So, I made the mistake of picking a performing arts degree, so I spend most of my days pondering how pointless of a degree it is. I did manage to pick a module about performance protest, and while some of it gets a bit bullshitty, there's been other parts like looking at native American performance/protest at the Dakota pipeline and stuff, which have been interesting and useful.
Yesterday there was some group work. It was a bit of a brainstorming exercise but as a group we settled on the idea of spamming the illegal immigrant report line/letterbox with shit so that new reports wont go through. Ok, it's nothing amazing, but it served the purpose of the exercise we were given.
Then this girl speaks up. Previously her contribution to class has been telling everyone about how she culturally enriched herself by going on holiday in places where poor people exist.
On our idea, she says that it might be illegal to do, so we should create a fake website and have people fill that in as a symbolic message.
A FAKE WEBSITE FILLED IN AS A SYMBOLIC MESSAGE
At that moment I realised why the arts seem so useless at changing things. It's jam packed with trust fund kiddies.
that is complete insanity. what could possibly drive someone to have that thought at my young age? To remove all potency from the tiniest little act. Seriously ghoulish.
Was at a bar and this lady and her boyfriend decided to talk politics with me. I'm hammered, as my girlfriend was the bartender at the place at the time.
The discussion starts slow but eventually they bring up climate change and I drop the 100 companies produce 70% of greenhouse gas line.
Then this lady looks at me and laughs and says "Yeah so? Do you drive an electric car? What do you personally do to help the environment?"
I sort of begin to foam at the mouth at this line and that was the end of the Convo. They left and my gf yelled at me for scaring the patrons away.
It was just so weird, this otherwise normal lady had this gut reaction to defend companies that were poisoning us. Not only that, she felt the need to blame me, the individual, in their stead.
Shit still fucks me up
:very-intelligent: They're everywhere. :very-intelligent:
Also, lol and lmao at electric cars being an indulgence purchase that absolves your sins.
Holy shit I hate how accurate that is
i saw a zizek interview that talked about this more generally, i know hes hit and miss but i thought he had a good point on this
that back in the day you bought your commodities that you needed or wanted and that was an act you would feel ethically neutral or bad about (especially if it was an unnecessary treat). and you (as joe middleclass) would absolve your guilt separately by donating to charity or whatever - still in a commodified way, but entirely separately. whereas now with green capitalism (or other "ethical" capitalism), the two become intertwined in the same action, and purchasing these commodities becomes the good deed in and of itself - absolving the consumer of the perceived need to do anything else and also absolving any sense of a guilty, wasteful purchase. buying commodities becomes the way you save the planet. he was talking about rainforest friendly chocolate bars or something as the example, but the principle is the same.
Driving an electric car doesn't help the environment. At most, it hurts the environment slightly less than a comparable ICE car, but far more than more sustainable forms of transport (public transport for example). This is so stupid. "I'm a good person for buying a nice car".
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Based tbh. I hope they remained thirsty and didn't dare to return.
I was very good at weeding out that crowd lmao
I cringe at some of my behavior during that time but sometimes I was rad
Love for someone to pull this line on me since I'm too poor to have a car right now :tofu-cool:
Oh yeah, same. That was the other half the reason I went nuts. Was wearing very obviously thrift store clothes and drinking dollar beers and tried to guilt me into a 35k purchase lmao
People are a disappointment a lot of the time. Anything good will be polluted by capitalism and the cult of individualism.