There's a number of takeaways we can come out of this essay with, but I want to focus on the anecdote about those kids rolling their eyes at that weirdo they were made to watch. Something I've been hearing constantly over the last few years is how screwed we are going into the future because kids are going to end up totally warped by all this stuff. Yeah, maybe. It's impossible to fully see into the future, so who knows how things could go?
Personally, I don't buy that, and pictures and anecdotes like the ones you showed are why. I've had a few talks with some of my friends about this who don't agree with me. Hell, one of my very closest friends, practically a brother to me, has tried to counter me by saying, "I don't know, dude, these kids laugh their asses off at shit like skibbidy toilet," as if he and I didn't find the dumbass shit we came up with in our late teens fucking hilarious. For the sake of everyone's sanity and stomachs, I won't get into it in public. Suffice it to say there were many jokes, rants, and rambles about genitalia, bodily fluids, dead things, and just about anything and everything else that could be seen as bawdy, edgy, over-the-top, and just flat out disgusting in the mid 00's to early 10's.
Anyway, my point is this: the kids aren't in the best place today. They're not, and nobody with a sliver of sense would argue they are. But even so, I think the kids are, for the most part, alright. They don't often buy into this crap. They certainly don't enjoy it. Much of the time, they find it every bit as stupid and cringe inducing as it is, and all we need to do to see that is seek out a few of the myriad examples. I can't tell you how many times I've seen entire classrooms full of kids groan when some ideologically captured teacher tries to pivot their lesson plan into unrelated leftism. I've seen at least half a dozen instances of said classrooms - not just one or two kids, but the majority of the entire class - flat out laughing at and ignoring their teachers when they threaten them all with detention for not listening. And then we have examples like what you shared, where the boys in that picture would very obviously rather be just about anywhere else than watching some barely dressed behemoth act like a public pervert in a bid for attention so desperate that it's more childish than the literal children who are cringing at her.
We still need to keep our eyes on them. We still need to do our part to ensure the children in our lives, be they our sons and daughters or nieces and nephews, are able to grow in a healthy and stable manner. But we needn't pearl clutch, and we needn't succumb to doom and gloom. The kids still need adults with sense in their lives, but they're also alright.
Children occupy a weird, almost bipolar place in the American psyche, where common consensus seems to be both "We need to be hypervigilant about what our kids consume and monitor them at all hours of the day" and also "Kids have agency and can be allowed to do whatever they want and decide what gender they are before they know how to spell their name". Usually, the right gets accused of being the latter, but anyone who's ever read a neo-liberal thinkpiece knows that card-carrying progressives are just as prone to pearl-clutching over good-looking women (as in the Stellar Blade controversy), misogyny, racism, and all that kind of stuff in the media their children consume. They laugh at right-wingers who got mad about the Blue's Clue's pride episode with drag queens, but these are the same people who won't let their kids watch fucking Paw Patrol because it's fascist, pro-police propaganda, so it really isn't something exclusive to one side or the other.
That being said, I'm of the opinion that kids will always suss out material that they won't understand or shouldn't watch and, obviously, I am not condoning ever knowingly exposing them to that kind of media, either. Like I said, whoever took those kids to that "art exhibit" (not that it could rightly be called such a thing) should absolutely be held to account for what happened. But, I also feel like children have a way of figuring things out on their own. I'm not a parent, so it's easy for me to say this, but I think we just have to raise them right and trust that we equip them with the tools and knowledge to work these things out on their own when they see them, since, no matter how much we try to hide them from the world, the world will always find them, sooner or later. And if you don't, and go out of your way to shield them from things... well, whenever I get to the inevitable titanic, fifteen-part mega-series on the Furry Fandom, it'll be filled with examples of people who were overly sheltered as children who encountered the real world utterly unequipped for it. Two words can sum it up - Chris-chan. And if you don't know who that is... one day, we'll get to it. One day.
As for Skibidi Toilet - I think a lot of older kids who find that funny find it ironically so. I know I do. Maybe I shouldn't, but when I hear that "Skibidi Ohio Rizz" bullshit it does make me laugh at the absurdity of it all. I'm not sure about the impact of it on younger kids, sure, but a twelve-year old laughing at youtube videos of a singing head in a toilet is no different, as you said, from the dumbass nonsense Garry's Mod videos me and my friends found to be peak comedy at the same age.
Not only are left-wingers just as prone to hyperpolicing "problematic" media, they also seem to be more than happy to all but imprison their kids inside in the name of "safety". The "sure, kids have agency" thing seems to be about gender issues only. And really, is it actually giving them agency when the idea is that they were the other gender all along and basically don't have any choice but to transition? At least from my non-American perspective looking in. Anyway, I think the whole safety obsession is a clear example that something went desperately wrong with our culture somewhere over the last few decades. George Monbiot did some incisive pieces about that way back, before he became all about synthetic meat and crusading against farming.
Thankfully things aren't as extreme over here, and it's still fairly common for kids to be allowed to have a life unsupervised outside the house. That said, there seems to be an ever increasing draw towards organizing every second of their existence too, so as with many things we seem to be about 15 years behind the US. (Of course it helps that our infrastructure isn't as absurdly car-centric too)
As another non-parent, I also suspect you're right in your wider point. Like I said in an earlier comment, I think being too rigid about things will only present an ideal forbidden fruit and target to rebel against. Teach them to think critically and find their own truth, rather than force-feeding them an agenda.
And talk about teasing with that comment about a furry mega-series, haha. Not to mention Chris-chan. Now there's a blast from the past. I was wondering if you'd ever get around to him. Since I stopped following his antics years ago I have no idea what he's up to these days, and I'm not sure if I dare to know...(I do know he apparently declared himself to be trans at one point, because of course he would). And yes, I know the whole thing is basically bullying a deeply mentally ill person, but I have to admit I sometimes randomly think about his dad ordering him to cut down the internet or him sending the "tobaccy" in a rocket to the sun and chuckle anyway. What a magnificent and tragic internet rabbit hole. (Also also, I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that this guy was awarded a driver's license and left unsupervised in traffic somehow)
I grew up in the "stranger danger" - we were almost never allowed outside unsupervised. It wasn't until I was fourteen or fifteen that I was able to go ride my bike to another neighborhood, and this was in a safe, very insulated and very large neighborhood with a frequent police presence where the worst crime was speeding. Then again, I also had no one that lived around me that was my age (or gender) I could walk to see until I was around that age, so I didn't have much reason to do anything like that before, either. The point is, a handful of ghoulish crimes which, of course, are tragic and horrible, colored the American public's perception and scared the fuck out of the parents of an entire generation into keeping kids in the house. I don't blame the parents - they only knew what the media at the time told them, so if I hold anyone responsible, it's the media, who had a vested interest in beaming fear porn into the public's eyes to turn a profit. Which is exactly what they still do. The advent of TikTok and true crime polluting the minds of suburban white moms everywhere into thinking every person they come across is a serial killer, I suspect it's gotten even worse.
I've been keeping up with Chris-chan since the beginning and I don't know if there's anything I could say about him that hasn't been said a dozen different ways already, or do it better than that one soul who's on the Quixotic quest to compile it all into a documentary (which as of now has like over eighty parts and probably runs ten hours). But I'd still like to try. Needless to say, it's only gotten ten times worse. While I'd say that, yes, it is basically bullying a profoundly unwell person, most of his worst decisions are wholly his own made without the influence of trolls. With or without them pushing and prodding him, he'd still be making a public fool of himself. Would he be doing exactly the same things? Probably not. But Chris-chan is the perfect example of someone who's simply unable to make good choices, and the fact that there's hundreds of thousands of autistic people who manage to live successful, functional lives while he continues to spiral the drain is proof of it.
Probably not the post to get into it, but the whole true crime thing is so baffling to me. I mean, I get it to an extent. People have always been drawn to the morbid, compare "penny dreadfuls" back in the nineteenth century, etc. There's still something about choosing to wallow in these awful crimes that doesn't sit well with me, though. Especially when it seems to be some weird combination of obsessive and light entertainment for a lot of people.
As for Chris-chan, I for one would be happy to see you try. While many people have recounted the basic facts, I think your blend of humor and sincerity would work well for it. Plus, you're good at translating arcane internet culture into more universally applicable themes, and in general tend to have more substance than many of the comparable pundits. Secondarily, you touch on another important reason with the "probably runs ten hours" bit.
I'll spare you a second rant, but after reading your Sam and Cat entries I watched some of those Quenton Reviews (or whatever he calls the channel) videos about it. They were informative to an extent, and he did have some thoughtful points, but in the end I was left wondering once more why everything has to be video these days. Especially if they're not going to take advantage of the medium. 95% of it is either a guy talking into a camera or muted clips of the show. Very little would be lost by making it a series of written articles, which would take a fraction of the time to read. Unlike your stuff, the analysis to recapping ratio is also really bad. Or: yes, much of it has been said, but how much has been said in essay form rather than overly long-winded videos? :P
(And since I'm replying here, hope you have a good trans-Atlantic trip!)
I have a future series on a particular true crime case coming up that goes a little in depth into the larger "true crime community" and podcast phenomenon.I get it, too - I indulge in it every now and then, but at the same time, as you said, wallowing is the problem. It's bad for the mind and the soul to dwell on that kind of stuff for too long. Where I have a real problem is how the fandom around it - and it really is a fandom - makes such a lurid, sensationalized spectacle of very real crimes that happened to very real victims, most of whom have very real family that cope with very real consequences of having a loved one taken from them prematurely under possibly the worst circumstances a person can face. So many of them handle the story with zero respect to the victims and treat them like slasher flick synopses, and end up making the killers out to be some sort of rock star movie villain than the subhumans they actually are. It's difficult to tolerate, but I think the wider impact on the mental health of people who consume that content is both deleterious to themselves and everyone around them. I always go back to a friend who sold his house at the behest of his wife because she spooked herself so bad listening to true crime podcasts that she was convinced their house was "too vulnerable to intruders". That's some pretty severe brainrot, in my opinion.
You make a valid point about videos over essays. I will say that Quinton Reviews has been an invaluable source of information for this series. His video about Dan Schneider in particular served as a lot of the basis of my information about it, though I've done a lot of other research into the topic so I won't end up just regurgitating the same information he presents. If nothing else, the sources he cites are much the same I've been using (outside of combing forums, fan wikis, and reddit); as it turns out, there's only so many sources about Dan Schneider and his work that exist, so it does kind of end up with us fishing in the same pond, if that makes sense. I have a lot of opportunity to sit and listen to videos at work, which means I can just put on his eight hour screeds on Victorious or whatever and soak in the information. He's a lot more thorough than I am, but I also don't feel the need to be as overly comprehensive as he does, though, I won't lie; I find his scrutiny of even the minutae to be informative. What value that evaluation provides, since it is about a ten-year old teen sitcom, is debatable, but still. Quinton himself is... well, I don't think we'd get along all that well, but I have to commend his work ethic.
And thank you. It's my first time in Europe - returning to the mothership, as my friend called it. I'm not going to Norway or anywhere that far north, but one day I'd like to make it out there.
Huh, expect Schneider and get Eurovision, I guess. Maybe they should have done a Victorious special episode. :) Anyway, considering you have a thing for Finland, I also expected Lordi to feature in that mini-lineup of famous past acts. I remember that was a pretty big thing here at the time, at least. Personally I'm deeply out of the loop on this, since I honestly couldn't care much less about Eurovision. I'm not surprised to hear it's become...what it's become.
As for the "yearning for normalcy" thing, that one gave me some pause. In one sense I get the sentiment for sure, and I think you're right that many people feel this way. The problem is that these events, Eurovision and Olympic, confer so much prestige and legitimacy on the hosting country, and I can also see how that sticks in the craw of many when literal wars are involved. Or: maybe this just proves your point even more. When every trivial little stupid thing has been so politicized, people are too exhausted to care when it's about actual weighty issues for once. I think this decoupling from the issues would be easier for me to accept if the whole thing wasn't so framed in terms of nation states to begin with, but more focused on the individuals and their art and/or sport in a more neutral way.
I guess this is also the place for a mini-rant I've been thinking about for a while, haha. I'll come right out and say it: "non-binary" really is such a bullshit identity, isn't it? Not only is it not at all transgressive, like you point out in the essay. It's also a perfect way to place yourself in the matrix of the Blessedly Oppressed at no personal cost, by a simple declaration. At least gender dysphoria is an actual thing. And even now, committing to living as the other gender comes with real social, financial and physical costs, even without the full surgical package. Why put up with all that when you can simply declare yourself "non-binary", let the more fervent ideologues occasionally call you "they" while everyone else uses your old pronoun that matches your body, and otherwise keep living as you were, just with a few extra Diversity Points?
Other than the naked opportunism, there's another aspect that bothers me here. It's related to JMG's concept (via Vico) of the Barbarism of Reflection, and how the managerial class and academics reduce everything to abstractions. That is, by declaring yourself "non-binary", you're extending the ol' physical world a big middle finger. You declare that you're far too good to deal with physical limits like your body. It's not even about swapping one set of limits for another, as in gender dysphoria. It's a way of saying your abstractions are more important than nature, which does irk me a bit in its audacity. Or: you can't make the physical aspect of your being go away by refusing to acknowledge it. It also feeds into the annoying trend that there doesn't seem to be room for androgynous men or masculine women within the traditional gender structure anymore.
Then again, there's another way to see it. I guess it's just young people being young people, throwing themselves onto a trend carousel to be with the Current Hip Thing. Of course it looks silly to those of us closer to 40 than 30. That's probably most of the point. In the end it's mostly harmless posturing they'll grow out of, and the positive flip side of this having no cost is that you can drop it at any time, unlike, say, a tattoo. It's more like a garment you can slip out of when you're no longer a rebellious teen or college student. I do find it pretty embarrassing and cringy when anyone born before 2000 claims to be "non-binary", though. To me it's a Zoomer thing through and through, just like how, say, no one in my generation could truthfully claim to be a hippie. Anyway, thanks for indulging me in this rant, haha.
Unfortunately, the ultimate end of the Bakeryverse will be delayed until next month. I was hoping to wrap it up before this, but I'm going abroad soon and I won't have time to work on anything while I'm gone. To make sure it gets done right, and I have time to do the research I need to do (which I'm highly considering collecting and reviewing my sources and just taking notes while on the ride across the Atlantic), it'll have to wait until I return. So, until then... yeah. "Topical" articles, if you can really consider this "topical" weeks after Eurovision ended. Also, never heard of Lordi before, but listening to them now... I would not be surprised if they're one of Ghost's biggest inspirations. I appreciate Scandinavians keeping the art of good old fashioned hard rock alive, since over here the only "rock" band to make waves is Imagine Dragons. Who I would be very hard pressed to even call rock.
I understand where you're coming from about the decoupling of these events from politics and the nation states. There is an argument to be made that perhaps Golan would have been slightly more warmly received had she not come out draped in an Israeli flag.
As for the non-binary rant, I can't think of anything you said I disagree with. One of the most grating things about it is that so many that claim to be non-binary still present themselves in traditionally gender-coded ways. Nemo wears a dress and has fake nails but he's still demonstrably masculine presenting in almost every other way. The same goes for Bambi Thug, who is still female presenting. I've seen more and more people say they're "non-binary" and simply do nothing to change the way they present, and just say, "Oh, yeah, I'm non-binary". It's like people who say they're trans and do nothing to present as the gender they say they are. To me, it's just a cheap, easy way to "get into the in-crowd", like you said. There's no real blurring of gender roles, associations, or androgyny. It's very low effort. Also, yes, I agree one of the most pernicious aspects of this is that by trying to "deconstruct gender", these people have inadvertently cemented certain things as gender coded. Gender is a made up social construct... but if you wear a dress, you ARE a woman. If you're a man who dislikes sports or traditionally masculine things, well, that must mean you're a woman. Vice versa for women who dislike traditionally feminine things. The funny thing is that it comes back around to bite homosexuals, too. If "liking a man" makes you a woman, then what is a homosexual man? I have a gay friend who's explained it all to me in ways that I can't in a simple comment, but he says that the pressure for young gay men to transition is not insignificant, which only ends up making an already unenviable situation all the more complicated for people in it.
If gender is a social construct, then why do the very things these people claim "don't define gender" like fashion and colors and hobbies DO define gender? It's all very puzzling, but I also think that's a feature, not a bug. It's meant to be confusing. It's meant to be disorienting. It's meant to be so full of loop-holes and mental gymnastics that more scrutinous people just throw up their hands, give up, and say, "Okay." There's no coherent logic to it. I do hope - and to an extent, I also think - it's largely a passing fad that will change as time goes on. I knew plenty of girls who had their "lesbian phase" in college and grew out of it. I know much fewer men who've dabbled in male partners but I'm sure it happens, too. A lot of it is the social pressure to conform, and since playing with sexuality is the "it thing" for the younger generation, it's no wonder so many of them bend over backwards to accommodate it. Like I said - social pressure is still a huge influence on people's behaviors, especially young people who are both in the physical panopticon of the modern education system, and, worse, the digital panopticon of social media.
Wise advice for this monocle-popped pearl-clutcher. The good, true and beautiful are things I intend to put on display, but it <i>is </i>better simply to laugh at vice.
Vice, I think, is a self-correcting issue over time. Left to their own devices, they'll always implode, and we are indeed better served pursuing our own good while they do so.
I feel like basically every large scale entertainment event, these days, is a celebration of our descent into the wasteland of culture death.
And I think Prester John gets it exactly right: An emotional overreaction only fuels these idiots. Ignore them and seek out the sources of spiritual renewal.
"one of the chief reasons for American society’s agonizingly slow burn-out is the lack of a fika, tea time, siestas, smoko"
You need to be napping two to three hours a day. You need a ten part tea set with some posh Chinese blend. You need a whole cuisine based on weird little baked goods consumed in the lazy hours of the afternoon. You need to always be siestamaxxing. (I've been reading too much NRP.)
But you're absolutely right. We do need to be napping two or three hours a day. We do need to be siestamaxxing. Humans literally evolved to take naps. We live a fundamentally unnatural lifestyle by not, at the very least, just "chilling the fuck out" in the middle of the day, and I would be so bold as to argue that's half the reason America is... well, like it is. It's work, work, work, with no break, and you get your weird little baked good and posh Chinese blend when you die.
Maybe.
Truly, we live in a fundamentally inhumane society.
I’d also like to mention that the 1998 Eurovision winner was Dana International, an Israeli pop diva who was more of an “old school transsexual” type who probably identified closer to drag queens than biological women.
The English version of her winning song is a bop, btw:
I understand. I remember seeing watching of the Nanny on Nick at Nite when I was young because I'd be at my grandparent's house and it was basically the only thing on. Most of it flew over my head but I think Fran Drescher had a non-negligible influence on my taste in women as a result.
Apart from one particularly gruesome semester where I fell in with the art hoe crowd in uni, I can proudly say I've never watched a Eurovision competition. Even then, it was mediocre slop mixed with the most sanitary kind of "transgression"; I can't imagine how bad it is now.
Beginning to come around to Neil Postman's idea that television itself was a massive cultural mistake
I'm inclined to agree with that myself, especially as I continue to dig into the dirty dealings of studios both presently and previously. Unbelievable levels of misconduct on every level. I'd take it a step further and say that I'm not sure a society can even truly function with something like television in its midst. I don't think television, like any technology, is inherently bad, but clearly we've demonstrated that we aren't ready to handle it.
Great article, and another fascinating deep dive. I tend to agree that a lot of people are feeling oversaturated and looking for the refreshingly normal and wholesome; like a baked chicken breast after binging on cotton candy. Thank you!
At this point, people overdosing on this material need to be force-fed something green and leafy just to detox the heavy metal poisoning they've contracted watching this trash ;)
How could I not when you so succinctly and poetically encapsulated all that I sought to say in a phrase? Again, I have no idea why it wouldn't let me tag you proper, though. Just another one of those "Funny" (read: debilitating) UI issues on this site.
All very true. There’s nothing more tiresome than someone trying to be transgressive by poking the corpse of hegemonic cultural Christianity.
I was very on board with this article until you got Karma Chameleon stuck in my head.
You love it. You know you love it.
There's a number of takeaways we can come out of this essay with, but I want to focus on the anecdote about those kids rolling their eyes at that weirdo they were made to watch. Something I've been hearing constantly over the last few years is how screwed we are going into the future because kids are going to end up totally warped by all this stuff. Yeah, maybe. It's impossible to fully see into the future, so who knows how things could go?
Personally, I don't buy that, and pictures and anecdotes like the ones you showed are why. I've had a few talks with some of my friends about this who don't agree with me. Hell, one of my very closest friends, practically a brother to me, has tried to counter me by saying, "I don't know, dude, these kids laugh their asses off at shit like skibbidy toilet," as if he and I didn't find the dumbass shit we came up with in our late teens fucking hilarious. For the sake of everyone's sanity and stomachs, I won't get into it in public. Suffice it to say there were many jokes, rants, and rambles about genitalia, bodily fluids, dead things, and just about anything and everything else that could be seen as bawdy, edgy, over-the-top, and just flat out disgusting in the mid 00's to early 10's.
Anyway, my point is this: the kids aren't in the best place today. They're not, and nobody with a sliver of sense would argue they are. But even so, I think the kids are, for the most part, alright. They don't often buy into this crap. They certainly don't enjoy it. Much of the time, they find it every bit as stupid and cringe inducing as it is, and all we need to do to see that is seek out a few of the myriad examples. I can't tell you how many times I've seen entire classrooms full of kids groan when some ideologically captured teacher tries to pivot their lesson plan into unrelated leftism. I've seen at least half a dozen instances of said classrooms - not just one or two kids, but the majority of the entire class - flat out laughing at and ignoring their teachers when they threaten them all with detention for not listening. And then we have examples like what you shared, where the boys in that picture would very obviously rather be just about anywhere else than watching some barely dressed behemoth act like a public pervert in a bid for attention so desperate that it's more childish than the literal children who are cringing at her.
We still need to keep our eyes on them. We still need to do our part to ensure the children in our lives, be they our sons and daughters or nieces and nephews, are able to grow in a healthy and stable manner. But we needn't pearl clutch, and we needn't succumb to doom and gloom. The kids still need adults with sense in their lives, but they're also alright.
Children occupy a weird, almost bipolar place in the American psyche, where common consensus seems to be both "We need to be hypervigilant about what our kids consume and monitor them at all hours of the day" and also "Kids have agency and can be allowed to do whatever they want and decide what gender they are before they know how to spell their name". Usually, the right gets accused of being the latter, but anyone who's ever read a neo-liberal thinkpiece knows that card-carrying progressives are just as prone to pearl-clutching over good-looking women (as in the Stellar Blade controversy), misogyny, racism, and all that kind of stuff in the media their children consume. They laugh at right-wingers who got mad about the Blue's Clue's pride episode with drag queens, but these are the same people who won't let their kids watch fucking Paw Patrol because it's fascist, pro-police propaganda, so it really isn't something exclusive to one side or the other.
That being said, I'm of the opinion that kids will always suss out material that they won't understand or shouldn't watch and, obviously, I am not condoning ever knowingly exposing them to that kind of media, either. Like I said, whoever took those kids to that "art exhibit" (not that it could rightly be called such a thing) should absolutely be held to account for what happened. But, I also feel like children have a way of figuring things out on their own. I'm not a parent, so it's easy for me to say this, but I think we just have to raise them right and trust that we equip them with the tools and knowledge to work these things out on their own when they see them, since, no matter how much we try to hide them from the world, the world will always find them, sooner or later. And if you don't, and go out of your way to shield them from things... well, whenever I get to the inevitable titanic, fifteen-part mega-series on the Furry Fandom, it'll be filled with examples of people who were overly sheltered as children who encountered the real world utterly unequipped for it. Two words can sum it up - Chris-chan. And if you don't know who that is... one day, we'll get to it. One day.
As for Skibidi Toilet - I think a lot of older kids who find that funny find it ironically so. I know I do. Maybe I shouldn't, but when I hear that "Skibidi Ohio Rizz" bullshit it does make me laugh at the absurdity of it all. I'm not sure about the impact of it on younger kids, sure, but a twelve-year old laughing at youtube videos of a singing head in a toilet is no different, as you said, from the dumbass nonsense Garry's Mod videos me and my friends found to be peak comedy at the same age.
Oh man...I see Chris-chan in there, and I quake with fear. That's going to be one hell of a dive.
Not only are left-wingers just as prone to hyperpolicing "problematic" media, they also seem to be more than happy to all but imprison their kids inside in the name of "safety". The "sure, kids have agency" thing seems to be about gender issues only. And really, is it actually giving them agency when the idea is that they were the other gender all along and basically don't have any choice but to transition? At least from my non-American perspective looking in. Anyway, I think the whole safety obsession is a clear example that something went desperately wrong with our culture somewhere over the last few decades. George Monbiot did some incisive pieces about that way back, before he became all about synthetic meat and crusading against farming.
Thankfully things aren't as extreme over here, and it's still fairly common for kids to be allowed to have a life unsupervised outside the house. That said, there seems to be an ever increasing draw towards organizing every second of their existence too, so as with many things we seem to be about 15 years behind the US. (Of course it helps that our infrastructure isn't as absurdly car-centric too)
As another non-parent, I also suspect you're right in your wider point. Like I said in an earlier comment, I think being too rigid about things will only present an ideal forbidden fruit and target to rebel against. Teach them to think critically and find their own truth, rather than force-feeding them an agenda.
And talk about teasing with that comment about a furry mega-series, haha. Not to mention Chris-chan. Now there's a blast from the past. I was wondering if you'd ever get around to him. Since I stopped following his antics years ago I have no idea what he's up to these days, and I'm not sure if I dare to know...(I do know he apparently declared himself to be trans at one point, because of course he would). And yes, I know the whole thing is basically bullying a deeply mentally ill person, but I have to admit I sometimes randomly think about his dad ordering him to cut down the internet or him sending the "tobaccy" in a rocket to the sun and chuckle anyway. What a magnificent and tragic internet rabbit hole. (Also also, I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that this guy was awarded a driver's license and left unsupervised in traffic somehow)
I grew up in the "stranger danger" - we were almost never allowed outside unsupervised. It wasn't until I was fourteen or fifteen that I was able to go ride my bike to another neighborhood, and this was in a safe, very insulated and very large neighborhood with a frequent police presence where the worst crime was speeding. Then again, I also had no one that lived around me that was my age (or gender) I could walk to see until I was around that age, so I didn't have much reason to do anything like that before, either. The point is, a handful of ghoulish crimes which, of course, are tragic and horrible, colored the American public's perception and scared the fuck out of the parents of an entire generation into keeping kids in the house. I don't blame the parents - they only knew what the media at the time told them, so if I hold anyone responsible, it's the media, who had a vested interest in beaming fear porn into the public's eyes to turn a profit. Which is exactly what they still do. The advent of TikTok and true crime polluting the minds of suburban white moms everywhere into thinking every person they come across is a serial killer, I suspect it's gotten even worse.
I've been keeping up with Chris-chan since the beginning and I don't know if there's anything I could say about him that hasn't been said a dozen different ways already, or do it better than that one soul who's on the Quixotic quest to compile it all into a documentary (which as of now has like over eighty parts and probably runs ten hours). But I'd still like to try. Needless to say, it's only gotten ten times worse. While I'd say that, yes, it is basically bullying a profoundly unwell person, most of his worst decisions are wholly his own made without the influence of trolls. With or without them pushing and prodding him, he'd still be making a public fool of himself. Would he be doing exactly the same things? Probably not. But Chris-chan is the perfect example of someone who's simply unable to make good choices, and the fact that there's hundreds of thousands of autistic people who manage to live successful, functional lives while he continues to spiral the drain is proof of it.
Probably not the post to get into it, but the whole true crime thing is so baffling to me. I mean, I get it to an extent. People have always been drawn to the morbid, compare "penny dreadfuls" back in the nineteenth century, etc. There's still something about choosing to wallow in these awful crimes that doesn't sit well with me, though. Especially when it seems to be some weird combination of obsessive and light entertainment for a lot of people.
As for Chris-chan, I for one would be happy to see you try. While many people have recounted the basic facts, I think your blend of humor and sincerity would work well for it. Plus, you're good at translating arcane internet culture into more universally applicable themes, and in general tend to have more substance than many of the comparable pundits. Secondarily, you touch on another important reason with the "probably runs ten hours" bit.
I'll spare you a second rant, but after reading your Sam and Cat entries I watched some of those Quenton Reviews (or whatever he calls the channel) videos about it. They were informative to an extent, and he did have some thoughtful points, but in the end I was left wondering once more why everything has to be video these days. Especially if they're not going to take advantage of the medium. 95% of it is either a guy talking into a camera or muted clips of the show. Very little would be lost by making it a series of written articles, which would take a fraction of the time to read. Unlike your stuff, the analysis to recapping ratio is also really bad. Or: yes, much of it has been said, but how much has been said in essay form rather than overly long-winded videos? :P
(And since I'm replying here, hope you have a good trans-Atlantic trip!)
I have a future series on a particular true crime case coming up that goes a little in depth into the larger "true crime community" and podcast phenomenon.I get it, too - I indulge in it every now and then, but at the same time, as you said, wallowing is the problem. It's bad for the mind and the soul to dwell on that kind of stuff for too long. Where I have a real problem is how the fandom around it - and it really is a fandom - makes such a lurid, sensationalized spectacle of very real crimes that happened to very real victims, most of whom have very real family that cope with very real consequences of having a loved one taken from them prematurely under possibly the worst circumstances a person can face. So many of them handle the story with zero respect to the victims and treat them like slasher flick synopses, and end up making the killers out to be some sort of rock star movie villain than the subhumans they actually are. It's difficult to tolerate, but I think the wider impact on the mental health of people who consume that content is both deleterious to themselves and everyone around them. I always go back to a friend who sold his house at the behest of his wife because she spooked herself so bad listening to true crime podcasts that she was convinced their house was "too vulnerable to intruders". That's some pretty severe brainrot, in my opinion.
You make a valid point about videos over essays. I will say that Quinton Reviews has been an invaluable source of information for this series. His video about Dan Schneider in particular served as a lot of the basis of my information about it, though I've done a lot of other research into the topic so I won't end up just regurgitating the same information he presents. If nothing else, the sources he cites are much the same I've been using (outside of combing forums, fan wikis, and reddit); as it turns out, there's only so many sources about Dan Schneider and his work that exist, so it does kind of end up with us fishing in the same pond, if that makes sense. I have a lot of opportunity to sit and listen to videos at work, which means I can just put on his eight hour screeds on Victorious or whatever and soak in the information. He's a lot more thorough than I am, but I also don't feel the need to be as overly comprehensive as he does, though, I won't lie; I find his scrutiny of even the minutae to be informative. What value that evaluation provides, since it is about a ten-year old teen sitcom, is debatable, but still. Quinton himself is... well, I don't think we'd get along all that well, but I have to commend his work ethic.
And thank you. It's my first time in Europe - returning to the mothership, as my friend called it. I'm not going to Norway or anywhere that far north, but one day I'd like to make it out there.
Huh, expect Schneider and get Eurovision, I guess. Maybe they should have done a Victorious special episode. :) Anyway, considering you have a thing for Finland, I also expected Lordi to feature in that mini-lineup of famous past acts. I remember that was a pretty big thing here at the time, at least. Personally I'm deeply out of the loop on this, since I honestly couldn't care much less about Eurovision. I'm not surprised to hear it's become...what it's become.
As for the "yearning for normalcy" thing, that one gave me some pause. In one sense I get the sentiment for sure, and I think you're right that many people feel this way. The problem is that these events, Eurovision and Olympic, confer so much prestige and legitimacy on the hosting country, and I can also see how that sticks in the craw of many when literal wars are involved. Or: maybe this just proves your point even more. When every trivial little stupid thing has been so politicized, people are too exhausted to care when it's about actual weighty issues for once. I think this decoupling from the issues would be easier for me to accept if the whole thing wasn't so framed in terms of nation states to begin with, but more focused on the individuals and their art and/or sport in a more neutral way.
I guess this is also the place for a mini-rant I've been thinking about for a while, haha. I'll come right out and say it: "non-binary" really is such a bullshit identity, isn't it? Not only is it not at all transgressive, like you point out in the essay. It's also a perfect way to place yourself in the matrix of the Blessedly Oppressed at no personal cost, by a simple declaration. At least gender dysphoria is an actual thing. And even now, committing to living as the other gender comes with real social, financial and physical costs, even without the full surgical package. Why put up with all that when you can simply declare yourself "non-binary", let the more fervent ideologues occasionally call you "they" while everyone else uses your old pronoun that matches your body, and otherwise keep living as you were, just with a few extra Diversity Points?
Other than the naked opportunism, there's another aspect that bothers me here. It's related to JMG's concept (via Vico) of the Barbarism of Reflection, and how the managerial class and academics reduce everything to abstractions. That is, by declaring yourself "non-binary", you're extending the ol' physical world a big middle finger. You declare that you're far too good to deal with physical limits like your body. It's not even about swapping one set of limits for another, as in gender dysphoria. It's a way of saying your abstractions are more important than nature, which does irk me a bit in its audacity. Or: you can't make the physical aspect of your being go away by refusing to acknowledge it. It also feeds into the annoying trend that there doesn't seem to be room for androgynous men or masculine women within the traditional gender structure anymore.
Then again, there's another way to see it. I guess it's just young people being young people, throwing themselves onto a trend carousel to be with the Current Hip Thing. Of course it looks silly to those of us closer to 40 than 30. That's probably most of the point. In the end it's mostly harmless posturing they'll grow out of, and the positive flip side of this having no cost is that you can drop it at any time, unlike, say, a tattoo. It's more like a garment you can slip out of when you're no longer a rebellious teen or college student. I do find it pretty embarrassing and cringy when anyone born before 2000 claims to be "non-binary", though. To me it's a Zoomer thing through and through, just like how, say, no one in my generation could truthfully claim to be a hippie. Anyway, thanks for indulging me in this rant, haha.
Unfortunately, the ultimate end of the Bakeryverse will be delayed until next month. I was hoping to wrap it up before this, but I'm going abroad soon and I won't have time to work on anything while I'm gone. To make sure it gets done right, and I have time to do the research I need to do (which I'm highly considering collecting and reviewing my sources and just taking notes while on the ride across the Atlantic), it'll have to wait until I return. So, until then... yeah. "Topical" articles, if you can really consider this "topical" weeks after Eurovision ended. Also, never heard of Lordi before, but listening to them now... I would not be surprised if they're one of Ghost's biggest inspirations. I appreciate Scandinavians keeping the art of good old fashioned hard rock alive, since over here the only "rock" band to make waves is Imagine Dragons. Who I would be very hard pressed to even call rock.
I understand where you're coming from about the decoupling of these events from politics and the nation states. There is an argument to be made that perhaps Golan would have been slightly more warmly received had she not come out draped in an Israeli flag.
As for the non-binary rant, I can't think of anything you said I disagree with. One of the most grating things about it is that so many that claim to be non-binary still present themselves in traditionally gender-coded ways. Nemo wears a dress and has fake nails but he's still demonstrably masculine presenting in almost every other way. The same goes for Bambi Thug, who is still female presenting. I've seen more and more people say they're "non-binary" and simply do nothing to change the way they present, and just say, "Oh, yeah, I'm non-binary". It's like people who say they're trans and do nothing to present as the gender they say they are. To me, it's just a cheap, easy way to "get into the in-crowd", like you said. There's no real blurring of gender roles, associations, or androgyny. It's very low effort. Also, yes, I agree one of the most pernicious aspects of this is that by trying to "deconstruct gender", these people have inadvertently cemented certain things as gender coded. Gender is a made up social construct... but if you wear a dress, you ARE a woman. If you're a man who dislikes sports or traditionally masculine things, well, that must mean you're a woman. Vice versa for women who dislike traditionally feminine things. The funny thing is that it comes back around to bite homosexuals, too. If "liking a man" makes you a woman, then what is a homosexual man? I have a gay friend who's explained it all to me in ways that I can't in a simple comment, but he says that the pressure for young gay men to transition is not insignificant, which only ends up making an already unenviable situation all the more complicated for people in it.
If gender is a social construct, then why do the very things these people claim "don't define gender" like fashion and colors and hobbies DO define gender? It's all very puzzling, but I also think that's a feature, not a bug. It's meant to be confusing. It's meant to be disorienting. It's meant to be so full of loop-holes and mental gymnastics that more scrutinous people just throw up their hands, give up, and say, "Okay." There's no coherent logic to it. I do hope - and to an extent, I also think - it's largely a passing fad that will change as time goes on. I knew plenty of girls who had their "lesbian phase" in college and grew out of it. I know much fewer men who've dabbled in male partners but I'm sure it happens, too. A lot of it is the social pressure to conform, and since playing with sexuality is the "it thing" for the younger generation, it's no wonder so many of them bend over backwards to accommodate it. Like I said - social pressure is still a huge influence on people's behaviors, especially young people who are both in the physical panopticon of the modern education system, and, worse, the digital panopticon of social media.
Wise advice for this monocle-popped pearl-clutcher. The good, true and beautiful are things I intend to put on display, but it <i>is </i>better simply to laugh at vice.
Vice, I think, is a self-correcting issue over time. Left to their own devices, they'll always implode, and we are indeed better served pursuing our own good while they do so.
I feel like basically every large scale entertainment event, these days, is a celebration of our descent into the wasteland of culture death.
And I think Prester John gets it exactly right: An emotional overreaction only fuels these idiots. Ignore them and seek out the sources of spiritual renewal.
"one of the chief reasons for American society’s agonizingly slow burn-out is the lack of a fika, tea time, siestas, smoko"
You need to be napping two to three hours a day. You need a ten part tea set with some posh Chinese blend. You need a whole cuisine based on weird little baked goods consumed in the lazy hours of the afternoon. You need to always be siestamaxxing. (I've been reading too much NRP.)
But you're absolutely right. We do need to be napping two or three hours a day. We do need to be siestamaxxing. Humans literally evolved to take naps. We live a fundamentally unnatural lifestyle by not, at the very least, just "chilling the fuck out" in the middle of the day, and I would be so bold as to argue that's half the reason America is... well, like it is. It's work, work, work, with no break, and you get your weird little baked good and posh Chinese blend when you die.
Maybe.
Truly, we live in a fundamentally inhumane society.
I’d also like to mention that the 1998 Eurovision winner was Dana International, an Israeli pop diva who was more of an “old school transsexual” type who probably identified closer to drag queens than biological women.
The English version of her winning song is a bop, btw:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPksS8QWWY
I also think she’s really pretty since I have a thing for Fran Fine type of gals, but sorry as a sister-of-Sappho I prefer woman-born-woman.
I understand. I remember seeing watching of the Nanny on Nick at Nite when I was young because I'd be at my grandparent's house and it was basically the only thing on. Most of it flew over my head but I think Fran Drescher had a non-negligible influence on my taste in women as a result.
Phew! Long rant. And quite astute.
Thank you. I try to trim down my articles these days, but... some of them still get away from me.
No need to trim! Just keep it rolling out! Typity typity type! And you find some great pix and vids to go with it. Very informative.
Apart from one particularly gruesome semester where I fell in with the art hoe crowd in uni, I can proudly say I've never watched a Eurovision competition. Even then, it was mediocre slop mixed with the most sanitary kind of "transgression"; I can't imagine how bad it is now.
Beginning to come around to Neil Postman's idea that television itself was a massive cultural mistake
I'm inclined to agree with that myself, especially as I continue to dig into the dirty dealings of studios both presently and previously. Unbelievable levels of misconduct on every level. I'd take it a step further and say that I'm not sure a society can even truly function with something like television in its midst. I don't think television, like any technology, is inherently bad, but clearly we've demonstrated that we aren't ready to handle it.
Great article, and another fascinating deep dive. I tend to agree that a lot of people are feeling oversaturated and looking for the refreshingly normal and wholesome; like a baked chicken breast after binging on cotton candy. Thank you!
At this point, people overdosing on this material need to be force-fed something green and leafy just to detox the heavy metal poisoning they've contracted watching this trash ;)
Thanks for reading Jenn, always appreciate you.
😂. Yes!
Ayyy thanks for the shoutout ❤️
How could I not when you so succinctly and poetically encapsulated all that I sought to say in a phrase? Again, I have no idea why it wouldn't let me tag you proper, though. Just another one of those "Funny" (read: debilitating) UI issues on this site.