#born strange

[manicassandra]

HEY FUCKHEADS GUESS WHOS BACK NORMALLY I WOULDVE BEEN WRITING MORE SHIT BUT IVE BEEN SPENDING MY MANIC ENERGY POINTS SPECING INTO OTHER SKILL TREES

so. punks. fucking rebels. half of tumblr is insistent they are them and the other half is porn bots. oh wow i'm so edgy and cool shut up okay. i need you morons to realise something.

yes. doing shit like making your own clothes and growing plants is technically rebellion. joy as an act of resistance yada yada. but some of you dentheads think buying from an op shop or your local deli makes you a fucking punker radical awesome rebel.

these little things. as important as they are. are not enough. i know a good percent of you just want that sweet sweet superegosyncratic (kill me now i'm using freudian psychology to talk down to 12 year olds on tumblr) title to cushion your desire to feel self-satisfied. but if you actually give a shit about any of these morals you parade then stop just patting yourself on the back after working from home since it technically slows the capitalist machine. you gotta do as much as you can or else you're only doing it for yourself.

and before an idiot says a dumb thing take note of me saying as much as you can i'm not expecting the disabled to storm the whitehouse or whatever but i am saying if you can do more and you aren't then you're basically doing only as much as required for whatever self-serving reason you call yourself a rebel.

and i know how insufferably close i sound to those "you're not a real punk shut up faker" losers but please just think about my words before you think your own thoughts.

stop doing enough. do as much as you can. i think it was deleuze who talked about how late-stage capitalism commodifies anti-capitalist philosophies and sentiments into easier to digest and reduced forms so that the consumer can feel content in themselves while still consuming or maybe it was someone else idk for evidence see the squid game macdonalds meal.

uhh what else. if you call yourself anti-capitalist or anti-exploitation but still choose to buy from like target or temu instead of making your own clothes/using old clothes/at the bare minimum supporting small local businesses not out budgetary necessities (i.e. genuinely not having enough money to afford it not just wanting to save money) or an otherwise inability but because of some personal other reason like preferring cheaper prices or convenience know that you are quite literally overriding your morals for a few dollars. you are quite literally having your fucking morals be bought by convenience and cheapness.

that's all for now folks.

[manicassandra]

you know i really don't like it when folks overuse the term sprezzatura because it is a beautiful and very useful term in fashion and style but then they call every hollywood name brand fashion wearing guy with the mildest sense of fashion someone as an example of sprezzatura and i have to say i disagree. i mean, it literally means effortless and i'm sorry i love william dafoe he's a great actor and his personality and style is really spectacular but i don't think what he does is effortless. he's putting on a suit. A WHOLE SUIT. there is a lot of effort there and i wouldn't call his style effortless. keanu reeves is great but you can tell he's trying to look good. it's all intentional. a 3 piece suit is not sprezzatura in my eyes despite that being origin of the term i know. when i see someone wearing a full outfit with jewellery and designer i do not think that is effortless grace. it is very effortful grace. do you know what's sprezzatura? adam fucking sandler. he wears gym shorts and baggy t-shirts like he's at his daughter's soccer game. and he looks dazzling. he's looking more iconic and spectacular than half the suit and tie ballenciaga gucci whatever fucks while wearing something a thousands of the price because he's not trying. the style and soul of his fashion comes from the genuineness and honesty. that's what sprezzatura is. it's being genuine and not trying while still looking good.

[manicassandra]

Ok but consider, dear misanthrope, that humans are amazing. i love humans so much. they are very dear to me and i believe that intelligence does not make one more or less evil, but more capable of both good and evil. it means they are capable of expressions of extraordinary kindness, or immeasurable evil, and yet choose the better. you say human nature is selfish, i say that i’ve seen selflessness beyond measure in the reflection of a child in the eyes of its parent. i see fathers teaching children how to dance. i see siblings, not of blood but of love, sheltering each other is harsh times. i see the sorrow of a man realising his mistakes. i see the trust between two friends. i see a rainbow of love and affection in infinite hues, and i cannot imagine a world without such colour.

yes. humans do spawn suffering. but it is the greys and whites of the canvas that let us see the colours of the paint. it is the suffering caused by the few that lets us see the compassion of the many.

[manicassandra]

Nothing makes me more angry (at the moment) than modern news. It seems every aspect of the industry has lost all respect for itself and the reader, becoming some miserable greedy shell of its former self wrapped in corporate shame and pity. From the very beginning aspect, the collection of information, it is laden with sensationalisation and yellow journalism rather than accurate or well paced information (see: the entire profession of paparazzi). And from a consumer perspective, it has equally miserable experience.

First, you search up a topic of discussion, a thousand more controversial and attention grabbing suggestions filling the search bar before you can even read what you want. Then, a hundred news titles designed to grab attention rather than inform, taking radical political views optimised to either enrage or satisfy your priori. Then, clicking on the first link, it gives little information, instead being a hollow title, followed by a link to a main page inviting you to view more ads just to learn what you came there for. Then, a thousand ads all designed to trigger your anxieties, your worries, before answering them with shitty AI-generated images and gonzo-journalism titles that sell you A New Product To Kill Your Belly Fat This Time We Swear. Unsatisfied, you click the next link, only to find the entire article blocked by a subscription window. But don’t worry! You have a suspiciously short-timed promo deal to give 50% off, which seems to oddly reset each time you visit the website.

I’m just saying that for an industry centred around informing people, arguable one of the most decisive and important ones in the current system of society and governance we exist in, it’s a pretty a shit one.

[manicassandra]

you know chasing some ideal form of yourself always seems like a sisyphean endeavour you can never be satisfied with yourself because of the very nature of the self. it is a gestalt of perceptions, you are a superstate that collapses into how others choose to see you. the only colours that show on the chameleon are the ones youre looking at. stop seeking this monolithic idea of a better you because these goods and bads are the colours other (and you!) cast on the canvas of your actions. you are no better than the colour they choose to see you as. in the end, seeking a self youre happy with is seeking a perception others have of you that satisfies you, which is tragically out of your control. sure, you can find new people, do new actions, but how they interpret and feel about your actions is ultimately a consequence of their life and experiences, nothing more.

the idea of becoming a better person implies that there is such a thing as good or bad people. there is no such thing. only what society deems they want the most. morals are at best a survival instinct and at worst a tool used by those who claim to be greater than you to control you. the true beauty of the self, of interpretation, and of morals, is that they are unique to you. every single experience youve ever had cascading into a beautiful web of beliefs and connections in your mind, every aspect of your past dictating every aspect of your future. your morals are unique to you, as is the same with every mind in existence, and as such seeking an endeavour such as perfection in the minds of everyone is simply not possible.

You are what everyone sees you to be, and you can't be perfect in everyone's eyes. So stop chasing that ideal self, and learn to love what you are now.

[manicassandra]

you know its not hard to take the idea of death of the author and realise that its not some tragic modern phenomenon but a integral aspect of art and actually quite beautiful

The more I consume my tailored algorithmically perfected content designed to create reactions and opinions the more I see art, artists, and (rather dreadfully) art "critiques" pop up on my feed. I hate seeing critiques because their very existence offends art as a concept.

If you boil it down, really boil it down, art is the use of one's skill, time, and dedication to evoke something, either it be the communication of an idea or the sharing of a feeling, within the audience. A medium by which one can speak to many. And the beautiful thing about it, is that is entirely up to your interpretation. Anything derived from it is wholly subjective and simply a gestalt of all your past influences processed into your analytical processes consuming the stimuli in front of you. All art is both a communication in the present, and echoes of the past.

This is all to say that the beauty of art comes from its subjectivity, and not some intended or "true" meaning. That is all to say that implying that someone might be somehow more correct about their interpretations than another person is pretentious, wrong, and killing art as we know it simultaneously. You've got younger artists now complaining about how people too their art and found their own meaning with it, as if somehow what they intended behind their art matters more than how it affected someone else.

FURTHERMORE, I hate hate hate hate hate hate it when I see people, either they be critiques or other artists putting down abstract, performance, or otherwise alternative artists for their work calling it not art. IT IS ART. SOMEONE PUT TIME AND EFFORT INTO MAKING A THING THAT EVOKES SOMETHING. THAT IS ART. YOU DO NOT COME INTO A PADDOCK AND COMPLAIN OF THE CHICKENS.

Just because you're butthurt about how they aren't fitting into your idea of how artists do art doesn't mean you should put them down for it or say that its bad art.

ADDENDUM:

STOP TAPING BANANAS TO WALLS LIKE YOUVE DONE SOMETHING. YOURE NOT WITTY FOR GOING TO A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE FIND MEANING IN ABSTRACT THINGS, PLACING AN ABSTRACT THING THERE, AND THEN LAUGHING AT THEM FOR APPRECIATING IT.

IF ANYTHING ITS KIND OF MISERABLE “HAHA LOOK AT THESE LOSERS FINDING MEANING IN SOMETHING THAT THEY WOULD OTHERWISE NOT APPRECIATE AS MUCH” AS IF MEANING WASNT ALREADY UNIQUE TO AND PROPERTY OF EACH PERSON WHO SEES ANYTHING MEANING THAT WHETHER OR NOT THE CREATOR MEANT ANYTHING BY IT THE FOUND MEANING IS JUST AS VALID AND BEAUTIFUL

MAYBE IF YOU TRIED FINDING THE BEAUTY IN MORE EVERYDAY THINGS YOU WOULD SPEND MORE TIME ENJOYING WHAT LITTLE TIME WE AS A SPECIES HAVE ON THIS MISERABLE ROCK RATHER THAN MAKING FUN OF PEOPLE AT AN ART GALLERY INTERPRETING AND MAKING ART YOU PUTAIN

[manicassandra]

Back on my political bs but this time it matters

Every time you, yes you, person the algorithms of the internet, either it be directly or indirectly, has led you to idiots like myself, need to pull it together. Stop making shitty 5 videos and shorts on social media saying meaningless trite like "All men are evil" or "He got in an accident, ick" because regardless of how little care or how much irony is saturated in your media, it will still have consequences.

I don't know if you realised this yet but people like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and especially Andrew Tate are parasitic monsters that feed off of vulnerable and confused young men, especially the ones who see videos calling them monsters, rapists, or dangerous for the sin of being born a certain sex, or insulting their masculinity for the sake of a few views. People like that are hurt and confused and turn to the hyper-masculine traditionalist idols like Andrew Tate for support and guidance.

Because inherently, regardless of how strange it may sound masculinity is a culture, one you offend whenever you make fun of those who participate in it. Is it often an unhealthy one? Yes. But that doesn't justify insulting people who often have no choice in joining in on the train of masculinity. If you really want to criticise toxic masculinity and its dangers, do so. Don't instead feel the need to insult and mock people.

[manicassandra]

Thinking about the intense irony of "sigma" and other right-wing hypermasculine online circles adopting Patrick Bateman and by extension Christian Bale as a figurehead for their grindsets and ideals. Not only is there an inherent irony in the adopting of a serial killer "psycho" as a representative for the ideal form of these individuals, but also by adopting Bateman as some "sigma male" it is also highlighting the fact that none of these people watched American Psycho or did not read the slightest into the tones and themes of it.

At it's core, American Psycho is a criticism and parody of the womanizing, greedy, and dangerous psychology of people who equate self-worth to monetary value and seek validation and respect above all else in a male-dominated capitalist society. In other words, it's a criticism of that kind of "Sigma male grindsets to become a millionaire in a year and get chicks" (I hate that I just wrote that) philosophy and sphere of thinking (though that particular sphere didn't exist or at least wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is in the 20's but it sought to criticise the time's equivalents of that thinking).

So I just find it particularly ironic that these people chose out of every male figure in media the character who is a caricature of their psychology, in a movie that criticises said psychology, played by a guy who wore makeup.

I mean sure it's kicking a dead horse since that entire world of thinking and buzz words has died in recent years and with it this gross misrepresentation of American Psycho due to the ever-hungry ever-moving void that is cringe anti-culture behaviour but these kinds of world views have and will persist in newer forms, like motivational speakers like the Tate brothers. It's part an ironic look back at past world views, but also a clear sign that these kinds of predatory and dangerous opinions and equations of money to importance will always twist worldviews and media in order to convince young and vulnerable men of both a heinous opposition and an unattainable ideal form (though only attainable through their new premium service, of course) in order to radicalise them and optimise the profit produced from them

peepoo no one reads these but uhh if you did i think thats neat that you decided to fully read my entire babble about an already dead form of opinions and the inherent irony within and if anyone says "oh media can be interpeted how you want it art is up to interpretation" shut up jurassic park is a feminist film fuck you and maybe you shouldn't idealise a serial killer just saying how do you shrug through a text google now hellp