satire is a collective sedative
Satire is a creative superpower that has the ability to liberate us from the status quo, but our overreliance on it has turned it into a collective sedative.
satire is a collective sedative
There are obvious downsides to this line of thinking. It’s anti-intellectual, for one. But also, the incessant caricaturing and dumbing down of major life events numbs us to their significance. If a meme pokes fun at someone’s bad behaviour, it gives the bad behaviour a pass. Through our rapid meme-fication and IJBOLing, we obfuscate the evil of th... See more
Have We Lost Our Minds?
She’s not wrong. In recent years, I’ve noticed that, as a culture, we struggle to engage sincerely with art – or with life (at least, that’s how it seems online). I first observed this in 2016 when Donald Trump ran for president; his actions and comments were defanged as he was endlessly memed because no one thought he’d actually win. I saw it afte... See more
Halima Jibril • Ethel Cain says we are in an irony epidemic – is she right?
There are countless examples of how we turn everything into a meme or a joke online. Musician Ethel Cain (Hayden Silas Anhedönia) has noticed this too, ranting on Tumblr earlier this week about how “nobody takes anything seriously anymore“. “It makes me feel so crazy and annoyed because I am constantly bombarded by jokes,” she wrote. The now-delete... See more
Halima Jibril • Ethel Cain says we are in an irony epidemic – is she right?
A client and I were recently analysing the surprising success of the canned water brand Liquid Death, now valued at over $700 million. In case you’re not familiar with it, Liquid Death is notable because the entire brand is essentially one big joke – it’s water (obviously a pure and healthy substance), presented in a “dangerous” heavy metal kind of... See more
alex • Taste: The secret ingredient - Basic Arts
It feels like there’s been a dimming of our imagination and even of possibility. Are we somehow becoming less creative?
The New York Times • The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You | NYT Opinion
What if there’s nothing we can do,
and we’re just stuck in a creatively stagnant era? Well, stagnation can lead to explosive change. The Renaissance in Northern Europe came after war, the Black Death, and religious turmoil. The Harlem Renaissance of the ‘20s and ‘30s sprang out of segregation and poverty. The counterculture movement of the ‘60s erup
... See moreThe New York Times • The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You | NYT Opinion
To insulate ourselves from these seemingly guaranteed failures, Millennials, and Gen Z after us, adopted irony as a cultural strategy. Irony allowed us to continue life under late capitalism while psychologically sheltering ourselves from the demoralizing reality. Irony as culture became: “The band I like will inevitably sell out, so I might as wel
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