Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Abolisyonista (abolisyonista@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:07:56 JST Abolisyonista

   The MCU brainrot, Ready Player One, & the recent Minecraft movie choke-full of memetic references makes me wonder: Why are we so excited over memetic representation? What does it give us? This isn't like trans or POC visibility. What gives? Any post-situs out there that might know?

   • Embed this notice
     Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:18:38 JST Håkan Geijer

     in reply to

     @abolisyonista being in on the joke. A part of a "subculture"

   • Embed this notice
     Abolisyonista (abolisyonista@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:23:47 JST Abolisyonista

     in reply to

     • Håkan Geijer

     @hakan_geijer Idk kas, would you clap and cheer if we saw Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Makhno or so and so on screen?

   • Embed this notice
     Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:51:13 JST Håkan Geijer

     in reply to

     @abolisyonista no, because even if our forbearers did impressive things or laid groundwork, I find our idolatry of them a little off putting. A cameo or even a full role by a major studio would only ever be a recuperated representation. I imagine it would be quite grotesque

   • Embed this notice
     Abolisyonista (abolisyonista@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:51:46 JST Abolisyonista

     in reply to

     • Håkan Geijer

     @hakan_geijer Indeed.

   • Embed this notice
     Abolisyonista (abolisyonista@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:51:57 JST Abolisyonista

     in reply to

     • sport of sacred spherical cows

     @beadsland That's one way to look at it.

   • Embed this notice
     sport of sacred spherical cows (beadsland@hcommons.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:51:58 JST sport of sacred spherical cows

     in reply to

     • Håkan Geijer

     @abolisyonista @hakan_geijer

     Can't speak from post-situationism, specifically, but me thinks you've hit squarely on the head of the matter here.

     Isn't memetic representation, as memetic reference, per se. Nor subculture, in any indefinite article sense.

     Rather, this is 1980s Usian high school clique culture, wherein the regulars at a certain table in the lunchroom, who identified as the unpopular kids, the kids that got stuffed into lockers and mistreated by the mean girls, ascended in social status.

     Starts with *original* media, movies, about "nerds" and kids playing on their computer modems being the protagonists in power fantasies. Only a shift in the principle sociotechnical imaginary of society subsequently placed those once put-upon smart kids in positions of hierarchical power in the real world.

     Today, every time references of once niche interests appears in popular media, it's an affirmation that those bullied kids of two generations ago are now the ones culture caters to.

   • Embed this notice
     sport of sacred spherical cows (beadsland@hcommons.social)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 17:51:58 JST sport of sacred spherical cows

     in reply to

     • Håkan Geijer

     @abolisyonista @hakan_geijer

     Which is why one can't just slot in any old subculture and expect the same result.

     The representations are those deeply associated with a very culturally specific (in both geography and history, yet also narrow developmental age band) dynamic of power and parochial powerlessness, reified through tropes as a right of passage that culminates in cultural dominance.

     The hierarchy has been upended, or so the ludomythological accounting tells us, and even those of subsequent generations, who were not alive when the prior hierarchy was first committed to popular media as normative, even natural, seek to find their own sense of power through their association with the media of the victors of that hierarchical inversion.

   • Embed this notice
     無 Mu (mu@ni.hil.ist)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 18:51:03 JST 無 Mu

     in reply to

     @abolisyonista andrewism talked about memes in their video about civilization. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0_w87J9Dj0) how they can be a part of a mass movement.