#cruel optimism

[nonlineardreams]

Cruel optimism is kicking my ass. Like I'm supposed to make peace with everything being horrible and my inability to meaningfully impact change and just be okay with expressing my values through small insignificant actions in the face of immense horror???

[torpiddd]

thank you lauren berlant

[candiditibisoles8]

cruel optimism, berlant

[proustiansleep]

[kewpie-girl]

https://extraextramagazine.com/talk/lauren-berlant-on-intimacy-as-world-making/

[chastitybeltparkway]

It's a kind of inward aggression. It seems like self-contempt, but it's really an inverted contempt for everything. That's what I was trying to describe in her. I would say it had to do with her childhood, not because she was sexually abused, but because the world that she was presented with was so inadequate in terms of giving her a full-spirited sense of herself. That inadequacy can make you implode with a lot of disgust. It can become the gestalt of who you are. So the masochism is like "I'm going to make myself into a debased object because that is what I think of you. This is what I think of your love. I don't want your love. Your love is shit. Your love is nothing.

Interview with Mary Gaitskill 1994

[jacqueslacan]

“To admit your surprising attachments, to trace your transformation over the course of a long (life) sentence, is sentience — that’s what I’ve learned. The pain of paying attention pays me back in the form of eloquence: a sound pleasure.”

Lauren Berlant, “Two Girls, Fat and Thin,” Cruel Optimism

[probablyasocialecologist]

The cruelty of crypto in its promise to revive the American dream | Aeon Essays

Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and loads risk onto the poor

Millennials and Gen Zs were raised to be entrepreneurs of the self, to believe that, if they simply worked and studied hard enough, success and security were waiting in their futures. Failure was a personal blight for refusing to invest their time wisely, for failing to grind hard enough. Post-2008, that dream was shot. You could work and work, but that did not mean that you would have job security and freedom from roommates by your mid-30s. Maybe this was what was meant by burnout culture. In the aftermath of the crash, middle-class people spoke of the death of the dream – the postwar ethos that, if you were willing to work hard enough and play by the rules, upper mobility and success were waiting in your future. If their parents had believed in climbing the ladder and just rewards for their hard work, this path was now closed to their children. These generations are also a product of the speculative environment they were raised in. Most of the day-traders were teenagers or children in the financial crash, or just graduating college. Fledgling adults in the COVID-19 pandemic. Born between the mid-1980s and early 2000s, their identity is shaped by the vacuum of post-communist politics (I, personally, was sent, age five, to a fancy-dress party styled as the Berlin Wall) or shaped by the speculation and excess of the dotcom era, or racked by the uncertainty of the 2008 financial crash. They’ve encountered the death of the American dream (or in Ireland, where I’m from, the optimism of the Celtic Tiger) and felt the withdrawal of the state’s contract in everything from mounting student debt to inferior healthcare to the rising cost of living. The postwar security and investment in public goods like education and housing their grandparents and parents enjoyed has been replaced by volatility and risk. Retail trading forums like WallStreetBets and NFT Discords are spaces where people trade crazy investment advice, but it’s also where they articulate their loss of hope in those same dreams. What replaced the fantasy of the good life? Dreams of prepping for life on Mars or in the metaverse? Of financial security through wild trades, or finding a good man to take care of you so you could leave the hustle behind? And who are these new dreams in service of? If the tale of hard work and upward mobility kept us yoked to our employers and our 9-to-5 jobs, the fantasy of the YOLO investment ‘Lambos or food stamps!’ keeps its subjects attached to the market. To risking it all. And these dreams feed the market, as in the crypto winter of 2021 where many vulnerable investors were left holding the bag, or the post-GameStop frenzy where, despite feelgood stories about David and Goliath, the significant profiteer was the market-maker behind the Robinhood trading app.