[oneheadtoanother]

[ouroborosorder]

this is such a profoundly stupid thing to be mad about but. i periodically think about how banksy made one of my single favorite pieces of art of all time, and everything else he's ever done has sucked. man, how did you nail it once

[ouroborosorder]

It's this piece, titled The Banality of the Banality of Evil. Because on first glance, you're like. Yeah, okay, it's obvious what it's saying. Even nazis, even evil people can appreciate beauty, too. But then you learn its name, and suddenly the interpretation shifts a bit. The idea that evil is banal has in itself become banal. my first response to seeing a nazi on a bench is "oh it's about the banality of evil" and not "jesus christ there's a nazi on the bench."

and like. i dunno i think that's a really interesting way for a title to recontextualize a piece. it's finding nuance by tearing out the nuance you want to project onto it. it's not the greatest piece of art ever made, but i'd be lying if i said i didn't have a huge soft spot for it

[manwhorewednesdays]

Okay but I have to add to this

what I find really interesting is how the way this is drawn (especially considering who drew it) the art style seems extremely deliberate. This type of nostalgic landscape painting is very reminiscent of nazi art and specifically, Hitler's art.

Nazis were extremely judgmental of "entartete Kunst" (degenerate art). Bansky's usual work very well fall into this category! So for him to go for this style of painting in particular is another choice I find very interesting, because I can see some people react to this painting with some variation of "oh, I didn't know he could actually draw! I thought he is a hack but he is a real artist!" - and that is where they would agree with the Nazis.

I dunno I just find this piece very compelling

[ouroborosorder]

oh that is actually fascinating. in fact, to add on- a detail I omitted because I just kinda forgot to mention it. The reason there’s two signatures in the corner is because it was a painting in a thrift shop, Banksy adding the Nazi, and then returning it to the shop.

I think there’s something interesting about recognizing the lineage of this type of art and wanting to mess with it, subvert the intent, and explore the topic and legacy. It’s potent. I really like this piece

[rifa]

I was thinking this out in the tags but I think it deserves to be here.

So in summer of 2024 I was on an Alaskan cruise that ended up also having a gathering of 800+ Christian nationalist qanon people, no hyperbole at all. And it was one of the weirdest weeks of my life.

But one experience from it was this very strange feeling that this painting reminds me of. When you view this painting youre observing the nazi observing the landscape. When I was I'm Alaska looking at melting glaciers and massive untouched mountains and wilderness, I was also looking at nazis looking at it. And it made me wonder how they saw it, where their appreciation for the natural world sits.

I wondered if they knew that the landscape was only there because it was protected from mining and oil refinery. Or how they were taking in the visibly shrinking glacier without reflecting in horror about the effects on climate change. I looked and thought about the people whose land it was well before settlers, I sought out that history on our excursions, I know they didn't. When we all watched whales together I wondered if they cared, or if they were looking at sacrifices they were willing to make.

It was very surreal because I could hear them talk about how beautiful it all was. But I knew we weren't looking at the same thing, not really, and I wondered *what* exactly they saw.

Just like I wonder about what this nazi sees in this landscape, and how that vision aligns with his others for the world. If it's something he feels entitled to, something he sees as a sacrifice, something cold and aesthetic without any wonder or love for the natural world and the people in it.

Because if beauty and nature can't shift evil what the fuck can

[dragongirlsweetie]

wow. you really jacked off to a photograph of a penis

?

[dragongirlsnout]

Don't do this; it makes mustard gas!

[charl0ttan]

this is actually a symptom of being punk

[yay-bunnies]

⚠️SCROLL BACK UP!!!⚠️

THIS IS A PAINTING

[sistertaxon]

You have brain damage from covid.

[kosmogrl]

one day I’ll look back and laugh at how much I used to worry

[pussyhoundspock]

joining the war on kids reading any book they want on the side of kids reading any book they want. simply you will be fine. it's even good to be confronted with things you don't understand and even find upsetting, uncomfortable and difficult. it's a surprise tool that will help you later.

[nonevahed]

prev tags:

literally ok so not a funny story but kind of funny? when I was nine I encountered rape in a book and I was like hey mom what’s this mean and she explained it and I was like oh. gross. and then like two weeks later a girl on the bus abruptly disclosed her csa and we were all like ????? what ???? but I was like wait hang on there’s a word for that ☝️🤓 and explained what it meant and that it was illegal and that you could talk to a teacher or my mom if it had happened to you and everyone was like ohhhhh I see I see and very somberly comforted the girl (she was safe she was removed from her home and living with my neighbor at the time so it wasn’t Urgent)

[zarohk]

And this is a perfect illustration of why it is important for kids to read or variety of things, and why abusers don’t want them to.

[unsettling-mantis]

Hiding knowledge from kids will not benefit them but only render them helpless when faced with the unknown

[depsidase]

[foldingfittedsheets]

During one semester of PE in high school I got put in a section called Team Sports. This was significantly better than a regular unit because the athletic kids were able to play and I largely got to sit and watch.

Months were devoted to what they called Pickle Ball but I’ve since learned was basically ping pong with larger than average paddles. The paddles had been through the absolute wringer, all padding had been rubbed and torn off by a relentless stream of bored adolescents like myself.

This presented me with a unique opportunity. I had a pencil, nominally used to keep score. I had a blank wooden panel. And I had large stretches of time sitting on the sidelines.

Every day I’d pick a blank paddle. I’d doodle little animals, bizarre monstrosities, and a bunch that were just a huge eye in the middle with the words “Big Brother is Watching”. What can I say; I was reading 1984 at the time.

When we finally finished with the paddles and moved on to badminton I completely forgot my dozens of illustrations.

It wasn’t until several years later that it got brought up again. I was hanging out with a friend and their younger sibling. We were listening to them lament their high school experience of the day. “But I won the Pegasus paddle, so that was cool.”

“Wait- what?”

“Yeah, most of them are just Big Brother, so they’re not exciting, but there’s only one Pegasus so we fight over it. Last week I had an elephant I really liked though.”

“You guys fight over the paddles with art on them…?”

“Yeah!”

My friend turned to me and asked, “Didn’t you make all those drawings?”

Their sibling lit up, “You made them?!”

I sat in silence as the complexity of the world and the waves we leave behind as we move through it washed over me. I contemplated how intertwined I was with the rest of existence to create such a beautiful moment.

I had made art on a whim out of boredom and it had an effect on someone else’s day, someone who through random happenstance years later was telling me about it all unknowing.

Their sibling was delighted when I drew them another pegasus on the spot and announced that they’d be the talk of PE now that they’d uncovered the mystery artist.

[steorran]

not interested in getting involved in the rest of this discussion, for the most part, but to me this is a GREAT piece of advice that many people these days don't seem to be getting or understanding.

not everyone you meet or interact with is your friend, the requirements and expectations for respectful behaviour between friends is not the same as between strangers.

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tweet from Richard Siken (@/ richardSiken) reading: > There's a misunderstanding of roles here. I'm not dad or friend or ChatGPT. I'm a stranger. Asking offensive questions won't get you a gentle answer. That's how it goes, sometimes. You can be slopping with your pals. With strangers, you have to put more thought into it. > /End ID]

[kushblazer666]

[datadegroove-deactivated2026042]

[bardace]

Shut Up, I Don’t Care

[lawbreaker13]

Oh I hate this so much, incredible job OP

[letterful]

[the-big-mood]

In 1997, local television in Kharkiv accidentally filmed one of the most iconic rave moments in history.

[ruinedchildhood]

[nonaferatu]

My favorite one yet- heres the creator

[identitty-dickruption]

even growing up in a majority non-white neighbourhood with a mum who used to live in india meant that my safe foods growing up were palak paneer and mango lassi. and, unrelatedly, my biggest sensory trigger was meat, particularly processed meats like. say. chicken nuggets. the thing about autism is that things are safe because they’re familiar, they’re consistent, and they’re reliable. and all of those things are soo contextual. I don’t really. understand. how anyone could think that only one category of anything (but especially food) could be Universally Safe unless they somehow forget that the universe includes people who aren’t them 🤔 crazy

[identitty-dickruption]

I remember a conflict over catering for a disability event coming up because one person involved wanted the entire thing to be chicken and chips. citing the fact that chicken is a safe food. and quite apart from the fact that it wouldn’t have met specific allergy concerns. what do you mean chicken is a “safe food”? for who? quite frankly not an assumption anyone can (or should) be making

[theceaselesshunger]

Call me pedantic, but my response to any and all "radical kindness is punk" type posts is still that you should just call yourself a hippie. Like that was the actual radical kindness movement. I'm not even saying that to be derogatory, I think the hippies were cool! I'm Californian, I owe a lot to those guys!

It's just weird to me that there's such a strong desire to ape the aesthetics of what's seen as a "cool" subculture that people are constantly try to revise the core of it when one there's a much more closely aligned one right there. Hell at this point I think I'd argue hippie fashion is a lot more repulsive to the modern conservative than punk stylings

[mybigfatgaylife]

#i think people are struggling with the fact that being contrarian for the sake of it isn't counterculture anymore#also (and this is more spitballing than fact) but i think people associate punk with being cool and masculine#and being a hippie with being cringe and feminine

@shesgonnachangetheworld being spot on in the tags

[libertineangel]

The reason hippies gained a reputation for being cringe and uncool is because punk displaced them - most hippies were in truth middle-class white people who cleaned up and abandoned counterculture when the movement faltered, and those who didn't often became punks themselves (like Joe Strummer, John Lydon and the Crass collective) because they realised that this chill "radical kindness, hope is resistance" bollocks was a resounding failure that didn't accomplish anything.

The punk movement as a political vehicle was also a failure that squandered all its potential and failed to instigate any meaningful social change, but the people of Tumblr are hung up on it as the ultimate expression of cool rebellious counterculture from the dispossessed because the movement which actually picked up that torch in the wake of punk's decline was hip-hop, and the people here who say this stupid shit refuse to listen to it because, indeed much like hippies, they're a bunch of sheltered crackers roleplaying rebelliousness from their neat white suburbs.

[stuckinapril]

This may sound preachy, but if you’re in your teens or 20s please take care to develop the habit of speaking positively about people behind their backs. Gossip is unavoidable, and yes it does allow people to bond, and yes some people deserve to be shit talked. But I think being negative about things is literally just nature, whereas trying to be positive about things and people is a quality you have to be very intentional about . If this does not apply to you, good for you. But for most people I think it does. Im not lauding toxic positivity so much as saying that if there’s space to speak positively about someone behind their back, it’s better to take that route.

[echoednonny]

plus a lot of the time, talking about a person when they're not there still can get back to them. and hearing the nice things people say about you when you're not around? that can change someone's whole day. hell, once i heard a coworker i barely talk to considers me one of the most reliable people to go to for questions because i'm good at answering them in a way that makes sense. i've been riding that high for months.

[ashenmind]

“monsters in the backrooms” is still such a funny concept to me

“here’s a space that’s odd and makes you feel uniquely alone, like no one has ever been here before, but don’t worry, we put a critter in here because we thought that was boring”

[fishmech]

So you only like the first 62 words of the 80 word post that established the concept? Fascinating.

[ashenmind]

yes

[ashenmind]

like that last paragraph is exactly what I described; an author overplaying their hand because they don’t grasp that the space being empty is far more interesting than anything you could possibly put into it

[ashenmind]

there are 1001 one things you can put into the backrooms that are more interesting than monsters

once you have done that, find something else to do with your creative efforts. not everything needs to be suitable for a video game.

no. wander my halls for 10,000 years.