
Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability - herbertlui
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/opinion/bret-easton-ellis-on-living-in-the-cult-of-likability.html?smid=tw-share
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orthoganol
> That’s the real crime being perpetrated by the reputation culture: stamping
> out passion; stamping out the individual.

I think he's right, the pressure is real on a social reputation site like
Facebook (which he cites)... you have to present the best image of yourself,
which as he says, comes down to making yourself in the image of others. That
pressure does subside when you get older, but it's certainly there if you're a
high schooler or 20 something.

I meet a lot of smart young people who really go way too far in the self-image
game, I think without realizing how it tends to make them dull and conformist,
as BEE says.

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skywhopper
Hmm, when I look at the culture of Internet commentary and social media, being
overly positive and nice are not traits I find particularly common, and
certianly not oppressively prevalent.

I've not read any of his books, but from interviews I've heard and from
reading this article, Mr Ellis strikes me as one of those people who has so
remarkably little self-awareness about their own poor behavior that they gripe
endlessly about how oversensitive the world is to their offhand profoundly
honest and truthful observations, never once realizing that, no, they aren't
actually particularly insightful, they're really just a big jerk.

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dvanduzer
I think you're misunderstanding what he's saying about the "Like" button. He's
talking about how aggressively we've been conditioned to align our _identity_
with the things we like (aka, what we feel we must project publicly as our
interests).

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lsc
That's what I thought, too, but only because I've read American Psycho, which
had a pretty similar thesis.

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dvanduzer
I haven't read that, but it seems like a reasonably interesting thesis to
discuss. If that's Bret Easton Ellis's shtick... I definitely didn't get the
impression he was saying that Facebook was to blame for making everyone happy,
smiling consumers.

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lsc
It's a classic, but is also pretty disturbing, so it's not really for
everyone. Wikipedia says:

"He is a self-proclaimed satirist, whose trademark technique, as a writer, is
the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style."

Which doesn't really cover it, I don't think, but is a good start. If you
removed the murder from 'American psycho' you would have a book about a guy
who was incredibly obsessed with how things he bought and wore effected a
person's image. Really, that's kind of what the movie does. (note, still lots
of murder by movie standards, so again, not really everyone's cup of tea, but
the book goes over each act of violence in the same detail as describing the
aftershave he uses.)

You could say that the book was about image? "Look at that subtle off-white
coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark..."

But the point is, the main character, this status obsessed person, was
incredibly unlikable on all levels, even leaving aside the violence; one
interpretation is that the things we do for status don't make us more likable;
in fact, they make us rather less likable. I see a relationship between that
and the article, where he seems to complain, essentially, "Everyone is a
critic!" \- difference being, of course, is that we're now all critics who are
published, whereas it used to be that your platform was only as large as your
voice is loud.

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chillwaves
The intro bit spotlighting a South Park episode sets the tone for the rest of
the piece with remarkable accuracy.

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poofyleek
Like

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poofyleek
Hahaha. Got down vote for this joke. Irony is thick.

