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Almost a year or so ago, I was writing essays about tumblr bloggers who made animated gifs, which was then still a relatively unusual activity. I wrote about how it was one way to get followers on tumblr. Artists and tumblr users alike use photoshopped/designed imagery in their practice. The increasing ‘democratization’ of design/use of photoshop (amongst da yoof) can be seen in the frenzied production of animated .gifs and .pngs-transparent images, on tumblr- the content of which ranges from the banal to the sublime and the ridiculous.

There are many instances of the collage-like melding of high and low culture material and cross cultural material through both these formats on tumblr, that perhaps originated in sites like dump.fm and is perpetuated by sites like pomme.us.

I tried to think of an obvious cultural historical canon of ‘transparent’ images to contextualise and contrast this: I thought of the damocles sword, the dagger in Macbeth, the warped skull in the vanitas painting by Holbein, amongst others… they are visions, decidedly visual, gravity defying. I also thought of the doctoring of photos etc to include floating objects- like reports of U.F.Os and ghosts etc and how the defiance of gravity is a very natural human obsession/aspiration. Objects that are suspended inexplicably suggest a break with reality- a sublime/supernatural occurrence- and ultimately- human mortality.

The flippancy of the process of making images in these formats, often sits in contrast to the initial labour intensive production of the image/object pictured. The quality of some .pngs can appear like stickers, quite flat and graphic or have shadows/highlights which increase the kitsch floating 3D factor. Taking an object or icon out of its context gives one the opportunity to consider the object in isolation. Rather like the process of viewing an art work in a white cube gallery, or emblematic- like the stickers one may have adorned ones pencil cases, lockers, folders etc a a child.

One often sees low culture imagery-like games, toys, celebrities and cartoons made into these kitsch digital spectres. The replication particularly of game ephemera (wherein one can customize ones character/adventure/etc) reflects a generation that desired and so forth took the measures to be able to edit and customize to the nth degree the means with which they encounter the world- to make transparent, accessible and interactive their every vocation.

On tumblr, an image/video/text/etc is ordinarily viewed in the form of a square or rectangle. A .png breaks with that tradition to a certain extent, the boundaries remain but won’t be visible. As a platform, tumblr has been repeatedly expounded by artists, exploring the limits and extents to which it can be manipulated. Tumblrs like Gree and Hypergeography take the idea of the formal and accessible, quadrilateral framing of content to the extreme due to the formatting of their blogs. 

These ‘transparent’ images are something that is translated into contemporary art and culture quite a lot too. I feel the artwork used in this DIS magazine shoot, exemplifies this. There seems to be an understanding amongst tumblr users that transparent imagery is something that is ubiquitous in design, and we come across it every day, on all forms of products and in advertising. Some blogs reflect this and source these images from other sites in an archival manner and some fabricate/manipulate them, like 3bay / lois hopwood / kiddyp00l / whybray, amongst others.

This activity is clearly a reflection on the brand identities, products/subjects, icons etc that populate our recent history/or current culture. It’s also a meditation (if you want to go that far) on the proximity of our own personal brands with that of brand/corporate powers which now also populate social networks like troublesome vermin. And if you wanted to push just a little fruther it’s also a making sense of the brands and icons of yesteryear and the horror/eventuality that parallels their/our decay/ becoming obsolete- mortality.

This is much the same with the representations of technology of yesteryear/month with blogs devoted to archiving obsolete models of/technology- the volume of which increase exponentially in line with the doubling of technological prowess, year on year- evidently also a comment on consumerism blah etc. See below archival type tumblrs that act as obselete technological tombs.

http://dvdshlf.tumblr.com/

http://wwwtxt.org

Isolating a pop/subcultural phenomenon that was once popular through a nostalgic PNG is an effective way to garner feelings of familiarity, acknowledgement/identification from your followers- the qualities that most imagery on tumblr possess if they become popular.

It’s also a way to explain why revival of 90s imagery is popular because those in their late teens/ twenties (early adopters of tumblr/popular/influential bloggers) grew up then. They interact through this convivial activity- of reviving and archiving their pre-web 2.0 culture, or less reflective internet practices, which include early-millenial too, seen in blogs like Dora’s Moutout’s collective-self-mythologizing myspacenostalgia. 

One kind of .png/animated gif that persists is what one could probably consider in the vein of Greek New Media Shit- coined by Sterling Crispin I think…  Below are some .pngs that reflect their medium or have an art-historical relationship that was exemplified in the blog last linked.

These .pngs and .gifs jam art-historical monuments, high culture, into contemporary everyday tools. The dominance and wide use of these tools is set in contrast to these pinnacles of fine art, the production of which is associated with skill, genius and elitism. It’s more likely that the average person could name the brands of Facebook, Google and the Adobe suite, than they could name these artworks, in terms of value these companies out-rank the artworks in value too. To appropriate these works in the form of a .png/.gif is the closest one could get to interacting with these heavily protected site specific works- to contrast them with these ubiquitous corporate logos/tools that exist for the purpose of interaction has a humour and sense of reflection that brings up all sorts of questions about value, status, time, art etc.

I didn’t wat to say anything particularly out of this world with this, just to acknowledge that .pngs are something tumblr users seem to practice with increase verve, observing the thousand or so I follow, a bias but still quite large sample, and a sample I’ve watched for years now. There’s other things I wanted to comment on like the use of 3d modelled images of sexy out of proportioned babes- kitsch virtual reality/gaming culture references-that are also part of this self-mythologizing, like I mentioned in the last essay about Uncanny Valley Girls, and to include the few I’ve made but I wanted to keep this relatively informal and light.

UNCANNY VALLEY GIRLS - EVOLUTION IN CAMGIRL NARCISSISM

Not so long ago I wrote about celebrities as templates for a certain style of living- in that the minutia of their daily lives is up for sale and consumption with their complicity, obviously it’s more abstract and complex than this but ugh… The spectacle of a celebrity outweighs any of their achievements professionally- they have this bizarre valueless value and are predominantly female- the heavy weights that is.

Celebrities used to be shamed about how publicly they lived their private lives but now with the clarity and efficacy of social networks, constant engagement with technology, we too live incredibly transparently. We take for granted constant updates and access to everyone’s everyday, celebrity or not. 

Many of these celebrities- child actresses, heiresses, reality tv show stars- have grown up with contracts and deals being made over their pitfalls/breakdowns- every detail of their life. I feel like their infuriating wealth and leisure (perpetuated by media frenzy) parallels the privilege we have to freely express and interact online, that is encroached upon by the data commodity market/ CISPA bills etc.

I referred to celebs as High Techno-Priestesses, kind of in jest. The celebrities of the upper echelons of fame aren’t respectful, responsible, overtly religious or spiritual- and if they are it’s manicly so (Tom Cruise/Madonna- who don’t really count as they have made cultural contributions through their craft and professionalism lol).

A notable aspect of celebrities is their lack of intellectual contribution to culture, their presence is distinctly wordless, if not for catch phrases or embarrassing admissions, speaking in cliche on twitter etc.

I like this wordlessness or lack of meaning, it’s a haven from incessant pseudo-intellectualism (haha guilty). Celebrities abandon the illusion of a posterity in work or culture for a legacy of leisure/social praxis- the emancipatory reputation of speech/words is questioned in this. A presently hedonistic life experience, of shallow, wildly unaffordable, wildly unsustainable activity. It’s almost a back-warding of civilisation as we know it.

Celebrities like Heidi Montag and Courtney Stodden have so much coverage of their incessant cosmetic sculpting and health regimes, amongst other celebrities, like Britney, and Lindsay Lohan. This life of excessive self interest, where they just build and capitalise and meditate on themselves is mimicked, in my opinion in the rare but increasingly more visible UNCANNY VALLEY GIRLS:

WHAT IS AN UNCANNY VALLEY GIRL? 

It is the melding of the following terms:

Uncanny Valley - the point at which human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, causing a response of revulsion among human observers. example one example two

Valley Girl  is a stereotype depicting a socio-economic and ethnic class of white women characterized by vapid materialism.

I would define them as girls who have developed their image/identity/personal brand to extremes of perfection at the cost of much anything else, despite their evident wealth and privilege. This is performed to the degree that one is caused to question whether they have been enhanced digitally/surgically.

Dakota Rose, whether she photoshops her images or not, puts about this uncannily ideal image of burgeoning girlish sexuality. Her abnormally large eyes, full lips and slight willowy figure are the proportions of a final fantasy girl- she quite overtly appropriates/enjoys Japanese Kawaii culture. Her aesthetic is so ideal and so rare that it invites a level of scrutiny bordering on harassment. Her Sister was a youtube/myspace sensation/internet celebrity if you will, Kiki Kannibal- that adds to the frenzy over her identity. 

Then there’s Valeria Lukyanova  who has reportedly had hundreds of thousands of pounds of surgery in order to become a kind of living Barbie. She has been both an article of curiosity and criticism, she considers herself a singer and claims to enjoy ‘astroplaning.’

These girls have produced some rather back-warding, damaging statements- an example detailed below- they have shallow, vain, even ignorant viewpoints on various subjects. The investment in their aesthetic and their context has not left time or opportunity to look into educating themselves to develop intellect as we know it. Their life goals, as seen below for Valeria are as bizarre and detached as her look in the photo above.

Also of signifiance is how they communicate themselves in photos from their blogs, or vlogs, via webcams, they are part of a camgirl culture. Cam girl culture is something I explore in my own work and I observe it in others like Kat Geran, Molly Soda and Sarah Deetz etc, but their’s is a far more intellectual, creative, expressive activity and alleviates them from the title of Uncanny Valley Girl.

I would consider these two Valeria and Dakota Rose, as the current most fitting examples of uncanny valley girls, but I am sure there are many more that fit this description, in time, hell let me know …or don’t ugh… so freaky.

Images of girls that are so uncannily beautiful that one doubts their authenticity is a standard now, there’s a general understanding that all images in magazines/advertising are edited to skew ‘reality’ in favour of an impossible ideal. Supposedly ‘real’ images of celebrities are for more sensational now. Any uncanny image is met with a desire to derail the individual and find out their ‘true’ or ‘real’ appearance- the verve for this is seen in blogs like http://celebritycloseup.tumblr.com/

Authenticity is a huge issue in this subject- whether a woman’s attributes are naturally gifted or enhanced affects her value when it comes to living as some kind of aesthetic spectacle. A female celebrity can’t escape being commodified in this way. The way this is practiced with the Uncanny Valley Girls is seen in the model of the celebrity- Jennifer Lopez or the Kardashian women are good examples, with the authenticity of their asses in constant question.

The enduring power of the spectacle of an idealized and predominantly Western beauty is seen in lots of virtual images of women. Recently these images have been popularized in the resurrection of techno-utopian 3d-modlelled hyper-proportioned babes, appearing in trends on tumblr and in the aesthetic of IRL LDN and teenwitch, whose influence is pervasive. There’s also Alis Pelleschi who through her own photography and art direction  overtly presents bodies manipulated to the point of an almost post-human proportions- although that aesthetic still harks back to the kitschness of these virtual babes and their exaggerated assets. 

The relativity between the gaze of the gamer and exaggerated representations of women is one you can find lots of information on. It’s the origin of these hyper-proportioned virtual babes, Lara Croft below is a good example to chart, as well as an uncannily real image of her.

Celebrities are the templates for The Uncanny Valley Girls, both of which are very abstract and privileged types of people that are both compelling and appalling misrepresentations of the vast majority of humanity.

They are a critical mass of something but it isn’t beauty- it’s Simulacra. They are performing and living as constantly evolving Simulacra “an image without the substance or qualities of the original.” 

I usually discuss my favourite girl positive babes from tumblr etc but the phenomenon of the Uncanny Valley Girl is something I’d wanted to express for a while and found it hard to articulate. It’s not something particularly positive either, I hope it doesn’t come across like I favour these lifestyle choices. I just want to draw parallels between these powerful/influential images of celebrities and virtual game babes, and how young girls (with a lot of time and money and privilege) are achieving something that almost blends the two and with the seeming intent to colonize the uncanny valley… but after that… I’m not quite sure what is in store for them…

These little essays are part of a series that goes towards preparing for my dissertation, if there’s anything that bugs you, like you want a citation for something, or credit for an image, or you whole heartedly disagree with something I’ve said, let me know. All images are credited to tumblrs I follow.

What do you miss most? The world.

TODAY

Interviewer: ‘What do you miss most?’

Tina: ‘The world.”

Accessed via BBC newsfeed on twitter today: Tina Nash, whose boyfriend gouged her eyes out last year is interviewed as her attacker admits his crime.

Tina loves sleeping because she can visualise in her dreams. She blurts out that she does not know what she looks like and winces self consciously. Tina has a monroe piercing.

‘I feel like a ghost.’

She cries throughout, pulling tears from her face with her fingers. The interviewer cruelly reminds her the last thing she saw was her attacker and she chuckles in sad acknowledgement, disgust, disbelief or despair, maybe all of the above?

Her message to women who are in abusive relationships: ‘It ain’t gonna get better it’s gonna get worse.’

A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO

Attended a talk bought to my attention via facebook: Mind, Body and Art after (Art after) the Internet. There’s lots of heated debate and delightful jargon that I can only just get a grip on/ keep up with… Don’t get me wrong it was very inspiring and enjoyable. One speaker is absent, acknowledged as the only female involved and there’s a joke/apology made about a load of guys talking about internet this evening… to ease the tension..? Hmm.

I cannot think up a good question so I fidget and try to keep up. Any which way, if I speak I’m going to get dragged into battle with one of these encyclopaedic, quoting, rutting minds. Minds. That’s what they are, there’s very little body-talk going on, it’s what is decidedly absent from discussion.

However, I’m not cruel, I understand that each has their area of expertise and can’t cover everything they promise, like myself, one of the panellists being missing didn’t help- Cadence Kinsey. Upon reading her work, I find would have perhaps been rather essential. Aside from that there was talk about future ICT, those google glasses and appropriating identities in social networking as means to distract and discard these ‘meaty’ bodies we apparently detest.

Bodies are abject but it’s also possible and a given (?) that as much as we want to get away from them we also revel in the ‘abjectivity’ of our bodies in all aspects of society and culture, depending on what we are permitted by these systems. I guess the internet, particularly in my own studies, IDK about yours, has played an important part in letting people engage with their ‘abject’ desires.

In the talk there was a lot of justified paranoia about the very real consequences of the data we produce in social networking being used against our will. Amongst a lot of worrying ethical implications, this would make exploring non-normative sexual desires problematic. It’s stuff like psychoanalysis that delineates what is perverse and what’s normative eh, scientific studies inform the actions governments take, like authorising companies to trade/share our data, frightening stuff. And yes, I’m generalizing but people like gross stuff, right? Prohibition and stigmatisation of porn and non-normative fetishistic/abject material through monitoring everyones online activities is gonna lead to some serious repression, eh..?

Is creating multiple profiles and identities to dissipate or renew identity (…or to perhaps convolute our identities so we can evade being capitalized upon…) also a way of birthing identities? A way for ‘man’ (or ‘cis-man’s’) dream to come true- to eradicate the supposed ‘control’ women have over procreation? Okay that might be an extreme perspective and also a boring gender binary kinda one, I’m sorry. I personally find continued engagement with queer theory/feminism and technology/internet to be of use and not run away with progressivist, digital ascension and transcendence beyond our bodies, without also getting better grip on our bodies and what they could mean…

On a side-note, I apologize for my language. I always chide myself for not using better pronouns, I hope in future to not align myself to the binaries I criticize. Language was prided in this talk with very little critical engagement- ‘communication/speech’ was heralded as humanity’s emancipatory gift- this only goes for anyone who benefits from a dominant patriarchal subjectivity.

The evolutionary tendencies/possibilities of language will only change if you or I take care to critically engage with language and modes of communication that incorporate incarnations of otherness alongside patriarchal subjectivity, which cannot be simply eradicated, but supplemented by a spectrum of expression… well hopefully.

TODAY AGAIN

Watched a program on a BBC iplayer: ‘Divine women: When God was a Girl, exploring images of powerful women from ancient pasts from around the world. Of particular note was the dichotomous image of women as life giving and death giving- considering the infant mortality rates of early civilisation. It also covers ancient and contemporary religions that have worshipped/ overthrown/ mythologised women in various ways. Ending with a very joyous exploration of contemporary Hindu festivals.

A FEW WEEKS BEFORE

I read an old BBC article about Bangladeshi prostitutes taking steroids to become more ‘bountiful’ -rounder and fuller in breast and thigh to the point of potentially permanently damaging these women’s health. I am reminded of this watching the divine women program. Amongst the numerous ancient symbols/idols of fertility and femininity the narrator draws attention to a civilisation where there was a disparity between physiology of the remains of the women of that civilisation- who were quite slight in build and those carvings that celebrated ideal images of women as voluptuous.

It also made me ponder briefly think about the role of Primitivism in Modernism and  the congruency with the influence of psychoanalysis and this relegating/ eradicating/ editing of the past by the Victorian/Western world, for their own culturally appropriative ends. The narrator of the program on Divine Women claims that the overly erotic statues and carvings of women were hidden away in the back of museums, dismissed as vulgar, hidden from the public, buried again.

There’s so much more I could tell you of things I come across and how they are connected, if only by the locus of my narrative, retelling it to you… most of this stuff is from watching things or reading things on the BBC website, which is not what I set out to do and it’s not what I do all day… procrastination eh haha

I haven’t cited much or made my writing that credible, the way I write is completely coloured by personal choice and experience and a refusal to be formal. I welcome anyone who has access to similar content or ideas that might unseat some of my assumptions, most anything I write on here in someway pertains to my dissertation. It’s not all for that means, though sometimes I just feel the need to despair when a Mother with a Monroe piercing has her eyes gouged out and elsewhere we’re fantasizing about google glass.

STUFF ABOUT (STEFAN) MIRR-R, (KAJA) CXZY, CELEBRITY AND TUMBLR

Masculinity- mature, virile, muscular, athletic, professional- these are properties that are celebrated and privileged, unlike their antonymns: immature, weak, delicate, un-athletic, unprofessional- which funnily enough, are often associated with femininity or girlieness.

I wax lyrical about girliness but I do not address masculinity in my essays usually- mostly because girliness/epicinity is subversive- feminine properties are not traditionally associated with success- as much as the attributes of the masculine are. I refer to how popular these feminine tumblr personalities are- in most cases supposedly slight forms of expression are the reason for their popularity- their style, their looks, their personality or lifestyle are the draw- like celebrities who aren’t really considered professional any sense.

It’s quite obvious all this, sorry to spell it out- and who is it that is often tarred with this reputation for being vacuously obsessed with celebrities- women. But as much as this analogy fits between IRL celeb and TUMBLR celeb, it’s not a perfect fit really because these are two very separate if seemingly relative worlds- celebs get a lot more money out of this for one thing, heh.

Celebrities are people commonly understood as spectacles- there’s a sense of uselessness about them- of a disproportion in their degree of affluence to work and substance/toil etc- And the ones we’re most obsessed with- the gurrrls: PARIS, NICOLE, SNOOKIE, KIM KARDASHIAN, ETC ETC. They are the ones that incense and amuse us the most.

I often talk about how popular online personalities express their girliness/appropriate it, exacerbate it etc, etc but they are also quite witty and usually feminist which isn’t necessarily something that could be said about these notorious IRL celebrities.

I enjoy how on the wikipedia page for masculinity you find a Greek statue of Heracles- as a standard for the absolute masculine. For femininity- it’s The Birth of Venus pictured on wikipedia- famous for her love beauty and fertility. 

Apollo is the god of the Sun, dreams, and reason while Dionysus is the god of wine, ecstasy, and intoxication. wikipedia duh.

I would like to introduce the framework of the Apollonian and Dionysian - perceived as dichotomous in the many readings on the wiki, to what I observe on tumblr, briefly. In a lot of Western philosophy/literature- they are presented as oppositional, although they are not overtly, in their Greek context, considered opposites or rivals.

Current tumblr lifestyle/fashion trends (neon hair/gaudy patterns/oversize platform shoes/club kid vibes/seapunk, sexually and emotionally frank micro blogging etc) are intoxicating, incessant, feminine, creative and chaotic- this could be seen as Dionysian (God of Wine) aspect of tumblr- the undercurrent or opposition is the Apollonian (God of Sun)- the sobriety of tumblr- observable as a blogging style where the content or form is minimalist, distanced, restrained or disciplined in some way.

The Dionysian is a force of chaos and destruction, which is the overpowering and alluring chaotic state of wild nature. […] socially constructed Apollonian virtues accounts for the historical dominance of men (including asexual and homosexual men; and childless and/or lesbian-leaning women) in science, literature, arts, technology and politics. Camille Paglia 1990 Sexual Personae via wiki on this shit.

I don’t really agree with the bracketed content there… but generally yes… you can find various interpretations on the wikipedia page that differ in some ways but mostly express this binary that seems gendered and obviously prevalent in culture in quite an insidious way.

I guess you could consider celebrities Dionysian- associated with drinking and sex and chaos, excess, depravity- the kind of things we want to read about celebrities getting into and out of, these professional vocationalists are antithetical to our own everyday lives making them obvious figures of contempt and aspiration- as those who seem to live hedonistically and lavishly without exerting Apollonian work-ethic/ behaviour/ philosophy. As we go about our Apollonian lives we live vicariously through their Dionysian antics.

I was once, decidedly not now, jokingly referred to as tumblr famous, I talked about this and explored it in former essays. I felt part of, or at least aware of the feminist, girly, 90s revival tumblr trends that shakily grew with popularity over about 2 years.

Content that is now and for a while has been ubiquitous on tumblr- anything nostalgic from the 90s- can be immediately banked upon for notes- recent articles have found- people of any age seem to claim ownership over this decade and early y2k trends- compulsively reliving their own relatively recent history, perhaps as a means to identify with a time before the critical mass of materiality (90s/early y2ks) in an increasingly supposedly immaterial and less chronologically distinct way of life. 

The critical mass point is say before say about 2005 where definitive websites of my generation were formed- youtube etc- giving us all the ability to generate and access cultural content from all eras/areas in a globalised way like never before- it’s not truly that different but it may seem so.

The short-lived remote trends of the 90s are going round a second time amongst youths who never experienced them directly in the first place - the content is understood ironically/iconicly but expressed as immediate or nostalgic to affirm an individuals authentic connection so they can be involved in the communities that form bonds/are able to source content over such common pasts and thusly, ultimately benefit in a social manner.

Sharing this kind of nostalgic content helps organise a sorta cultural psyche and make sense of the pre-web 2.0 existence for those who have lived through that. Those who haven’t lived through that- the younger tumblr users- feel disaffected because they cannot relate to, yet still want to be in on this diverse subcultural language/discourse so they fake it. 

^Tumblr users reflecting on this very issue.

This where the question of authenticity comes in. Now Meadham Kirchhoff and Jeremy Scott etc, have become exponents of tumblr trends through recent collections, these neon/appropriated cartoon/geocities type material in their collections they will make this language/pool of loaded cultural material ubiquitous, as these collections leak to high street stores etc etc, homogenise etc etc jargon blah.

The flaura and fuana of 90s/y2k fashion have become out of my personal price-range, when it comes to second-hand shoppinh online. Particularly one of the reasons bloggers and young girls could afford this self expression was perhaps through the fact they could get hold of 90s fashion and accessories on the cheap. 

So perhaps now this has been truly capitalized upon, maybe these creative bloggers will move on? Maybeeeee, maybe not but it leaves room for an expansion or change in expression that will predictably come about as the 90s stuff becomes increasingly stagnant.

The same principle as mentioned here, relates to how in a lecture we were meant to understand the role of artists according to Clement Greenberg, art critic/theorist of ages ago n shit I don’t care for, except for this statement that artists acts as ‘reluctant innovators.’ Same can be said for bloggers/tumblrs invested in style etc I guess lol.

^Tavi G the public face of teen feminist blogging these days reflects.

So what does this all have to do with the Apollonian and Dionysian thingamy? Well I wanted to present the 90s trend partially produced by the efforts of influential feminist girly bloggers, you still have to consider wider communities like dump.fm, the members of which produce a lot of content that has inspired and networked individuals around net nostalgia/internet archeology etc.

I now find, as maybe many of you will, that brands such as nike and adidas have come back in vogue in the last year or so probably for the same reason the 90s stuff did- this kind of nod to a shared past- where brands were an aspirational language that formed cliques- in terms of haves and have nots etc- I remember that from school a lot.

These brands are distinctly to do with Sports/ athleticism/ efficiency etc, the preserve of the masculine in the Apollonian tradition.

The closeness of this past where these brands related to cultural relevance amongst teens, makes it hard to differentiate between those dressing in reference to the y2k, sense of irony etc and those who choose to still assign the way they dress to these brands as a means to communicate their status, as was perhaps originally intended.

I really like this photo from DIS Magazine. Article here. This kind of slathered in brands look is slightly too good to be true, it’s so hammy- expressing irony/ nostalgia/ creativity- as with much of the 90s revivial but relies heavily on appropriation of the brands logos to ultimately communicate affluence and status etc. They also remind me a lot of Paris and Nicole in the early 2000s from this particular shoot. These kind of brands were purported a lot by Paris Hilton/Britney/celebutantes of my early teens so they have this air of privilege and vacuity that is synonymous with feminine expression. The 90s revival has a far more punky non conformist riot grrrl queer theory edge to it.

The aspirational brand imagery I find/notice on tumblr haha^

Branded sportswear has a far more tribal aspect to it- that comes with sporting tradition and it resists the Dionysian chaotic forms of expression that were put about with 90s revival, it resists creativity but its defo a trend right now, y’agree? Revival of these dominant brands is confusing because they were so prevalent they have resisted becoming directly archaic or nostalgic. There’s so little distance between the ironic wearing of Nike with Chanel on tumblr etc and when my teen peers wanted to wear Nike/Von Dutch etc to express their affluence and aspirations and distance themselves from poor plebs like me.

Where as the 90s revivial is all guns-blazing-colour-and-pattern-and-stickers-andd-D-I-Y-expression-and-creativity, branded clothing is a far more banal, simplistic, uniform-like language.

Of course nostalgia is relative, depending on your time perspective, ones person’s nostalgia can be another’s present, conflict with this is always bubbling in the comments below youtube music videos, which are all ‘thumbs up if you’re listening to this in 2012” etc- which causes conflicts aplenty…

It’s not like I see nostalgia as a static thing that is only obsessed over so vehemently by myyyy generations, I get it happens to everyone- it’s just this on tumblr it’s happening so much and being capitalised upon so vehemently that is seems remarkable. Like the anxieties expressed in this article.

While wearing brands overtly buys into shady capitalist corporations- the distinct pick up of this trend in tumblr is by the queer/gay community. Many young expressive queer/gay tumblr users are responsible for the imagery in this specific essay and they are taking sportswear and fusing it with their own looks. ( Oh and thanks to them for the images, ask me to credit if I have forgotten please.)

Nearly finishing this article I was pleased I took so long as I saw that Stefan Schwartzman’s photoshopped porn model shoot had been published through Vice- the models are wearing a mix of outdoors, sportswear and high fashion brands and even his own hat design, as well as a Lonsdale beanie- a brand now commonly associated with louts and skin heads in the UK.

To incorporate brands like Lonsdale is a sort of gentrification of the preserve of the lower-middle class lout- particularly in the UK which is also a distinctly homophobic preserve too.

Sports like football here have widespread problems with disassociating openly gay players- now that is archaic… The pornographic content below, that appears without Stefan’s photoshopping, features erotic situations where the partners wear sportswear. Any environment or career where sexuality is repressed/prohibited is going to be the fodder which pornography exploits to satisfy unquenched desires. I like how Stefan artificially produces something which already exists in a slightly different context- and how awkward and skewed the fabrics and images become from Stefan’s efforts, making the already very staged amateur vibe of the models intensified.

Incorporation of these brands into self expression through fashion is a way to address such issues of sexual repression but also helps these brands to be more accessible to young gay teens etc, in ways they perhaps couldn’t have orchestrated themselves- an interesting yet problematic situation.

Another artist who photoshops her way to my heart is CXZY. I can see something similar going on perhaps in the work of CXZY as I do in Stefan’s. Coincidentally, reading an article recently about artists looking at each others facebooks, I find to my delight that CXZY suddenly picks up the pace and transforms her blog and produces loads of content relating to social networking platforms with particular attention to facebook.  

She takes or reblogs icons screenshots, colour swatches, formats that are iconic of the site and posts them on her tumblr, which has a theme that mimics facebook layout- it irks you, it’s uncanny, like undead facebook- zombie facebook, autonomous facebook, skewing its own formatting with demonic glee.

It reminds me of the way those ads that I spoke of in the crying essay that try and trick you into clicking them by mimicking the instant messaging format of facebook- usually some pouting temptress in the default image who implores you to talk to her. CXZY does so much more than just this but sincerely please check out her tumblr there’s lots of links through her url on here.

Subverting the platforms or systems of expression you engage with daily in the ways CXZY and Stefan do is nothing new but its definitely refreshing to see people engage with their immediate and mess with what is available to them, particularly on tumblr, where innovative activity is hard to find sometimes.

This essay has meandered a lot from girldom and masculinity, to the Apollonian and Dionysian, to nostalgia and celebrity, to sportswear, sexual repression and photoshop. These things aren’t necessarily connected, it’s just the imagery and themes that I reflect on when I open up tumblr. I might come back and edit this tomorrow when I’ve had time to think more but here have my unfinished works babies, lemme get vulnerable 4 u. xx

Horsing around with Tino Sehgal.

I wanted to get some thoughts out of the way on this thing I did last week or so. I have essays for tumblr in the pipeline but I feel they may suffer due to the 16000 words due in at the end of April for Uni, I will get 2 tumblryy essays out in the next month or so I hope, as my rest point from the other 8000 word essays haha, what madness.

SO. The ‘workshop’ was in the Tate Modern, with Tino Sehgal, an artist who I’ve referenced in a few essays in my academic endeavours but not online. He’s a choreographer/situation constructor etc, I’ve seen a few of his works over the years and studied his practice where it felt relevant. Here also is what he’s gonna be doing in the Tate around the Olympics if you care.

The workshops took up about 4 hours, 4-9 and were a mixture of discussion and movement, both orchestrated/led by Tino. I don’t know what I imagined, perhaps something a little more immersive like the works I’d seen but it was really very ad-hoc. There were about 44 of us in some room just off the turbine hall, most of the people there were students or older artists/ dancers. Most of us looked/were pretty middle class and most of the group spent their time trying to win Tino’s/ group approval by intellectualising the activities we were set to do- by all means this was instigated by Tino. Who threw around the words like social, emancipation, society, technology, community, tradition, flexibility etc, words which, as I was doing some research from my course, came together in a quote by Jacques Ranciere from The Emancipated Spectator 2009:

May ‘68 supposedly prioritised the themes of ‘artistic critique’ of capitalism - protest against a disenchanted world and demands for authenticity, creativity and autonomy, as against its social critique of inequalities and misery and the denunciation of the egotism that destroys the bonds of  community. These are the themes that have arguably been incorporated by contemporary capitalism , supplying those desires for autonomy and authentic creativity with its newfound ‘flexibility,’  its flexible supervision, its light, innovative structures, its appeal to individual initiative and the ‘projective city.’ p34

HMMMMMMMMMM.

During the whole workshop I enjoyed the exercises we did whereby Tino gave out simple quite nonspecific movement instructions and we just ran with it, as opposed to the bullshit discussions we kept having. Yawn.

With the exercises, the group would ordinarily start, spaced evenly about the room and would then be instructed say for example, with each step we took, in unison, to aim to move into a position where we were central to those nearest to us, all done to Tino’s pace (whereby he would rhythmically chant ‘step’ until the rhythm was instinctive enough for him to stop and us continue.)

What happened: from initially being a spaced out group we became cramped together bustling and shuffling. As you can imagine the group read into this in various ways, with elaborate hand gestures, decrying how frustrated they became when they couldn’t move so freely etc etc, or how they felt this represented the pace of society, pressure of contemporary living, etc, etc, bullcrap bullcrap- most of us were fidgety students or spritely verbose grandma/grandpas- I know I sound as bad as i’m trying to make them sound but they were doing dumb stuff like bringing up that ‘people these days are lonelier than ever’ etc, and how ’we have lost something since the olden days before innernet/globalisation’ in a nostalgic kind of know-it-all way etc, anyone would cringe.

Tino was quite clear that a lot of what we were doing, in further exercises was in relation to ‘swarming’- which he claimed was his point of interest amongst other things and that also he wasn’t particularly interested in anything when it came to these workshops… sighhh, never a straight answer…

The swarming stuff was interesting and how frustrated Tino got when we didn’t perform as he seemingly wanted and how he claimed we were more successful or behaved differently to other communities of people he had done similar workshops/exercises with. I watched him often as we performed the exercises, sometimes he seemed entirely disinterested, made sense. 

I was told by an observant group member that one of Tino’s assistants/chums he bought along was making notes against our names at one point, which is also bizarre…

Anyhow I just wanted to get out of my system how banal and yet bizarre it all was, if not for the free fancy sandwiches we got at one point- the high point of the thing, next to running full pelt from one side of the turbine hall to the other in a kind of British Bulldog type game, that was also neat.

I guess I probably come across as petulant and elitist but the whole environment was quite superficial and contrived and the agency of most of the people who turned up (for free for 4 hours on a Sunday/Monday) to me, was to impress Tino, or catch his attention.

It all felt very strange and disconcerting, especially as my own agenda for being there was to explore some ideas set about in the stuff I study for Uni- a kind of communication or relation which didn’t involve voice or speech, a more bodily interaction, in contrast ya know, to all the stuff I write on here and the academic lifestyle but it was very similar to my experiences in lectures etc- where I feel unable to justify articulating myself, and when I do, almost always being confronted with refute or disregard- for various reasons but almost always treated this way.

There was so much focus on Tino’s quite trivial demands of us and what we (the group) imagined he was alluding to, people always wanting to succeed in the task set, by trying to eliminate problematics instead of just running with it and giving themselves time to reflect. It feels like what happens on my course- we go away and do the reading and then come back and try to say the right thing- almost always ending up in ridiculous meta-conversations that trail off for lack of grounding… and I get my head bit off when I try and ground it.

Doing the workshop was relevant as we were looking at the use of physical theatre in Dancer in the Dark 2000 in one lecture/seminar but I didn’t get the chance to mention it, maybe I will reference Tino in my essay in regards to it but not sure…

I guess I didn’t learn much about movement/community/bodily expression etc that I can express straight away without it being coloured by how cringe-worthy the whole evening was, but in retrospect it was worth it for those damn fancy sandwiches (I had about 6 fuckyeahhhh).

;__;

It is not whether you really cry. It’s whether the audience thinks you are crying.
Ingrid Bergman

It’s uncomfortable to witness tears, you are implored to try and stop a person from crying, to console them, to fix them, they’re leaking, they’re broken. Why are you crying? Why are you sad?

If I understand why you’re upset then I can stop you from crying.

If I stop you from crying then I can understand why you’re upset.

STOP CRYING YOU SISSY, GROW UP, CHEER UP, DRY YOUR EYES, MAN-UP, HAVING A HISSY-FIT, YOU’RE CRYING LIKE BABY, YOU’RE MAKING A SCENE, ATTENTION SEEKING, CRYING LIKE A LITTLE GIRL, HAVING A TANTRUM, BLUBBERING, BAWLING, YOU’RE HYSTERICAL.

The eyes lacriminal system produces tears to keep the eye moist in order to enhance vision, what is it to overproduce many tears at once, why? Crying impairs vision, makes your face hurt etc, what purpose does it serve to cry? I don’t know but I feel relief.

There’s something important about crying- whereby it is a point at which speech is rendered incapable, crying is a communication, an expression, that impedes cohesive language- to the point of tears, collapse into tears.

Tears are the silent language of grief.
Voltaire

….

Tears at times have the weight of speech.
Ovid

-found poetry on brainyquote

So how do you feel about a project like webcam tears by Dora Moutot? It’s an archive of tears shed before webcams, with little to no other information provided. Contextless tears from webcam owners.

It was inspired by Laurel Nakadate’s work. Expressions of feeling to a webcam, with the desired purpose of others viewing, is this repugnant, indulgent and insincere? It’s intolerable, crying, it’s an expression of vulnerability- it’s hard to speak, it causes discomfort to witness it, on the brink of tears-the break down of cohesive language to tears is a failure to communicate? Crying is seen as an involuntary anti-participation in constructive communication, in functional living, hysteria is not en vogue, ok?

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.
Herman Melville

I’m not gonna beat about the bush, excuse the pun, but crying is distinctly associated with feminine expression in visual culture. That’s a sweeping statement I guess, go on tell me I’m wrong, I’ll cry and you’ve won. haha

“False in legs, and false in thighs; / False in breast, teeth, hair, and eyes.”

Robert Herrick “Upon Some Women” as quoted in Antichrist 2009

To orchestrate crying for the purpose of recording seems problematic- tears are something relatively impromptu… But then again, one probably cries in ones room, where you keep your computer, you’re probably crying scrolling through your facebook feed, while you tweet, whatever.

My video for webcam tears was incidentally filmed a few days before I discovered the project.

I only cried one tear in it, not a lot of bang for your buck there.

What does it matter that tears are authentic though? What is so horrifying for tears to be of the crocodilian persuasion- falsely expressing weakness, crying wolf? What proof is there, what way is there to identify tears that connote true suffering and those that are not. Are tears an expression, a codified system for expression where authenticity even has a place? And why is it so important for sadness to always be remedied.

She: A crying woman is a scheming woman- Antichrist 2009 

‘The tears in the hairdresser’s eyes are the sign of his emotion. But this emotion is itself produced by the film maker’s system and, once he films those tears and links this shot to other shots, they can no longer be regarded as the naked presence of the recollected event. They belong to a process of figuration that is a process of condensation and displacement.’ 94

So what of recording your own emotional tribulations? Or reliving them through micro-blogging, well in the case of 33Summer, it invites misogynistic attacks on a daily basis. Like for webcamtears and done so much prior with Laural Nakadate and many more before- these tears are curated or created to be seen. What does it means to intentionally express suffering for a viewing public, particularly the kind of people who would have a tumblr/webcam, affluent expressive people.

I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn’t enough. I was exploding inside.
Ingrid Bergman

So you’ve got it good? You have webcam access, you have the time to make videos of yourself crying for Dora’s project and the gall to make yourself part of this wailing wall? So why are you crying? Always why, always with crying there’s a need to quell it, silence it, end the hysteria/chaos, ugh.

It occured to me that an artwork I’d seen a while ago that stuck with me still is relevant to this, by artist  Phil Collins called Return of the Real that I saw in 2006. Collins orchestrated a documentary where a company he set up got former reality tv participants who had their lives ruined by their experience with reality tv to be interviewed -to coax out of them and relive those traumas for the camera again, part of this work this was presented in a gallery format where the video of the interviewer and interviewee were projected on opposite ends of a dark room very large, an intense way to view such an exchange. 

See the reception of Leave Britney Alone by Chris Crocker for examples of how drawn towards, yet riled against, viewing masses are to unbridled emotion- particularly of significance is that Chris Crocker portrays femme qualities, whether his lack of hetero-normativity contributed to the notoriety this video is unclear but it’s what most of the comments of the video discuss.

A crying person makes us question their gender, sexuality, their constitution.

How many jokes, or cringe-inducing moments in movies are there when post coitally, either one or both partners cry? He/she didn’t cry after did they? CRIIIIIIINGE… Crying isn’t sexy is it? There’s something in common between almost all the subjects I’ve mentioned so far in this essay, not all but most, that they have released/leaked nude images of themselves-Paris Hilton has her sex-tape, Nakadate is frequently nude in her work, Molly Soda has nudes you can search out with ease, DeadNiggaStorage intermittently bares his ass for kicks, Arvida has nudity as part of her practice in self portraiture, 33summer discusses her sexual assault graphically etc. 

There’s something oxymoronic about this image and there also isn’t.

Unbridled sexual and emotional confession is linked to denigration of character, see Sasha Grey’s primary school reading fiasco- a sex industry worker is not fit to educate children. See Zizek’s bizarre anti tulip rant- where he says children shouldn’t have access to tulips for the sexual veracity of the flowers will insense them cos they look like vaginas duh and we all know vaginas are detrimental to a child’s education.

Learning and education, academia even- is not the place for sexual expression it seems- it is excluded, expelled, unprofessional.

Unbridled sexual and emotional expression are also something connoted with teenage behaviour- attributed to wild hormones- dismissed for that reason. Emotional and sexual excess are attributed to teenagers- idols of excess, excess as rite of passage-teenage rebellion. Emotional and sexual excess are relegated to hormones and teenager-dom or hormonal women, it doesn’t sit right.

Sophie Convey’s zine cam girls- where girls modelled their own clothes/posed for their webcam in their own styles was a perfect play on words that fits in with this idea of false sexual advertising online. ‘Cam girls’ is a zine of self expression in this limited webcam format- but to an outsider it may instantly make one think of something seedy, maybe ‘cam-whoring’ a cute term obviously, for anyone who seeks attention through some indeterminate yet excessive presence on camera- most likely through titillation as whoring suggests.

There’s something about adverts like this, where you’re meant to be fooled into an instant chat in your periphery, where your dream girl is reaching out to you thorugh a familiar social networking IM, with a seductive default image, imploring you to validate her with response. Sonya is no ghost, just a shell. Sonya fooled you into clicking this pop-up with her flagrantly inauthentic attempt to communicate, damn that Sonya.

Sonya why can’t I quit you? ;__;

‘She: “False in legs, and false in thighs; / False in breast, teeth, hair, and eyes.” ’ Antichrist 2009

Did you start out branding yourself as a teen online, did you have a myspace, a livejournal, did you cringe at yourself when facebook timelines were introduced? Putting up emotional pleas, meaningful lyrics, videos of yourself dancing in your underwear, vlogging about inane stuff, crying even, on any of these platforms? How do you build on this? Do you try and sweep it under the rug as you ‘grow up’, do you destroy your former avatars, or do you build upon them, subsume and own them? Did someone leak your n00dz, or did you do it? Did you become a suicide girl so you could leak ur n00dz first?

The conflict between personal and professional online presence isn’t a fresh subject. Public figures are always fumbling tweets and putting up statuses that they shouldn’t, have their email hacked and their durrdy affairs leaked and we’re doing it to each other, spiteful post break-up stalking or hacking of our nearest and dearest- ‘fraping’ etc.

What is to come of this, what’s the point of crying over crying over spilt milk? I suppose I want to draw some obvious conclusions: shit son, we’re quite emotionally and sexually repressed in our everyday lives and when it comes to stuff online things are kinda different but also not…

And shit son, we’re quite sexually and emotionally repressed in our professional and academic lives too so makes sense that when we have fun online we might partake in seemingly dubious sexual and emotional expression. Which funnily enough, as our professional and academic lives become inextricably linked with our online presences, is going to present problematics that might shift the way people continue to express themselves- and I guess I also wanna add in that, the yoof, particularly teens on the tumblr which is my usual subject, are experimenting with this and resisting this by creating these avatars that discomfort us with their tears, their sexual discovery and inconsistency.

It seems silly to draw mainly from tumblr as a resource but check how endlessly this lot toil in the tumblr mines to extract pseudo-teen ore for their own ends. Tumblr trends and behaviour exceed their context, which brings another sense of validity to thinking about this stuff but also this weird sense of critical mass:

So what’s beyond all this excess though? If it could be seen as at critical mass. Maybe it’s something for the next diatribe, which will express more about resisting that excessive expression and some of the other problematics involved with this subject, perhaps the hang over from perma-teen excess is happening somewhere… the sobering up and growing up of tumblr teen excess. And if it exists as a single topic body of work tumblr, it might look a little something like Fran Malthouse’s work. Check it out and thanks for reading.

aww look it’s the sunrise the morning after the tumblr hangover <3

essay coming soon ft. analysis of luce irigaray, webcam tears, laurel nakadate, sarah maple, t.A.T.u, the offspring, 33summer and much much more

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Revolting Girls Revolting!

(Click here for easier reading)

Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), describes the MPDG as “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up, thus their men never grow up.

I cringed. I know you will. Following the first link you will see a list of films which seem applicable and many more in your own mind perhaps too. 

Kate Winslet’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is notable for acknowledging and rejecting this label, in a remark to Jim Carrey’s Joel character: “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”

For my own reasons I do not necessarily agree with the conditions that make Clementine’s comment a valid rejection because of circumstance of the scene- taking place as a memory in  Joel’s head, after which the conversation becomes decidedly less idealistic and more… contradictory and mushy… However I am not entirely concerned with denigrating Clem’s place as objector to such a vile trope that has been cited spanning almost a century of cinema.

I am more concerned or delighted to see how this trope has been translated recycled and unintentionally subverted by the feminine online personalities that I often write about.

While uncited, the wikipedia article also states this:

MPDGs are usually static characters who have eccentric personality quirks and are unabashedly girlish.

Popular feminist-leaning tumblr bloggers are usually static characters who have eccentric personality quirks and are unabashedly girlish.

(Of course if you say something on tumblr you gotta be prepared for me to screen grab it and talk about it, especially if you intend to be contentious, which most people on tumblr attempt to in order to gain abstract reward of attention that satisfies a libidinal lack…)

However in this case, koolthing hits the nail on the head, it does make you feel a bit ‘…ugh.’ Many people on tumblr try and shame this girliness. But why? This is probably, in part, down to damages done to girlishness and femininity through the impotence of the MPDG how she is only useful or worth being expressed in cinema and tv to teach broodingly (self-centered) soulful (moping) young (naive/impetuous) men to embrace life!

The allusion in the moniker MPDG to Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys is also of great significance as an entity that guides growing boys away from the imperative of sexual maturity but still alludes to it. There are connotations of ‘never growing up’ in the words ‘pixie’ and ‘dream’ and ‘girl’ and the qualities of eccentricity (synonymous with manic dream and pixie) and girlishness exclusive to one of the most desired and taboo sexual objects in contemporary culture: the pre/pubescent girl or virgin…

Mania is antonym of tame, the tame is of the meek, docile, domicile and passive- as I begrudgingly will put is feminine. So mania- synonymous with fury and rage can be considered a masculine attribute, depending on your own connotations. And pixies are ancient mythologies, exotic and synonymous with fairies and other little feminine creatures that are wild mischievous and fantastical. The MPDG in need of taming and in doing so the man can quell or cope with her hysteria(mania) and rectify his formerly passive ‘lost’ position and reassert activity in the world, as is his masculine duty, thus all equilibrium will be restored according to the trope these bullshit writers have constructed …sigh.

My own vitriol aside, I really believe that the online identities I often talk about all relate to this trope. If not only for the fact that tumblr is quite taken with cinema. A lot of the content, which is a commonality between all these identities is that they all post cinematic icons- film taste is something quite contentious on tumblr. I find this group often circulate imagery from John Waters films like Pink Flamingos, late 80s/90s films which celebrate or parody ‘shallowness’ and ‘bubbliness’ like Heathers, Clueless and kids tv shows and pop stars from that era that exude these qualities too.  

A while ago Molly Soda was featured in Vice Magazine, I consider her a manic pixie dream girl with feminist interests.

• Manic- she is manic and frenzied in her videos- exaggerated miming and dancing to pop songs, at times drunk. More than her own mania, people become frenzied by her, angered by her image alone.
• Pixie- she has a great sense of humour, people who make ignorant sweeping criticisms of her via her ask box are victims of this sharp wit much to my and many others amusement.
• Dream- she is quite unattainable in that Molly Soda is widely understood as an avatar and that a lot of her performance art is tied in with this identity. She is not concerned with clairfying this either. She remains enigmatic and mysterious, like a dream.
• Girl- she is decidedly girlie, and cute and feminine in her self portraits, sexuality and appearance- via clothing and make up, the female icons she posts on her blog too indicate that she embraces femininity.

The article about her was in a slightly mocking yet reverent tone, as Vice does. While Molly did make public a relationship with online personae hotsugar. Her manic pixie dream girl qualities which include being bubbly and a shallowness- perhaps garnered through her self portraiture, alluding to narcissism (but then again who isnt a narcissist in some way that has a blog/microblogs). Ahem, however for all her bubbly shallow demeanour Molly is, aswell as this, acutely witty and sharply intellectual, when prodded. She has been featured in a numerous magazines and online articles for her online presence.

It is not so much that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is what she pretends to be but that she encompasses that trope and so much more without the reason for this being existing to help men on their way to achieving their potential, how frustrating for them, eh? The frustration is clear over the years from all the hate and criticisms over her appearance that may in part come from frustrated admirers. 

Arvida Bystrom was in another Vice article which loosely speculated about and gave an overview of her and other bloggers with feminist stances. Also Meadham Kirchhoff featured Arvida Bystrom as a key muse, name dropping her as significant influence in their a collection from earlier this year, even naming a dress after her. 

• Manic Arvida could be considered manic in her virrulent internet presence.
• Pixie her pixie quality is almost definitely communicated through the mischievously sexual nature of her self portraiture, her practice which dabbles in all kinds of ‘naughty’ subjects- eroticizing her body hair, presenting herself androgynously etc
• Dream she is dream like in the sense that she is also relatively inaccessible through her blog but also in her self portraiture she seems in repose often, and placidly calm and otherworldly.
• Girl she is incredibly girlie and endearing, stylistically she is as much androgynous as she revels in pink, pastel vibrant, floral celebratory feminine aspects of her identity.

Arvida is an artist and this is marvellous exposure for her that I do not want to belittle. I have to admit I hold her online persona and that which trickles through her photography and self portraiture with a reverence too. There is an odd serenity about this hyperfemme, that pulls my gaze from the noise of the rest of tumblr imagery and settles me silent on her, she is an otherness, alien, someone I cannot lie I sort of worship with the time I spend admiring and pondering over. There’s an overt but not overstated sexuality about her too, she placcidly regards the camera in portraits. Something that Mirdham Kirchhoff picked up on is the place of the male gaze in Arvida’s images. They described her as a centrefold which has obvious connotations of sexual anticipation, women as commodity, idolotry etc.

She is not so much manic in retrospect but her Pixie Dream Girl qualities definitely mean she suits the more positive feminine aspects of this trope, the wonderfully mutated trope, where being eccentric bubbly and shallow, at times, does not devalue you. Girliness does not devalue or define Arvida- she exists in this state without the narrative or goal, as cinematic motif has mistakenly asserted, to rectify wayward men.

(A side note on hairy armpits), For some of these and other avatars I follow, through anonymous messages, or comments on images there is chatter over their unshorn armptis- (but Vice assures us hairy armpits are in, so no need to panic!) No matter how informative the blogs/links/projects/work of these people might be on feminism and body positivity, they are tirelessly criticised for their appearance. These girls continue to endure such criticisms because the discussion can always be held with a view to enlightening or empowering someone else. These women are not martyrs though, their body hair is something they are neither ashamed or proud of to any great extent but more so something they must continue to express and promote to highlight that it is sheer insanity to police someone else’s body.

Hairy armpits, despite the perspective some of us have, are still a taboo choice. Shaving in some senses affirms damaging patriarchal traditions that try and diminish women into hairless homogenous drones for the consumption of the male gaze. Choosing to grow out natural body hair challenges that mainstream idea but is also understood as a mainstay of established subcultures.

Alongside these examples, my friend Sarah Deetz runs a blog where her identity and style, which are very malleable, function as a catalyst to discuss a whole host of topics, from cinema, to existential topics and criticism of visual culture. I find Sarah’s photography and styling quite self conscious and carefully crafted, she has a sharp wit and is very informative on feminist topics off guard, which conveys her analytical skills that she employs when studying a film degree. Sarah also has a notably bubbly demeanour- no doubt down to our mutual addiction: full-fat coca-cola.

• Manic Sarah whom I’ve met in person, is decidedly manic, if not for the permanent caffeine high she is prevalent on twitter, blogspot and tumblr, or which she has a few anyhow, she manically expresses herself if you will.
• Pixie Sarah is a similar height to me, a small girl who is also cheeky, witty, sexy and cunning.
• Dream Sarah presents her identity often in an ironic way, speaking in 90s colloquialisms on her twitter, often verbosely on her blogspot, and sharply cuts down poor attempts at criticism on tumblr. Her avatar is hard to put down to singular person, she is otherworldly in that sense.
• Girl Sarah is excessively, wonderfully girlie, in particular her habit of wearing publicly lacey vintage underwear layered over each other, alongside, glittery accessories and pastel hair colours, she herself exudes femininity.

As of late Sarah has been pre-occupied with all things post millennial, silvery and powder pink/blue tones. I met her a few months ago, with newly shorn off hair- on a whim, which we then dyed a lilacy colour, she buys delicate vintage underwear and teams this with contrasting fabrics and tailoring and is generally endlessly delightful and above all else, girly. 

There is an errant girliness to the women that are admired on tumblr in this community and also in the people who are producing a lot of feminist artwork/zines. I encounter more than ever now a congruence between female empowerment and girly qualities, amongst my peers.

Not long ago, a past, misogynyst boss of mine accused me of using my ‘girly’ and ‘feminine’ charms to get my way. Whether or not I did, I think this is a case of the fault being in the eye of the beholder. Trying to impose guilt on me, as my fault, because he associated my femininity with his will to please me, at the time I felt this to be a disgusting subtextual sexual contract. I didn’t work there long.

On a sidenote, I feel a bit iffy over referring to these groups as girls- increasingly, on tumblr, I am engaging with people who refuse to align themselves with common binary understanding of gender. I do want to speak of girlness as something exclusive to women but something people of any gender could adopt and enact in a positive, reclamation, if I may. The kind of general criticism these tumblr personalities receive for having indeterminate/fluid sex, gender or beauty preferences often arises from a need in the antagonizer to distance themselves from identities that intimidate or stimulate their own, in a way they can’t make sense of. By demonising or attacking these figures that challenge their own identity, that they find abject, they can reaffirm their own and pressure others into the same through ignorant vague shaming.

In my hackneyed Manic Pixie Dream Girl summaries, I may also have noted identities such as transgenderchild and rotting whom I am not so familiar with (especially as to their feminist/ queer theory leanings) but they encompass these qualities without adhering the cinematic trope entirely, they echo, rehash and transform the trope in the narratives they construct about their avatars with their blogs.  

Another quality that links all these girls is that they all engage in abject activities, abject in that they repulse and horrify some of the people who view their work, self portraiture/identities. If it isn’t their androgyny, or non hetero-normativity, body hair, sexual expression it is their most disgusting aspect that causes controversy, their errant feminist principles, whether that be mass feminism or an individualist version or any other of the many forms.

Girlieness is often seen at odds with feminism, culturally because of other stereotypes that paint them as butch, asexual, archaic or desexualized. Also because girlie refers both to girlie magazines- of scantily clad women for male gaze consumption, and girlieness as of femininity through pink dresses and cuteness and junk. It is also important to note that imitating or aspiring to be these girls, as is often berated on tumblr by bored naysayers, is possibly one of the more wise, if stylistically risky, choices for impressionable teenagers and I am glad that they sicken the more conservative users because it only makes them more powerful icons. girlie 

noise about contemporary art theory.

Texts at hand:

Maurice Merlau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind, in Galen A. Johnson (ed.) The Merlau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader. Philosophy and Painting, Evanston, Illinoise, 1999, pp 121-149.

Yve Lomax ‘A Twittering Noise’ in Sounding the Event: Escapes Dialogue and Matters of Art, Nature and Time. I.B Tauris, 2005, pp. 8-37 plus notes.

As I made my way through the snippet of Maurice Merlau-Ponty text, I found myself becoming increasingly infuriated. There’s a smug awe for painters, Merlau-Ponty is the teacher and painters, en masse, are his fav student, whom he mollycoddles and pats on the back constantly.

The text is about painting and philosophy, so perhaps I was foolish to expect anything else?! And yet, I found it boring and more than that, my reading was tainted by the fact I don’t feel so reverential about painting. This is a very emotional response I know but that’s the sad truth, no big ideas going on here, just grumbles, for now.

I’m not going to silence this sense of fangirling that came off, at first glance though. There’s this reverence towards painters and lack of criticism that got me all blue in the face. This paragraph in particular had me incensed:

‘… Since the power or fecundity of works of art exceeds every positive casual or linear relation, it is not illegitimate for a layman such as myself, speaking from his memory of a few paintings and books, to express how painting enters into his reflections, and to register his sense of a profound dissonance, a transformation of the relationship between humanity and Being, when he holds up a universe of classical thought, contrasting it en bloc with the explorations of modern painting.’ p139

For me there’s a sycophantic quality, where Merlau-Ponty reveals insecurity, citing his ‘lack.’ Maybe I am missing some kind of double bluff but I felt utterly perplexed as to why this is necessary to say. Beyond my obvious repugnance towards the content, its the choice of phrase that Merlau-Ponty uses that doesn’t gel with me.

”…Such a labour demands a long familiarity with history. I lack everything for it’s execution, both competence and space.’ p139

Sometimes I explain when I write essays that I am going to be critical of tumblrs which aren’t accurate representations of those that puppet them but that’s a kind of childish insecurity of mine that makes me overstate such things, to avoid obvious, overtired arguments about authorship and ethics. I’d have figured that Merlau-Ponty needn’t point out the ‘dissonance’ he is rocked by when brandishing ‘a universe of classical thought’ to the ‘explorations of modern painting’. The wording just conjures ideas of epic cinematic face-offs between antithetic warriors, which is kinda cringe-inducing to me.

What may have happened, is I have misread this paragraph and become clouded by my increasing resentment… that’s why I’m writing about it here, to see if I can write away my troubles or hoping that one of you lot’ll help me out. 

On the other hand, I have also been picking odds and ends from the text that sparked with me, as below… so all is not lost.

‘The dubious relationship of likeness is- among things- an unequivocal relationship of projection.’ p131

I was reminded of two examples that I cannot cite for having a sieve-like memory, one was from a tiny orange book that briefly mentions social networking, one of the authors expressed anxiety that ‘liking’ (in the context of facebook etc) would only create ever more introspective communities and not this global affinity/unity one might think it would spore.

Then there’s an article (which I have now forgotten how to find but will correct when dredges up), about destroying your facebook. This would be done not ot by deleting it but by liking everything you can, inviting every application and advert-bot to inhabit your facebook avatar, thusly mutating your online identity into this monstrous dissonant entity that no longer resembles you so those lofty powers that be cannot effectively advertise to and homogenise you into the cattle herd of information fodder you are for the great and evil capitalist machine etc etc etc it would also infuriate your fellow facebook friends, no end haha.

This article which I will make known as soon as I recover it also reminded me of the first text we broached in our reading group, Yve Lomax’s A Twittering Noise. Which mentions over and over (in all it’s nigh-impossible-to-fathom stylistic glory) the word NOISE. 

‘Nascent nature begins in noise and the old man and his dog die in noise.’ p13

Yve Lomax’s text (the vast proportion of which is about photography, which I was mostly oblivious to until told so….) is equally as indulgent in delivery as that insecure paragraph by Merlau-Ponty. The style of delivery is so rich with imagery, I’m kinda drunk and befuddled as to what I’m reading and thusly equally lost..

‘Listen to the noise of human antagonism. Yes, listen to the quarrels and hatred amongst ourselves, human face-to-face. But listen to the noise of our battles against and hatred towards the noise that… sounds the multiple birthings, becomings and coming undones of the world, which can be heard at the seaside and, if you have an ear for it, at the edges of our many languages, within our myths and metaphors, our images and encodings, our recordings, and channels of communications. Or indeed, our hearts as they beat through the night. Oh yes, if you have an ear for it listen to the noise of the background noise, which is nothing but pure mixed up, multiplicity on the move.’ p12

When I read that article (which I can’t remember for the life of me) about convoluting your facebook avatar by liking everything, polluting newsfeeds with incessant interaction etc, I was reminded of the above passage, this noise. Which is just so apt for discussing a barrage of art theory as I am now, it feels like that tsunami of noise, as Lomax described.

Why don’t I feel the contempt for Lomax’s heavy stylistic puffery, though, when I do for Merlau Ponty’s? Lomax’s text constantly had me yearning for some kind of polemic, with which I was never provided, a frustrating, saucy, tease of a text. Most of my reading group/peers disliked it, for your information. Maybe it’s cos I revel in the fact Lomax never provides any concrete answers but only pivots for thought, a text within which it is easier for me to manoeuvre, to make associations, to breathe without fear of my thoughts in regards to subjects at hand, being irrelevant. Merlau-Ponty’s text was grounded and quoted and cited, authoritative and finite, like an incessant lecturer.

I can see how this reflection alone might read as very confused because it is after the fact and the product of much hours of hap hazard reading and references to things forgotten. This is the first of my journeys into putting raw thoughts out about what I’m studying. I know that ‘style of delivery’ is a fraction of what I’m studying but I never figured it would have such an impact upon me.

I feel like a petulant child, I secretly want to abide and understand but can’t so for now I will wail and scream and revel in the sound of my own voice/noise.

Blargheughlarghlrlrlrlrahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaahahahahahhlhlhrlh!?

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DEADNIGGASTORAGE? // THE SUPPOSED LIVES AND DEATHS OF PERSONAL BRANDS ON TUMBLR.

AN IMPORTANT FACTOR FOR IMMEDIATE CONSIDERATION WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING BUTT HURT ON TUMBLR.

The content you post on tumblr is a willing and purposeful effort to communicate. Unless you make private all your content, you must acknowledge that anything you post, while it is unlikely, could garner no attention a lot of attention or negative responses, or silly analysis by yours truly.

While I mean no disrespect to the people I write about, I can fully understand that they find it invasive but I really subscribe to the above statement.

From spending a lot of time on tumblr just to mention a few these are the biggest problems that are part and parcel of the site community.

• Tumblr users steal your original content and upload as their own and it is difficult to rectify this.
• Tumblr users can hoard URLs for the purpose of antagonism. 

Gifs are usually the subject of controversy when it comes to stealing content, not so much with photos or text. Blogs I follow, often tell their following that they became more popular when they posted original content gifs.

Changing url is a significant move for a tumblr avatar too, I think it means that the personal brand you have built will be greatly damaged. It disturbs the associations your followers make with the content you post but it could also be liberating. I found this with west-nile-virus, the branding of this blog, has wavered between personal posts, text posts and photo/gif blog depending on the whim of the blogger, now changed to Fuks, removing a lot of the associations I had with west-nile-virus but not adjusting his blogging style, as far as I know.

Fuks was at one point also part of the lost blog network probably still is… the purpose of which seems to be to promote a group of supposedly exclusive quality blogs whose content is similar. I remain unable to advocate this as anything but some kind of new-age version of an elitist old-boys club. I must admit, it’s a clever way to brand exclusivity, despite my apprehension.

A url controversy I didn’t manage to record was that of the mermaid/queen/cunt watergate-esque debacle. A popular blogger now pocacuntas momentarily changed her url and posted about it, neglecting to save her url under a secondary blog and being quite public about the change, another blogger stole it, seemingly just for the purpose of causing heartache to the pocacuntas. As the pocacuntas had amassed quite a following, this was a problem as the notoriety she had built was now being hijacked by the url hoarder. This is obviously quite frustrating and it continues to reverberate around my dashboard.

But as I put first off, this is tumblr and you have to expect negativity, increasingly so with the more popular blogs, the more popular you are the more likely followers are to be jealous, resent your avatar or make false assumptions based on your content, as more people have the chance to speculate about you. I have noticed this on my own blog. It is as though followers feel that you owe your tumblr presence to them , which is in some senses true, if you are a personality blog and use your blog as a window to your soul- that could be quite a hurtful experience. But I and many others do not use tumblr like this, my tumblr is a fraction of my life that I expose and I take insults on the chin, despite how perceptive some accusations may be.

Maybe one of the first few people I followed when I began to use tumblr was deadniggastorage. He was unnervingly witty and posted a variety of really exciting imagery, also he was a consistent blogger- his content rarely deviated from a volley of stimulating imagery and well-answered asks. He posted enough to have a significant presence on my dashboard at that time. Unfortunately, for a period of months, deadniggastorage was absent from tumblr for a spell in Prison which he is quite open about. Prior to this he had a pretty strong following from what I could tell- in terms of the amount of asks he got and how popular his original content got.

Lately Schon Pee, as he is also known musically/irl (as far as I can fathom) has experienced a level of tumblr fame that has caused him to reflect quite actively on tumblr, and test his avatar, as below.

I mentioned not long ago that Jennifer Chan wanted to get rid of her following on tumblr, perhaps though, she didn’t have enough of a following to execute this work or it was just a musing. It’s something maybe all tumblr users have considered or practiced- to begin again or delete your tumblr.

To delete your tumblr, as a blog with many followers is kind of an act of martyrdom, people who claim to delete often post the objections of their fawning followers (from my observations). When someone follows your blog they are validating something you have created with their attention. It’s a kind of social contract, which abstractly suggests  your blog serves value or has purpose to that follower. When many people follow your blog, there is a sense that you owe your influence and exposure to your followers, it’s not true but I am sure I’m not the only one who has noticed this kind of behaviour.

As with all things on tumblr that are popular, it is alarmingly unfashionable to care about your blog, because you are suggesting that blogging is meaningful to you, being quite a ubiquitous platform, this can invalidate your personal brand and paint you as sycophant.

As nicely illustrated by coteau and DNS here becoming emotionally dependant on tumblr is a big no-no.

I like that tumblr users are able to reflect upon the ephemeral/abstract quality of their context but I find in many (not all and I’m assuming not the above) cases it is a shallow attempt to create a sensationalised throw-away comment that will gain notes and only massage their ego. This is another factor of tumblr behaviour: one user cannot make assumptions about other tumblr users because nobody is obligated to present their true selves through their blogs. While they should take responsibility for their content they do not have to adhere to a moral or honest line, or be thankful for their popularity.

I suppose their is a no way to truly qualify blogs, it is subjective. Like the hipsterism so commonly associated with tumblr, as soon as someone becomes very popular, copy-cat blogs begin to arise, hoping to leech off trending content, gain status, and ultimately, massage their egos. The followers of these blogs become quickly complacent or bored or desensitised to the content/personal brand which is now ubiquitous. Often the followership of these blogs will try to breed contempt in order to topple their deities with tumblr burn book blogs, which are usually shut down for their abusive content, a good example are the numerous critical blogs of Molly Soda. For successful tumblr personalities these kind of things only make them more popular, as they remain unfazed and come off looking a lot better than the envious lynch mobs that troll them.

The god complex that goes along with gaining notoriety on tumblr is something that is put about by followers, more than the popular tumblr users, as illustrated below, flattery is one way to garner attention from the personalities/blogs that you want to interact with.

By choosing to command his followers to unfollow DNS is invalidating them in a sense. There is an exclusivity and value to following a blog because it has an effect on the content you choose to expose yourself to. And if your blog is about your personal brand, people buy into that when they follow you, they are increasing the exposure of your content, promoting your brand by association and doing you a service, ONLY if you subscribe to this value system too.  

I like to think I’m not taking things seriously, I’m more speculative. Lol I hope.

This is why demanding your followers abandon you and not just deleting your blog is quite an aggressive and paradoxical move as it challenges the value system within this site as a social network. DNS’s activity threatens those who aspire to build a community for their content/personal brand, people who take their avatar seriously, who are precious about their online identity.

Some real talk from DNS

At one point I noticed deadniggastorage offered a tongue in cheek swearing of vows to the deadniggastoragecult, or something of that ilk- there was much home made sign on webcam revelry and after a while it died down. But from then on I noticed Schon Pee’s anatagonism and content change. DNS makes a point of outing the shallowness and insignificance of tumblr blogging through humour and some very speculative posts.

While his posts can seem off the cuff, or the product of a whim, there are certain subjects he repeatedly comments on. I sometimes find myself a little disgusted with DNS’s admissions but I continue to follow because of the spectacle of the destruction he is enacting, and of course, for old times sake, the fraction of him I can see through tumblr, is fascinating. 

I initially titled this lil essay THE ABDICATION OF DEADNIGGATORAGE, THE REULCTANT TRYANT RULER OF WEST TUMBLR. I see now how it is kind of relevant to liken him to a Prince if this situation is looked at from a Machiavellian angle, Lars Svensden discusses how fear is used in society to progress and protect it’s subjects.

‘…whoever controls the fear in society is well on the way to controlling the entire society.’ 2007 Lars Svensden A Philosophy of Fear

If we look at tumblr as a microcosmic society, where the average tumblr aspires to gain more followers (and ultimately validating their taste and personality, all in ultimate homage to the ID) by blogging courteously: with a balance original content, reblogging from wide sources, being somewhat open to anonymous asks and their following. When a tumblr personality with many followers (who thusly has more power than an unpopular tumblr due to the exposure and acceptance of their brand by the community and obviously power/influence is desired on this site) treats their following with contempt and seems to still gain followers- it challenges the value system. It confounds the idea that morality/ethics and blogging notoriety go hand in hand.

As relevant as this Basquait quote is, I see Deadniggastorage more as the Prince of tumblr. He hasn’t taken any responsibility upon himself, he doesn’t view himself as a martyr or ruler despite his tongue-in-cheek black jesus phase. There is an errant playfulness to all that he communicates through tumblr, in some ways his tumblr personality reminds me of the work of Andy Kaufman, which is a compliment indeed.

‘Even if it is a good thing for a Prince to be loved, it is more important for him to be feared, because fear goes deeper than love. ’ 2007 Lars Svensden A Philosophy of Fear

I suppose I wanted to explore immaterial destruction but have meandered and not concluded much. I speculate more than anything, to call this a proper essay I’d need far more concrete research and theory but I like that most of my tumblr readership understand this.

 DNS has provided me with a nice anecdotal example of an attempt to annihilate a pervasive avatar, which I guess I kind of want to thank him for, as he has inadvertently aided my studies. Not that DNS must consider himself an internet artist/performance artist/ tumblr famous or any such lark, his behaviour is just unique and something internet artists have previously discussed. Heck I also hope this doesn’t do any disservice to DNS by promoting him to new followers but it may well do. I imagine people may want to continue to test this virulent avatar to his limits, I wonder how much it will take?

MOLLY SODA AND THE PERMATEENS / ARRAN RIDLEY AND THE CASE OF THE LIQUID AVATAR.

In anticipation of Sarah Deetz PERMATEEN ZINE at the end of August, I want to talk about the phenomenon, my interpretation. I am not going to prescribe to the stance that I can explain the root of it or even accurately fathom it currently or forsee what the implications of the permateen may be. Gee whizz what a stupid idea to even begin then huh? No. Not really, as while I cover my ass I do it for good reason. That reason is that I accept my fractured perception of the world, tumblr and the phenomenon of the permateen, dude it’s all so ephemeral and insignificant.

I have no concrete sources(<—- generic link about early 20s loser dumb dumb heads/permateens) only assumptions and tenuous connections to make between by meagre experience/knowledge and what I observe. There are a number of factors I want to consider other than perma teens directly. Teen appropriation, 90s cultural appropriation and 90s cultural entitlement, worship of the superficial and avatar death. 

I remember, before, commenting on a rather tired bbc program which was meant to analyse the teen experience/sensation from it’s inception in the 40s/50s to the teens from the 90s. Like everyone was trying to carve their own path and outdo their previous generation, which now seems very abstracted. Teens that I interact with are on tumblr, and largely, I find that while they follow trends, talk about pop culture but so many of them reblog and align their identity with cultural artefacts from my youth and even late 80s culture. It’s almost as if the vast majority feel disaffected by their present. 

Maybe it’s something to do with hindsight. Yet I see it in fashion and music and so much more, there’s a reverence towards the idiocy, superficiality and optimism of the 90s. 90s teens were the ones I found puzzling when I was a kid, I never really was a very good teenager- which explains my current obsession and my admission that I am playing catch up, in that I consider myself a permateen.

I failed at my teens (no significant rebellion/drug use/anti social behaviour to admitt) and now i am failing to become a structured young adult, as that first cringe-worthy hyperlink discusses. I am and maybe you are, part of this weird stunted adolescent existence, where we can’t get a job, a house or consider a family- the things society expects of us in order to become a functioning cog. So I am festering in the primordial ooze of my teenage years, going back to uni and starting to feel worryingly peterpan-like about life.

Now I’ve made all the apologies for the lack of academia/teen angst and attempted to contextualize permateens, we can get down to business- I still want to talk about tumblr trends. Topics of discussion will be Molly Soda and some other internet artists, tumblr fame ladder climbing and generally the will to discard and evolve one’s avatar.

The first time I ever got despondent about someone on tumblr deactivating was when artist/tumblrlrr Arran Ridley/Teenage Dog’s dump fm aesthetic was becoming popular. In an act of martyrdom Arran deleted his blog just as I was about to start one of my very first essays on internet artists on tumblr. I was angry but suddenly understood that deleting your blog can be as important as making it an aesthetic paradise. It makes people lament your absence, for one.

Arran has since returned with a few different urls and projects and he’s even played the same trick with facebook. Arran’s current URL of choice is clubclassics. And it applies remarkably well to the PERMATEEN aesthetic. His current blog is a cultural tomb to it’s moniker clubclassics, he draws from movies, tv and general ephemera associated with aspirational living as a true teen/early 2000s of the 90s. I refer to it as a tomb for the fact the content is delivered quite coldly, from the stony colour pallet of the theme to the fact most of his content looks like a lazy google search, which dehumanises his blog and further affirms his budding reputation as the Riddler of avatar reinvention.

While there’s the obvious choice of being called teenage dog etc, Arran really lives the PERMATEEN existence, when we would meet up he was making work that dealt almost exclusively with imagery from his formative years. He contrasts some of the cold content with incredibly personal stuff too, webcam photos and intimate yet suspiciously tongue-in-cheek details like below.

It seems that the one avatar Arran may find it hard to shake off is the constant artist, even his most personal admissions have a tinge of slow-burning, calculated aesthetic consideration about them. What I liked too about Arran’s first blog that he deleted, much to my annoyance, was how he was didn’t have to present the low res images of ferns and doctor pepper cans with irony- it was more that these were honest remnants of his past that were being exhumed.

The level of personal investment in internet artists artwork and bloggers on tumblr is always interesting to me. They (I use they in the most unreliable sense i.e tha artists i av come across and am too lazy to namecheck rightnao, okai?), where was I? Okay, they seem to tentatively feed personal information into their work. Social networking is prevalent, it dominates contemporary living whether you like it or not, the news reports what happens on twitter etc etc.

So slipping their identity into their work while being an aloof and inexplicable artistic intention, is also very much standard learned behaviour to garner interaction, or also an existential gesture towards the frailty of the avatar wahhh. Brad Troemel, ever the oracle to which I look for internet sense makes an apt comment on his facebook:

REAL TALK, I think we can all agree.

I have been lax about namechecking my artists, I won’t when I discuss blogs in question. As usual I write about Molly Soda but that’s because she reigns as tumblr queen- whatever she does or blogs is greeted with equal adoration and contempt- to all of which she is seemingly unaffected. So boys who look like molly soda  and molly soda try hards attempt to make scathing critique, they try and deny such butt-hurtedness and Molly just shrugs, murmurs some Taylor Swift lyrics and continues to draw followers.

She has reached the heights of a deity almost. When she reloblogged a pic I drew of her, it got so many notes and I gained so many followers, it is as though all she touches turns to gold. Even moreso the mollysoda try hards blog, reblogged an earlier essay of mine that waxed lyrical about Molly and I easily gained 100 followers. It wasn’t very negative but was mostly about tumblr fame. 

Molly Soda is definitive of a perma teen, in more ways than the ones I have descibed. it’s also down to a kind of lolita way of dressing, being very honest about her body and private life. Molly owns her identity, warts and all, which I figure is part of her success- something that all teens aspire to. Molly is my age, she dresses like a stereotypical 90s grunge/artsy girl, if you catch my drift, people find this quite sensational as her body modification choices tend to challenge the status quo and then become immediate trends.  Her identity is copied vastly, hence the Molly Soda tryhards blog, for as her fame becomes meteoric, there are a proportional amount of people who dislike or are jealous of her. The fact that people invest time to half heartedly antagonise her is just inadvertent PR.

An obvious and unmentioned factor is how do people remain interested? The ‘hate’ perpetuates interest mostly, like the tumblr burn book- of which there have been many incarnations- dedicated to just being cruel about tumblr famous people/ make them ever more popular. There are gossip magazines, we don’t need to get deep to realise that people get off on gossip and their idols faults etc etc. But whatever piques a community on tumblrs interest soon ebbs; as with trends, there’s a short shelf life for the tumblr famous- but Molly Soda is constant haha.

Bloggers martyr themselves( by deleting/changing url), under the impression that they can begin again and easily regain their popularity. I often see people message popular blogs ‘hey I used to be so and so but I deleted’ expecting recognition and most of the time they get a sardonic reply. There is a sense of entitlement with tumblr fame but none seem to realise their fame is often coincidental and temporary not something intrinsic to them.

I fully understand the slightness and coincidence of my follower count and it’s down to separate incidents:

• a picture of me went viral, the same picture, twice, such madness. 
• I drew a pic of molly soda, which she reblogged
• another pic of me got moderately popular
• an article I wrote about molly soda got exposure.

These reasons humble me cos I am primarily a photo blog that documents found photography and reblogs my likes. I’m simple folk. There’s a lot of posturing on tumblr, I only had to scroll down my dash just now to find peole lamenting tumblr, dissing it which of course, is so cool cos it’s an unpopular opinion, or at least we all wish we were tired of tumblr and had lives…

I feel like I wanna full circle back to what Brad Troemel said about internet artists not making anything just inspecting one another’s brands. Tumblr is mostly personal brands, blogs that is but what kind of productivity does this cause, there’s definitely a futility to blogging on tumblr, it’s quite addictive and gives one a sorta false sense of achievement. 

An artist once told me that my practice was slight, in the sense it was slight gesturally, not in a fragile sense, maybe in a slow burning and subversive sense haha I hope. I don’t really make art anymore, so what do I do? Bits here and there? Not much. My future is still in this permateen phase, half baked etc. One thing abut perma teens i noted is how it is an incarnation of generation X.

“…”Generation X” has always signified a group of young people, seemingly without identity, who face an uncertain, ill-defined (and perhaps hostile) future. -from wikipedia yo.

I feel that tumblr is a kind of hive-minded, self-destructive, snowballing generation X, where everyone is seemingly melding into a permateen with too much identity. All wishing we were teetering on our platform shoes, quivering with fear at the ominous millennium bug. Those were simpler times.

Star Trek, teenagers, hipsters, rage-wolf, perma-teens, memes and more…

There’s an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation that I was thinking about recently, called Darmok. In the episode, the Star Trek crew interact with a Tamarian, Dathon. Tamarian’s speak only in metaphor or allegory.

Captain Picard and Dathon are transported to a nearby planet surface after much misunderstanding between the crew and the visitor, the Tamarian’s prevent the Enterprise from beaming Picard back up, much to the crews dismay and confusion. On the planet, Dathon keeps repeating “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and throws Picard a dagger. Picard assumes this is an invitation to duel. A hostile creature attacks them, and due to their misunderstandings Dathon is fatally wounded.

In Dathon’s final moments, Picard catches on that the repetition of “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is an allegorical reference to a Tamarian legend, where two warriors ally to fight a beast threatening them, and thusly become friends. Picard recognises that Dathon was trying to befriend Picard, the Enterprise manages to disable the Tamarian’s forcefield and Picard returns to the ship, the two races unite and lament Dathon’s unfortunate demise. 

I have mentioned this to a few people saying that I feel, particularly on tumblr, that I communicate with people unwittingly in this way- through allegory/metaphor. Those who communicate via tumblr, through photos, screen shots of movies/tv shows, gifs and memes, communicate in the same way as Tamarians. Tumblr users forge friendships and followings in this way.

Having a tumblr, can be very different from person to person. Personally, I look for people to follow whose content either relates to mine or for a blog with an aesthetic that I would aspire to or whose content suggests they have consistent but varied sources. This doesn’t make much sense but it’s not of great importance.

People I follow often mention how tumblr kills memes- due to the speed and efficacy with which they are shared and elaborated upon through the tumblr community, there is an implication that popular content becomes tired and frustrating quickly so more innovative and specialised content is prized. 

^Someone I follow expressing frustration at a recent meme, maybe 2 days after it became popular. This is evidentiary of the remarkable speed with which tumblr creates and destroys popular content- as soon as something becomes overly popular it is shared by many and becomes ubiquitous and bothersome on a dash board/feed.

I can identify and I’m sure other tumblrs too, blogs with little to no personality- these are blogs which to the untumblr’d eye may seem appealing but in actual fact mainly reblog popular content- trying to gain followers through mutual mass-interest- often including rage cartoon memes, popular gifs and gothic/creepers/american-flag-hotpants etc.

There doesn’t seem to be any standard formula to creating a popular blog on tumblr, there are categories though- personality blogs, photo blogs, fan blogs, and gif blogs. If there is one common theme to being popular is that a single tumblr must post regularly, somewhat topically and must be knowledgable about the sources or nature of it’s content.

But back to the point about Darmock- communicating through metaphor, allegory or interests. It is widely known, or was for a while, this time last year and earlier, through this rage wolf meme that tumblr was associated with ‘hipsters.’

To change your style regularly as the cycle suggests, is something a child or teenager does- it is flippant -we assume through puberty to ultimately settle into an adult personality that will mature and cement. (haha so untrue adults just pretend :P)

A single identity is also easier to fund- you know what to buy what to listen to, what to watch, what to talk about- there is a comfort in that familiarity- changing your identity regularly is something that causes discomfort and suggests privilege- my recent black lipstick wearing causing my mum to scream out is my own allegorical example… haha

Swift identity changes are also synonymous with mental illness. Having a solid identity- while being reliable and iconic doesn’t make you intriguing, one can appear stale. Like when you create a sim on the Sims, its not one family for the duration of your game- there is always the opportunity to create infinite identities- it’s fun. Having multiple avatars is a prevalent guilty pleasure.

There is a dichotomy between having a consistent identity (which suggests you’re a stable, informed adult) and a fluid identity (being able to indulge in/sample all the cultural material that is available to a person and being willing to be influenced by it). I can only assume due to the spiralling success and ubiquity of tumblr, that now a larger proportion of people are indulging in hipsterism, probably accusing one another of all kinds of shallow ironic interest in this or wearing of that.

As it was mentioned in texts like Relational Aesthetics by Nicholas Bourriaud, artists (he deemed relational or post-productive), sample and curate material, more like djs than commercial artists - the receptive style glitteratti on tumblr have done the same- keeping fluid identities in order to communicate where their philosophical/political/cultural loyalties lie. They are susceptible to change and innovation, thusly they benefit from continued relevance and popularity.

I constitute a hipster as a person whose style you cannot emmulate/understand and whose heterogeneous choices threaten your established choices and symbolize a transience of identity- which is frightening- this is all definitely related to Freudian ego/ID, insecurity. Things that appear alien or unfamiliar cause fear. People fear hipsters because it threatens their current identity and symbolizes the inevitability of change. A way to neutralise this fear is to assert amongst your peers that the transience of identity- is a shallow behaviour- to mock it.

Hipsterism could be referred to as ‘Identity in flux’. Teens pick and choose identities to feel their were through the transformation of child to adult. Identity in flux is a very contemporary notion. The teenage program on iplayer vox-popped d-listers, and explained that for people who were teens in the 1930s and prior, it was not unlikely to go to work at 12, to be treated or even tried in courts of law as an adult.

Our transcendence from children to teens and to adults has to ADHERE to society’s bounds of 18/21. One may become an adult when puberty ends, this could be 16 or 18 or more like 20, or anything else. Adulthood is something that while inevitable is not accurately quantified by governmental law. Hence, in part, there are subcultures that embrace ‘regressive’ activities and I think the more conservative and dreary adulthood is- full of fear and repression - the more regressive and deranged it’s teens become. Also that teenagerdom- with which rebellion is associated, spills out and into the twenties like others and myself observe in Perma-Teens and Hipsters. 

‘Fear can have a cohesive effect- it can re-establish a sense of community that would seem to have been lost in the age of individualism.’ Lars Svensden 2007 A Philosopy of Fear.

Hipsterism is an extension of teenagerdom- the rejection of the hipster is society’s norms going through a puberty where popular culture has a less hierarchical formulae- no longer just governed by celebrities, tv, magazines, and movies but bloggers and online identites and collectives- who don’t adhere to established cultural speeds, or societal patterns.

I haven’t really set out to draw any massive conclusions from this, it’s more a collection of tenuously linked observations and opinions. I don’t think it’s more sophisticated to be a tumblr blogger, hipster or perma-teen, than any other subculture associated with teenagerdom, it’s just different and I notice it and am often labelled with all 3. ;) 

 And finally, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” to all my dear followers.