday this article was printed on) and $2.25 Saturdays. I can get my back copies at the library, thank you very much, or just read something up-to-date about Michel de Broin somewhere else.
Incidentally, this post is 400 words long. Pay your $3.34 up now and I’ll even let you access it for more than a month!
I’m honestly astonished at how badly the Star has mangled their headline story today. They’re looking a lot more like the Sun, and I’ll pass up the easy cheesy metaphors on that one.
See that? Don’t you assume that the 3 people killed has SOMETHING to do with the video of tearful witnesses hugging outside police lines?
Well, the deaths and video are completely unrelated. I had to peel apart this awful article to even figure out what really happened.
And yes, I said awful, it reads like someone was assigned a newspaper article when they wanted to write a dramatic novel: “It was a bleak and bloody day for the Greater Toronto Area.”
“In less than eight hours, three were killed and at least one was wounded in four separate attacks.”
The “one” in “at least one” refers to this Scarborough school shooting which put one person in hospital with non-fatal injuries. The “at least” refers to ANYONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE GREATER TORONTO AREA who may have been injured by a violent assault. See how the scope of the article might be a little, uhm, overreaching?
By “four separate attacks” they mean 4 totally unrelated incidents, 1 of which did not involve a death.
“The violence began just after noon, when a 16-year-old boy was shot outside Bendale Business and Technical Institute in the city’s east end. … It wasn’t long before gunshots rang out again, this time in Mississauga.”
A shooting in Scarborough followed by a shooting in Mississauga - that’s over 35 kilometres away for those of you watching from the bleachers, not only the complete other end of town but the NEXT city over - should not be described with language like “the violence began” and “gunshots rang out again”.
“Information on the attacks trickled in as the hours passed and police in Toronto and Mississauga investigated the crime scenes.
Police said there’s nothing to indicate that a shooting on Netherwood Rd. on Monday, just blocks away from the first shooting, is connected, but homicide detectives will be looking for any link, he said.”
The first shooting should be referring to the school shooting, but even the Star couldn’t maintain the link to that long enough and slipped up, admitting that the first incident that might be even somewhat relevant, the first HOMICIDE, was the one in Mississauga. Yet the front page of the website was nothing but the headline/link “Three killed in 8-hour span” with a video from the school shooting underneath.
I can’t decide if this is deliberately misleading people in order to monger up some tabloid-style fear, or just horribly, horribly messy journalism.
The other two incidents - a teenager gunned down on a basketball court at Jane and Finch and a stabbing in an apartment in Scarborough - weren’t any more related to any of the others than the first two.
By the end of the article, the writers were obviously reaching for the thesaurus… or fantasizing about a job in creative writing:
“The night ended tragically on Kennedy Rd. as well, when the victim of a stabbing perished from his wounds despite paramedics’ efforts. Police remained tight-lipped about the incident, which happened on Kennedy Rd., just south of Sheppard Ave E.”
Perished from his wounds? How about ‘died’? The night ended tragically when the victim of a stabbing perished from his wounds? Are you kidding me?
Why was this article even written? This is FOUR DIFFERENT ARTICLES. The video is ALREADY USED IN ONE OF THEM. Hey! Paperheads! You don’t need to fatten up websites like you do newspapers! Why are you making readers dig through this nonsense just to try to piece together the news for themselves from the information you bury in inappropriate connections?
There’s a good chance you already caught this, as it’s pretty old in Net Years at this point (having snagged over 15 million YouTube views between the two videos below) but I caught it late (via Amber Mac) and know people who haven’t seen it, as well as wanted to post something about it anyway.
Okay, first off watch this video made by this guy Tay Zonday in his house and posted to his YouTube account, which received over 13 million views:
Then when you’ve watched all of that one, if possible, or at least 2 minutes of it, watch this which was the outcome of him posting this weird home video:
I don’t even need to include the internet / new media commentary, as he does in both the intro and outro.
Not to mention he also performed the original on JKL.
Telegraph - Pleasure chip being developed by scientists Current technology, which requires surgery to connect a wire from a heart pacemaker into the brain, can cause bleeding and is intrusive and crude. When the technology is improved, we can use deep brain stimulation in many new areas. It will be more subtle, with more control over the power so you may be able to turn the chip on and off when needed. In 10 years' time the range of therapies available will be amazing – we don't know half the possibilities yet.
Inquisitr - Las Vegas Snow Pictures Tourists and residents of Las Vegas alike received quite a shock as a snowstorm blanketed sin city's most famous monuments with the heaviest snowfall the area has seen since 1979.
Aus Broadcast Corp - Toronto inventor unveils anatomically correct fem-bot "With more than 13,000 phrases in English and Japanese at her disposal, Aiko can have a reasonable chat. She can read the newspaper, learn the layout of buildings and offer people directions or tell them to take an umbrella if it is raining."
Phone/PDA? Mobile version!
