"... establishing the terms and the tenor by which we enter that bustling intersection called discourse. The comedification of America has become the memeification of America.... The puerile hasn’t confabbed with the establishment so much as replaced it, with the latter’s permission. Jokes mingle with cruel and lethal austerity measures. At the podium during a rally held after the Presidential Inauguration, Musk raised a stiff right arm in what looked like a Nazi salute yet it was laughed off by the Anti-Defamation League as just an 'awkward gesture.' This month, Musk briefly changed his profile name on X, the social platform he owns, to Harry Bōlz, a brilliant display of homophonic potty humor that prompted a surge in an obscure cryptocurrency by the same name. This is where America lives and what America does. Nothing is funny, but everything is. And therein lies a sense of impotence, because our ability to discern the consequential ghoulishness of this nation’s policies–
LOL that’s crazy!–doesn’t in and of itself constitute resistance.... Laughter does not speak for itself. We must ask after it.... We ask the universe, as one memesmith did, 'does anyone know if we have to maintain our senses of kindness and empathy despite the world constantly trying to destroy the individual and destroy feelings in impersonal society tomorrow.'"
How are you doing in the bustling intersection called discourse?
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78 comments:
Althouse doxxes Dinky Dau as Lauren Michele Jackson.
Jeez, what bloated and pretentious writing.
Jeez, what bloated and pretentious writing.
Also uninformed.
“Harry Bolz” is homophobic? Sure, Jan.
She fails to recognize and/or acknowledge she and her ilk do not deserve wit and clever, only childish name calling and fart jokes.
As seen in Reader’s Digest: Laughter is the best medicine.
Those pearls won't clutch themselves.
"We ask the universe, as one memesmith did, 'does anyone know if we have to maintain our senses of kindness and empathy despite the world constantly trying to destroy the individual and destroy feelings in impersonal society tomorrow.'"
Who has been trying to destroy the individual and feelings? Isn't it the screeching harridans, the Karens who have been shutting down discourse before any disagreement can be spoken?
Also, using "the universe" as a God-substitute is disingenuous. The universe is cold, impersonal, brutish, and could drop a space rock on us at any point, without compunction.
One of the surprising things about online discourse is that many people -- the majority -- are genuinely funny. Before social media we got jokes from professional comedians and, maybe, an odd uncle. With an expanded circle of acquaintances, we're surrounded by more cleverness. For an Era of Not Funny, we have access to history's broadest section of funny people.
And a wittier person would've said all of that with one meme.
Lauren Michele Jackson screeches:
"THAT'S NOT FUNNY!"
This is your brain after four years of training in the humanities. Any questions?
We'll survive.
"And therein lies a sense of impotence"
It's OK. Everyone knows you're not funny.
I read and understood all of her words, but strung together into sentences, it didn't make a lick of sense to me. Y'all go ahead and mock the hell out of her.
"The diagnosis of online irony poisoning tends to understate the extent to which social media's rightward drift regulates so much else in life...establishing the terms and the tenor by which we enter that bustling intersection called discourse."
Diagnosis tends.
That is a flimsy skeleton, subject and verb, to support a weighty baggage of tortured opaque phrases.
Now do the Obama, Hillary, Bernie, AOC, Kamala, Schumer, Lizzy Warren, Hogg, Walz, Cobert, and Taylor Swift being photographed using that SAME Nazi salute that upsets Progressives so much NOW!!!
It is so much fun sitting back watching the left implode.
@RideSpaceMountain, good catch. It's the feeling of impotence. Like the nostalgia evident in recycling the "Black Jeopardy" skit for the SNL tribute, they used to be laughing a lot.
"does anyone know if we have to maintain our senses of kindness and empathy despite the world constantly trying to destroy the individual and destroy feelings". Yes, as every half-way significant novelist even from WHOA HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO has attested.
Also, as Mary Beth pointed out in one of the threads yesterday, that Alanis Morisette song killed everybody's understanding of what irony is.
Sexist that I am, I googled her and 5 pictures of a humorless scold popped up. I think if I had asked non-PC version of AI to imagine the author of this gibberish, it could not have improved on this.
I read the comments so far, but as to the quote: What?
I recently came across what may be the ultimate boomer joke. A 90 year old couple tell a younger friend that they are getting divorced. If you feel so strongly, why did you wait so long? "We had to wait for the kids to die."
"...The puerile hasn’t confabbed ..."
Pure comedy gold.
Oh my! Elon is homophonic!
"Lauren M. Jackson (she/her/hers; Ph.D. English, University of Chicago) has research and teaching interests in affect, aesthetics, and the novel in contemporary African American literature. She also teaches courses in the Department of Black Studies."
Her current project examines forms of bad feeling in contemporary African American literature, reading these “bummer affects” as expressing the aesthetic problem of a definitionally black literature.
Assistant Professor of English Northwestern University
"Bummer affects".
Pull my finger.
Tl:dr — if you don’t support my solutions to the problem, then you don’t support solving the problem. And having fun while you clean up my mess is fascism.
Rocco said...“Harry Bolz” is homophobic? Sure, Jan.
Funny, I read “homophobic” too. I was trying to figure out, “how is that…oh. Homophonic.” Ok, that makes more sense.
Wikipedia explains the cause of the blather-laden quote from The New Yorker: "Lauren Michele Jackson (born 1991) is an American culture critic and assistant professor of English and African American studies at Northwestern University." Sez it all!
that Alanis Morisette song killed everybody's understanding of what irony is.
Don’t ya think?
Is she in any way related to Oswald Bates?
I am old enough to remember when one of the great objects of a university education was to learn how to write with clarity and precision.
But that didn’t leave much room for professors of English to demonstrate originality and innovation to their tenure committees, so the nonsense babble of Derrida and Foucault crept into the curriculum, and a liberal education became more like joining an esoteric cult with a guild of shamans speaking to each other in a jargon that seems deliberately designed for obfuscation.
This writer has drunk deeply from that poisoned well. Even intelligent, well-educated people are left scratching their heads and wondering what the hell she’s talking about, and what the hell her editors were thinking when they put this drivel in a magazine they are trying to sell.
Allow me to translate this pseudo-intellectual psychobabble, or mansplain this article. Many men, myself and apparently Elon Musk included, retain their juvenile sense of humor. We still laugh at fart jokes and things like Elon referring to his imaginary legal expert as Suggon Deeznutz when tweeting to Governor Newsom. Many women never had and indeed despise juvenile humor. This has been the case since humans first walked the earth but in modern times the internet is blamed for everything. Some evidence - I believe Caddyshack, produced decades before the internet, is the funniest movie made while my wife hates it.
Her current project examines forms of bad feeling in contemporary African American literature, reading these “bummer affects” as expressing the aesthetic problem of a definitionally black literature.
And again: What?
"Her current project examines forms of bad feeling in contemporary African American literature, reading these “bummer affects” as expressing the aesthetic problem of a definitionally black literature."
The genre is "blackity black," my experience being a black person. Michelle Obama's Princeton master's thesis, Glenn Loury autobiography, etc. It's irresistible apparently.
Only a rare few blacks escape it, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams. Call it the super smart ones who have something else to say.
I believe Caddyshack, produced decades before the internet, is the funniest movie made while my wife hates it.
I don't laugh at Caddyshack nearly as much as at Blades of Glory.
The ultimate boomer joke:
A man asks his wife on his way into the kitchen, "what kind of topping do you want on your ice cream?"
She replies "butterscotch."
Twenty minutes pass.
He returns with a plate of ham and eggs.
She asks, "where's my toast?"
Elon has the ultimate fuck you money. He literally doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks of him. This drives the Lauren Michele Jacksons of the world crazy.
And also I'm Gonna Git You Sucka - every time the band appears out of nowhere to provide Slade's background music, I crack up. Overgold... PMS... Some classic bits in there. Plus Keenan Ivory Williams looking awesome.
Re: my obsession with Caddyshack. It was the first comedy I saw when I was stoned as a bejesus belt. It will always be the funniest movie subjectively for me, i.e., I admit others are funnier. FYI- just saw 100s of Beavers. Great flick many laugh out loud moments, and it was filmed in Northern Wisconsin! I recommend it highly, and I suspect Lauren Michele Jackson would hate it.
If they hold off for a few month, they can have their Bummer in the Summer.
The most important decision that any of us can make right now is what do we stand for: Goodness... or badness?
Being a Christopher Walken fan, I favor Balls Of Fury. Her observation certainly explains the Gutfeld! ratings.
I’ve sent boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. But I felt I owed it them.
Strangely, I didn’t find this line funny until after earning my law degree.
Christopher B said, "good catch. It's the feeling of impotence. Like the nostalgia evident in recycling the "Black Jeopardy" skit for the SNL tribute, they used to be laughing a lot."
Quoting Jerry Seinfeld, "most humor actually comes from insecurity." It is very hard to be powerful and be humorous, because making the people who are less powerful than you laugh requires you to understand some of their insecurities.
It's part of the catharsis of humor and why we invented it, it releases stress. Laughing at our anxieties is one of the best ways to defeat them.
Above all else, the Devil can not stand to be mocked.
"Musk briefly changed his profile name on X, the social platform he owns, to Harry Bōlz, a brilliant display of homophonic potty humor." Changing his username to Harry Bōlz wasn't homophobic. It inappropriate, childish, and lewd, but not homophobic. The author knows this and still chose to use homophobic because she is dishonest and manipulative. She knew if she just said it was inappropriate, or childish, or lewd folks would care less, but if she can attach a rhetorical kill-word like homophobic then her audience would read it as a permission structure to hate Elon Musk.
As someone, along with many others, who has been riffed a couple of times in my career, I find the shock that govt employees have at finding their supposed sinecures are not secure very amusing. Welcome to the party, pal!
Jackson's essay sounds like the complaints of someone who is being relentlessly mocked by people she feels are her inferiors.
“ reading these “bummer affects” as expressing the aesthetic problem of a definitionally black literature.”
I wonder now what the bummer is affecting.
Lenny Bruce uses profanity = Comic Gold
Comediens attacking Christianity = Comic Gold
Comedians attacking white people = Comic Gold
Comedians attacking patriotism = Comic Gold
Musk making a mock nazi salute = That's not funny
Vault Dweller, homophonic, not homophobic.
I can remember some leftwing Comedian sarah burnhard "Joking" in 2008 that if Sarah Palin came to town a few of her black homeboys would give her a nice welcome by raping her.
And of course, there's the other chick comedian that joked about killing Trump by cutting off his head.
But Musk's mock nazi salute is really over the line.
Pretentious writing indeed. "The diagnosis of online irony poisoning". Good grief. I guess if you cant write, through in a lot of 10 dollar words, and lard up the word count.
"I believe Caddyshack, produced decades before the internet, is the funniest movie made while my wife hates it."
A similar thing with my father and my mother only it was Austin Powers- The Spy Who Shagged Me. My father loved that movie and my mother detested like no other.
@Yancy Ward
Ahh I misread that. I withdraw the rest of my statement relying on that to call her dishonest and manipulative. I wouldn't want to create permission structure to hate her.
“Harry Bolz” is homophobic? Sure, Jan.
I made the same mistake. It's "homophonic," like "there," "their," and "they're," but perhaps the writer's intent was for us to think she wrote "homophobic." Sort of like that fake political speech that was(n't) made back in 1950:
“Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.”
Is the "Bummer affect" a Black version of "That's Not Funny"? Or just the cumulative effect of decades spent in the service of the Party of Killjoys?
Democrats and their faithful religious cultists do not like to me mocked.
Neither does the devil.
The New York Times tried to make "irony poisoning" catch on back in 2018-2019, but it didn't catch on. The phrase did get an online following. "Irony poisoning" is downstream from the deflation of ideals. As in the later days of the Soviet Union, people realize that the official rhetoric of those in power never corresponds to what's actually happening. What we read in the papers is most likely untrue. "Irony" has been institutionalized, and people react accordingly.
When Jackson writes about Elon Musk giving "what looked like a Nazi salute" long after that interpretation has been discredited her screed self-destructs. She's writing in the "puerile" fashion that she claims to deplore and invites the kind of memes that she attacks. It's similar with the "cruel and lethal austerity measures" and the "ghoulishness of this nation’s policies." Save some of that juicy rhetoric for when it's actually appropriate, otherwise you're just making yourself an object of ridicule.
This article has been mocked enough that I don't need to step in and help, so I'm just here to second the recommendation of Hundreds of Beavers. One of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
Kate said...
One of the surprising things about online discourse is that many people -- the majority -- are genuinely funny.
Some of the funniest things I've ever read have been in online fora.
It has been observed online for a while now that the Left can't meme. This article feels like an attempt to close off that area of battle since more often than not the Left loses in the Meme Wars. Just look at the failures with the attempts of "Dark Brandon" for Joe Biden or attaching Brat to Kamala Harris.
Reads like a first draft of something I scribbled freshman year that needed a lot of reworking to be understood by the reader.
Sounds like she has a lot of ideas in her head and that either those ideas became obscured by her turgid prose or the ideas themselves are weak and poorly thought-out.
Or both.
A black hole... whore h/t NAACP NOW that is funny.
A "burden" h/t Obama of evidence. The audacity.
Pass it h/t Pelosi to smell it is juvenile humor.
Transgender in drag is a gay preoccupation.
Sodomy is not rape-rape h/t Whoopi True in the digestive tract with excretory function.
The Schoolmarm seethes. Her bustle broke.
"I believe Caddyshack, produced decades before the internet, is the funniest movie made while my wife hates it."
A similar thing with my father and my mother only it was Austin Powers- The Spy Who Shagged Me. My father loved that movie and my mother detested like no other.
Another movie where I've heard there's a similar divide is "Slap Shot" starring Paul Newman.
Ironically, "Slap Shot" was written by a woman, Nancy Dowd.
Water closet humor was practiced by Hillary.
Hairy balls is a Freudian slip a la black whore h/t NAACP or "burden" h/t Obama.
Hairy balls is not transphobic but rather ageist.
Is the JournoList a closet pedophile with groomer dreams? An Epstein accessory in orientation?
Obama called TEA party members "teabaggers". I would bet my house, Lauren Michelle of the New Yorker found that comment exhilarating.
A problem. A final solution. A "burden". A wicked solution. A little too ironic.
She writes "Nazi", into the trash it goes. Excelsior.
"Musk raised a stiff right arm in what looked like a Nazi salute yet it was laughed off by the Anti-Defamation League as just an 'awkward gesture.'"
So, which is it, Lauren? Is Musk a Nazi, or are you delusional?
You will never get into heaven if you don't know how to laugh. Just look at the way things end up turning out. Everyone knows that God has a sense of humor. To go against humor is to go against God. And when I say God I really mean Gaia, lol
Goon is another juvenile guy humor movie women like.
…must be something about hockey…
Social media's rightward drift? I guess what you think depends upon where you started. She see's a rightward drift. I see people waking up and realizing they have been subjected to a long con. A grifter is in trouble when the mark begins to understand it was just a long con. But as Lincoln supposedly observed, you can fool some of the people all the time. And the left will still have its acolytes.
The genre is "blackity black," my experience being a black person.
That's a John Derbyshire coinage. I think the full expression is "blackety-blackety-blackblackblack."
"This article feels like an attempt to close off that area of battle since more often than not the Left loses in the Meme Wars."
This is what women are doing when they slap that "childish" label on things men like that they don't. If men are doing something they enjoy that women are not interested in, far too often the reaction is to try to stop them from doing it.
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