How Pop Became Slop

Welcome to the wasteland!

Been a bit since the last one. There's been a lot going on behind the scenes, so it's been tough to sit down and make one of these. Hopefully today's post has been worth the wait.

For a while I wanted to write a bit about the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and what it did to modern music. It is more than you might think. One could just list it out point by point and talk dryly about the result of the bad decisions that lead to the Act, but as the modern internet has proven, something like that just isn't going to fly. Instead, give a watch to the above video to understand the decisions that lead to it and get a load of some of its fallout in the process. After that we can move on to the rest of this madness.

It's hard to really emphasize what the '90s was like for music unless you were there, and I don't mean that in an old man sort of bragging. It was a different planet. There was a period where you could hear anything at pretty much anytime, and it was always new. Anything from metal to swing music could have been found on the radio or the TV, and obscure bands could be found under even overturned rocks. Much is said about the high quality of mainstream music from the '50s to the '80s, and it was definitely high quality, but where the '90s excelled at, at least, for a time, was the sheer variety one could find. It is a hard experience to describe.

However, it didn't last. Something shifted, and it shifted hard. By the end of the '90s, all of that disappeared, never to be seen again. You would no longer hear an oddball band like Squirrel Nut Zippers or a random blues song out of nowhere. Instead, you would hear the same 20 songs on repeat, on every radio station and every music channel regardless of the "genre" of the station or music in question. 

It actually happened around the same time Napster took off, proving God has a sense of humor. Once the industry decided you couldn't have what you had five minutes ago, the audience started to leave. This is always overlooked when legalistic boomers and music industry sycophants talk about the negative effects of Napster and file sharing: they act like it occurred in a vacuum, and it most certainly did not. This was probably the first indication that the monoculture was over, and no one realized it at the time.

I can give an idea of how this artificial infection spread even outside the US, showing it was a philosophical battle, and not just industry whim in one country. Canada's own YTV once had a show called The Hit List which was a music show that promoted bands and music from all over the spectrum. If you were a kid in the '90s, you watched this to keep your finger on the pulse of the music world. By the late '90s, the host, Tarzan Dan, was replaced with young women who only promoted the same groups you saw on MTV and heard on the radio, seemingly out of nowhere. It all happened at the same time as what happened down south.

Not only did I include the interview discussing what happened at that time in the free Gen Y book from awhile back, I also posted it on Wasteland & Sky itself.

Here are some excerpts:

Tarzan Dan Freeman: "When I did [The Hit List], it was one of those things where you could hear Blur and Smashing Pumpkins, and you could also hear the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys, and people still watched the show, and it had massive, massive numbers. The other side of it was, we didn’t have as many cable channels back then, or music-based television shows. We didn’t have social media, and email was just new, so it was where people went to find out about the newest songs or to see an interview and hear about music beyond radio…. 

"For us to be there when the Spice Girls came up and became massive, and Backstreet and ‘N Sync and all those different groups, be it rock and pop and dance or whatever it was…the ’90s were great, because everything that came out was played. It wasn’t just a genre."

That is what it was like growing up in the early '90s. In your mind there was no limit to what you could do or how far you could stretch. It was a much different way of seeing the world than what is currently pushed. That all changed, though.

As he would go on to say:

Tarzan Dan Freeman: "If kids started watching [The Hit List] when they were 12 years old, and when I’m leaving they’re 19 years old, then all of a sudden they’re outside the demographic. What we noticed was, the demographic was aging. When I left, they took the show off the air for a couple of months, and they came with plastic furniture and a couple of female hosts, and it was really about young boy bands or Aaron Carter, that kind of thing—really pop, ear-candy type of music that was more geared towards the kids. [JD: This was 1997, by the way]

"Originally the show was going to be cancelled, because the show had run its course and had gone on for quite a while. What happened was, because I’d been there for seven-ish, eight years, and the demographic had changed, I think when they decided they were going to bring the show back in a different form, I was too old for the show. Because for me to go back and go “Here’s Aaron Carter!” after I’d just been playing Smashing Pumpkins and Blur and Collective Soul and Creed, and then to go, “Aaron Carter’s the best!”…y’know, we could still play Backstreet Boys, but I think what would have happened is, my credibility would have been somewhat crushed."

And that's what the shift was like at the time. If you were a Gen Y kid who grew up with all this stuff, suddenly you were treated as if you no longer existed. There was no longer a place for you. All of a sudden, backs were turned to you. It was as if you no longer existed. It was as if you woke up one day in a new reality where the old never happened, and you were expected to not remember it, because why would you? That's not Progress.

All this to say that the cultural shift was huge. Over night everything you liked was not only gone, you were also not supposed to notice it. You either embrace it and forget everything you grew up with, or you move on. They were telling you to go away. In a monoculture, you can't exactly do that, though. There is either the crowd, or there is nothing. This wasn't the same as "countercultural" movements like punk or goth that had to be chosen willingly: this was a generation of people now told they no longer existed. So what exactly did everyone do?

They did what they were told: they disappeared.

Enter the internet. Napster and general online piracy took off before even 9/11. If the culture not only didn't respect you, but was willing to tell you what you could be, the response for a Gen Y kid was to give them the finger. No one was going to tell you who you were through the thing that was your whole world. We took our media consumption very seriously back then. We delved deeper into Our Media, made online subcultures around it, and sneered at the growing mainstream that was, coincidently, starting to push Geek Culture (which a lot of these same people threw in with, to the same result of their earlier trust in the system), before the mainstream itself tried to cash in on them with new terrible Terminator, Ghostbusters, and Transformers movies. Gen Y, throughout our entire existence, has never quite shaken our dependence on corporate IP.

We consumed, were thrown out, clung to it from the fringes, and when those decisions came to bit them in the rear, we forgave them and allowed them to sell slop with the skin of what we truly worshiped, like an even more pathetic Tashlan. Though, like everything, it came with diminishing returns as many realized what was being done, and finally decoupled from the parasitic relationship. The memberberries are not as strong a draw as they once were.

It did eventually come at high price. Losing trust of the people in charge and forcibly carving your own path into the wilderness divorced from the culture made sense at the time, but no one considered the consequences. Gen Y's choices were as fractious as the mainstream, and in the end helped lead us to where we are.

What did it lead to? Stuck culture.

And that's where we are now.

I'm obviously not defending the mainstream's act or the reaction to it, but that is the consequences of having a culture that is throwaway and purely cynical towards its audience. People deep down want to belong. They want to belong, but they also want things that matter. At a certain point, culture stopped being about anything connected to the human or the community experience. Even the dumber trends in the '90s at least tried to sell kids on it being cool and belonging with your friends. Now it hardly feels like they care if anyone buys anything, which is probably true but outside the scope of this post. Abandon your original audience at your own peril.

But that isn't sustainable. A culture of nothing leads to nothing and creates nothing. We still haven't had '00s nostalgia becoming mainstream despite recently having the 25th anniversary of 9/11. We won't have it ever, but it's important to realize it is because the '00s was when the last bits of shared culture frayed and split. No one is going to have nostalgia for that except kids remembering private experiences. Especially when all those media properties from that time have never gone away. What else is there to pine for? 

What is to be nostalgic for that isn't a personal, which means isolated, memory? I see a lot of nostalgic posts about desk setups and old phones, but what else? Not a whole lot that you can't easily find one click away.

The '90s were also not where this all started. As I've said before, the '90s were only good if you grew up in them. The media for kids was high quality, society was still high trust, and everything was very affordable. It was the period just before the internet, social media, and phones overtook everything. It was the last time a kid didn't have to grow up in a bubble of electric unreality all the time. Everything else about the era, however? Not too good.

The point is to be aware of how things can change out of nowhere, and how you're expected to just accept the shift or be erased with it all. You are not a person, but a consumer, and that is all you will ever be. That isn't the sign of a healthy society, but one already on its way down. And that is why we are where are today.

But I don't intend to go quietly into that night. I'm going to keep doing what I can where I can, and I hope you continue to do the same. Giving up does nothing for no one. Besides, if things could change like they did in the first place, who is to say what tomorrow might hold? Anything is possible, after all. We have living memory of a time where that was true.

That doesn't mean I'm ever going to like late '90s bubblegum pop music, though. It was bad back then and has aged even worse when the music industry never left it behind.

I think I'll go listen to my Collected Eurodance vinyl instead. What is Love and Rhythm of the Night never get old. And neither does the real stuff. Never forget the real stuff.

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Seasonal Blues and How to Solve Them!

Welcome back to the wasteland!

With the end of August there's usually a lot of nonsense one needs to fight through to get back to stability again. I'm not sure why exactly this is the case, but it 100% always seems to be how it is. It oddly isn't just a thing for children and teenagers having to readjust to school again after losing their precious summer vacation. Even as an adult the seasonal change still is in effect, regardless of your occupation. There is a sort of lingering panic affecting everything from coworkers to higherups, forcing a mood that doesn't quite settle until the weather itself does.

We're all waiting for fall, essentially.

This also leads us to point to a strange feeling in the modern world, especially with the internet, in how the seasons all seem to last longer than they used to, even though time passes faster the older you get. A lot of people wonder just how that seems to be the case. Is it just fighting the passing of time, or is there something else there?

Well, the main reason we do this is that we're trying to subconsciously competing with a world that wants us to be faster than we can actually be. Seasons become longer because we're simply not allowed to enjoy them as they are anymore. Whether it is due to loss of local community and family or a culture that continually presses for more materialism and less meditation, the end result is that it is always over before we even realize it began and we're on to the next thing already.

This is the real reason Christmas music plays in November, people begin outwardly yearning for Spring at the start of February, and why a lot of people begin preparing for Halloween around Labor Day. They want to get into a mindset longer than they're socially allowed to have it, and in a society of alienation there is really no reason not to do it. Not to mention that if they don't, they barely get to celebrate it before it's over and we're on to the next thing.

The fact of the matter is that the world moves too fast now. It's been moving faster and faster with less and less care for how it effects the populace for quite some time now. We already don't have enough connection with each other as we used to and there is little means for us to fix it with how we currently operate. The way things are isn't enough to satiate us as social animals, so we look to solutions to this endless issue.

If you want a real solution it is to have more holidays in the year that mean something. I don't mean obviously cynical ones like Valentine's Day or even a one day event like St Patrick's Day. Without a monoculture, the few holidays we have are the few times we feel like we belong to a greater whole anymore. If we want to savor that feeling, well, all we can really do is extend the biggest ones we already have with us. We'll never agree on a new one with the current fractured state of things. This is why Halloween and Christmas in particular are the holidays that last the longest. They're feasibly the only ones we can stretch out longer beyond the day everyone accepts socially.

And, to be honest, I don't really understand the complaints about it. It isn't like you're doing anything else in the meantime except living through another generic day that seems to blur from one to the next. What does having a longer season to celebrate really take away from that? Nothing, really. It's just a residue of the anti-social instinct we've had implanted in us as acceptable for literal decades at this point.

Having the autumn season be a build up to spooky season gives it more for us to do amidst the doldrums of returning to school for kids or getting over the jarring completion from the hot summer season to the mild one adults go through. Halloween is so tightly tied with the autumn season and falling of the leaves that it makes sense that people would get in the mood for it ahead of time, much like Christmas is so tied with winter. We need more to look forward to beyond just another day doing what we already do.

However, I would agree with the idea that hopping from holiday to holiday is exhausting. Christmas not beginning immediately after October 31st is a good thing, we do need space to anticipate it, but the holiday also isn't supposed to end on December 25th, either. And yet for as long as I've been alive, it has not extended into the worst month of the year (January) like it is supposed to and where it would add a lot to an otherwise nothing month where literally nothing happens except cold and everyone being miserable and sick. Would Christmas being properly celebrated not help make that lousy month better from all the cold, snow, dreary feelings, and nothing happening in it? Would it also not help to have a proper holiday to anticipate after it to look forward to? It isn't as if there are many holidays to actually build up to in the first half of the year before Lent, either. Perhaps that should also be addressed. Three months of cold and nothing else isn't exactly healthy for anyone.

As the above video states, there is probably some crass commercialism involved here, but it's almost irrelevant to the discussion. The stores stock every season much too early but most people don't pay them any mind except to complain about it. The only ones that regularly get the complaints are Halloween and Christmas, as it's usually due to people not wanting to be part of the social fabric including those anymore, as if that isn't a key problem with the way things are and why they're being pushed more and more as a consequence. September and October leading to Halloween, and Christmas centered on December through January (it should be the start of February, traditionally, but no one wants to have that conversation yet) is about a quarter of the year where we could potentially act like a society that appreciates and shares the same general experience, and deep down that is what the majority actually wants, but we make no moves to do it.

That is what we had long ago, and what everyone still craves. We might not have celebrated those holidays as much back then, but that is also because we were tied together more tightly for the rest of the year. We don't have that bond anymore, and it is why the masters in charge downplay both holidays every year while the rest of us have been ramping them up more and more these days in the opposite direction. In a sense they are a few of the things we still have left and losing them, or choosing to opt out these days, in a sense is saying you're done with the social contract. If that is what you want then don't be surprised when things don't improve when they're finally gone. Because they most definitely will not, nor will anything pop up in their place.

Of course there are also those that take every season and make it about themselves. You've seen it yourself. The decorations, the costumes, the events, all made to make the person organizing them the winner in some competition in their mind, to put them above everyone else, something only exacerbated by social media. Those who engage in this tend to cheapen the experience and make folks more cynical about the season and what it's for, but the key isn't to abandon the season: it's to make said people know this isn't how things are supposed to be done, and how to make it better. You don't abandon stolen ground, you reclaim it instead. We've spent too much time just ceding everything instead of fighting for any of it.

We still need that connection. It isn't going to go away, no matter how much we downplay it or think we're above it. In fact, that desire for belonging has only increased in recent years. Deep down, we know what we want.

Memories matter, but so do shared cultural memories that the wider populace is able to have together. We're having less and less of those the further we get into the 21st century, and we need to do something to fight against it, even if it's working with what we already have fumbled. We need to do something drastic before we lose it all, because that is the only alternative future ahead of us besides reclaiming what we lost. There is no better alternative coming.

It's either preserve and build, or lose it all. That's it. This starts locally and personally, as all change does. Create what you want to see and promote it as wide as you can. Support others, don't sabotage, and push the most obvious and simple changes you can. That's the only feasible solution to combatting decay and atomization. We need to create what we want to see.

So let's create! That's what we're here for, after all.

That's all for August, ladies and gentlemen! We'll soon be leaving summer behind for more colorful skies to come.

Until September, have yourself a good end of the month!

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Finding a Lost Generation

Welcome back to the wasteland!

I'm a bit sidelined physically this week, so I wanted to have something to chew on a bit. That said, it's also more of a trip down memory lane. It's still summer, after all! This is the time for that. It's also the 20th anniversary of YouTube, which ended up changing the entertainment landscape more than anyone thought possible.

When the internet first started taking off among the general public in the 1990s, the monoculture was not only still intact but was also the default assumption for the populace on how the world, universe, and everything, worked and would progress going forward. Message boards and chat rooms were full of what you might call "trolling" and silly behavior, but it was all on the assumption that it was for relaxing between life itself and that it was just a fun side thing. It wasn't yet life itself, and would not become a new home for millions.

That changed slowly through the 2000s as not only were kids born in the '90s growing up (usually completely unsupervised) on the internet, so too did Gen Y end up turning towards cyberspace more and more as an outlet for dealing with the post-9/11 world to find some stability where it once existed. Then of course there was the rise of social media from Myspace to Facebook to Twitter/X, but that was more of a gamechanger for the older generations. Before that happened, Gen Y was carving out its own ecosystem on message boards and comment sections based on cynicism, sneering contempt of once happy nostalgia while also depending on it at the same time. Pop culture also mutated for this crowd as a way to sustain identity in an era where corporate Geek Culture was concocted by corporations to siphon what little money they would have left by 2008.

I bring this up to show the epitome of what this era was like with a site that was called Channel Awesome. Back before websites became little more than content farms and the internet became flooded with bots, YouTube was just one site that was primarily used for a few things, all of which changed radically over time. The key development in its growth from illy home videos and pranks was the attempt to create a new ecosystem to forge an identity by people who largely didn't have any in a world that didn't want them to discover one.

Channel Awesome was (technically still is) a pop culture review site that focuses on nostalgia. They were not the first or second, but the one that first tried making it into an industry. Whether it succeeded or not is for you to judge.

In the '00s, the popular thing to do was to review the childhood's of Gen Y (and younger Gen X and older Millennials: remember, it's all a spectrum) kids to mock and skewer it and show how ridiculous a lot of what the audience grew up with was. Isn't it all just silly and meaningless? But somehow it's important to us, even though it's quite obviously terrible!

There were a few hallmarks of this upcoming genre of video review: snark, sarcasm, irony, and the obsession with "logic" and accepted opinions from Respected Professionals above all. Honestly, looking back at the era now, it's incredible how lock-step a lot of this was. You would not really find much in the way of dissenting opinions, because everyone was expected to think the same thing about everything. Contrarianism existed, because of course it did, but adherence to the monoculture (in this case, the accepted corporate "Geek" monoculture out of a paid Kevin Butler speech) mattered more than anything else. This was your "community" and you needed to belong there, which meant that you needed to be a Real Geek.

The above video does a very good job at highlighting the majority of the members that existed on the site two decades ago, even talking about where they ended up in the time since they started. It's a fascinating look at a time and place long since gone, and how and also why it would all eventually go away. Of course, the video is long, so be aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less interesting as a historical document on internet history that has faded away.

As for why it all went away, the answer is simple: it wasn't enough. The people involved, the audience, and the wider culture, was fracturing as the monoculture was dying in the 2000s, and as it was doing so, new priorities emerged and new identities formed. Those priorities and identities were manyfold, but they all sum up with the fact that those involved realized, at least, subconsciously, that none of this stuff was an identity. That's when it all shifted.

For myself, I bailed on the scene fairly early on when I realized the majority involved where content stewing in bitterness for the old days while also profiting (socially, at least) on those same old days, which made me question exactly what this was all for. No one wanted to create anything, they wanted to live in this weird bubble of pop cult aesthetics and slang divorced from not only the real world but any meaning that childhood might have actually had. The '00s were the hangover for Culture Ground Zero, where it was told products were all you needed to have an identity, the greatest lie Geek Culture told, and by the end of it, especially with the crash of 2008, that wannabe Gen X aloofness cracked and turned into a desperate bitterness over reality.

That's why you had so much anger in those days few remember to mention when waxing nostalgic over the "Old" Internet. The Nu Atheist/Skeptic movement was the first dividing line, deciding an entire segment of their former cohorts were now intellectually inferior and needed to be scrubbed off the internet with sneers that would make a middle-aged Karen politician in Current Year blush. You might think this unearned arrogance and hatred was a defining trait of that particular crowd, but no, it soon became the default way to operate online.

Through the 2010s, as that lack of identity failed, it also split up itself. Atheism +, progressivism, counterculture discourse, but one of the few things that refused to completely sever was that obsession with Pop Cult media. That obsession would even become a battleground in Culture War issues, because neither side could admit that the culture they grew up on not only no longer existed, but they were so focused on mindlessly clinging to their phony identity centered around it that they never considered passing it down to the generation just under them. A whole generation cut itself off from the wider world, because they had long since abandoned it.

Years later and they're still be arguing over the Hollywood system that hates them even as mainstream audiences have lost all investment in the entire affair long before they have. In other words, that pop cult identity is already gone and irrelevant, but they can't let it go. This is because it's all they have, and they need to still have that connection, because there isn't anything else for them left. Everything else is dead or problematic (which is just a euphemism for dead).

The above video that highlights all these many "content creators" (itself a demeaning term) and shows how just about all of them scattered away through all of the above madness that was the 2010s, is a good example as to lack of identity driving everything. Not to say they are fundamentally broken people or anything, but that what united them all together fractured as reality set in. There really wasn't any glue in the first place aside from those old corporate products.

Some of them did right the ship in their own lives, which is commendable, but the loss of shared monoculture is even more obvious when seeing the change in a whole cohort right before you. At the end of the day, all of the above people on whatever side of the conflicts they were on desired one thing: a community to be a part of, and a place where they could belong, and an identity that defined them. That is the real story here.

We've discussed both the book "Bowling Alone" and the madness that the 2010s set forth on an entire generation that had just dealt with the miasma of despair that was the '00s in earlier pieces, but they both stem from the greater issue, which is the lack of any real shared culture beyond products, transactional relationships, and a recitation of a youth that was the last time that connection existed. We are a culture of isolated islands connected by a bridge that fell into the sea long ago, and all we can do is rage about it. However, that does not change that said bridge is gone and not coming back. That world is over.

I don't want to be too hard on the people that do or like any of this stuff. It clearly has value. The wider point is not that it is bad that "geek" stuff exists, but that it's not an identity or a personality. It doesn't make you who you are. What you like to consume does not define who you are, and most of arguments around the subject of gatekeeping in regards to this always just amount to focusing on the phony identity aspect over the much more pertinent quality one, which shows exactly where the priorities truly lie in such discussions. It's still primarily thought of as a desire for a club away from the plebs, not a thriving art or entertainment landscape to grow in.

Art is an ecosystem meant to present a window into what the culture not only finds important, but how they live and what they believe. Without any of that, it's just product in a sea of other product, with no rhyme or reason or direction except to fill shelves. It's just consuming slop to consume slop and possibly harm the outgroup in the process of doing it so one can still feel they belong to an ingroup that doesn't care about you.

But what are they trying to belong to?

In fact, what are we belonging to right now? Are we any better than the young Geek Culture acolytes of the '00s, angling for an identity, or are we still the same lost sailors at sea? Are we still struggling to draw lines in the sand based on cliches, ingroup insults, and more Us vs Them rhetoric? How much more pared down do we need to get from the current state of things? Will it ever be enough? Will we ever be satisfied?

Right now, it's hard to say, but it won't always be that way. Enjoy the trip to the past and remember both the good and bad so we know what to take with us going forward. Because we're going to need it for what's coming up ahead.

Have a good weekend and I'll see you again soon enough.

Check out the Cirsova Summer Special! Only one issue left before the end of their 10 year, 40 issue run! Check it out for more exciting stories of action and adventure!

Destruction Incorporated

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Been a bit, but I don't want to waste any more time, so let's get into it. Not a long one today, and yet there is a bit to discuss.

I don't think I have to tell you much about the mess that is OldPub, the old publishing industry sometimes mistakenly called "TradPub" (there is nothing "traditional" about them), and how far they've declined. It's fairly obvious just from one perusal of the shelves of your local big bookstore that they are far beyond irrelevant despite all the money and "prestige" they have behind them. It's all flooded with Japanese manga for a very good reason, and that's because the industry has long lost the plot in connecting with the average reader. They have to outsource it now.

However, it is also good to remember how this all happened. There are are more and more people joining these niche spaces every day, trying to understand just what might have happened to lead us to this position where everything is so fractured. Why are bookstores completely barren of new material from this side of the world, why is what little there so formulaic and vapid, and why is a foreign culture leading the charge for our own entertainment instead? Not to mention, there are still plenty of older folks who have been around for a while who don't quite understand all of this, either, and mistakenly blame Japan for this situation. Lots of fingers pointing in different directions. All of them should be pointed at OldPub itself.

This is kind of an odd situation, if one thinks about it for more than a second. Theoretically, manga could be topped. However, what requires that to happen requires a total overhaul of how OldPub functions. It's simply not going to happen. There is way too much ideology and far too many fragile egos in play for any kind of reversal. It will all simply crumble away just as the infrastructure built by previous generations does. It is now Destruction Incorporated, and the idea of selling art and entertainment instead of religious pamphlets is far too absurd to continue. If it wasn't there would be discussions going on between parties instead of endless lectures from the failures in charge of the rusted mechanisms.

And to think it all started because the adults in charge forgot how to say no, and let in fanatics to destroy their own hard work from under them. It's not that absurd, however. In fact, it happened before! You probably even know to what event this statement refers to.

The blueprint for the sort of literary takeover that destroyed OldPub is epitomized by the siffy cultists way back in the 1930s, who then seized the industry in the 1940s and turned a market for normal people into their own fetish playground. The pulp revolution over the last decade specialized in the rejection of their frame of "Don't Read Anything Before 1940" to discover just how much fantastic writing was buried for petty political reasons and deliberately left out of print. You can read more about this specific problem in The Last Fanatics where I discovered it for myself as I was writing about it. If one cares about art at all, OldPub is a failure at preserving any of it.

For a more general picture of what is going on now, I suggest the above video showing how the Literary Cartel used the Fanatic blueprint to do the same thing to the wider industry. Books about nothing written to no one and heavily leaning upon gimmicks and the promise of becoming a micro niche celebrity is what the Literary Cartel decided to do to their industry. It's like its own Oprah's Book Club, complete with the advertisement of religious cult figures for whatever ideology OldPub wants to foist on you.

We live in an age off closed of silos where no one interacts outside of them or attempts to connect to a wider culture, or can even imagine one existing, therefore all that is left is ruling the tiny sandbox of the few peasants still unlucky enough to be there. There is no ambition to reach anything wider, nothing but lecturing, browbeating, and celebrating death and dismantling. Us Against Them, over and over again, repeat until infinity.

But how did they do this? What is the secret formula that allowed this cartel to create such a wasteland of entertainment and edification?

By creating a formula for doing it. Art formulas have not solved a single problem over the past century, but boy are they the main culprit in causing a lot of them!

The subject of formulas has become radioactive as a discussion point in recent years, though there isn't any reason it should be. It's very clear to anyone paying attention that every art formula that has popped up in the last 30 years or so does not work for the simple reason that none of them have produced classics or done anything but shrink the market into the exact situation it is in now. All it has done is enshrine fetishes as genres and to lash out at anyone outside (and even inside!) of the small and ever-shrinking spaces.

You don't have to like the current anti-formula (if that's what you want to call it) zeitgeist, but it is an inevitable kickback from people who had to sit aside and watch the destruction happen despite their plentiful warnings that it would lead to exactly this. The obsession with formula implies a distrust in the artist and the environment that might allow him to foster in, saying that in order to succeed there is somehow a one fits all pattern that will mold his unique vision into something Better. Though, again, if that were the case: why has it not happened yet?

The second video above from the same creator goes into the process of creative death through formulas in depth even more than usual video on the subject. The fact of the matter is that art requires identity given from the unique circumstances around the artist's life that lead him to where his is. If the only thing he has to express are the same buzzwords in the same delivery and from the same social positions and the same "Global Standards" approach to not rocking the boat as every other "individual" in the scene, then why would the audience be interested? At that point, it's all interchangeable and meaningless. What is the purpose of consuming slop like this?

When the people in charge tell you that shrinking is growing and ignorance is freedom, what is an artist supposed to gleam from it? How can you connect when the industry tells you that you are meant to be just another cog in the crumbling machinery instead?

Fanfiction writers in particular find the idea of being against the inarguable failing state of modern writing beyond the pale. After all, they saw how all the major IP franchises were brought down by fanfic-tier thinking and the resulting yawn the audiences let out in response. It doesn't even matter if the product "makes money" when it's out of the conversation in a few months anyway. At some point, instead of being a hobby, fanfic writing took over the corpo jobs to pump out more content. Nothing is being explored, because there is nothing left to explore in these properties, it's instead being rehashed and exploited.

This isn't to say there's no value in fanfic writing, but it has always meant to be what it was and never anything more. It's a hobby, not a career. By removing it from its context it has become as polluted as everything else in the industry has. Now there is no ambition beyond endlessly reheating and recycling so the dying system that hates you can stay afloat for five more minutes. What other reason would it have to act this way?

No one in the industry wants to do anything but put out Content, and that is proven, as the second video shows, to be the actual focus of Creative Writing courses in Current Year. It's far off from the purpose of writing, or even creating any kind of art, but is inevitable when the industry itself is run lock, stock, and barrel, by a small group of people who have very limited imagination or idea of what art is even capable of in the first place.

All they care about is the club. Just like the siffy crowd did way back in 1939 when they were figuring out a way to control the industry for themselves. That game has remained unchanged, regardless of the players in it.

This is the end result of unimaginative people running industries that are supposed to run on imagination. They not only cannot imagine appealing to people who aren't them, they think slogans and checkboxes are the end goal and height of art. There is nothing more than this.

How exactly do you reason with that? The simple answer is that you don't. The industry's death spiral is as comical is it is unbelievable, but it's also understandable in a climate where fanaticism is more important than connection. Say that right things and get rewarded, even if your actions don't match up with your words. None of it matters except cynical grifting and elbowing others out of the way for your share of the scraps, leading to a vapid climate of art and entertainment that chases all the normal people off. Eventually all you're left with is a gaggle of ladder climbers scrambling for the top rung that leads out of the sewer. It isn't taking you anywhere higher. Why are you even in the sewer to begin with? That's as much as can be imagined these days.

Without a monoculture to rally around, the audience will not demand better, because they have other options. Instead of complaining, they walk away, leaving the people in charge smug in the thought that their art must be top notch since no one is complaining about it. No, they just gave up on you instead, which is way worse. They don't even care enough to tell you they hate it. This should be the worst place for a creative to be, yet it's the one most strived for these days.

This leaves the "mainstream" to wither away, fighting for the last scraps as it all comes caving in. This leaves us all in those silos to pursue our own individual goals, never to interact with each other ever again. Whatever the end goal of all this modern nonsense is going to look like, I don't think anyone particularly knows or, honestly, cares.

Eventually there will be another monoculture again. It's unavoidable since it is part of human nature to need community and a way to express creativity in a way that benefits more than just themselves. Until then, however, all we can do is watch and observe as the Fanatic philosophy formulizes itself into death cult ritual and obliterates itself in the resulting purity spiral. And hopefully we never let this destructive behavior take hold again afterwards, though that is obviously hoping for a lot. It'll take a lot of time and effort, but hopefully it'll happen one day.

Regardless, Destruction Incorporated is simply the way the people in charge have decided to run things until the clock runs out. Let's see how it works out for them.

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The World Braindead

Welcome back to the wasteland!

I don't know where you are, but here the weather is beating me down and taking no prisoners. It's not unbearable so much as it is annoying, much like today's subject. As bad as the weather might get, you always know it's going to go the other way eventually. The world isn't ending, no matter how much some of us wish it was, but it has also always had its antis: people who just hate everything and want it to die. Sometimes they disguise it very well.

Today lets take a look at one particular movie that disguises itself as one of peace and love but is actually one of death and misery. It also took a long time for this movie to be exposed for what it was, even though it seems so obvious to us today.

We could talk about some of the most obvious subversive movies made. Pleasantville and American Beauty the most obvious ones people still talk about quite a lot. There are some less obviously subversive flicks like Forrest Gump or Wag the Dog, but are no less corrosive than the former two. Even though these films say one thing, they tend to mean something else, which is a nasty trick Hollywood used to be very good at pulling offer. 

However, back in the day it was also a lot less subtle and a lot more blatant about what the message, not that unlike how it is today after decades of trying the poison pill technique instead. The difference is how they focused more on selling a specific worldview back then that is currently fading in the world of Current Year, mostly because it failed and everyone knows it failed, even if they won't admit it. This makes the movie extremely hard to go back to.

The above video speaks about the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still which, for a long time, was looked on as a siffy classic film on par with Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Invaders from Mars. It was seen as one of the Big Ones--and important, to boot. They even had a popular band for a while named after the main character! To this day the film is also studied and looked on as an important building block in modern cinema. It goes without saying that the movie was popular and influential back then. Few movies surpass its cultural importance.

It's also not a good movie.

While the earlier mentioned three movies in this set still hold up, this particular movie does not. The reason is, even from people who agree with its general thesis, because the film is a clunky and ham-fisted lecture with plenteous logic gaps meant to make the audience take one lesson away from the movie in question with no wiggle room or alternate solution. It's a religious tract for the progressive world order of its day. You can see its entire playbook from the above video itself. Suffice to say, the movie does not hold up.

The message being sold in The Day the Earth Stood Still is the same as HG Wells book The World Brain that I discussed in The Last Fanatics. It is the beating heart of 20th century materialism that runs the engine of the siffy mutation formed through convention consensus in 1939. This thesis is the idea that humanity all subconsciously and collectively will come to the same beliefs and conclusions that are, shockingly, the exact same as the siffy author's worldview of the time period. In essence, it says humanity is destined to have an epiphany that siffy authors are actually their superiors and had it all figured out before the rest of you plebs. Do what they say and reach paradise or you are an evil monster who must be put down. As you can tell, things have not changed that much since The Day the Earth Stood Still released.

Therefore, keeping this philosophy in mind, the trick for these writers is to create a specific sort of protagonist, a creature above man that is not supernatural (because the supernatural is infantile and evil) which will guide humanity down the right path. He is clearly above the common piece of filth that is man, and must be portrayed as without progressive sin (progressive sin of its era) with all the solutions that lesser humans are too inferior to figure out on their own.

Once you see this is the one trick, much of what is called "classic" siffy absolutely falls apart, because this is what it is all hinged on. You can even see it done today, complete with new progressive sins and designated acceptable classes of acceptable targets filling in the villain role. It does not work anymore because the trick is obvious to everyone, but said writers have no other one to use, so they just keep using it over and over to diminishing returns and ever-shrinking cliques that do little more than decay into even more bitter beings. Truly the class of betters that should be ruling the world. At least, so they are still told by the people in charge.

This corrosive view of existence is also why adventure stories have always been demonized by these same types. In The Last Fanatics I covered the prevailing view of this set that aliens could never be portrayed as evil or malevolent. Humanity always had to be inferior, the lesser, or the most evil, because the other, the alien, was the Higher Being above them. This is because said anti-social writer considered themselves the outcast and the other, and always saw themselves as above the common man. Portraying an alien as evil is tantamount to calling them bad people. And that's just not possible! They're smarter and more special. The Important People tell them so!

Therefore, aliens could not be cast as anything else than Higher or else the writer and story would be labeled as x-ist or y-phobic and therefore discarded without further thought. Aliens are your betters, just like the other, and you need to process this immediately or get sent to a camp. (Or in the case of a particular siffy con, beat your chest about open minded tolerance while having your convention a few hours away from literal concentration camps). 

You see, Humanity is bad because Humanity isn't like the writerOther. Therefore, it's a personal affront to these types to express any creativity outside this narrow ruleset. Truly the "genre" of imagination and wonder.

Human beings being cast as an irredeemable evil is key to the playbook, since this framework is created by anti-social types who dislike reality and believe it would be changed for the better if they were in charge, but all they have done is made everything worse. You have to ignore reality, you can't argue, you can't discuss, and you can't offer alternatives. You are to shut up and be led by your betters, the ones who decided they know better but have yet to prove it even with having decades upon decades of institutional support from those who hate humanity even more than they do. What we are left with is a World Braindead, not a World Brain.

This attitude is what set the stage for the climate we are currently living in right now. That is also why it's falling apart and in constant need of propping up. It's a little like a circus tent falling down while those under it frantically run around to prop it back up. The end result is obvious, and those panicking are simply wasting their time.

All of this could have been avoided with the one thing such stories don't allow: self-reflection. This means self-reflection of the writer, not an attempt to project a faulty view of the world onto the audience so they can worship at your feet.

The Day the Earth Stood Still does not understand that change always starts with the self. The movie is obsessed with tearing everything down simply because it has its own superman to bully the world into compliance. It centers on demonizing locality and shared culture to prop up a bizarre individuality that is also part of a worldwide collective of acceptable beliefs and rules decided by the strongman. The one world future of Klaatu requires the right creature being put in charge to rule it all, somehow also embodying the everchanging goals of Progress at the same time. This is the world these anti-socials want. It isn't possible, but that's also why it's dying.

The movies, and these people, don't understand that if you want a solution to a wider problem, you have to start local. You have to connect with people you might not understand or might not understand you and come to a new consensus on how to build something better through both of your contributions. You can't wait for some top down revolution to do it for you. As has been shown, that isn't how we got here to begin with. We got here through laziness and flippancy, allowing rot to take hold and telling ourselves its Natural or some nebulous thing like History leading the charge. Decay is easy; growth is hard. We haven't really tried to grow anything in decades, just complain and hope for others to do it for us or punching holes in the boats of those trying. Well, that isn't going to happen by doing this. The proof for that is Current Year.

The only solution to the current state of the World Braindead is to not follow its example. To start small and focus on that. Give attention to what we can. It's the only option we have to counteract the destruction of Klaatu-types who want us to fall in line with their rotting materialistic view of existence. We need to build, not destroy.

The good ending to The Day the Earth Stood Still would have been to throw Klaatu into a furnace and call his bluff. But the narrative was specially made to not give the characters the choice: it's willful and blissful enslavement Vs deserved genocide of the human race. Bow to Satan or die. He'll give you the world and all you have to do is give him power to tell you white is black and black is white for the rest of your life. Isn't that a small price to pay for tolerance? For a world where everyone can be equal some of the time?

It starts with a rejection of the premise these 19th century materialists set up. Not just Doing The Opposite as many online stylize themselves and their image, but understanding what they got wrong in their initial thesis of what humanity is and correcting with a better and healthier vision. Live a better way free of paranoia, bitterness, and tired memes. Instead find one of belonging and growth. Start local, always. It won't start anywhere else.

We can only start from ourselves, not to change but to understand. What we've lost, what we need, and what we have, is more important than what could be. There is no Eden on Earth and there never will be. We have to start living for something better than failed utopias built by people who have proven time and time again to be full of nothing.

Klaatu's false premise and promises need to be rejected. The World Brain must be allowed to finally die. Only then can we finally move on from this pit we've lodged ourselves into, and only then can we finally have a new vision of the future.

It starts with ourselves and those around us, and that's where the focus should be. Until then, at least we can laugh at the absurdity of the Klaatu class and the World Braindead they have left in the wake of their failed ideas.

Not like the movie has much else of value of offer these days, just like the mentality that thought it up in the first place. It's all dead and rotted, so let's finally put it all to rest.

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Friday Night Life

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Summer is on so let's go back in time for this week's post. Let's travel back to rediscover that nebulous time between the week and the weekend that has been muddied over the decades: Friday Night. More than anything, I want to touch on what it was and why it mattered more than the nostalgia that remains around it.

First, watch the video above to get a handle on what exactly we're talking about. It's not an easily definable thing we're going to be talking about from here on in.

You might think that Friday night is still a big deal these days, but it isn't to the same extent it once was. This is for multiple reasons. "Friday Night" was a cultural institution when everyone had more or less the same work and school week, with the same promise that weekends would be for you and those around you and no one else. It was your time. This is what made Friday Night such a powerful force. Everyone was off at the same time, with the same options, and in the same communities, and that knowing shift is what drove a lot of what made it all so enchanting.

Work exists for leisure, not the other way around, which means that leisure has to be more meaningful than work. Therefore, once the weekend actually comes, it is anyone's guess as to what happens next. It's a whole other world divorced from the long week being left behind. The actual activities on the weekend itself don't matter as much is the reality that it's time for you and yours, and the world comes in distant second. But that's the weekend: not what lays between it and what was left behind.

Friday Night, however? That's where the magic is.

Friday is a lot of people's favorite day of the week because of more what it symbolizes than what might actually occur during it. A Friday symbolizes a coming break from work and a retreat into leisure. Nights are already seen as the leisure time (it is when most people sleep, after all), but when you add in the weekend ahead and (usually) the lack of no big plans ahead, it makes Friday Night a time of endless possibilities. You can do anything, and anything can happen.

It isn't so much what you do, but the knowledge that you can do it. This is your true reward for getting through the week, and it is what made the work truly worth getting through. Friday Night represents real freedom, the kind we tend to get less of these days regardless of your age or station in life. Everyone had the same shared experience, which is what made it all the better. you could also meet anyone, and you were all on the same equal ground and in the same mindset.

No one really says this anymore.

I try to be careful with these subjects on here, mostly because it is easy to fall into the nostalgia trap of thinking old things were better simply because they were old. It's what I and many others my age did when we were young, but I think at this point the conversation has moved beyond nostalgia arguments when industries are collapsing and the online space is rotting away at faster and faster speeds. We're trying to find that place we lost before we lose the chance to rediscover it for good. What people are looking for is that intangible space between the past and the present, the spot that we can't seem to find, and put something down there to begin building on.

A sort of new monoculture? Who can say, but it's something we know we lost and something we know we need to regain.

Nostalgia isn't really an argument anymore as much as it is now a Brand like everything else, and you already realize that, as does everyone else. You don't actually want the 1980s or the 1990s or even the 2000s back. You want that cohesiveness and sense of belonging and wider societal purpose they had in spades compared to now. You want to be able to go out and find things with other people as curious as you are: someone to connect with and something to find. The loneliness epidemic is not just for single males, after all. It effects everyone living in a world where fragmentation through consumption is the end goal. This world is the end state of striving for perfect individuality, after all. The perfect individual is alone.

But perfection isn't possible. Convenience doesn't necessarily make things better, either. Those were things taken for granted back then, and now we can't even entertain going back to it again. However, the Friday Night experience we all want and desire, is not possible in a world of easy convenience. It requires being able to go out and find people who think, act, and believe, at least a little like you do: a cohesive communal experience where anything can happen. That is a big part of the magic.

That requires risk, but it requires risk of a different sort: where putting yourself out there doesn't result in an internet video from someone who thinks so little about their neighbors that they will toss them to the sharks and be rewarded by those around them for doing so. It requires a world where you can talk about the same things with people you barely know and find yourself at least a little better off for it. You can't do that if your neighbor has nothing in common with you and has no desire to even try to connect. It's a two way street, and that isn't where we currently are now.

Perhaps this is why the past is currently looked at with more curious eyes beyond the nostalgia, and why Zoomers and younger are hungry for it despite having no memories of that era. We all know the way things are isn't sustainable and is not ideal, but we don't know how to retain what we lost without pretending the clock is a different time than it is.

The point is that making everything more convenient hasn't really made anything better. Yes, we still get good books, video games, and music, but we were already getting those before. What it hasn't done is made our quality of living better as a whole. Life itself hasn't benefited from these changes, which is how a nebulous feeling like Friday Night became a pale shadow of what it once was. Yes, you can go out somewhere, but Everyone won't be there which means Anything can't happen. The magic is no longer there, just as the majority no longer is.

It's gone, but the hunger for it remains.

And that's what we need to get back.

So the next time Friday Night rolls around, think twice about what it really means, and what makes it truly so special. Perhaps if we try to reclaim that feeling, we can come that little be closer to reclaiming that certain undefinable quality we can't seem to nail down. It can't hurt. In fact, it'll only bring us closer, in the end. What else can be better?

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Staying Vs Leaving

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Here I am back with another topic, this one a light subject. We're getting into summer, so let's keep the streak going. I want to talk about nostalgia, but not as a negative or a positive, but in the contrast of something wider. Let's discuss the culture of Staying Vs Leaving.

As you are certainly well aware, the culture of nostalgia has more or less turned into a joke by this point. Hollywood remaking '80s and '90s properties into Modern products has failed and continues to fail to greater degrees. No one can seem to understand what the audience wants anymore, not even the audience. The reason for that confusion is because the audience doesn't actually want old things: they want the ecosystem those old things were allowed to be created in. I'm not just referring to demographics or time periods, but a very specific approach.

Now, of course nostalgia is real and many would argue is a big problem with today, but it's really a symptom of a culture that doesn't really have anything to offer outside of piecemeal experiences thrown out like chum in the water to satiate anyone who will chomp it up. This is a difference between the cultures of Staying Vs Leaving. This battle is best shown in the recent example of Pizza Hut Classic being created and trumpeted all over social media.

The above video talks about what exactly people miss about things of the past, and it is not just the IP or franchises or big bold neon and colorful text and logos, like every cynical executive (who lived through those times, mind you) would say it is. What they are missing is, as mentioned above, the climate that allowed those things of the past to be created and flourish in the first place. Yes, they do miss the franchises and the chains and the big glossy movies and production: but what they miss above all of it is the shared experience everyone had at the same time reacting to or enjoying those things. They want the framework of the culture.

So what is the difference between the Culture of Staying Vs Leaving and what does that mean? Let's get into it.

The key takeaway is the difference in approach in how these things operate today. I'm not talking about ideology or cynical profiteering, but about what they say about the culture. The old way, the way of Big Fancy Cinemas, Pizza Hut Classic, inviting video stores, bright arcades, and shiny malls, was a culture of Staying. They wanted you there, to stay. They wanted you to stick around, and in the process this environment would invite others to do the same. In other words, exactly what third places are meant to do. You can quibble about their effectiveness or the like all you want, but that's what they did. This is a feature of real life communities completely lost today.

This means that all of that old era was linked together under the shared idea that we were all in this together and there were places to go where we can fit in together. As we well know by now, the purpose of art is the same as community: it's to connect. A culture of Staying means a culture of connection, of sociability. It's the purpose of all of this, really.

The opposite is what we have now: a culture of Leaving. As the above video states, this is a climate centered on individuality and alienation, of getting out as fast as possible to be left on your own. Swipe, scroll, pick something up, get in and out, consume, and on to the next thing. It is the antithesis of how it used to be, and it's why no matter how many Ghostbusters, He-Man, Star War, or Marvel, movies or remakes that Hollywood pumps out, they will never hit the same, because they are being fed into a culture of Leaving. No one has the time or means to sit and Stay. We do not reward it, in fact we proudly thump our chests about how special and different we are from each other instead. The idea of Staying is not the cultural era we are in anymore, and we can't pretend otherwise or think things can change as long as we continue to reject the reality that we deliberately chose.

The memories older generations have of that long gone era isn't just of nostalgia, it is about the shared cultural experience of Staying that has been abandoned and subverted. When someone is celebrating a Pizza Hut Classic or the experience of a vinyl record, it is not just because those are old things they remembered and mindlessly prefer over "better" options. That might be the starting point, but the real underlying desire is that forgotten ecosystem, that community feeling of going anywhere and feeling like you belong there and so does everyone else around you. 

Baby Boomers used to thump their chests about driving everywhere being freedom: but that isn't what they had. It was in fact a safer society filled with others that had the same shared experiences. No matter where they went, there they were, because where they were was more or less the same everywhere which made talking and getting to know others simpler. They took this long gone era for granted and aren't even aware it's completely gone for younger generations. They were marinated in the Culture of Staying while they pined for a Culture of Leaving. They didn't realize they were in a veritable sandbox of fellow children: not a wide open road of strangers and possible danger around every corner. They had community, and it was so prominent they didn't even realize it.

In fact, I would argue this is what Zoomers who engage in old mediums are really after. This shared cultural experience is the only piece they can try to understand for themselves. These old products and forgotten mediums are the only windows left into the Culture of Staying they can find. They want what they never were able to have because what they have today is so much weaker. And every single person knows it.

It's not just about physical media or expensive and shiny advertising or old IP, a lot of that sort of nostalgia is missing the forest for the trees. Every one of those things is part of a bigger cultural tapestry that was taken off the wall to be replaced with the digital one-push button world of consuming and moving on: the Culture of Leaving. No one wants to Stay, and that is why they can never feel at home or satiated with how things are and are always on edge and alone. They not only don't understand the purpose of leisure, they have long forgotten how to live.

The Culture of Staying had more weight and felt more Real, which is why people are seeking it out without even knowing what it is. The culture of Leaving has been the standard for a long time now, but it was also the desired endpoint of those who lived decades earlier who lived in the old world. The streamlining and dumbing down of old things was to make them More Accessible and Easier to do, but all that did was degrade those same things and make us take them for granted. Streaming hasn't made music any better. Netflix hasn't made movies or TV any better. Digital eBooks haven't made books any better. Always online consoles to download everything haven't made video games any better. Apps and readers haven't made comic books or manga any better. It just made them more convenient to consume: so we can Leave for the next thing on the list to consume.

You could quibble or fight about who is to blame for today's ecosystem or what the best way to fix the problem is, but I suspect that will already change as more and more people begin to realize what they have lost. The increase in vinyl and Blu-ray/DVD sales, the creation of things like the above Pizza Hut Classic, the desire for more analog experiences, all signal an obvious change in thinking. You have to look at it in the greater scheme of things beyond product purchasing: it's the desire for what those things represent (though yes, them being superior products and experiences is part of it, one can't deny that). You'd have to be blind to not see the climate has changed quite a lot over just the last few years, and is still in the middle of shifting.

We have more Content than ever before, and yet we're more bored and unsatisfied than we've ever been. That is solid proof that what we want isn't something purely tangible or easy to express. It's a specific cultural frame that we want: one that has more to offer than the next dopamine hit. We want what we once had, but better than it ever was before.

It's important to realize the Culture of Leaving did not spring up because of the internet and phones. Technology itself didn't lead us here. What lead us here was our desire to Progress past the Culture of Staying to make things more convenient, and the end result was something that is the complete opposite of what we once had. In essence, it was forgetting what mattered that allowed us to throw it away and replace that ecosystem with something inferior that we can't admit to being so because we've talked ourselves into thinking Convenience is a Good Thing. However, "convenience" is not a synonym for "good": it is just as capable of being bad for you as inconvenience, as we can see from how things are today.

We need something more than the bare minimum of consuming and moving on to the next thing. We've always wanted it, but we lost sight of how to get it back.

So let's try Staying for a little bit. It can't possibly be any worse, right? We won't know until we try.

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Off the Record

Welcome to the wasteland!

Given recent heated discussions, I figured it would be best to bring the temperature down a little, and talk about something a bit lighter. We can all use a break every now and then, right? In fact, I wanted to talk a bit about physical media in a way that does not get talked about much anymore. Let's not talk about practicality or physical quality, but something else entirely. I want to show in example of what makes it special. The above video is tangentially related more to show how little I'll be talking about audio quality in today's topic, because I think too many get hung up on it.

For anyone who has followed me for any amount of time, you are aware that I am big into music. Since I started being able to as a kid back in the '90s, I have amassed a pretty good CD collection that, despite bizarre attempts at fearmongering in recent years, is still perfectly functional today. Mostly because I take care of them. Regardless, this is to say I've been at the game for around three decades at this point. While my CD collection is more or less complete (I still have a few more Rhapsody albums to get), I still go out of my way to try to hear stuff I've never heard before.

I tend to focus more on rock music and its many subgenre and spinoffs. It's just what has always clicked with me the most.

Not too long ago, I had an epiphany. I realized that with vinyl records becoming ubiquitous and affordable for the first time since before I'd actually started collecting music, I could finally get into them myself. Obviously I wouldn't be able to ever match my CD collection, but I didn't want to. There was no reason for that. I had always wanted to get my absolute favorite albums in the format, and now was my chance. So, I went for it.

You see, for anyone younger than Gen X, vinyl has been a dead format for the majority of our lives. It was elbowed out in the late 20th century format wars by CDs (cassettes suffered the same fate) as antiquated and limiting. It was not progressive enough and there were too many rough edges in the format. Records were clunkier, held less music, were more fragile, and a bit of a pain to store. CDs, they said, would solve all those problems. They did. CDs are easy to use, hold twice as much music as a vinyl, are much more durable, and very easy to store. There's a good reason mine are still in pristine condition, some bad jewel cases aside. Essentially, CDs were the most obvious step forward, the progressive choice for music listening. Eventually that would move over to streaming, but as far as physical media went, CDs were considered it.

Then it might shock you to hear this as someone who hadn't heard vinyl since I was a child and never owned any myself before relatively recently that I actually think it is the greatest physical format for listening to music and that all its limitations are its strengths. And it's not for the reasons you might think.

The weaknesses of vinyl are actually its strengths. I know that's confusing. You're going to have to put up with my logic as I explain it.

The reason for this is that all the conveniences of CDs are actually a drawback for the listening experience that only multiplied when streaming came along. In essence it was a downhill slide to get here, though I will admit that CDs and the like do have their uses for travel or exercise. That said, for listening to music as an activity? They are not as good as vinyl. Let me explain just why that might be with a few points you might not have considered.

If you've never used vinyl before then you might be surprised as to how much set up there is to getting one to play. Slide the record from its sleeve, keep your fingers away from the surface as you lower it on the turntable, and then start it up. But of course it doesn't quite end there. You have to put on Side A and then lower the arm (making sure the needle isn't covered first), delicately onto the record. Did it right? Congrats, it's time to listen to the first side . . . of two. Vinyl rarely contains more than 20-25 minutes a side, which means you are going to have to stick close to the player and make sure you're there for all of it. Also, of course, to make sure no loud stomping or pushing of heavy furniture happens nearby to disturb the record or potentially cause skipping. This does not afford you the chance to wander off to do anything else. You will be there for the 20 minutes or so of Side A, paying attention. After this, you will do it again with Side B, making sure you're paying attention to the entire album. Here it is time to finally lift the arm and remove the record, once again handling it delicately and avoiding dust and dirt (or possibly cleaning it with your brush) before putting it away again.

Get all that? It's a process.

The end result of all this inconvenience other mediums don't offer? You will be paying attention to the music first and foremost above all else. Nothing else will take precedence, guaranteed. You cannot afford to zone out around a vinyl record, which makes you need to give it all your focus. It's too delicate to be left alone for too long.

All this is why vinyl is the best musical format. The reason is it makes the listener prioritize the music and listening experience over all else, and it's the only format that does this short of attending a live show. When you're putting on a record it is because you want to listen to the record. The lack of skipping tracks, of wandering off, of putting it in the background, means appreciation of the music comes first. It will always have your priority. Yes, vinyl's sound is less flat and more rounded and spacious than digital files are, and that could be an argument itself but the real difference is in how much attention each format must be given.

A sample of my own collection

As an example of my annoying ramble above, let me tell you a little tale. One of the records I have is Hysteria by Def Leppard. You can see my copy right there in the picture. This is a 12 song album that is over an hour long. Naturally, this means modern releases wisely split it across two records, effectively making it a double album. This is an immediate improvement, even despite improved sound quality. The above process of playing all four sides made me give the album my full attention for the first time in ages. No skipping songs, no letting it fall to the background as I find myself doing something else with my free time, and no pausing it for whatever random reason I feel like I had to sit there and listen, really listen, and hear all the bells and whistles and incredible songwriting that album is filled with. As I did so I felt myself pulled into the music and the tone the band sets, and engrossed the entire time making me appreciate everything about the craft, the energy, and the hooks, all the more. It turned what I thought was a 10/10 album into an 11/10 one. It effectively made me think an album I already thought was perfect even better. All of this could only happen because of the limitations vinyl set on me as well as the different presentation of audio than what I'm used to.

It started to make sense why back in the day music was treated as more of an event, why they had record listening parties and why kids would spend time just listening to records at friend's houses: all things no one does anymore. Sure, you can have a listening party on bandcamp, but it's hardly the same thing as being in the same room and having to concentrate on all the contours of the specific sonic presentation smacking you in the face while minding the limitations to keep you focused. Without that there is a high risk of music becoming a background novelty, which is more or less what it's become today since vinyl fell away.

The size of the format itself also contributes to it. Vinyl records are large, attention grabbing, and very in your face. They almost demand to take all your attention when you look in their direction. On top of that, they are the hardest to store and take care of, as well. Basically, it's a form tailor made to be intimidating, which, oddly enough, is something that makes them all the more compelling. The inconvenience is appreciated.

This isn't so much a music hipster thing, I'm not really going on about vinyl being "warmer" as the cliche goes, but in how everything about it prioritizes the importance of its own artform before anything else. That's its biggest strength that no one really brings up.

Even the idea that the storage space is overly miniscule and was improved on with CD and then that was improved on with unlimited streaming is incorrect. Almost all of the best albums worth hearing are under 50 minutes long. In the CD era, because the limit was increased to nearly 80 minutes, albums started to become loaded with filler. This made heavy use of the track skip feature CDs added and took away from the experience described above. It made the album look weaker and feel more disposable. The fact is that the limitation of the vinyl gave albums their perfect length. A 40 minute album is perfectly paced, coinciding, incidentally, with most live shows if you take out banter and general set up. Exceptions like the above Hysteria, an album over that limit, still benefits from the fact that it earns its mammoth length: there's no filler on it at all.

Your space on a record is limited, so you have to dredge up your best material for it and be aware that the audience will be paying close attention to it due to the nature of vinyl. This sets a higher bar for music and is in fact a good reason why Classic Rock has the name it has.

Even in the CD era, albums that did not have vinyl as their primary release format, or sometimes not even one at all (essentially the early 90s through the late '00s, almost two decades), the ones that aged the best are ones that still, for one reason or another, adhered to the old rule set by the format. The best albums didn't "fill up the CD" just because they could have.

This means when these sorts of albums actually get a vinyl release (think albums like The Strokes' Room on Fire, Less Than Jake's Hello Rockview, Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American, or the White Stripes' White Blood Cells), they fit it like a glove. Even the better longer albums transition over to becoming great double albums (think Alice in Chain's Dirt, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf, or White Stripes' Elephant) like they were always meant to be that in the first place. The pacing set by the limitations of the form not only make it more digestible, but allow more concentration and appreciation for what is being done. This is a good sign that vinyl got it right ages before we figured it out. We were just blinded by new tech and progress, which is a very common 20th century habit we still haven't broken.

Some could make the case that vinyl is only come back because of hipsterism, but that doesn't really explain it's unavailability during the peak hipster years of the '00s and why now it's only coming back in a big way now. If anytime would have been the time for that it would have been the post-High Fidelity snarky Scott Pilgrim era. But that never really took, did it? The reason is because younger generations want the inconveniences they never had, and older audiences are missing it now more than ever. It just doesn't hit as hard with the way things are. Experiencing what you love in a more involved way is always a good way to learn just how you like it.

All of this is a long way to say that convenience has devalued a lot of our artforms. The base level for engaging with art used to require a level of inconvenience which played into engagement, which meant most people put up with it, and they benefited. What we forgot is that sometimes inconveniences aren't bad things. Fishing out a cartridge to stick into your SNES or disc into your PS2. Taking out a tape or disc to slot into your player to watch a movie (and then either rewind or dig through menus). Rushing to catch a TV show on at a specific time or else hope for reruns in the summer. Picking up a paperback or hardcover to flip through and set down with a bookmark. These could be seen as mildly annoying or even frustrating, especially as opposed to how plug and play everything is in Current Year, but they also made these things more engaging and participatory for the audience. And most of these annoyances are just little things, but it's the little things that add up to the total and greater experience.

The easier and more convenient all these things have made things, the more it all gets streamlined into an app on a device to press and go, the less we care and the less we care about creating or preserving these forms, because now they're little more than distraction from mundanity, not art to engage or consider. This is the core of what modern slop is and why it's so hard to define: it's the end result of convenience culture, it doesn't spring out of anything else. Everything has been reduced to a dopamine hit with the least amount of effort or backlash.

To create a future of art that is meaningful, that can connect, and can grow, the old ways have to be understood, and inconvenience must no longer be seen as the greatest evil like it currently is. The warts and the difficulties are part of the experience: they add up to the greater whole. Taking that away simply takes away part of the core experience. It can't really be ignored any longer.

Life isn't convenience, and it never will be. No utopia or perfect world is ever coming. Accept the warts and realize that sometimes they aren't really warts at all. You're just too focused on the tree instead of the forest.

What we need is something real, and that means annoyances. We ain't in Heaven folks, not yet, so get used to it. We're gonna be here a while, so let's make it count.

And listen to Hysteria. It holds up great.

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