“ We protect ourselves with the childish: neutral-toned decor, minimalist technology, popular movies, basic clothing styles, or esthetic (i.e., visually appealing) images.”
I’d sort of argue the opposite, childish would be a huge improvement. it’s wild seeing like old McDonald’s filled with amusements geared towards children, instead we’ve sort of optimized for this safe early thirties aesthetic. It is boring in the way that adults who used to be cool slip into the monotony of work and childcare, but have nostalgia for the sort of safest experiences of their twenties. Like a soccer mom sneaking a listen to hootie and the blowfish while running to pickup a Starbucks at half time.
Lotta thoughts. There’s a decent amount of talk in here about the woke language policing, and I think there’s a paradox in language that I don’t know how we get past.
I’m pretty progressive. Emotionally I have no desire to denigrate any groups, and I feel in my bones the problem of calling something r-<mentally-ill> or calling bad things “gay”
And yet, part of expressing certain emotions is transgression. We say bad words _because_ they’re bad. That’s what feels good about saying them. I personally drew the line at “crazy”. Crazy is too emotionally salient a word for me not to say crazy because it may offend people who are mentally ill. And I don’t want to offend people who are mentally ill! But I can also acknowledge the paradox that there’s something a little dirty or transgressive about the word “crazy” and that’s core to why I use it. Because I’m trying to describe something crazy!
You can’t replace a transgressive word with a words that’s not transgressive because fundamentally you’re trying to express the transgressive thing!
One of my favorite movies was Chasing Amy by Kevin Smith, in general Kevin Smith was pretty core to my teen development. And I’ve been listening to some reviews of it recently, and most people who are prone to like it sort of agree that it’s a great movie but it didn’t age well. But I can’t help feel like we’ve lost something here. I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t know that I would say we’re strictly speaking in a better place than we were 30 years ago.
And it’s interesting because you’ll never win an argument on the micro. Right? I would feel ridiculous trying to explain to someone why I should be able to say the r-word, there’s no excuse, and yet in the macro there’s something to grok here.
I’d sort of argue the opposite, childish would be a huge improvement. it’s wild seeing like old McDonald’s filled with amusements geared towards children, instead we’ve sort of optimized for this safe early thirties aesthetic. It is boring in the way that adults who used to be cool slip into the monotony of work and childcare, but have nostalgia for the sort of safest experiences of their twenties. Like a soccer mom sneaking a listen to hootie and the blowfish while running to pickup a Starbucks at half time.
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