…that are unrelated in content but visually similar.
Maybe it’s the color palette.
Batfort
Style reveals substance
Tag: image of the week (page 2 of 7)
Some weeks you just need a laff.
At first I thought this meme was just shitposting and silliness. Then I looked closer.
Ah yes, pogs.
I will never forget the time that my brother and his friend challenged each other to a six-pack-of-Surge challenge during a Superbowl. (I think they made it to four.) Or the framed Pikachu card I have in my kitchen (yes I’m serious), gifted to me by my brother after he moved on from dominating the Pokemon card came.
Personally, I had a—briefly—a collection of pogs.
My brother is Core Gen Y (he’s younger than me).
I’m Early Gen Y.
I’ve never loved thinking of myself as a Millennial, but I’ve come to terms with it. As a generation, they’re too whiny and short-sighted (at least as described by Boomers) to be something that I wanted to identify myself with. Birth years don’t lie, and no matter how much I hate thinking about myself in that way, my life trajectory is quite Millennial.
The best descriptor I’ve found for myself is “Old Millennial.” There was a time in my life when I didn’t know what the internet was, and I became an adult without owning a cell phone. Most of my childhood was spent reading books or running around in the woods or at ballet class. Growing up, our household was wired—my dad loves computers and we had a lot of PC games—but my first encounter with high-speed internet or AOL messaging was in college. My folks still had dial-up well into my undergraduate days (I would connect to open wifi when I was home for breaks, otherwise my blossoming internet habit tied up the phone line for hours).
Anyway.
I love how memes can convey such depth of truth with such brevity. The best memes refine a complex concept or set of symbols to a very fine point, presented in such an unrefined manner that they demand that your mind do the work of assembling the pieces back together.
That’s why they’re so sticky. The meme only sets the stage.
You still have to do the work.
Eyes on the prize (that is, Jesus Christ).
Keep dong the work.
Forgive yourself.
For reasons I can’t fully articulate tonight, this image almost perfectly encapsulates the past few years. Wild German romanticism combined with a perfectly timed message to the media. Things that don’t go, but somehow share a spirit.
Even the cropping (vs the original painting) somehow works in this context.
(or is that nightmares?)
Pewdiepie’s dreams came true. Someone wore the Montcler x Pierpaolo Piccoli collection in the wild.
Because no event calls for a nun-Darth-Vader-puffer-jacket-Christmas-angel look like a Harry Potter movie premier. Looks like Ezra Whatshisface is determined to ascend to the next level of fame, yeah?
Dressing this way certainly gets you buzz. But it also makes you the weird goth kid who is super-pissed that he has to take family photos with the rest of the normals.
Priorities, I guess.
When I was 23, I moved to a very liberal city. It’s not the most liberal city on the West Coast, but it’s famous for its, shall we say, really enthusiastic prayer rallies.
At the time, I was fresh out of undergrad—bright eyed and hella libertarian. I hadn’t yet discovered the difference between a state and a nation, and thought that borders were stupid since as far as I knew they were basically arbitrary.
In my new city, I settled into my new life. I walked to the grocery store and cooked myself dinners. I hung out with my roommate and watched the Westminster dog show on TV as I studied. Eventually, I went through the requisite mental breakdown as a graduate student, and spent too much money on coffee (because I was flat broke).
Amidst this backdrop of normalcy, a steady drip-drip-drip of leftism dropped against my forehead. You can’t escape it in this city—in most cities. It’s everywhere, softly emanating from the newsstands and whispered by the rustle of umbrellas (which are mostly wielded by out-of-staters). It’s implicit in nearly every conversation and behind every knowing glance over a glib reference to capitalism or the patriarchy.
Many people would go along with this—and I didn’t appear to resist on the outside. But inside my head I started to notice, to wonder. I had questions.
Eventually I searched the internet for answers to some of my questions, and found that other people were asking them too. I read their answers. I read everything I could find. I was offended—some of the mental scars are still with me to this day.
Still, I was intrigued. There was Truth here. And gradually I found myself drifting farther and farther to the right, even as I was surrounded in a softly smothering sea of leftism.
Now as an older, hopefully-wiser woman, I see graphics like “Moving to the Extreme,” and I understand. It’s terrifying to think about, but I myself am one of those tiny red dots that has moved away from the center toward one of the opposing poles.
Even though (or maybe especially because) many of our differences are fake, entirely-engineered scams cooked up by a media that is incentivized by an unholy combination of money, clicks, and hidden special interests, the divide is very real and very much growing.
Just ask my 23-year-old self.
Sometimes I crave Spaghetti-Os. This is weird for a few reasons.
- Who even thinks about Speaghetti-Os?
- It’s been over a year since I’ve eaten something that wasn’t meat, eggs, cheese, butter, or coffee, and I really don’t crave any of that stuff.
- Ew.
Yet still, the cravings are there. They don’t belong, but still pop out and say hi.
That’s kind of how I feel about this image:
Memes in real life.
Semi-obscure right wing memes in real life.
Semi-obscure right wing memes in real life themed for a holiday.
So wrong and yet so right.
I love the implicit sub-plot of this setup—it could lead toward its own horror movie. Or rather, long-form YouTube video.
It’s everywhere this week. You can’t escape it. Even my own dad brought it up offline.
The NPC meme.
I was going to write about it a few weeks ago, but never did because…there is a lot. What it means to be sentient, the side-effects of corporatization, IQ and personality type, the mask that we actively present to the world. You get it.
[Jordan Peterson voice] It’s a complex issue. [/Jordan Peterson voice]
Which is why I feel compelled to post Jordan NPCterson.
Not only is this the most beautiful meme I’ve ever seen, it allows me to talk about my changing attitudes toward JBP.
First off, the aesthetic. Great typography choices—the font is just hard enough to read that you have to take a moment to decipher “NPCterson.” (Which is a great pun in its own right.) I love how this one mimics co-opts the popular Millennial aesthetic of sticking something over a pastel background.
Now for the man himself. I read his book, but never got around to posting a review because I couldn’t really figure out what to review—most of what he gets at is already available in his YouTube archive. I would have written about the last chapter—the light pen, which I liked when I read it—but the longer I thought about it the more I kinda got mad at him for stealing his friend’s rad light pen, using it to write 10 sentences, and then never using it again.
I’ve been souring on him as a thinker gradually over the last couple months, but what really got to me was his reaction on the Kavanaugh confirmation. He stated on twitter that Kavanaugh should step down, thereby completely nullifying all the work that the Right had done to get him in there, and validating every underhanded tactic the Left used to try to keep him out.
And then he tried to walk it back as a “thought experiment.” That astounds me, honestly, to be in his position in this political and media environment and to say something like that and expect it to fly. Especially since we all know full well that it could happen to him at any moment.
My other favorite is a line from the Hoaxed trailer: “Falsehoods have consequences. That’s what makes them false.”
Uh, no. EVERYTHING has consequences. That line doesn’t even make sense.
I’m glad carnivory is working out for him, but I’m done paying attention to him and the rest of the “intellectual dark web.”
Did you think it would be anything else?
I’m glad he’s standing his ground.
Republican politicians have been cucking, selling out, and otherwise compromising for a long time now.
That’s how we got President Trump.
Even with the absolute struggle that we went through to get him elected, many of the old guard Boomer Republicans never quite got it: that it does not make you a better person to be civil with an opponent that has no intention of being civil back. It makes you stupid.
With the Kavanaugh debacle, some of them have finally woken up to what’s really going on.
How do we know this?
From Chad Pergram:
After Kavanaugh vote, Pence walked from the chamber with his detail to the exit which would open the doors up to the Senate steps. They swing the doors open…and all you can see is a throng of protesters across the plaza…and hear are protesters shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
As Pence stands in doorway of Capitol at top of Senate steps, protesters across the plaza spot him and start shouting louder. His motorcade waits at the bottom of the Capitol steps.
Pence stands for a moment in Senate doorway, indecisive, w/protesters hollering. Pence then reverses course to exit Capitol another way. Pence walks a few steps. Pivots & says “let’s do it.” Pence then defiantly walks down the Capitol steps and waves to Kavanaugh protesters
Pence—Mike Pence—the mildest mannered complete opposite of Trump’s brash manner, has embraced the villain role that he has been given by the leftist mob.
This is significant.
(Some of) the people who used to want to play nice now understand that it’s not possible. They didn’t capitulate to the mob, didn’t back down on the vote. Kavanaugh himself personified this by not withdrawing or buckling under the pressure.
Despite the absolute batshit insanity shown by the protesters on the left, the Republicans held firm. They didn’t go through quite the gauntlet that Trump or Kavanaugh ran, but they withstood the heat and they stood firm.
It seems like after years of never-Trump whining and ~bipartisan cooperation~ which leads to horrific things like Obamacare, the Repubs finally decided that they were not going to take it anymore.
This makes me feel marginally better about the future.
See also Lindsay Graham. I’m going to start paying attention to him.
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