I believe this weirdo renaissance will emerge from people unafraid to speak unpopular opinions in plain terms without fear of reprisal from whatever side of the fence they sit on. I think it will be a sort of counterculture from the middle.
In a polarizing world (political, economic, even colors are clustering into shades of charcoal and white…), the misfits and rebels will be the ones who refuse to “pick a side.”
A big part of this analysis is missing: weird is "in" in politics, and not in a fun way. Extremely fringe ideas are now mainstream and conspiracy theories that would have never been entertained at all in the media are everywhere. Fringe figures with cruel, racist, sexist and antiscientific ideas have huge followings and get massive public attention in ways that they rarely have done previously. The Sydney Sweeney thing was about those who are reviving "eugenics" and the cracker barrel thing was driven by bots. Lots of weird is out there, just not the kind we like and people are retreating into sameness where they can to cope.
I've noticed, for several years now, that the muddied green, peach, brown "earthy tones" are the only colors (tones nonetheless!) juxtaposed against the endless shades of gray everywhere. This phenomenon can be seen from artwork Ditto for the soft-edge furniture - you know what I'm talking about: the plaster tables with pillar legs and entirely upholstered chairs with animalistic shapes. To me, though, that has stood out as WEIRD. It's weird because it goes against the human spirit. Humans imagine and create; each human person has infinite dignity and has a unique mission. Conformity is the weapon of the devil you often write about. I have a dream of designing dresses with big twirly skirts in beautiful colorful prints in real, natural fibers. Each dress would have an optional embroidery kit so it can be customized and embellished. Did you know that in 1901 the average American household spent 14% of its household budget on clothing, and that figured plummeted to 4% by 2002? Yes, mass manufacturing has helped, but so has conformity, especially where clothing is increasingly "unisex." I wrote a 96-slide presentation on this topic for fun. I believe the antidote is a return normalcy: humans being imaginative creators. Maybe my dress company has a future, or better, would be just in time. Am I willing to make the bet? I wonder what your hypothesis is as fas as what will fill the void once the implosion comes about. Thanks for your excellent work!
One of my favourite new cafes has lots of dark wood, rich colours on the walls (scarlet or crimson), and heavy tables with what appears to be cast iron supports. There are four or five comfortable armchairs with bold patterns that wouldn't look out of place on-set for the Golden Girls. The ceilings are at least ten feet high and the beautiful old building has crown moldings. The walls are full of colourful art. People often walk in and say, out loud, stuff like: "this is charming" or "oh, cozy, I like it". It clearly hits home with people, and a restaurant or pub like this wouldn't have seemed so notable even 25 years ago.
The similar feel (texture, rich wood, colour, decorations) of Irish Pubs may be one reason they are so popular. There is at least one company in Ireland that designs and exports pub interiors from a pre-set list of themes. There's something nice about the minimalist Scandi or Brooklyn styles, but not as much when it is everywhere.
I agree, Sean. Another phenomenon that intrigues me are all the Facebook Marketplace listings for gorgeous antiques, as well as well-made furniture and home goods being "given away" by an ageing generation. I'm a value shopper and never hesitate to pounce of these finds. I often think of it as arbitrage, but the reason I don't run out to get a storage unit and stockpile my finds is the simple economics behind it: there's no taste, no demand, for these furnishings. I do think it'll make a comeback so it'd be a long arbitrage game which I'm not bold enough to undertake. In the meantime, our home is looking very posh for pennies of the dollar. :)
Yes, there seems to be no end of upright pianos, china, furniture, etc. going for little to nothing. We have a small house, a cat, and small kids - if we picked up nice stuff we'd have to hide it away in storage so it doesn't get trashed!
Astute observation, Ted. Once you notice this pattern, you’ll see this everywhere. Even the most bland thing ever produced would be celebrated as the most innovative now. We have to resist this conformity.
The weirdo isn't likely to return in the near future. To understand the extent and power of conformity, you have to spend time with young people. I teach at the college level. The overwhelming majority of students dress the same, listen to the same music, consume the same entertainment, and use the same slang terminology, the most telling of which is "cringe." The demonstration of passion, or even enthusiasm, is subject to mockery and ridicule. Fear of appearing "cringe" is the primary reason why most students will not speak in class. Last semester, I had a student who wore his hair past his shoulders, painted his fingernails, and had a genuine love of punk rock and heavy metal. He was a joy to have in class. However, his breed is an endangered species. Few in his age demographic possess similar qualities of independence.
We can expect the dictatorship of the bland, under corporate authority, to continue unabated for a long time.
“Corporations didn’t intend to make the culture stagnant and boring,” I recently explained. “All they really want is to impose standardization and predictability—because it’s more profitable.”
Bingo!
Follow the money.
Institutional greed and salacious procurement of resources have increased in the wake of the digital economy's condensation of information. Greed only amplifies the suffocating restraint of originality.
I actually wish there MORE rounded corners. I keep bumping my shins into coffee tables, bed frames, and modernist fireplace ledges. I’m a collage of bruises.
Here in Florida about ninety percent of the cars are black or white or every one of the fifty shades of grey. Also, many homes that had a yellow or sandy exterior are being repainted one of 10 shades of white. Boring. I got my first blue car.
Time to bring back the Beat Poets, e.g. Ferlinghetti's perpetual awaiting of a rebirth of a sense of wonder. Folk singer, Tom Russell's marvelous "Hotwalker" CD includes paens to the pre-1960s polyglot American culture, and decrying the age of the strip malls and big box stores.
"A trillion dollars is spent training AI on all the digital data of the past"
The crucial word in this sentence is "digital".
There are still massive corpora of texts, artwork, etc., that have not been (and will probably never be) digitized. It's easy to say "look at the volume of digital data compared to previous human output". But how much of that data are duplicates, ephemera, or merely junk? This is true of our analog artifacts as well, to an extent. But the simple fact that we have access to 'the analog' and the algorithms do not makes a difference.
"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro." --Hunter S. Thompson
This is probably a more important article than we think. Thanks for publishing it.
I have found myself listening to Captain Beefheart a lot in the last couple years… just sayin’…
I was just about to say that, and add - viewing the art of Basil Wolverton and MAD Magazine's Don Martin.
well done! 🥳
check out captain beyonds first album, lol...
👍
"Turn and face the strange." ~ David Bowie
I believe this weirdo renaissance will emerge from people unafraid to speak unpopular opinions in plain terms without fear of reprisal from whatever side of the fence they sit on. I think it will be a sort of counterculture from the middle.
In a polarizing world (political, economic, even colors are clustering into shades of charcoal and white…), the misfits and rebels will be the ones who refuse to “pick a side.”
A big part of this analysis is missing: weird is "in" in politics, and not in a fun way. Extremely fringe ideas are now mainstream and conspiracy theories that would have never been entertained at all in the media are everywhere. Fringe figures with cruel, racist, sexist and antiscientific ideas have huge followings and get massive public attention in ways that they rarely have done previously. The Sydney Sweeney thing was about those who are reviving "eugenics" and the cracker barrel thing was driven by bots. Lots of weird is out there, just not the kind we like and people are retreating into sameness where they can to cope.
I can't be anything but weird. I tried. It doesn't work.
Ted, you always hit the bull's eye.
I've noticed, for several years now, that the muddied green, peach, brown "earthy tones" are the only colors (tones nonetheless!) juxtaposed against the endless shades of gray everywhere. This phenomenon can be seen from artwork Ditto for the soft-edge furniture - you know what I'm talking about: the plaster tables with pillar legs and entirely upholstered chairs with animalistic shapes. To me, though, that has stood out as WEIRD. It's weird because it goes against the human spirit. Humans imagine and create; each human person has infinite dignity and has a unique mission. Conformity is the weapon of the devil you often write about. I have a dream of designing dresses with big twirly skirts in beautiful colorful prints in real, natural fibers. Each dress would have an optional embroidery kit so it can be customized and embellished. Did you know that in 1901 the average American household spent 14% of its household budget on clothing, and that figured plummeted to 4% by 2002? Yes, mass manufacturing has helped, but so has conformity, especially where clothing is increasingly "unisex." I wrote a 96-slide presentation on this topic for fun. I believe the antidote is a return normalcy: humans being imaginative creators. Maybe my dress company has a future, or better, would be just in time. Am I willing to make the bet? I wonder what your hypothesis is as fas as what will fill the void once the implosion comes about. Thanks for your excellent work!
One of my favourite new cafes has lots of dark wood, rich colours on the walls (scarlet or crimson), and heavy tables with what appears to be cast iron supports. There are four or five comfortable armchairs with bold patterns that wouldn't look out of place on-set for the Golden Girls. The ceilings are at least ten feet high and the beautiful old building has crown moldings. The walls are full of colourful art. People often walk in and say, out loud, stuff like: "this is charming" or "oh, cozy, I like it". It clearly hits home with people, and a restaurant or pub like this wouldn't have seemed so notable even 25 years ago.
The similar feel (texture, rich wood, colour, decorations) of Irish Pubs may be one reason they are so popular. There is at least one company in Ireland that designs and exports pub interiors from a pre-set list of themes. There's something nice about the minimalist Scandi or Brooklyn styles, but not as much when it is everywhere.
I agree, Sean. Another phenomenon that intrigues me are all the Facebook Marketplace listings for gorgeous antiques, as well as well-made furniture and home goods being "given away" by an ageing generation. I'm a value shopper and never hesitate to pounce of these finds. I often think of it as arbitrage, but the reason I don't run out to get a storage unit and stockpile my finds is the simple economics behind it: there's no taste, no demand, for these furnishings. I do think it'll make a comeback so it'd be a long arbitrage game which I'm not bold enough to undertake. In the meantime, our home is looking very posh for pennies of the dollar. :)
Yes, there seems to be no end of upright pianos, china, furniture, etc. going for little to nothing. We have a small house, a cat, and small kids - if we picked up nice stuff we'd have to hide it away in storage so it doesn't get trashed!
Apologies for the typos - a "fat finger" hit send before I was done. :)
Astute observation, Ted. Once you notice this pattern, you’ll see this everywhere. Even the most bland thing ever produced would be celebrated as the most innovative now. We have to resist this conformity.
The weirdo isn't likely to return in the near future. To understand the extent and power of conformity, you have to spend time with young people. I teach at the college level. The overwhelming majority of students dress the same, listen to the same music, consume the same entertainment, and use the same slang terminology, the most telling of which is "cringe." The demonstration of passion, or even enthusiasm, is subject to mockery and ridicule. Fear of appearing "cringe" is the primary reason why most students will not speak in class. Last semester, I had a student who wore his hair past his shoulders, painted his fingernails, and had a genuine love of punk rock and heavy metal. He was a joy to have in class. However, his breed is an endangered species. Few in his age demographic possess similar qualities of independence.
We can expect the dictatorship of the bland, under corporate authority, to continue unabated for a long time.
“Corporations didn’t intend to make the culture stagnant and boring,” I recently explained. “All they really want is to impose standardization and predictability—because it’s more profitable.”
Bingo!
Follow the money.
Institutional greed and salacious procurement of resources have increased in the wake of the digital economy's condensation of information. Greed only amplifies the suffocating restraint of originality.
I actually wish there MORE rounded corners. I keep bumping my shins into coffee tables, bed frames, and modernist fireplace ledges. I’m a collage of bruises.
Here in Florida about ninety percent of the cars are black or white or every one of the fifty shades of grey. Also, many homes that had a yellow or sandy exterior are being repainted one of 10 shades of white. Boring. I got my first blue car.
You pay a surcharge for that hot sexy matte gray, damnit. Get with the times!
Time to bring back the Beat Poets, e.g. Ferlinghetti's perpetual awaiting of a rebirth of a sense of wonder. Folk singer, Tom Russell's marvelous "Hotwalker" CD includes paens to the pre-1960s polyglot American culture, and decrying the age of the strip malls and big box stores.
Merry Christmas... Christ Climbed Down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz78npvSZvo
"A trillion dollars is spent training AI on all the digital data of the past"
The crucial word in this sentence is "digital".
There are still massive corpora of texts, artwork, etc., that have not been (and will probably never be) digitized. It's easy to say "look at the volume of digital data compared to previous human output". But how much of that data are duplicates, ephemera, or merely junk? This is true of our analog artifacts as well, to an extent. But the simple fact that we have access to 'the analog' and the algorithms do not makes a difference.
"When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro." --Hunter S. Thompson
I do want fins or something on my car.
Hood ornaments
OOH something to look at while I'm driving:-)
It was Sydney Sweeney's "good jeans/genes" double entendre tagline that caused upset, not the mere fact that she was wearing jeans.