A big part of why I started blogging in the first place was that I realized that the internet in recent times has become, for lack of a better term, dumbed down with academic cred. I see graphics of quotes from well known intellectuals of the past and sometimes present reposted ad nauseam all the time. The implication of intellectual engagement with the least amount of effort.
The fact that this is so common—and that I often see the same platitudes posted by multiple people across the span of a few days—feels very endemic of the current state of online discourse. Radically minded thinkers putting up their hands and putting their fingers to the keyboard in an emphatic burst of passion…only to share a doom-confirming quotation from a source seen as reliable, with any additional commentary boiling down to an annoyingly exasperated sigh and “yep”. That’s not even two words.
Where do we go as a country when the best commentary we can muster on our society is someone else’s theory regurgitated verbatim with little thought regarding the content as long as it sets off nicey bells in our heads? In today’s America, we choose a side and ride it ’til we die, only activating those wonderful Critical Thinking Skills when it’s to demonize someone who even slightly leans towards the opposition. That’s not freedom of thought. That’s mental slavery. Your freedom is the price you pay to come off to your friends as “right”.
It is almost as if this glory of proving yourself “right” to the nebulous entity that is whoever may be observing you at any given time, outweighs the formation of actual solution and action that can lead to the solutions you want. It’s a damn shame that the legacy of these smart-whipped creatives who wrote the originals, if we keep sitting on our asses, is going to be “all we did in reaction was sigh”.
In our interactions with the wider world we always see ourselves as the little guy. This transcends any sort of societal status or access to privileges; everyone loves to be a victim. Because of this we embrace negativity and wallow in it. If ignorance is bliss, then abject suffering must mean we are intelligent, and intelligence equals righteousness. We conduct ourselves to these standards of being the most “right” to such a degree that we simply don’t take action. Action is normally messy. Individually crafted politics are inherently so. Getting mustard on your sweatshop-new, hackney-slogan t-shirt isn’t a good look.
This is because we have taught ourselves that humans have an apex and we ourselves, to ourselves, are that apex. It’s the mythos of the little girl getting depressed by her peaches and cream Barbie, except we are are the little girl and the doll simultaneously. We plasticize ourselves because we are faced against not just established systems of power and economics but the will of human nature itself, and not much can be done to radically alter the not so skillfully applied makeup of humankind. We are still humans underneath all the buildup, vested with the history proven capacity to make radical good and to make radical evil, though we often forget the latter attribute since we don’t like thinking about scary things and prefer reducing anyone who doesn’t agree with us to a subhuman, a fascist ball of primordial ooze. (As if we’re not collectively swimming in it.)
It’s much easier to blame everything on a redneck who lives five states away. Obviously the blame is on the big guy only as it applies to the little guy, but the other kind of little guy than you. This is unity, right? This is getting things done?
When we prune ourselves over like this for others we deny ourselves the do, because doing requires room for error and failure, and belly flopping isn’t the “right” thing to do. So we become complacent to what ails us instead. We may know the truth that the people running the asylum are the real crazies, but we’re so obsessed with proving our own manufactured sanity that we can’t let ourselves be seen as even 1/24 delirious. But you have to be a little unhinged to have the ambition to actually try. You have to let that side of yourself be seen.
But ambition isn’t a good look. It gets you looked at funny at best and gets you locked up at worst. So we call for our armchair revolutions all the while.
If we keep up this lethargy then maybe the only solution is to keep our eyes peeled to the heap of melted plastic as it slowly disintegrates into the landfill earth. To keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing. Half life after half life.
But it does not have to be this way.
Hard Living
Saturday, September 9th, 2023Pussy Gillette are hands down one of the best recent groups in existence. And to think frontwoman Masani didn’t first pick up a bass until her thirties and all of their music videos—favorably—look like a straight rip from a thrice-copied VHS tape you would get your grubby hands on from a cool skater buddy in either 1988 or 1998. They are as real and raw as it gets, yet the video of theirs linked above, which just came out a few days ago, has just 312 views at the time of me writing this.
A message of defiant empowerment that pairs big-smile badassery with a great and much needed sense of humor, buried against the tides of internet business as usual. I don’t think people are quite ready for Pussy Gillette. They may be “recent”, but they bring with them a heady aspiration for longevity that might alienate the general public. The general public is not concerned with artists with guts, just artists with all-caps GUTS. Of course, I speak of America’s prodigal girlchild, Olivia Rodrigo, who I cannot believe I am mentioning in the same breath as Pussy Gillette. But I have to.
I voluntarily keep up with Olivia’s music as a checking tool since she’s just one year older than me yet completely the opposite of me in numerous ways. Here’s the thing: when I write songs and make music, I hope to make a—for lack of a better term—ack—safe space for young female artists who prefer not to listen to Taylor Swift. Olivia’s music intends to make a hostile space for young female artists who prefer not to listen to Taylor Swift. You see the problem here? We are not very compatible. I will give her most recent video credit for not being a genreless slice of slap-in-the-face curd pie like some of her others—c’mon, it’s kyuuuuute.
Olivia is twenty, a baby in the grand scheme of things. Not too long ago she was nineteen, my age. I can attest to the pain and suffering that comes with being a teenage girl, as well as the satisfaction that can come from squishing and pouring those swirling emotions into song (or prose). The truth is is that I am just not as social as Olivia—no wonder she uses the butterfly throughout her branding. I don’t really have songs to write about regarding Tyler from history class. I have songs to write about mass media brainwashing’s effect on the populace and that scene from The Wall where Bob Geldof is yelling at everyone (which is probably the most accurate depiction of the modern day large scale concert production, by the way). Maybe if that Tyler kid said something that really fascinated/infuriated/both of those things-me I would wring it like a towel and turn the warped, pulsating droplets into a song. But my brain is too skewered and too focused on my studies to do the whole “normal teenage girl” thing that much.
Or maybe that’s just the “commercially palatable” thing. Olivia’s GUTS are that she is smooth, like intestines in a well-oiled Cuckoo’s Nest Combine machine. Our friends Pussy Gillette, however, are rough, jagged, and edgy in a way that is all their own. And boy, do they own it. Yet they are not willy nilly—they share the same focus, awareness, and intelligence that societally powerful artists have, though PG choose cute shock value over cute exploitation of the vulnerable masses. In this I actually see a chance of engagement with a wider, captive audience—they embody defiance and self-assured-ness in a world that needs it. “Permanent Trash” is an ode to self empowerment and self pride. These traits are of great yet controversial interest and analysis to our society. Because of the internet, the self esteem of humanity sits in a perilous state in an age of simultaneous constant comparison to and instant disappointment in other people. We are forced to ask ourselves what traits we can find pride in without alienating others, springing gray hairs like poison darts as we ruminate on how we could be “better”.
Never mind that the people pitting us against each other in this manner are so comfortable in their positions of corrupt power that they never even consider these concerns. They know they are bad, and they know they have their fingers on society’s pulse. The “influencers” we worship and revile in unison, the milquetoast kings and queens of the schoolyard, guide us towards superficial quests for brownie points that only serve to obscure that they are the real enemy. In a desperate bid for commercial acceptance, humanity cries out, “what part of me is palatable?” Pussy Gillette offer the answer: the whole she-bang, baby. Live with yourself. Live.
But, of course, by the time you’re on the “G” in their name when typing it into the YouTube search bar, the suggested results snap away out of fear of Pussy Gallavanting, Pussy Galloping, Pussy Grumbling, or any sort of adorable videos of tiny felines doing cute things, therefore obstructing the culture of cat videos that has been the foundation of the internet since its earliest days.
But all of the best recent bands—PG, cumgirl8, Round Eye, as I was writing this Spotify recommended me a band called DICKFARTBUTTSEX—have eyebrow raising names. I say we usher in a new culture of degeneracy and dignity with the music we listen to. You can’t truly spill guts without a little seppuku.
P.S.: A side note from the Tumblr side of things: this new wave of porn bots is too good. “ReformedBlasphemy” should be MY username.
Tags:censorship, crowd control, degeneracy, humanity, music, music videos, pop music, popular music, pride, Pussy Gillette, society, suppression, videos
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