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Been thinkin hard lately about American culture. I'm trying to be more fabulous and poo poo, putting my outfits together and looking like a well groomed happy beardo. Figure I'm going to start making / modifying my own clothes. Kind of like a bohemian punk. I found this sweet af poncho from ecualama.com . Recommend checking them out. So that Keffiyeh thread got me thinking about American culture. Like.. What is American culture? Colonization, sure. Pilgrims and poo poo. Okay, so that's kind of cultural touchstone I remember from my youth, though at the time I was more into toys and cartoons and video games. I think when I was really little I was more into inventions and craft. Lego was my poo poo. I made the things but loved inventing and creating my own things. Expansion. Pioneering. Settling. "Manifest Destiny". They taught about that in school. So that's like wagon trains, that kind of thing. I'm from west of the west, so in elementary school we focused a lot on Louis and Clark and the wagon trains. Pretty evil poo poo we taught ourselves was good and admirable. Resource over extraction. The Dust bowl. Destroying the environment itself for just a few more kernels of grain in a crop. The elimination and consolidation of small settler families which at that point may as well have always been there since the new testament. Hawaii you're a state now, by the way. I digress. So what is American culture? We ran out of places to conquer and settle. Rather, we made it more efficient, using spreadsheets and capital control. A more gentle genocide except for when you have a Korea, Vietnam, others that are as important but not things really taught to kids, but all that was probably just on a spreadsheet too. I grow up and things become cringe. We cycle wildly between cultural movements. Laws used to find new culture and stomp them out, because a good culture has some kind of element of how to organize a society. Can't have that. So now I guess I can only be a cultural settler. But I try my best to be respectful, trying to find my own self, something that is uniquely me but isn't 'cringe'. American culture is genocide, to the point where we genocide our own cultural movements so money can be made with new ones. This is a good Soviet propaganda cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRSsybt9wAo
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Dec 12, 2023 14:47
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| # ? May 5, 2024 23:24 |
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burger
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Dec 12, 2023 14:58
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Gentrification is the ritual that Americans need to do to feel like early settlers again. Lying and cheating to the population that already lives there, using the cops as foot soldiers to get them forcibly out, putting their structures/symbols in place which embody whiteness and upper middle class, like Starbucks or Whole Foods, instead of a Protestant Church.
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Dec 12, 2023 15:03
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Brands
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Dec 12, 2023 15:16
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Look at our escapist media fantasies. Super hero movies, top gun, Avatar We yearn for the return of the unambiguous bad guy. We need problems that can be solved by the good guy (us) punching the bad guy in the teeth. I don't think this is an accident. The MIC funds the poo poo out of our media and it's in their best interest that we jump at every shadow and that that shadow have a human face that waves a different flag than ours, even though the global box office now demands that the bad guy be from some invented eastern European country rather than Russia now. Which is funny when you think that our other greatest creative movement (American romanticism) was explicitly about man overcoming nature rather than fellow man, which would be a far more fitting cultural narrative given how thoroughly we've hosed the world and should be focused on "conquering" those problems. But that is to say I think our culture is explosions and black and white morality tales, echoes of either (winning) WW2 or the 1980s as the unattainable highwater marks of our society
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Dec 12, 2023 15:29
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:Look at our escapist media fantasies. Super hero movies, top gun, Avatar return? we never went away
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Dec 12, 2023 15:39
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rap, the greatest genre of music in all of history tbqh any of the cool parts of american culture have come from either black people or immigrants
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Dec 12, 2023 16:02
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we love death and plastic, op
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Dec 12, 2023 16:05
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even if someone has bad taste and doesn’t like rap, the story of marginalised people finding discarded drum machines in the dumpsters behind recording studios and using those, some old records, and their own voices to create a genre of music that has taken over the world with no signs of ever slowing down is one of the most inspirational stories in the history of art
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Dec 12, 2023 16:06
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Dec 12, 2023 16:08
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Dec 12, 2023 16:11
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Dec 12, 2023 16:12
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my bony fealty posted:burger
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Dec 12, 2023 16:15
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Your culture is the culmination of all of your favorite brands, which manifests as something called an "aesthetic"
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Dec 12, 2023 16:45
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It doesn't exist beyond a conduit to make money, it isn't that there is actual culture inside America's borders but it is pretty much instantly co-opted and exploited as quickly as possible. It isn't a profound statement, it is just how America works. The state of New York in 2023 is kind of interesting. It is a city that exists more in the past than the future, it isn't that culture doesn't exist there (usually immigrant culture) but the brutality of neoliberalism is slowly but surely making life impossible. The rent crisis in New York is pretty unreal and it is unclear how culture can exist in a place that squeezes everything out of the humans that live there. Capitalism isn't new but present-day New York seems to be pushing the edge of what is possible.
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Dec 12, 2023 16:57
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the something awful forums
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Dec 12, 2023 17:12
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the only actual culture america has was made by jews and black people until the neoliberal era when the market finally figured out how to eat that too. everything else is just the half-remembered traditions of german drunks and imperial propaganda
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Dec 12, 2023 17:40
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my bony fealty posted:burger Pepe Silvia Browne posted:Brands Pentecoastal Elites posted:the only actual culture america has was made by jews and black people until the neoliberal era when the market finally figured out how to eat that too. everything else is just the half-remembered traditions of german drunks and imperial propaganda but also the burger is the symbol of America god bless
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Dec 12, 2023 17:49
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I think putting something on a t-shirt is an american value
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Dec 12, 2023 18:36
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if your political movement doesn't have a slogan that can be expressed as a good shirt you're pretty much hosed (you're hosed no matter what)
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Dec 12, 2023 18:37
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:the only actual culture america has was made by jews and black people until the neoliberal era when the market finally figured out how to eat that too. everything else is just the half-remembered traditions of german drunks and imperial propaganda the american cultural cycle is: a marginalized group expresses their identity in a novel way, the mainstream expresses moral panic at this expression until they find a way to monetize it, it becomes "American culture" and no longer belongs to the group who invented it
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Dec 12, 2023 18:52
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Plank Walker posted:the american cultural cycle is: so a slight variation on "first as a tragedy, then as a farce" in "first as a tragedy, then as a product" 
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Dec 12, 2023 18:54
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blue jeans and a white t shirt
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Dec 12, 2023 20:30
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Plank Walker posted:the american cultural cycle is: You can straight up illegalize it, too. Copyright exists to choke culture, as well. The genocide of fledgling culture. Sampling is a form of cultural expression that was destroyed by copyright. We aren't even allowed to harness culture deemed worthy by our own brands. Exceptions, of course, but you're in a legal gray area (aka, unenforced copyright) if you make money off it. The genocide culture will seek you eventually.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:41
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ELTON JOHN posted:rap, the greatest genre of music in all of history rap, jazz, funk, soul, r&b, gospel, rock n roll house music also comes from black ppl in underground gay dance clubs in Chicago warehouses (that's y it's called house music) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyMyKOq5EfY
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Dec 12, 2023 20:44
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ELTON JOHN posted:even if someone has bad taste and doesn’t like rap, the story of marginalised people finding discarded drum machines in the dumpsters behind recording studios and using those, some old records, and their own voices to create a genre of music that has taken over the world with no signs of ever slowing down is one of the most inspirational stories in the history of art imo hip hop is a direct continuation of the oldest natural form of music, recordkeeping and storytelling and the core concepts within predate manmade instruments. or written language in order to alter or mess up a portion, it has to fit the rhyme scheme, rhythm -and- context, allowing information to be preserved and shared more reliably pre-writing think about how you learn and remember the alphabet, f. ex.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:50
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ProfessorBooty posted:Been thinkin hard lately about American culture. I'm trying to be more fabulous and poo poo, putting my outfits together and looking like a well groomed happy beardo. 
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Dec 12, 2023 21:36
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u should go to the rodeo sometime op
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Dec 12, 2023 21:41
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Dec 12, 2023 21:48
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We invented skyscrapers, which people have mixed feelings about. Excited to read everyone's thoughts on skyscrapers
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Dec 12, 2023 22:14
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wallace stevens... teju cole...
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Dec 12, 2023 22:24
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Badactura posted:We invented skyscrapers, which people have mixed feelings about. ahem! quote:Between the 12th and the 13th century, Bologna was a city full of towers. Almost all the towers were tall (the highest being 97 metres (318.2 ft)), defensive stone towers clean ayers act has issued a correction as of 00:23 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 00:21
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Dec 13, 2023 00:27
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what's another word for pirate treasure
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Dec 13, 2023 00:27
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ArmedZombie posted:what's another word for pirate treasure 
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Dec 13, 2023 00:41
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ArmedZombie posted:what's another word for pirate treasure loot
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Dec 13, 2023 02:49
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Dec 13, 2023 03:58
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ProfessorBooty posted:We cycle wildly between cultural movements. I don't think this is really true, most of the essentials of these movements are virtually identical. I think America has a strong and vibrant culture that Americans often fail to see because they are so entrenched in it. Sure it sucks poo poo, but it exists. ELTON JOHN posted:rap, the greatest genre of music in all of history Some cool parts of american culture not from immigrants are popcorn and non-habitual tobacco use FirstnameLastname posted:the oldest natural form of music, nobody knows what that is dummy
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Dec 13, 2023 04:18
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it's whistling cowboy tunes
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Dec 13, 2023 04:34
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america invented the internet
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Dec 13, 2023 04:42
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