The difficulty of trying to poke at people's assumptions about what is "real life" and what is not; why "online" life must be abjected compared to "real" life; why certain fields, activities, works of fiction &c. have "value" and others do not; why certain questions are worth asking, and others are notā
the difficulty of trying to work 'upstream,' as it were, to question all of that, is that people always have the option of shutting down the question by retreating to a previously assumed position, rather than actually attempting to answer it ab initio. Their opinion is already the cultural default idea! They can just gesture back at it and act as if it's obvious, rather than engaging with your argument.
"Life that occurs online is less valuable than real life" -> "Why is that?" -> "Because it isn't real" -> "How do you define 'real'? Why are certain activities that a person can engage in more 'real' than others?" -> "They are different because some are real and others are not"
"Activities that involve physical movement are more real and valuable than those that do not" -> "What makes activity that occurs on a couch or in a bed less 'real'?" -> "Because you are just stuck inside rather than being in the real world" -> "What about disabled people? If you cannot leave your house, is your entire life less 'real' and 'valuable' than that of somebody who can?" -> "Oh my god, please go touch grass"
"These people are getting excited about their internet fanfictions and little video games instead of having real sex like normal people" -> "What is the idea of 'normalcy' doing for you here? Why is it better to be 'normal'? Why are, say, sexting, sexual role-play through instant messaging, and writing and reading pornographic material, less 'healthy' or 'real' sexual behaviors than having 'real' sex? What contributes to your ideas about the categories of 'real' versus 'fake' sex, what belongs to each category, and the relative health / normalcy or pathology / abnormality of those categories? Can we historicise these ideas?" -> "Oh my god, someone clearly needs to get laid"
"Smut is rotting these people's brains" -> "Why is pornographic or otherwise sexually explicit content innately noxious or valueless?" -> "It's smut!" -> "What about Lolita or Lady Chatterley's Lover?" -> "That's different!" -> "Why, other than cultural prestige, is it different? Can you create, from first principles, a general analytic that would allow you to, when presented with a work of fiction, decide whether it was 'smut' or whether it had value? Are you certain your analytic would always agree with what the literary establishment had decided?" -> "I mean, it's Lolita. I wasn't talking about Lolita"
"Oh my god, look at this article title! 'Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl'!? What are humanities coming to?" -> "Why is that absurd?" -> "Jane Austen and masturbation?" -> "Why do you think these two things are so antithetical? What makes historical medical ideas about masturbation an inherently infelicitous lens through which to view Austen's works? What is it about Austen, or about masturbation, that makes this combination laughable?" "I mean, just look at the title of the article! 'Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl'!!! It's ridiculous!"
"The New Historicists are off talking about contemporary ideas about race and gender and medical science rather than doing the work of a literary critic!" -> "What is the work of a literary critic?" -> "To critique literature!" -> "What does that entail? Why should any one analytic lens be the only one that constitutes 'literary critique'? We can trace the historical development of different analytic lenses throughout the creation and sequestration of "literary analysis" as an academic fieldāso why should some of them be 'real', and others spurious?" -> "They are making articles like 'Little Dorrit and the Medicalisation of Disability in Science Periodicals of the 1850s' instead of explicating the characters, plot, and themes of the work in itself without reference to contextualising discourses!" -> "What is bad about reference to contextualising discourses?" -> "It's not literary critique!"
"There is a difference between low and high culture, and high culture is better" -> "What is the difference? Why is 'high' culture better?" -> "High culture inspires people to think deeply about life and art" -> "Is it impossible to think deeply about 'low' culture? Can the analytic lenses applied to 'high' culture not be applied to 'low' culture? What would be infelicitous about such an application? Are these lenses innately not suited to 'low' culture, or is the perceived mismatch a matter of cultural ideals that can be historicised, politicised, problematised? Is your reverence for 'high' culture due to some innate quality within the work itself, or due to what obedience to these standards can buy you?" -> "No, it's not about cultural standards, some works are just better than others" -> "What about cases where something is considered 'low' culture at one point of time, but later re-evaluated and considered 'high' culture? Has the work itself changed due to its changed designation? Would you have new respect for a work you had previously dismissed if its cultural evaluation changed? If so, how can you claim that your reverence is due to a quality innate to the work itself, and not to your desire to have your engagement with culture respected by others?" -> "So you think your 100k word slow-burn enemies-to-lovers Stucky fic is as good as the Mona Lisa? Please get a life"
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
kaledo-art
ellievsbear
blakekathryn
titsay
areudirty
romaincrisis
