worst fad of the 21st century so far. it's steampunk, right?

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"Tell us what you think"

really unhappy about this steam powered giraffe thing

thanks to this thread for reminding me about kale and sausage soup which owns

TS: fake Victorianism vs. fake medievalism

there's also a guy around the corner with an I Love Vagina bumper sticker on the back of his truck. i don't know if he eats kale though.

I'll bet he tells people about how much he loves to eat kale, talks about how he'll happily eat kale all night long, it's not something he does as a favor, he just really enjoys eating kale, but then when there's actually a plate of kale right in front of him he sort of half-heartedly nuzzles at it for twenty seconds and then is like "ok great what's next"

kale is spectacular you just have to know how to cook it right

it is not very forgiving if you don't cook it right but neither are most vegetables

things about kale i didn't know before i ate it habitually for a long time - raw kale can be hard to digest, massaging kale with lemon juice and salt makes it less bitter and (supposedly) easier to digest.

just kale things

steampunk can only be embraced by fairly wealthy people with more time and money than good sense,...

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Thursday, August 25, 2016 8:26 PM (yesterday)

the people I know who are into it are not wealthy at all.

was gonna say, a lot of these items are easy to come by in thrift shops, eBay, etc.

Isn't steampunk like at least thirty years old?

No one's mentioned vajazzling.

I guess because the thread doesn't say 'best fad'.

yeah idk what about it codes as wealthy unless you think people are actually buying/making steam-powered computers or something xxp

there is definite steampunk - burning man crossover. With only a few exceptions, everyone I know who is a steampunk person either is or was a burning man person at some point.

the only person irl i know who has expressed any interest in steampunk is a young man who is sweet, non-gothy, very working class, and enjoys making things in the family shed

such a nice kid in fact that i've never took the piss out of him for liking steampunk

I had a steampunk outfit in a play I did once and I don't think the pieces combined cost us more than $100.

enjoys making things in the family shed

most of the steampunk ppl I know were like this as kids too.

worst fad: pro-rape blogs

i totally get the aesthetic delights of brass and clockwork and exposed engineering, i'm just a bit eyebrow-raisy about peeps who seem to crave to inhabit a more colonial era

generalized neo-Victorianism seems arguably worse than steampunk.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Thursday, August 25, 2016 11:03 PM (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is there really a diff

― mh 😏, Thursday, August 25, 2016 11:03 PM (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean yeah I think Steampunk has the defense of being a kind of fantasy/parallel universe thing, whereas straight up Victorian nostalgia is (1) nostalgia, which is inherently bad and (2) nostalgia for a more colonial era as NV says

to play devil's advocate for Victorianism though, you can make the same claim about nostalgia for almost any era. Humanity is pretty much always doing lots of horrible shit at any given time. 80s night -- "What, you're nostalgic for Reaganism? American imperialist foreign policy?

This ad keeps popping up in my FB feed and I've never wanted a train to derail so badly.

http://i.imgur.com/WFnqCqD.png

there's a certain kind of industrial optimism about the victorians that i still find kind of seductive: huge canals, the statue of liberty, digging up dinosaurs, national parks, all that. impossible to tease out from the bullshit ofc. and i'm not about to wear a 'waistcoat' in any case.

yeah i'm not gonna call anybody a monster if some aesthetic/imaginary version of the past tickles their fancy, but it is interesting the same kind of fantasies that become popular - i think there are political implications under the surface but not in convoluted, unexamined ways. i see some connection with "rap lyrics in stodgy English" and the whole exaggerated old-fashioned manners/m'lady/chappism cults. because manners are a weapon of class privilege and the roleplay adopters don't seem to be exactly detourning this aspect of their fantasy

most of the victorian "nostalgia" is about as accurate as renaissance fairs ime

sorry, scratch that "not" - the political undercurrents are complicated and usually unexamined

For Americans the VIctorian Era was actually a less-colonial era

yeah i get that but steampunk is largely Victorian London fixated imo unless you count that Will Smith movie

altho come to think of it just because the US's colonies in the 19th century were largely internal let's not pretend they weren't there

For Americans the VIctorian Era was actually a less-colonial era

― Josefa, Friday, August 26, 2016 1:24 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reeeally depends how you approach the westward expansion of the US

also the Philippines (though that might be just after Victorian era proper)

Isn't steampunk like at least thirty years old?

steampunk was basically codified in the early 70s, sci-fi lit subgenre (Oswald Bastable books, KW Jeter etc.) That it's become a "thing" that people LARP about in is sad and ridiculous.

i totally get the aesthetic delights of brass and clockwork and exposed engineering, i'm just a bit eyebrow-raisy about peeps who seem to crave to inhabit a more colonial era

I was thinking recently that there's a weird correlation between these anti-technologists and anti-social progressive Trump supporters. They should join forces and buy an island somewhere and live out their pre-industrial revolution fantasies.

burning man is also something you need to be wealthy to do.

also most of the good (or "good") steampunk books (difference engine, maaaaaybe diamond age) are pretty explicit abou viewing the victorian era/the victorian mindset as kinda pretty fucked up.

irl steampunk is more like "nostalgia for a bbc sci-fi miniseries that never actually existed."

burning man is also something you need to be wealthy to do.

yup

it didn't used to be that way but it sure is now

not if u work on a crew, based on what a bunch of my relatively poor 20-something friends are doing right now

what, you mean a crew bankrolled by a wealthy person, ie as an employee?

I dunno, whatever the garbage/recycling crew is, pretty sure that's part of the actual organization, they give crew passes in exchange for work.

those are employees not attendees

Burning Man LLC is a thing

was responding to "need to be wealthy to do", which did not specify an employee/attendee divide (which is pretty tenuous at best, the folks who are working still have a lot of fun, maybe even more fun)

well i mean you get to see babs streisand if you're a janitor at the arena

https://twitter.com/GroverNorquist/status/768988127415377924

Grover Norquist ‏@GroverNorquist 18h
18 hours ago Massachusetts, USA

There is no Trump. There is no Clinton.
Burning Man starts Monday.
All is right with the world.

if only we all could enjoy the privelege of cleaning up after Grover Norquist

We already are.

god that tweet is amazing

A friend used to run them - one feature which was interesting was that there were separate channels so people were dancing to 3 different sets of music indicated by colour rings on the headphones. If you wanted to dance with someone you could switch to their stream so you were both hearing the same thing.

that sounds really nice