this is a nuanced topic. as much as this meme is trying to be intelligent, it’s just as dumb as what it’s critiquing.

you learn to think from books, but film and TV exercises that thinking. in film you’ll find symbolism and metaphor and meaning, intentional or not.

being able to extract that is intelligence, not raw facts. americans love to boast about how educated they are and about the virtues of education, but why are there millions of users of goodreads and letterboxd and few can write a coherent paragraph about a book they read or a film they watched?

it’s because of this type of braindead thinking–it’s all about imagination!!! imagination is great, but it’s really about thinking; it’s about not being stuck in thought patterns that lead nowhere.

it’s in texas though.

now all of a sudden we care about texas? what goes on in texas is as important to me as the affairs of a random tiktok influencer.

we’re fucked no matter if this data center is built or not.

nintendo used to mean games like castlevania, metroid, earthbound, final fantasy, shadowrun, goldeneye. now it means ‘games for little kids featuring goofy characters with too-big heads.’

you shouldn’t have this system to begin with.

we’re all adults, right?

i’d rather go back to browsing the 1998 internet on a webTV box than this modern bullshit. no offense to anyone.

the modern internet is a heavily propagandized mild abstraction of real life. the old internet was ‘the internet.’ it was a playground for nerds, misfits, shut-ins and the regular folk who made the mistake of logging on and trying to talk to the rest of us.

gen-z are not only dumber than their parents but less cool.

they don’t even wear baggy jeans right. dudes are out there flexing cropped t-shirts with confidence like it isn’t a bad look even without any gay connotations.

i hate zoomers who never experienced past decades being like ‘lol nothing was good.’

bullshit. go and watch home movies in a burger king shot in 1995 and really pay attention to what you see.

“everyone is happier” should be the main takeaway, even the employees.

right lol.

there was at least a balance between profit and caring about the human experience, even if it was on some small level in the name of profit.

she was more interesting than anyone in the celebrity world now. that’s for damn sure. but that’s true of any artist from that time period that was popular enough to be played on the radio or MTV.

nowadays mainstream art is missing the passion of experience.

i was thinking about this the other day when i was watching curb your enthusiasm. larry david was so in tune with the human experience because he lived in the thick of NYC when it was a melting pot of would-be actors and comedians and artists and musicians and everyday people. it was a diverse mix that could afford to live in a hub of culture and opportunity no matter where their lives would lead.

shit now is so out of touch, soft and self-absorbed. the brooklyn gentrifier doesn’t have to live next to the waiter at the restaurant they eat at every day. those lesser people may as well not even exist. and they’re seen as lesser, and this is something that’s just understood even if nobody says it out loud, but in the past you didn’t feel that way unless you were at the furthest edge.

the working class and the poor used to have a voice within culture even if it could be muted at times. maybe kurt cobain or madonna were rich and famous and maybe they never preached the right politics but they spoke for us just the same.